Fred Hoyle: Element 79

Pym did in fact finish his work. It put quite a drain on his failing strength, but he finished it. Then he sat himself out in the garden, relaxing. A stranger came down the hill path from the direction of “The Knott.” In a few minutes he was at the cottage. Then he paused for a moment, nodded, and opened the garden gate. Pym saw a man of about thirty, handsome in a slightly repellent way, coming up the garden path. “Do you think you could make me a pot of tea?”

Pym rose slowly from his wicker chair. “Of course, if you wouldn’t mind having it inside. You see, it’s a bit awkward to carry the things out here.”

Pym showed the stranger into the tiny sitting room and then went to put on the kettle. When he came back with the tea he found the fellow reading his latest paper. It seemed a bit impudent, but Pym didn’t like to be too impolite. “Are you a scientist, might I ask?”

“You could call me that, Professor Pym.”

“So you know my name?”

“You are well known around here.”

“Not really.”

“Oh, yes. There aren’t many scientists in these parts, real scientists. Let me ask you a question, Professor Pym. Do you consider yourself a real scientist?”

Pym flopped into a chair. “That hardly seems very civil.” The stranger threw back his head and laughed. His teeth were evenly spaced, very white, and apparently without blemishes. Pym liked him less and less, particularly as he went on, “You are a Fellow of the Institute of Physics. I know that. It doesn’t answer my question. Take this paper here, for instance. It is no better, no worse, than the fifty-three other papers you have written. In it you make six assumptions each reasonably plausible in itself. But have you ever paused to reflect that a chain of six assumptions gives only a poor chance of the whole argument being right? In fact, your paper is wrong. It is utterly worthless.”

Pym went very white, his legs trembled badly. “You can’t know that! Even if you’ve worked on the subject yourself, it’s impossible to be sure.”

For answer, the stranger took three sheets of paper from his rucksack. He flicked them down in front of the old man. “Read these and you will see.”

The writing was small and neat and the pages were well-filled. Pym put on his reading glasses. Ten lines of poetry and the hand of a master is obvious, the same for ten bars of music. So it was here. Pym read on and on in growing astonishment. The logic was concise, crystal dear. It not only solved the problem along quite unexpected lines, it showed how the problem had half a dozen new connections which nobody had noticed before.

Pym was under no illusion now, no illusion that he was dealing with an ordinary walker coming down off the hills into the valley. With more calm than he felt, he came instantly to the point. “So what might be the purpose of this visit? Not a pot of tea, I see, for you haven’t touched it.”

“Not a pot of tea, Professor Pym.”

“You still have the advantage of me.”

“More than you realize. If it is a name you are seeking, some call me Death. To a scientist this might seem unduly melodramatic. Yet there is a component of truth in it. See.”

The stranger walked to the window. The sunshine vanished outside. Pym felt his mouth bone dry. He could see the gaunt hills of winter, his hills, with the grass and bracken and flowers gone, with the sky overcast. An instant later the Sun flashed out and it was summer again. The stranger resumed his seat. “I have other names. Some call me the Devil, also rather melodramatic, I am afraid. Yet there is a component of the truth in this, too. To be blunt, Professor Pym, I am here to bargain with you.”

To his own surprise, Pym was amused. “Mephistopheles— Dr. Faustus! You don’t expect me to take that old stuff seriously.”

The stranger smiled in return. “How times change. Ah, well, new men, new methods. No, I am not going to offer any fair Marguerite. On a simple calculation, you have earned sufficient over the past thirty years to have bought yourself quite enough in that direction, if you had been so inclined. Say an average of twenty-five hundred pounds per annum, giving a total of seventy-five thousand pounds. Fair Marguerites don’t come as expensive as that, Professor. Give me credit for a little intelligence.”

“Suppose you tell me what you have to offer.”

“Not so fast. Before I make any offer, I intend to touch on a few sensitive points. Take the manner of your election to the Institute of Physics, for instance. Aha, I see we have a reaction there. Let me remind you of the things you have tried so hard to forget. Shall I recite the names of the committee that recommended your election, the names of your friends? Of course they did nothing grossly improper. They didn’t push you ahead of any much better man. What they did—your friends—was to push you ahead of ten other men of equal ability.”

“Stop it! For God’s sake, can’t you spare me anything? I’m old now, and tired.”

“Yet you are ambitious. You have written still another worthless paper, even though the writing of it has consumed many of the last days of your life. Why did you write this rubbish? Don’t insult me with nonsense about your duty as a scientist. You know standards as well as I do. You wrote this paper in a last vain hope of pulling something off. You wrote it in the spirit of a gambler who must have one last fling.”

Pym was trembling again. “In pity’s name, come to the point.”

“I have no pity. I have already told you who I am. How far are you willing to gamble, Professor Pym?”

“What must I offer?”

“Should I say your soul? No, no, we don’t believe in souls nowadays. Your life, the remainder of your life. The disease that will kill you is even now at work. You already know it. If you send me away from here you will live until winter descends on the hills, until the precise moment I showed to you a while ago. The last days of the summer will be clear and beautiful. These you will have, without too much pain. You will walk the valley and you will climb the lower hills once again.”

“The alternative?”

“Immediate death. These last days, Professor, the beauty and pathos of these last days. That is what I bargain for.”

“And the offer?”

“The paper, the three sheets which you have just read. You will copy them and seal them in an envelope addressed to the Institute of Physics. You may trust me to see it reaches its destination. I am no defaulter on a bargain.”

“Will you answer me a question before I decide?”

“You may ask it.”

“What possible advantage do you get out of this arrangement? I’m going to die anyway, so why not wait? It must come to the same thing from your point of view.”

The stranger smiled. “I am pleased with the question, Professor. I will gladly answer it. If you accept the bargain, I shall get nothing at all from it. You will be the gainer. These papers will come as a thoroughly worthwhile final achievement to your life. You will go out with a bang, not a whimper. Understand, I make no claim that what I am giving is great physics. It is not a major new theory, nor need it be for your purpose. It is a thoroughly sound piece of craftsmanship, exactly the kind of thing you have always had the ambition to achieve.”

In a considerable measure, Pym had now recovered his wits. He was puzzled. “So either way you get nothing out of it. If I refuse you get nothing, if I accept you get nothing.” The stranger considered the matter for a while. Then he said, “It hardly behooves me to explain my motives. Yet I will say this: I am gambling you will not yield a single day, a single hour, in exchange for the paper. You will cling to life until the ultimate moment.”