Meyerhof added excitedly, "And for possible humor created from within, we have no laughter. Puns, I mean."
Whistler said, "Presumably, the extraterrestrials cancel out reactions to spontaneous jokes to avoid confusion."
Trask said in sudden agony of spirit, "Come on, now, Good Lord, do either of you believe this?"
The senior analyst looked at him coldly. "Multivac says so. It's all that can be said so far. It has pointed out the real jokesters of the universe, and if we want to know more, the matter will have to be followed up." He added in a whisper, "If anyone dares follow it up."
Grand Master Meyerhof said suddenly, "I asked two questions, you know. So far only the first has been answered. I think Multivac has enough data to answer the second."
Whistler shrugged. He seemed a half-broken man. "When a Grand Master thinks there is enough data," he said, "I'll make book on it. What is your second question?"
"I asked this. What will be the effect on the human race of discovering the answer to my first question?"
"Why did you ask that?" demanded Trask.
"Just a feeling that it had to be asked," said Meyerhof.
Trask said, "Insane. It's all insane," and turned away. Even he himself felt how strangely he and Whistler had changed sides. Now it was Trask crying insanity.
Trask closed his eyes. He might cry insanity all he wished, but no man in fifty years had doubted the combination of a Grand Master and Multivac and found his doubts verified.
Whistler worked silently, teeth clenched. He put Multivac and its subsidiary machines through their paces again. Another hour passed and he laughed harshly. "A raving nightmare!"
"What's the answer?" asked Meyerhof. "I want Multivac's remarks, not yours."
"All right. Take it. Multivac states that, once even a single human discovers the truth of this method of psychological analysis of the human mind, it will become useless as an objective technique to those extraterrestrial powers now using it."
"You mean there won't be any more jokes handed out to humanity?" asked Trask faintly. "Or what do you mean?"
"No more jokes," said Whistler, "now! Multivac says now! The experiment is ended now! A new technique will have to be introduced."
They stared at each other. The minutes passed.
Meyerhof said slowly, "Multivac is right."
Whistler said haggardly, "I know."
Even Trask said in a whisper, "Yes. It must be."
It was Meyerhof who put his finger on the proof of it, Meyerhof the accomplished jokester. He said, "It's over, you know, all over. I've been trying for five minutes now and I can't think of one single joke, not one! And if I read one in a book, I wouldn't laugh. I know."
"The gift of humor is gone," said Trask drearily. "No man will ever laugh again."
And they remained there, staring, feeling the world shrink down to the dimensions of an experimental rat cage-with the maze removed and something, something about to be put in its place.
The Immortal Bard
"Oh, yes," said Dr. Phineas Welch, "I can bring back the spirits of the illustrious dead."
He was a little drunk, or maybe he wouldn't have said it. Of course, it was perfectly all right to get a little drunk at the annual Christmas party.
Scott Robertson, the school's young English instructor, adjusted his glasses and looked to right and left to see if they were overheard. "Really, Dr. Welch."
"I mean it. And not just the spirits. I bring back the bodies, too."
"I wouldn't have said it were possible," said Robertson primly.
"Why not? A simple matter of temporal transference."
"You mean time travel? But that's quite-uh-unusual."
"Not if you know how."
"Well, how, Dr. Welch?"
"Think I'm going to tell you?" asked the physicist gravely. He looked vaguely about for another drink and didn't find any. He said, "I brought quite a few back. Archimedes, Newton, Galileo. Poor fellows."
"Didn't they like it here? I should think they'd have been fascinated by our modern science," said Robertson. He was beginning to enjoy the conversation.
"Oh, they were. They were. Especially Archimedes. I thought he'd go mad with joy at first after I explained a little of it in some Greek I'd boned up on, but no-no-"
"What was wrong?"
"Just a different culture. They couldn't get used to our way §i life. They got terribly lonely and frightened. I had to send them back."
"That's too bad."
"Yes. Great minds, but not flexible minds. Not universal. So I tried Shakespeare."
"What?" yelled Robertson. This was getting closer to home.
"Don't yell, my boy," said Welch. "It's bad manners."
"Did you say you brought back Shakespeare?"
"I did. I needed someone with a universal mind; someone who knew people well enough to be able to live with them centuries way from his own time. Shakespeare was the man. I've got his signature. As a memento, you know."
"On you?" asked Robertson, eyes bugging.
"Right here." Welch fumbled in one vest pocket after another. "Ah, here it is."
A little piece of pasteboard was passed to the instructor. On one side it said: "L. Klein amp; Sons, Wholesale Hardware." On the other side, in straggly script, was written, "Willm Shakesper."
A wild surmise filled Robertson. "What did he look like?"
"Not like his pictures. Bald and an ugly mustache. He spoke in a thick brogue. Of course, I did my best to please him with our times. I told him we thought highly of his plays and still put them on the boards. In fact, I said we thought they were the greatest pieces of literature in the English language, maybe in any language."
"Good. Good," said Robertson breathlessly.
"I said people had written volumes of commentaries on his plays. Naturally he wanted to see one and I got one for him from the library."
"And?"
"Oh, he was fascinated. Of course, he had trouble with the current idioms and references to events since 1600, but I helped out. Poor fellow. I don't think he ever expected such treatment. He kept saying, 'God ha' mercy! What cannot be racked from words in five centuries? One could wring, methinks, a flood from a damp clout!' "
"He wouldn't say that."
"Why not? He wrote his plays as quickly as he could. He said he had to on account of the deadlines. He wrote Hamlet in less than six months. The plot was an old one. He just polished it up."
"That's all they do to a telescope mirror. Just polish it up," said the English instructor indignantly.
The physicist disregarded him. He made out an untouched cocktail on the bar some feet away and sidled toward it. "I told the immortal bard that we even gave college courses in Shakespeare."
"I give one."
"I know. I enrolled him in your evening extension course. I never saw a man so eager to find out what posterity thought of him as poor Bill was. He worked hard at it."
"You enrolled William Shakespeare in my course?" mumbled Robertson. Even as an alcoholic fantasy, the thought staggered him. And was it an alcoholic fantasy? He was beginning to recall a bald man with a queer way of talking…
"Not under his real name, of course," said Dr. Welch. "Never mind what he went under. It was a mistake, that's all. A big mistake. Poor fellow." He had the cocktail now and shook his head at it.
"Why was it a mistake? What happened?"
"I had to send him back to 1600," roared Welch indignantly. "How much humiliation do you think a man can stand?"
"What humiliation are you talking about?"
Dr. Welch tossed off the cocktail. "Why, you poor simpleton, you flunked him."
Someday
Niccolo Mazetti lay stomach down on the rug, chin buried in the palm of one small hand, and listened to the Bard disconsolately. There was even the suspicion of tears in his dark eyes, a luxury an eleven-year-old could allow himself only when alone.