Philip Dick - The Eye of the Sibyl and Other Classic Strories

As he sat scrutinizing the pamphlets, a red-haired girl, wearing the College uniform, came over and seated herself beside him. She seemed perplexed.

“Maybe you can help me,” she said. “What is a syllabus? It says here that we’ll be given a syllabus. This place is screwing up my head.”

Bibleman said, “We’ve been dragooned off the streets to shovel shit.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.”

“Can’t we just leave?”

“You leave first,” Bibleman said. “And I’ll wait and see what happens to you.”

The girl laughed. “I guess you don’t know what a syllabus is.”

“Sure I do. It’s an abstract of courses or topics.”

“Yes, and pigs can whistle.”

He regarded her. The girl regarded him.

“We’re going to be here forever,” the girl said.

Her name, she told him, was Mary Lorne. She was, he decided, pretty, wistful, afraid, and putting up a good front. Together they joined the other new students for a showing of a recent Herbie the Hyena cartoon which Bibleman had seen; it was the episode in which Herbie attempted to assassinate the Russian monk Rasputin. In his usual fashion, Herbie the Hyena poisoned his victim, shot him, blew him up six times, stabbed him, tied him up with chains and sank him in the Volga, tore him apart with wild horses, and finally shot him to the moon strapped to a rocket. The cartoon bored Bibleman. He did not give a damn about Herbie the Hyena or Russian history and he wondered if this was a sample of the College’s level of pedagogy. He could imagine Herbie the Hyena illustrating Heisenberg’s indeterminacy principle. Herbie—in Bibleman’s mind—chased after by a subatomic particle fruitlessly, the particle bobbing up at random here and there… Herbie making wild swings at it with a hammer; then a whole flock of subatomic particles jeering at Herbie, who was doomed as always to fuck up.

“What are you thinking about?” Mary whispered to him.

The cartoon ended; the hall lights came on. There stood Major Casals on the stage, larger than on the phone. The fun is over, Bibleman said to himself. He could not imagine Major Casals chasing subatomic particles fruitlessly with wild swings of a sledgehammer. He felt himself grow cold and grim and a little afraid.

The lecture had to do with classified information. Behind Major Casals a giant hologram lit up with a schematic diagram of a homeostatic drilling rig. Within the hologram the rig rotated so that they could see it from all angles. Different stages of the rig’s interior glowed in various colors.

“I asked what you were thinking,” Mary whispered.

“We have to listen,” Bibleman said quietly.

Mary said, equally quietly, “It finds titanium ore on its own. Big deal. Titanium is the ninth most abundant element in the crust of the planet. I’d be impressed if it could seek out and mine pure wurtzite, which is found only at Potosi, Bolivia; Butte, Montana; and Goldfield, Nevada.”

“Why is that?” Bibleman said.

“Because,” Mary said, “wurtzite is unstable at temperatures below one thousand degrees centigrade. And further—” She broke off. Major Casals had ceased talking and was looking at her.

“Would you repeat that for all of us, young woman?” Major Casals said.

Standing, Mary said, “Wurtzite is unstable at temperatures below one thousand degrees centigrade.” Her voice was steady.

Immediately the hologram behind Major Casals switched to a readout of data on zinc-sulfide minerals.

“I don’t see ‘wurtzite’ listed,” Major Casals said.

“It’s given on the chart in its inverted form,” Mary said, her arms folded. “Which is sphalerite. Correctly, it is ZnS, of the sulfide group of the AX type. It’s related to greenockite.”

“Sit down,” Major Casals said. The readout within the hologram now showed the characteristics of greenockite.

As she seated herself, Mary said, “I’m right. They don’t have a homeostatic drilling rig for wurtzite because there is no—”

“Your name is?” Major Casals said, pen and pad poised.

“Mary Wurtz.” Her voice was totally without emotion. “My father was Charles-Adolphe Wurtz.”

“The discoverer of wurtzite?” Major Casals said uncertainly; his pen wavered.

“That’s right,” Mary said. Turning toward Bibleman, she winked.

“Thank you for the information,” Major Casals said. He made a motion and the hologram now showed a flying buttress and, in comparison to it, a normal buttress.

“My point,” Major Casals said, “is simply that certain information such as architectural principles of long-standing—”

“Most architectural principles are long-standing,” Mary said.

Major Casals paused.

“Otherwise they’d serve no purpose,” Mary said.

“Why not?” Major Casals said, and then he colored.

Several uniformed students laughed.

“Information of that type,” Major Casals continued, “is not classified. But a good deal of what you will be learning is classified. This is why the college is under military charter. To reveal or transmit or make public classified information given you during your schooling here falls under the jurisdiction of the military. For a breech of these statues you would be tried by a military tribunal.”

The students murmured. To himself Bibleman thought, Banged, ganged, and then some. No one spoke. Even the girl beside him was silent. A complicated expression had crossed her face, however; a deeply introverted look, somber and—he thought—unusually mature. It made her seem older, no longer a girl. It made him wonder just how old she really was. It was as if in her features a thousand years had surfaced before him as he scrutinized her and pondered the officer on the stage and the great information hologram behind him. What is she thinking? he wondered. Is she going to say something more? How can she be not afraid to speak up? We’ve been told we are under military law.

Major Casals said, “I am going to give you an instance of a strictly classified cluster of data. It deals with the Panther Engine.” Behind him the hologram, surprisingly, became blank.

“Sir,” one of the students said, “the hologram isn’t showing anything.”

“This is not an area that will be dealt with in your studies here,” Major Casals said. “The Panther Engine is a two-rotor system, opposed rotors serving a common main shaft. Its main advantage is a total lack of centrifugal torque in the housing. A cam chain is thrown between the opposed rotors, which permits the main shaft to reverse itself without hysteresis.”

Behind him the big hologram remained blank. Strange, Bibleman thought. An eerie sensation: information without information, as if the computer had gone blind.

Major Casals said, “The College is forbidden to release any information about the Panther Engine. It cannot be programmed to do otherwise. In fact, it knows nothing about the Panther Engine; it is programmed to destroy any information it receives in that sector.”

Raising his hand, a student said, “So even if someone fed information into the College about the Panther—”

“It would eject the data,” Major Casals said.

“Is this a unique situation?” another student asked.

“No,” Major Casals said.

“Then there’re a number of areas we can’t get printouts for,” a student murmured.

“Nothing of importance,” Major Casals said. “At least as far as your studies are concerned.”

The students were silent.

“The subjects which you will study,” Major Casals said, “will be assigned to you, based on your aptitude and personality profiles. I’ll call off your names and you will come forward for your allocation of topic assignment. The College itself has made the final decision for each of you, so you can be sure no error has been made.”