Isaac Asimov - The Gods Themselves

Bronowski looked away. He said, “Pete, I did get an answer. Last night. I thought I’d wait for today and think about it, but why think? ... Here it is.”

Lament’s eyes were staring questions. He took the foil and looked at it. There was no punctuation:

PUMP NOT STOP NOT STOP WE NOT STOP PUMP WE NOT HEAR DANGER NOT HEAR NOT HEAR YOU STOP PLEASE STOP YOU STOP SO WE STOP PLEASE YOU STOP DANGER DANGER DANGER STOP STOP YOU STOP PUMP

“By God,” muttered Bronowski, “they sound desperate.”

Lamont was still staring. He said nothing.

Bronowski said, “I gather that somewhere on the other side is someone like you—a para-Lamont. And he can’t get his para-Hallams to stop, either. And while we’re begging them to save us, he’s begging us to save them.”

Lamont said, “But if we show this—”

“They’ll say you’re lying; that it’s a hoax you’ve concocted to save your psychotically-conceived nightmare.”

“They can say that of me, maybe; but they can’t say it of you. You’ll back me, Mike. You’ll testify that you received this and how.”

Bronowski reddened. “What good would that do? They’ll say that somewhere in the para-Universe there is a nut like yourself and that two crackpots got together. They’ll say that the message proves that the constituted authorities in the para-Universe are convinced there’s no danger.”

“Mike, fight this through with me.”

“There’s no use, Pete. You said yourself, stupidity! Those para-man may be more advanced than ourselves, even more intelligent, as you insist, but it’s plain to see that they’re just as stupid as we are and that ends it Schiller pointed that out and I believe him.”

“Who?”

“Schiller. A German dramatist of three centuries ago. In a play about Joan of Arc, he said, ‘Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.’ I’m no god and I’ll contend no longer. Let it go, Pete, and go your way. Maybe the world will last our time and, if not, there’s nothing that can be done anyway. I’m sorry, Pete. You fought the good fight, but you lost, and I’m through.”

He was gone and Lamont was alone. He sat in his chair, fingers aimlessly drumming, drumming. Somewhere in the Sun, protons were clinging together with just a trifling additional avidity and with each moment that avidity grew and at some moment the delicate balance would break down...

“And no one on Earth will live to know I was right,” cried out Lamont, and blinked and blinked to keep back the tears.

Dua did not have much trouble leaving the others. She always expected trouble, but somehow it never came. Never real trouble.

But then why should it? Odeen objected in his lofty way. “Stay put,” he would say. “You know you annoy Tritt.” He never spoke of his own annoyance; Rationals didn’t grow annoyed over trifles. Still, he hovered over Tritt almost as persistently as Tritt hovered over the children.

But then Odeen always let her have her way if she were persistent enough, and would even intercede with Tritt. Sometimes he even admitted he was proud of her ability, of her independence. ... He wasn’t a bad left-ling, she thought with absent-minded affection.

Tritt was harder to handle and he had a sour way of looking at her when she was—well, when she was as she wished to be. But then right-lings were like that. He was a right-ling to her, but a Parental to the children and the latter took precedence always.... Which was good because she could always count on one child or the other taking him away just as things grew uncomfortable.

Still, Dua didn’t mind Tritt very much. Except for melting, she tended to ignore him. Odeen was another thing. He had been exciting at first; just his presence had made her outlines shimmer and fade. And the fact that he was a Rational made him all the more exciting somehow. She didn’t understand her reaction to that; it was part of her queerness. She had grown used to her queerness—almost.

Dua sighed.

When she was a child, when she still thought of herself as an individual, a single being, and not as part of a triad, she was much more aware of that queerness. She was much more made aware of it by the others. As little a thing as the surface at evening—

She had loved the surface at evening. The other Emotionals had called it cold and gloomy and had quivered and coalesced when she described it for them. They were ready enough to emerge in the warmth of midday and stretch and feed, but that was exactly what made the midday dull. She didn’t like to be around the twittering lot of them.

She had to eat, of course, but she liked it much better in the evening when there was very little food, but everything was dim, deep red, and she was alone. Of course, she described it as colder and more wistful than it was when she talked to the others in order to watch them grow hard-edged as they imagined the chill—or as hard-edged as young Emotionals could. After a while, they would whisper and laugh at her—and leave her alone.

The small sun was at the horizon now, with the secret ruddiness that she alone was there to see. She spread herself out laterally and thickened dorso-ventrally, absorbing the traces of thin warmth. She munched at it idly, savoring the slightly sour, substanceless taste of the long wave lengths. (She had never met another Emotional who would admit to liking it. But she could never explain that she associated it with freedom; freedom from the others, when she could be alone.)

Even now the loneliness, the chill, and the deep, deep red, brought back those old days before the triad; and even more, quite sharply, her own Parental, who would come lumbering after her, forever fearful that she would hurt herself.

He had been carefully devoted to her, as Parentals always were; to their little-mids more than to the other two, as always. It had annoyed her and she would dream of the day when he would leave her. Parentals always did eventually; and how she had missed him, when one day, he finally did.

He had come to tell her, just as carefully as he could, despite the difficulty Parentals had in putting their feelings into words. She had run from him that day; not in malice; not because she suspected what he had to tell her; but only out of joy. She had managed to find a special place at midday and had gorged herself in unexpected isolation and had been filled with a queer, itching sensation that demanded motion and activity. She had slithered over the rocks and had let her edges overlap theirs. It was something she knew to be a grossly improper action for anyone but a baby and yet it was something at once exciting and soothing.

And her Parental caught her at last and had stood before her, silent for a long time, making his eyes small and dense as though to stop every bit of light reflected from her; to see as much as he could of her; and for as long as possible.

At first, she just stared back with the confused thought that he had seen her rub through the rocks and was ashamed of her. But she caught no shame-aura and finally she said, very subdued, “What is it, Daddy?”

“Why, Dua, it’s the time. I’ve been expecting it. Surely you have.”

“What time?” Now that it was here, Dua stubbornly would not let herself know. If she refused to know, there would be nothing to know. (She never quite got out of that habit. Odeen said all Emotionals were like that, in the lofty voice he used sometimes when he was particularly overcome with the importance of being a Rational.)

Her Parental had said, “I must pass on. I will not be with you any more.” Then he just stood and looked at her, and she couldn’t say anything.

He said, “You will tell the others.”