"Perhaps now some of you see the point. Why did not any of the children in the first group think of this faster method of going across the room? It is simple. They looked at what they were given to use for materials and, they are like all of us, they wanted to use everything. But they did not need everything. They could do better with less, in a different way."
Knefhausen paused and looked around the room, savoring the moment. He had them now, he knew; even the Marine guards were hanging on his words. It was just as it had been with the President himself, three years before. They were beginning to comprehend the vastness and the necessity of the plan Dieter von Knefhausen had devised, and the pale, upturned faces were no longer as hostile, only perplexed and quite afraid.
He went on:
"So now you know what Project Alpha-Aleph is about, gentlemen and ladies. We have selected eight of the most intelligent human beings we could find—healthy, young, very adventurous. We played on them a nasty trick, to be sure. But we gave them in exchange an opportunity no one has ever had. The opportunity to think. To think for ten years. To think about basic questions. Out there they do not have the extra board to distract them. If they want to know something they cannot run to the library and look it up and find that somebody has said that what they were thinking could not work. They must think it out for themselves.
"So in order to make this possible we have practiced a deception on them, and it will cost them their lives. All right, that is tragic, yes. But if we take their lives we give them in exchange immortality.
"How do we do this? This is again trickery, gentlemen and ladies. I do not say to them, 'Here, your task is to achieve new basic organizing understandings and report them to us.' I camouflage the purpose of the experiment, so that the subjects will not be distracted even by that. We have told them that all of this is recreational, a way to help them pass the time. This too is a ruse de guerre. The 'recreation' is not an expedient to make the long trip tolerable. It is the central fact of the experiment, without which the trip would not have been undertaken.
"So we start them with the basic tools of science. With numbers, that is with magnitudes and quantification, with all that scientific observations are about. With 'grammar.' This is not the grammar you learned from Miss Mulholland in your composition class when you were thirteen years old, it is a technical term. It means with the calculus of statement and the basic rules of communication, and this is so that they can learn to think clearly by communicating fully and without fuzzy ambiguities. We give them very little else, only the opportunity to mix these two basic ingredients and come up with new forms of knowledge.
"What will come of these things? That is a fair question. Unfortunately there is no answer. Not yet. If we knew the answer in advance we would not have to perform the experiment. So we do not know what will be the end result of this, but already they have accomplished very much. Old questions that have puzzled the wisest of scientists for hundreds of years they have solved already! I will give you one example. You will say, 'Yes, but what does it mean?' I will answer, 'I do not know'; I only know that it is so hard a question that no one else has been able to answer it since it was first asked, for hundreds of years. It is a proof of a thing which is called Goldbach's Conjecture. Only a conjecture; you could call it a guess. A guess by an eminent mathematician some many years ago, that every even number can be written as the sum of two prime numbers. This is one of those simple problems in mathematics that everyone can understand and no one can solve. You can say 'Certainly, sixteen is the sum of eleven and five, both of which are prime numbers, and thirty is the sum of twenty-three and seven, which also are both prime, and I can give you such numbers for any even number you care to name.' Yes, you can do this; but can you prove that for every even number it will always be possible to do this? No. You cannot. No one has been able to, but our friends on the Constitution have done it, and this was in the first few months. They have yet more than nine years. I cannot say what they will do in that time, but it is foolish to imagine that it will be anything less than very much indeed. A new relativity, a new universal gravitation—I don't know, I am only saying words. But much."
He paused again. No one was making a sound. Even the President was no longer staring straight ahead without expression but was looking directly at him—one could not say with kindness, certainly, but without loathing at least.
"It is not too late to spoil the experiment. It therefore follows that it is necessary to keep the secret a bit longer, as long as possible in fact. But there you have it, gentlemen and ladies. That is the true protocol for the Alpha-Aleph experiment." He dreaded what would come next, postponed it for a second by consulting his papers, shrugged, faced them, and said: "Now, are there any questions?"
Oh, yes, there were certainly questions! Herr Omnes was dazzled for a moment, stunned a little, took a few breaths to overcome the spell of the simple and beautiful truths he had heard. But then first one piped up, then another, then two or three shouting at once. There were questions of all sorts. Questions beyond answering. Questions Knefhausen did not have time to hear, much less answer, before the next question was on him. Questions to which he did not know the answers. Questions, worst of all, to which the answers were like pepper in the eyes, enraging, blinding the people to sense. But he had to face them, and he tried to answer them. Even when they shouted so that, outside the thick double doors, the Marines in the machine-gun post looked at each other uneasily and wondered what made the dull rumble that penetrated the very good soundproofing of the room. "What I want to know, who put you up to this?" "Mr. Chairman, nobody; it is as I have said." "But see now, Knefhausen, do you mean to tell us you're murderin' these good people for the sake of some Goldberg's theory?" "No, Senator, not for Goldbach's Conjecture, but for all that great advances in science will mean in the struggle to keep the Free World free." "You're confessing that you've dragged the United States of America into committing a palpable fraud?" "A legitimate ruse of war, Mr. Secretary, because there was no other way." "The photographs, Knefhausen?" "Faked, General, as I have told you. I accept full responsibility." And so on and so on, the words "murder" and "fraud" and even "treason" coming faster and faster.
Until at last the President stood up and raised his hand. Order was a long time coming, but at last they quieted down.
"Whether we like it or not, we're in it," he said simply. "There is nothing else to say. You have come to me, many of you, with rumors you have heard, and asked for the truth. Now you have the truth, and it's classified Top Secret and must not be divulged. You all know what this means. I will only add that in this matter there are to be no leaks whatsoever. I personally propose to see that any breach of this security is investigated with all the resources of the government and punished with the full penalty of the law. I declare this a matter of national emergency, and remind you that the penalty includes the death sentence when appropriate—and I say that in this case it is appropriate." He nibbled at his lower lip as though something tasted bad in his mouth, looking older than his years. He allowed no further discussion, and dismissed the meeting.