Party Line

'Then what is it you want of me?'

'Realism. Some old-fashioned realism. A hard-headed assessment.'

'I'm fairly close to the operation. It's hard for me to step back those few necessary paces to take a good objective look at it.'

'Well, do the best you can. This is off-the-record. Just between the two of us. If necessary, we'll have you in to testify. To start with, maybe, how good are the chances for FTL?'

'We are working on it, senator. I have a feeling we still have a long way to go. We're beginning to have a feeling that it may not be a simple matter of physical laws.'

'What could it be, then?'

'Emphasizing the fact that we do not really know, I'd be willing to hazard a guess that it might be something we have never heard of. A procedure, or a technique, maybe even a state of mind, that is outside all human experience.'

'Now you're going mystic on me. I don't like this mystic stuff.'

*'In no way mystic, senator. Just a willingness to admit mankind's limitations. It stands to reason that one race on one planet is not going to come up with everything there is.'

'Have you anything to back that up?'

'Senator, I think I have. For the last several months, one of our operators has been trying to explain to his opposite number some of the fundamentals of our economic system. It has been and still is a trying task. Even the simplest fundamentals-things like buying and selling, supply and demand-have been hard to put across. Those folks out there, whoever they are, have never even thought of our brand of economics, if, in fact, any kind of economics. What makes it even harder is that they appear to stand in absolute horror of some of the things we tell them. As if the very ideas were obscene.'

'Why bother with them, then?'

'Because they still maintain an interest. Perhaps the ideas are so horrible that they have a morbid fascination for them. As long as they maintain that interest, we'll keep on working with them.'

'Our idea in starting this project was to help ourselves, not a lot of other folks.'

'It's a two-way street,' said Thomas. They help us, we help them. They teach us, we teach them. It's a free interchange of information. And we're not being as altruistic as you think. It is our hope that as we go along with this economic business, we'll pick up some hints.'

'What do you mean, some hints?'

'Perhaps some indications of how we may be able to revise or modify our economic system.'

'Thomas, we have spent five or six thousand years or more in working out that economic system.'

'Which doesn't mean, senator, that it is letter perfect. We made mistakes along the way.'

The senator grunted. This, I take it, will be another long-term project?'

'All of our work, or the most of it, is long-term. Most of what we get is not readily or easily adapted to our use.'

'I don't like the sound of it,' growled the senator. 'I don't much like anything I hear. I asked you for specifics.'

'I've given you specifics. I could spend the rest of the day giving you specifics.'

'You've been at this business for twenty-five years?'

'On a job like this, twenty-five years is a short time.'

'You tell me you're getting nowhere on FTL. You're piddling away your time teaching an economics course to some stupid jerks who are having a hard time knowing what you are talking about.'

'We do what we can,' said Thomas.

'It's not enough,' said the senator. The people are getting tired of seeing their taxes go into the project. They were never very much for it to start with. They were afraid of it. You could slip, you know, and give away our location.'

'No one has ever asked for our location.'

They might have ways of getting it, anyhow.'

'Senator, that's an old bugaboo that should long ago have been laid to rest. No one is going to attack us. No one is going to invade us. By and large, these are intelligent, and I would suspect, honorable gentlemen with whom we're dealing. Even if they're not, what we have here would not be worth their time and effort. What we are dealing in is information. They want it from us, we want it from them. It's worth more than any other commodity that any of us may have.'

'Now we're back to that again.'

'But, dammit, senator, that's what it's all about.'

'I hope you're not letting us be taken in by some sort of slicker out there.'

That's a chance we have to take, but I doubt it very much. As director of this branch of the project, I've had the opportunity…'

The senator cut him off. I'll talk with you some other time.'

'Any time,' said Thomas, as affably as he was able. I'll look forward to it.'

V

They had gathered in the lounge, as was their daily custom, for a round of drinks before dinner.

Jay Martin was telling about what had happened earlier in the day.

'It shook me,' he said. 'Here was this voice, from far away…'

'How did you know it was far away?' asked Thomas. 'Before they told you, that is.'

'I can tell,' said Martin. 'You get so you can tell. There is a certain smell to distance.'

He bent over quickly, reaching for a handkerchief, barely getting it up in time to muffle the explosive sneeze. Straightening, he mopped his face, wiped his streaming eyes.

'Your allergy again.' said Mary Kay.

Tm sorry,' he said. 'How in hell can a man pick up pollen out here in this desert? Nothing but sage and cactus.'

'Maybe it's not pollen,' said Mary Kay. 'It could be mold. Or dandruff. Has anyone here got dandruff?'

'You can't be allergic to human dandruff. It has to be cat dandruff,' said Jennie Sherman.

'We haven't any cats here,' said Mary Kay, 'so it couldn't be cat dandruff. Are you sure about human dandruff, Jennie?'

Tm sure,' said Jennie. 'I read it somewhere.'

'Ever see a physician about it?' asked Thomas.

Martin shook his head, still mopping at his eyes.

'You should,' said Thomas. 'You could be given allergy tests. A battery of tests until they find what you're allergic to.'

'Go ahead and tell us more,' said Richard Garner, 'about this guy who said the world was about to end.'

'Not the world,' said Martin. 'The universe. He was just spreading the word. In a hurry to spread the word. As if they'd just found out. Like Chicken Little, yelling that the sky was falling. Talking for just a minute, then dropping out. I suppose going on to someone else. Trying to catch everyone he could.

Sounded a little frantic. As if there was little time.'

'Maybe it was a joke,' suggested Jennie.

'I don't think so. It didn't sound like a joke. I don't think any of the people out there joke. If so, I've never heard of it. Maybe we're the only ones who have a sense of humor. Anyone here ever hear anything that sounded like a joke?'

They shook their heads.

The rest of you are halfway laughing at it,' said Mary Kay. 'I don't think it's funny at all. Here are these people out on the rim, trying all these years, for no one knows how many centuries, to understand the universe, then up pops someone and tells them the universe has run down and they, out at the edge of it, will be the first to go. Maybe they were very close to understanding. Maybe they needed only a few more years and now they haven't got the years.'

'Would that be the way it would happen?' asked Hal Rawlins. 'Jay, you're the physicist. You'd be the one to know.'

'I can't be certain, Hal. We don't know enough about the structure of the universe. There might be certain conditions that we are not aware of. Entropy presupposes a spreading out, so that the total energy of a thermodynamic system is so evenly distributed that there is no energy available for work.

That's not the case here, of course. Out at the rim of the universe, maybe. The energy and matter out there would be old, have had more time. Or would it? God, I don't know. I'm talking about something no one knows about.'