“Certainly. Certainly. If you are right. But it seems that what your story amounts to is that your assumptions are different from the accepted ones. Who’s to say which set of assumptions is right?”
“Sir, the structure I have built explains several things that are left doubtful in the accepted view.”
“Well, then, your colleagues ought to accept your modification and in that case you would scarcely have to come to me, I imagine.”
“Sir, my colleagues will not believe. Their self-interest stands in the way.”
“As your self-interest stands in the way of your believing you might be wrong.... Young man, my powers, on paper, are enormous, but I can only succeed when the public is willing to let me. Let me give you a lesson in practical politics.”
He looked at his wristwatch, leaned back and smiled. His offer was not characteristic of him, but an editorial in the Terrestrial Post that morning had referred to him as “a consummate politician, the most skilled in the International Congress” and the glow that that had roused within him still lingered.
“It is a mistake,” he said, “to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. We know that well enough from our experience in the environmental crisis of the twentieth century. Once it was well known that cigarettes increased the incidence of lung cancer, the obvious remedy was to stop smoking, but the desired remedy was a cigarette that did not encourage cancer. When it became clear that the internal-combustion engine was polluting the atmosphere dangerously, the obvious remedy was to abandon such engines, and the desired remedy was to develop non-polluting engines.
“Now then, young man, don’t ask me to stop the Pumping. The economy and comfort of the entire planet depend on it. Tell me, instead, how to keep the Pumping from exploding the Sun.”
Lamont said, “There is no way, Senator. We are dealing with something here that is so basic, we can’t play with it. We must stop it.”
“Ah, and you can suggest only that we go back to matters as they were before Pumping.”
“We must.”
“In that case, you will need hard and fast proof that you are right.”
“The best proof,” said Lament, stiffly, “is to have the Sun explode. I suppose you don’t want me to go that far.”
“Not necessary, perhaps. Why can’t you get Hallam to back you up?”
“Because he is a small man who finds himself the Father of the Electron Pump. How can he admit his child will destroy the Earth?”
“I see what you mean, but he is still the Father of the Electron Pump to the whole world, and only his word would carry sufficient weight in this respect.”
Lament shook his head. “He would never give in. He would rather see the Sun explode.”
The senator said, “Then force his hand. You have a theory but a theory by itself is meaningless. Surely there must be some way of checking it. The rate of radioactive breakdown of, say, uranium depends on the interactions within the nucleus. Has that rate been changing in a fashion predicted by your theory but not the standard one?”
Again, Lament shook his head. “Ordinary radioactivity depends on the weak nuclear interaction, and unfortunately, experiments of that sort will yield only borderline evidence. By the time it showed sufficiently to be unmistakable, it would be too late.”
“What else, then?”
“There are pion interactions of a specific sort that might yield unmistakable data now. Better still there are quark-quark combinations that have produced puzzling results recently that I am sure I can explain—”
“Well, there you are.”
“Yes, but in order to obtain that data. I must make use of a large proton synchrotron on the Moon, sir, and no time on that will be available for years—I’ve checked—unless someone pulls the strings.”
“Meaning me?”
“Meaning you, Senator.”
“Not as long as Dr. Hallam says this about you, son.” And Senator Burt’s gnarled finger tapped the piece of paper in front of him. “I can’t get out on that limb.”
“But the existence of the world—”
“Prove it.”
“Override Hallam and I’ll prove it.”
“Prove it and I’ll override Hallam.”
Lamont drew a deep breath, “Senator! Suppose there’s just a trifling chance I’m right. Isn’t even that trifling chance worth fighting for? It means everything; all mankind, the entire planet—”
“You want me to fight the good fight? I’d like to. There’s a certain drama in going down in a good cause. Any, decent politician is masochistic enough to dream now and then of going down in flames while the angels sing. But, Dr. Lamont, to do that one has to have a fighting chance. One has to have something to fight for that may— just may—win out. If I back you, I’ll accomplish nothing with your word alone against the infinite desirability of Pumping. Shall I demand every man give up the personal comfort and affluence he has learned to get used to, thanks to the Pump, just because one man cries ‘Doom’ while all the other scientists stand against him, and the revered Hallam calls him an idiot? No, sir, I will not go down in flames for nothing.”
Lamont said, “Then just help me find my proof. You needn’t appear in the open if you fear—”
“I’m not afraid,” said Burt, abruptly. “I’m being practical. Dr. Lamont, your half-hour is rather more than gone.”
Lamont stared for a moment in frustration but Burt’s expression was a clearly intransigent one now. Lamont left. Senator Burt did not see his next visitor immediately. Minutes passed while he stared uneasily at the closed door and fiddled with his tie. Could the man have been right? Could he have had the smallest chance of being right?
He had to admit it would be a pleasure to trip Hallam and push his face into the mud and sit on him till he choked—but it would not happen. Hallam was untouchable. He had had only one set-to with Hallam nearly ten years ago. He had been right, dead right, and Hallam had been egregiously wrong, and events had since proved it to be so. And yet, at the time, Burt had been humiliated and he had almost lost reelection as a result.
Burt shook his head in admonition to himself. He might risk reelection in a good cause, but he could not risk humiliation again. He signaled for the next visitor and his face was calm and bland as he rose to greet him.
8
If by this time, Lamont had still felt he had something to lose, professionally, he might have hesitated. Joshua Chen was universally unpopular and anyone who dealt with him was in bad odor at once with almost every corner of the Establishment. Chen was a one-man revolutionary whose single voice could somehow always be heard because he brought to his causes an intensity that was utterly overpowering, and because he had built an organization that was more tightly knit than any ordinary political team in the world (as more than one politician was ready to swear).
He had been one of the important factors accounting for the speed with which the Pump had taken over the planet’s energy needs. The Pump’s virtues were clear and obvious, as clear as non-pollution and as obvious as for-free, yet there might have been a longer rear-guard fight by those who wanted nuclear energy, not because it was better but because it had been the friend of their childhood.
Yet when Chen beat his drums, the world listened just a little harder. Now he sat there, his broad cheekbones and round face bearing evidence of the approximately three-quarter admixture of Chinese ancestry.