Isaac Asimov - Buy Jupiter and Other Stories

“I don't believe that,” muttered the general, but he had grown thoughtful again.

Steve stared earnestly at the Kaleido-volume, and the patterns over his head had almost stilled into warmly colored and intricately detailed circles that pulsed their pleasure.

Harding's voice was almost coaxing. “There are always the people who resist conformity; who don't go along; and they are the important ones of society. They won't go along with colored patterns any more than with any other form of persuasion. So why worry about the useless bogey of emotion control? Let us instead see the Neurophotoscope as the first instrument through which mental function can be truly analyzed. That's what should concern us above an. The proper study of mankind is man, as Alexander Pope once said, and what is man but his brain?”

The general remained silent.

“If we can solve the manner of the brain's workings,” went on Harding, “and learn at last what makes a man a man, we are on our way to understanding ourselves, and nothing more difficult-or more worthwhile-faces us. And how can this be done by just one man, by one laboratory? How can it be done in secrecy and fear? The whole world of science must cooperate. -General, declassify the project! Throw it open to all men!”

Slowly the general nodded. “I think you're right after all.”

“I have the proper document. If you'll sign it and key it with your fingerprint; if you use your two guards outside as witnesses; if you alert the Executive Board by closed video; if you-”

It was all done. Before Fife's astonished eyes it was all done.

When the general was gone, the Neurophotoscope dismantled, and Steve taken back to his quarters, Fife finally overcame his amazement long enough to speak.

“How could he have been persuaded so easily, Professor Harding? You've explained your point of view at length in a dozen reports and it never helped a bit.”

“I've never presented it in this room, with the Neurophotoscope working,” said Harding. “I've never had anyone as intensely projective as Steve before. Many people can withstand emotion control, as I said, but some people cannot withstand it. Those who have a tendency to conform are easily led to agree with others. I took the gamble that any man who feels comfortable in uniform and who lives by the military book is liable to be swayed, no matter how powerful he imagines himself to be.”

“You mean-Steve-”

“Of course, I let the general feel the uneasiness first, then you handed Steve the Kaleido-volume and the air filled with happiness. You felt it, didn't you?”

“Yes. Certainly.”

“It was my guess the general couldn't resist that happiness so suddenly following the unease, and he didn't. Anything would have sounded good at that moment. “

“But he'll get over it, won't he?”

“Eventually, I suppose, but so what? The key progress reports concerning Neurophotoscopy are being sent out right now to news media all over the world. The general might suppress it here in this country, but surely not elsewhere. -No, he will have to make the best of it. Mankind can begin its proper study in earnest, at last.”

The painting was simply a crudely done head surrounded by a series of aimless psychedelic designs. It meant nothing to ine and I had a terrible time thinking up THE PROPER STUDY. Foul Anderson also wrote a story based on the same painting and probably had no trouble at all.

The two stories appeared in the same issue and I suppose it might be interesting to compare the stories and try to get an idea of the different workings of Poul's brain-and mine-but, as in the case of BLANK!, I didn't save the other story. Besides, I don't want you to compare brains. Poul is awfully bright and you might come to me with some hard truths I'd rather not face.

In early 1970 IBM Magazine came to me with a quote from J. B. Priestley which went as follows: “Between midnight and dawn, when sleep will not come and all the old wounds begin to ache, I often have a nightmare vision of a future world in which there are billions of people, all numbered and registered, with not a gleam of genius anywhere, not an original mind, a rich personality, on the whole packed globe.”

The editor of the magazine asked me to write a story based on the quote, and I did the job in late April and mailed it in. The story was 2430 A.D., and in it I took I Priestley's quotation seriously and tried to describe the world of his nightmares.

And IBM Magazine sent it back. They said they didn't want a story that backed the quotation; they wanted one I that refuted the quotation. Well, they had never said so.

Under ordinary circumstances I might have been very indignant and might have written a rather scathing letter.However, these were hard times for me and there was another turning point, and a very sad one, coming up in my life.

My marriage had been limping for some years and it finally broke down. On July 3, 1970, with our twenty-eighth anniversary nearly upon US, I moved out and went to New York. I took a two-room hotel suite that I was to use as an office for nearly five years.

You can't make a change like that without all kinds of worries, miseries, and guilts. And among them all, I being what I am, one of my worries, as I sat in the two rooms in a strange environment, with my reference library still undelivered,* [* As long as I was a fiction writer I needed very little in the way of a library and could write anywhere. One of the less pleasant aspects of my switch to nonfiction was that I gradually built up an enormous reference library which nails me to the ground.] was whether I would still be able to write.

I remembered my story 2430 A.D., which ordinarily I might have abandoned in indignation. Now, just to see if I could do it, I began another story, on July 8, 1970, five days after my move, one which would refute Priestley's quotation. I called it THE GREATEST ASSET.

I sent it to IBM Magazine, and you'll never believe me but after reading my second story they decided to take my first one after all. It was utterly confusing. Was my second story so bad that it made the first look good? Or had they changed their mind before I had written the second story and had they not gotten round to telling me? I suspect the latter. Anyway, 2430 A.D. was published in the October 1970 issue of IBM Magazine.

Between midnight and dawn, when sleep will not come and all the old wounds begin to ache, I often have a nightmare vision of a future world in which there are billions of people, all numbered and registered, with not a gleam of genius anywhere, not an original mind, a rich personality, on the whole packed globe.

– J.B. Priestly.

“He'll talk to us,” said Alvarez when the other stepped out the door.

“Good,” said Bunting. “Social pressure is bound to get to him eventually. An odd character. How he escaped genetic adjustment I'll never know. -But you do the talking. He irritates me past tact.”

Together they swung down the corridor along the Executive Trail, which was, as always, sparsely occupied. They might have taken the Moving Strips, but there were only two miles to go and Alvarez enjoyed walking, so I Bunting didn't insist. I

Alvarez was tall and rather thin, with the kind of athletic figure one would expect of a person who cherished the muscular activities; who routinely used the stairs and rampways, for instance, almost to the edge of being considered an unsettling character himself. Bunting, softer and rounder, avoided even the sunlamps, and was quite pale.

Bunting said dolefully, “I hope the two of us will be enough.”

“I should think so. We want to keep it in our sector, if we can.”