George hesitated. “Well—years, perhaps.”
“Two years? Five? Ten?”
“I can’t say, Honorable.”
“Well, there’s a vital question to which you have no answer, have you? Shall we say five years? Does that sound reasonable to you?”
“I suppose so.”
“All right. We have a technician studying metallurgy according to this method of yours for five years. He’s no good to us during that time, you’ll admit, but he must be fed and housed and paid all that time.”
“But—”
“Let me finish. Then when he’s done and can use the Beeman, five years have passed. Don’t you suppose we’ll have modified Beemans then which he won’t be able to use?”
“But by then hell be expert on learning. He could learn the new details necessary in a matter of days.”
“So you say. And suppose this friend of yours, for instance, had studied up on Beemans on his own and managed to learn it; would he be as expert in its use as a competitor who had learned it off the tapes?”
“Maybe not—” began George.
“Ah,” said the Novian.
“Wait, let me finish. Even if he doesn’t know something as well, it’s the ability to learn further that’s important. He may be able to think up things, new things that no tape-Educated man would. You’ll have a reservoir of original thinkers—”
“In your studying,” said the Novian, “have you thought up any new things?”
“No, but I’m just one man and I haven’t studied long—»
“Yes.—Well, ladies, gentlemen, have we been sufficiently amused?”
“Wait,” cried George, in sudden panic. “I want to arrange a personal interview. There are things I can’t explain over the visiphone. There are details—”
The Novian looked past George. “Ingenescu! I think I have done you your favor. Now, really, I have a heavy schedule tomorrow. Be well!”
The screen went blank.
George’s hands shot out toward the screen, as though in a wild impulse to shake life back into it. He cried out, “He didn’t believe me. He didn’t believe me.”
Ingenescu said, “No, George. Did you really think he would?”
George scarcely heard him. “But why not? It’s all true. It’s all so much to his advantage. No risk. I and a few men to work with—A dozen men training for years would cost less than one technician.—He was drunk! Drunk! He didn’t understand.”
George looked about breathlessly. “How do I get to him? I’ve got to. This was wrong. Shouldn’t have used the visiphone. I need time. Face to face. How do I—”
Ingenescu said, “He won’t see you, George. And if he did, he wouldn’t believe you.”
“He will, I tell you. When he isn’t drinking. He—”
George turned squarely toward the Historian and his eyes widened. “Why do you call me George?”
“Isn’t that your name? George Platen?”
“You know me?”
“All about you.”
George was motionless except for the breath pumping his chest wall up and down.
Ingenescu said, “I want to help you, George. I told you that. I’ve been studying you and I want to help you.”
George screamed, “I don’t need help. I’m not feebleminded. The whole world is, but I’m not.” He whirled and dashed madly for the door.
He flung it open and two policemen roused themselves suddenly from their guard duty and seized him.
For all George’s straining, he could feel the hypo-spray at the fleshy point just under the corner of his jaw, and that was it. The last thing he remembered was the face of Ingenescu, watching with gentle concern.
George opened his eyes to the whiteness of a ceiling. He remembered what had happened. He remembered it distantly as though it had happened to somebody else. He stared at the ceiling till the whiteness filled his eyes and washed his brain clean, leaving room, it seemed, for new thought and new ways of thinking.
He didn’t know how long he lay there so, listening to the drift of his own thinking.
There was a voice in his ear. “Are you awake?”
And George heard his own moaning for the first tune. Had he been moaning? He tried to turn his head.
The voice said, “Are you in pain, George?”
George whispered, “Funny. I was so anxious to leave Earth. I didn’t understand.”
“Do you know where you are?”
“Back in the—the House.” George managed to turn. The voice belonged to Omani.
George said, “It’s funny I didn’t understand.”
Omani smiled gently, “Sleep again—”
And woke again. His mind was clear.
Omani sat at the bedside reading, but he put down the book as George’s eyes opened.
George struggled to a sitting position. He said, “Hello.”
“Are you hungry?”
“You bet.” He stared at Omani curiously. “I was followed when I left, wasn’t I?”