“Which is why you really brought me here?” He dropped to hip and elbow, facing her.
She said, “See, you can look at me easily now. You’re getting used to me. ... And, really, there were surely times on Earth when near nudity wasn’t something to be exclaimed over.”
“Times and places,” agreed Denison, “but not since the passing of the Crisis. In my lifetime—”
“Well, on the Moon, do as the Lunarites do is a good enough guide for behavior.”
“Are you going to tell me why you really brought me here? Or shall I suspect you of planning seduction?”
“I could carry through seduction quite comfortably at home, thank you. This is different. The surface would have been best, but getting ready to go out on the surface would have attracted a great deal of attention. Coming here didn’t, and this place is the only spot in town where we can be reasonably safe from interruption.” She hesitated.
“Well?” said Denison.
“Barren is angry. Very angry, in fact.”
“I’m not surprised. I warned you he would be if you told him that I knew you were an Intuitionist. Why did you feel it so necessary to tell him?”
“Because it is difficult to keep things for long from my— companion. Probably, though, he doesn’t consider me that any longer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, it was turning sour anyway. It’s lasted long enough. What bothers me more—much more—is that he violently refuses to accept your interpretation of the Pionizer experiments you ran after the surface observations.”
“I told you the way it would be.”
“He said he had seen your results.”
“He glanced at them and grunted.”
“It’s rather disillusioning. Does everyone just believe what he wants to?”
“As long as possible. Sometimes longer.”
“What about you?”
“You mean, am I human? Certainly. I don’t believe I’m really old. I believe I’m quite attractive. I believe you seek out my company because you think I’m charming—even when you insist on turning the conversation to physics.”
“No! I mean it!”
“Well, I suspect Neville told you that the data I had gathered were not significant beyond the margin of error, which makes them doubtful, and that’s true enough.... And yet I prefer to believe they have the meaning I expected them to have to begin with.”
“Just because you want to believe that?”
“Not just because. Look at it this way. Suppose there is no harm in the Pump, but that I insist on thinking there is harm. In that case, I will turn out to be a fool and my scientific reputation will be badly damaged. But I am a fool in the eyes of the people who count, and I have no scientific reputation.”
“Why is that, Ben? You’ve hinted around the tale several times. Can’t you tell me the whole story?”
“You’d be surprised how little there is to tell. At the age of twenty-five I was still such a child that I had to amuse myself by insulting a fool for no reason other than that he was a fool. Since his folly was not his fault, I was the greater fool to do it. My insult drove him to heights he couldn’t possibly have scaled otherwise—”
“You’re talking of Hallam?”
“Yes, of course. And as he rose, I fell. And eventually, it dropped me to— the Moon.”
“Is that so bad?”
“No, I rather think it’s good. So let’s say he did me a favor, long-way round.... And let’s get back to what I’m talking about. I’ve just explained that if I believe the Pump to be harmful and am wrong, I lose nothing. On the other hand, if I believe the Pump to be harmless and am wrong, I will be helping to destroy the world. To be sure, I’ve lived most of my life already and I suppose I can argue myself into believing that I have no great cause to love humanity. However, only a few people have hurt me, and if I hurt everyone in return that is unconscionable usury.
“Then, too, if you’d rather have a less noble reason, Selene, consider my daughter. Just before I left for the Moon, she had applied for permission to have a child. She’ll probably get it and before long I’ll be—if you don’t mind my saying so—a grandfather. Somehow I’d like to see my grandchild have a normal life expectancy. So I prefer to believe the Pump is dangerous and to act on that belief.”
Selene said, intensely, “But here’s my point. Is the Pump dangerous or is it not? I mean, the truth, and not what anyone wants to believe.”
“I should ask you that. You’re the Intuitionist. What does your intuition say?”
“But that’s what bothers me, Ben. I can’t make it really certain either way. I tend to feel the Pump is harmful, but maybe that’s because I want to believe that.”
“All right. Maybe you do. Why?”
Selene smiled ruefully and shrugged her shoulders. “It would be fun for Barron to be wrong. When he thinks he’s certain, he’s so vituperatively certain.”
“I know. You want to see his face when he’s forced to back down. I’m well aware of how intense such a desire can be. For instance, if the Pump were dangerous and I could prove it, I might conceivably be hailed as the savior of humanity, and yet I swear that I’d be more interested in the look on Hallam’s face. I’m not proud of that feeling so I suspect that what I’ll do is insist on an equal share of the credit with Lamont, who deserves it after all, and confine my pleasure to watching Lament’s face when he watches Hallam’s face. The pettishness will then be one place removed.... But I’m beginning to speak nonsense.... Selene?”
“Yes, Ben?”
“When did you find out you were an Intuitionist?”
“I don’t quite know.”
“You took physics in college, I imagine.”
“Oh, yes. Some math, too, but I was never good at that. Come to think of it, I wasn’t particularly good in physics, either. I used to guess the answers when I was desperate; you know, guess what I was supposed to do to get the right answers. Very often, it worked and then I would be asked to explain why I had done what I did and I couldn’t do that very well. They suspected me of cheating but could never prove it.”
“They didn’t suspect Intuitionism?”
“I don’t think so. But then, I didn’t either. Until—well, one of my first sex-mates was a physicist. In fact, he was the father of my child, assuming he really supplied the sperm-sample. He had a physics problem and he told me about it when we were lying in bed afterward, just to have something to talk about, I suppose. And I said, ‘You know what it sounds like to me?’ and told him. He tried it just for the fun of it, he said, and it worked. In fact, that was the first step to the Pionizer, which you said was much better than the proton synchrotron.”
“You mean that was your idea?” Denison put his finger under the dripping water and paused as he was about to put it in his mouth. “Is this water safe?”
“It’s perfectly sterile,” said Selene, “and it goes into the general reservoir for treatment. It’s saturated with sulfates, carbonates, and a few other items, however. You won’t like the taste.”
Denison rubbed his finger on his briefs. “You invented the Pionizer?”
“Not invented. I had the original concept. It took lots of development, mostly by Barren.”
Denison shook his head. “You know, Selene, you’re an amazing phenomenon. You should be under observation by the molecular biologists.”
“Should I? That’s not my idea of a thrill.”