“Another thing,” said Spencer, “is objectivity. How do you select the men to send back to observe the facts?”
“I am sure that we could get them. There are many men of the cloth, of every creed and faith, who would be amply qualified …”
“Those are just the ones we would never think of sending,” said Spencer. “We need objectivity. Ideally, the kind of man we need is one who has no interest in religion, who has no formal training in it, one who is neither for it nor against it—and yet, we couldn’t use that sort of man even if we found him. For to understand what is going on, he’d have to have a rather thorough briefing on what he was to look for. Once you trained him, he’d be bound to lose his objectivity. There is something about religion that forces one to take positions on it.”
“Now,” said Ravenholt, “you are talking about the ideal investigative situation, not our own.”
“Well, all right, then,” conceded Spencer. “Let’s say we decide to do a slightly sloppy job. Who do we send then? Could any Christian, I ask you, no matter how poor a Christian he might be, safely be sent back to the days that Jesus spent on Earth? How could one be sure that even mediocre Christians would do no more than observe the facts? I tell you, Dr. Ravenholt, we could not take the chance. What would happen, do you think, if we suddenly should have thirteen instead of twelve disciples? What if someone should try to rescue Jesus from the Cross? Worse yet, what if He actually were rescued? Where would Christianity be then? Would there be Christianity? Without the Crucifixion, would it ever have survived?”
“Your problem has a simple answer,” Ravenholt said coldly. “Do not send a Christian.”
“Now we are really getting somewhere,” said Spencer. “Let’s send a Moslem to get the Christian facts and a Christian to track down the life of Buddha—and a Buddhist to investigate black magic in the Belgian Congo.”
“It could work,” said Ravenholt.
“It might work, but you wouldn’t get objectivity. You’d get bias and, worse yet, perfectly honest misunderstanding.”
Ravenholt drummed impatient fingers on his well-creased knee. “I can see your point,” he agreed, somewhat irritably, “but there is something you have overlooked. The findings need not be released in their entirety to the public.”
“But if it’s in the public interest? That’s what our license says.”
“Would it help,” asked Ravenholt, “if I should offer certain funds which could be used to help defray the costs?”
“In such a case,” said Spencer, blandly, “the requirement would not be met. It’s either in the public interest, without any charge at all, or it’s a commercial contract paid for at regular rates.”
“The obvious fact,” Ravenholt said flatly, “is that you do not want to do this job. You may as well admit it.”
“Most cheerfully,” said Spencer. “I willingly wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. What worries me right now is why you’re here.”
Ravenholt said, “I thought that with the project about to be rejected, I possibly could serve as a sort of mediator.”
“You mean you thought we could be bribed.”
“Not at all,” said Ravenholt wrathfully. “I was only recognizing that the project was perhaps a cut beyond what your license calls for.”
“It’s all of that,” said Spencer.
“I cannot fully understand your objection to it,” Ravenholt persisted.
“Dr. Ravenholt,” said Spencer gently, “how would you like to be responsible for the destruction of a faith?”
“But,” stammered Ravenholt, “there is no such possibility …”
“Are you certain?” Spencer asked him. “How certain are you, Dr. Ravenholt? Even the black magic of the Congo?”
“Well, I—well, since you put it that way …”
“You see what I mean?” asked Spencer.
“But even so,” argued Ravenholt, “there could be certain facts suppressed …”
“Come now! How long do you think you could keep it bottled up? Anyway, when Past, Inc., does a job,” Spencer told him firmly, “it goes gunning for the truth. And when we learn it, we report it. That is the one excuse we have for our continuing existence. We have a certain project here—a personal, full-rate contract—in which we have traced a family tree for almost two thousand years. We have been forced to tell our client some unpleasant things. But we told them.”
“That’s part of what I’m trying to convey to you,” shouted Ravenholt, shaken finally out of his ruthless calm. “You are willing to embark upon the tracing of a family tree, but you refuse this!”
“And you are confusing two utterly different operations! This investigation of religious origins is a public interest matter. Family Tree is a private account for which we’re being paid.”
Ravenholt rose angrily. “We’ll discuss this some other time, when we both can keep our temper.”
Spencer said wearily, “It won’t do any good. My mind is made up.”
“Mr. Spencer,” Ravenholt said, nastily, “I’m not without recourse.”
“Perhaps you’re not. You can go above my head. If that is what you’re thinking, I’ll tell you something else: You’ll carry out this project over my dead body. I will not, Dr. Ravenholt, betray the faith of any people in the world.”
“We’ll see,” said Ravenholt, still nasty.
“Now,” said Spencer, “you’re thinking that you can have me fired. Probably you could. Undoubtedly you know the very strings to pull. But it’s no solution.”
“I would think,” said Ravenholt, “it would be the perfect one.”
“I’d still fight you as a private citizen. I’d take it to the floor of the United Nations if I had to.”
They both were on their feet now, facing one another across the width of desk.
“I’m sorry,” Spencer said, “that it turned out this way. But I meant everything I said.”
“So did I,” said Ravenholt, stalking out the door.
Spencer sat down slowly in his chair.
A swell way to start a day, he told himself.
But the guy had burned him up.
Miss Crane came in the door with a sheaf of papers for his desk.
“Mr. Spencer,” shall I send in Mr. Hudson? He’s been waiting a long time.”
“Is Hudson the applicant?”
“No, that is Mr. Cabell.”
“Cabell is the man I want to see. Bring me his file.” She sniffed contemptuously and left.
Damn her, Spencer told himself, I’ll see who I want to see when I want to see them!
He was astounded at the violence of his thought. What was wrong with him? Nothing was going right. Couldn’t he get along with anyone any more?
Too tensed up, he thought. Too many things to do, too much to worry over.
Maybe what he ought to do was walk out into Operations and step into a carrier for a long vacation. Back to the Old Stone Age, which would require no indoctrination. There wouldn’t be too many people, perhaps none at all. But there’d be mosquitoes. And cave bears. And saber-tooths and perhaps a lot of other things equally obnoxious. And he’d have to get some camping stuff together and—oh, the hell with it!
But it was not a bad idea.
He’d thought about it often. Some day he would do it. Meanwhile, he picked up the sheaf of papers Miss Crane had dropped upon his desk.
They were the daily batch of future assignments dreamed up by the Dirty Tricks department. There was always trouble in them. He felt himself go tense as he picked them up.
The first one was a routine enough assignment—an investigation of some tributes paid the Goths by Rome. There was, it seemed, a legend that the treasure had been buried somewhere in the Alps. It might never have been recovered. That was S.O.P., checking up on buried treasure.