Damon Knight - Orbit 19

Madline is anxious for me. She thinks they will disapprove my reembodiment. It is one thing for them to allow us to smother babes in their beds. It is something else for them to allow reembodiment, knowing the old husk must be discarded still containing life. The Representative Panel—all mortal—has qualms, scruples, ethics. They see death from the wrong end of the telescope. They see a tiny grim reaper, inexorably marching toward them. They feel it is wrong to collapse the telescope and speed his arrival.

I see only entropy. As long as my energy can be channeled effectively into my work, as long as they judge my work useful, irreplaceable, I am permanent. For them, death is inevitable, tragic, a dark room to frighten children. For me death is a matter of choice.

I reach my apartment and sit down to work. He has been suspiciously quiet. What is he up to? Escape?

Are you there?

I am here, Tomus.

What are you doing?

Thinking.

Does it hurt? I sense confusion. He is too serious to have a sense of humor.

No, he answers.

Good. What are you thinking about?

I want to live, Tomus.

You sound like you’ve already got one foot in the grave.

I begin work, listening to his idle chatter. It slows me down but amuses me. Is that why I let him live? For amusement? For company? I remember the dog.

I want—

You want what?

I want to be a nuclear physicist.

There are no more nuclear physicists, and where did you learn about them anyway?

In an old book you were reading.

Spying again, eh?

He is flustered. He hates being accused of anything. His ego, though strong, is unused to the abrasion of other egos. He feels, justifiably, that being unable to act should relieve him of responsibility.

Eventually he settles down.

I want—

What do you want?

I want to be a mathematician.

How about a fireman?

What’s a fireman?

A man who puts out fires, but they don’t exist anymore either.

Good. I do not want anything put out.

I am surprised and pleased, a metaphorical turn of phrase has, lamely, popped into his conversation.

How about an Indian chief? There are still some of those.

What’s an Indian chief?

You have to be an Indian first. Are you an Indian?

No.

How do you know?

You are not an Indian, I think, so I am not.

I’m not, despite appearances, your blood brother. Whatever I am is irrelevant.

True.

I laugh out loud.

Why are you laughing?

Your wit’s improving.

What wit?

Good question. Keep at it.

I want to be a mathematician.

I decide it is time to shut him up.

Okay, mathematician, try this. I give him one of the problems I am working on.

Pardon me?

That’s the type of problem mathematicians do.

Tell me again.

I tell him. He ponders, befuddled.

I will work on it.

Next day I find a letterdisk on my desk. The Center is reevaluating my exchange application. New evidence, requiring reconsideration, has come to light. I disregard it. There is work to do. Only the work is important. As long as it is done, little else matters. At noon I am in a state of intense concentration. He interrupts.

Tomus.

Buzz off.

Tomus.

Later, please.

I am a mathematician.

Good for you. So am I, a mathematician with work to do.

I have done your work.

He has my attention. Go on.

The answer is true like last time.

And the proof?

He begins the proof. Because of his success with the algebra, I pay close attention. Halfway through, I begin to laugh.

Tomus, what is wrong?

His proof is ludicrous, ridiculous. He has misunderstood the problem, committed blatant errors of manipulation, ignored what refused to fit, tried to chop the problem on a Procrustean bed. He is hopeless. A dunce.

When I finish laughing, he is still bewildered.

Tomus, the answer is true. I am certain it is true.

Get your pointed hat out of the cupboard and sit in the corner.

Pardon me?

Your proof is hopeless. I begin to explain his errors. The sense of wide-eyed astonishment grows. He has never seen anything so complex. It makes the questions of death and entropy shrink to minuscule proportions in his mind. He is awestruck. But he is still listening.

I spend the afternoon going over the problem, step by step, showing him, showing him again. Finally, when he understands, he is dumbfounded by its beauty.

He remains dumbfounded throughout the evening, allowing me, for once, a quiet dinner alone.

Weeks pass. From time to time, I show him more. He masters things quickly. He is learning geometrically, omnivorously. I try to impose some system on his learning. Discipline, the grammar of thought, is his weakness. He is insatiable, a mental whale—maw open —taking in the plankton of thought. He wakes me in the middle of the night with questions, some foolish, some irrelevant, some probing. He is on fire with learning. I wish, instead of a mathematician, he had chosen to be a fireman, putting out infernos.

A year passes, two years. I give up complaining about his interruptions of my work. His unintentional interruptions are the worst, a peripheral sense of intensity, edging into my mind, a clamoring, a clanging, a one-man band.

Because of this distraction, my own work creeps. The Representative Panel, delaying judgment on my application—on my worthiness to survive, to serve them—is anxious. They want results. Madline tells me of the controversy over my application. Many of them are using my unproductiveness as an excuse to oppose another reembodiment. They prefer to avoid meeting the question directly. They prefer to avoid killing him. A canceled application kills no one. It permits a normal death, age, death, entropy.

I have thought of it. Even without the scholar in my closet, the furious engine of learning, rattling and clanking and puffing steam, even without him, my output would be small. One day, I realize why. I am bored. Bored stiff. Ho-hum. Though I still believe in my work, work that must be done, it bores me. I have experienced most things. Everything of interest, except—I remember a conversation I had with him. No, I have never experienced that.

I sit back in my chair, hands behind my head, thinking, reflecting, ruminating on too many years.

Have you ever thought— I begin.

Not now, Tomus.

I am stunned. He has never refused to talk. Not now?

I am busy.

Busy? What can he be doing? Digging out? Tunneling out? The rebuff angers me. What the hell do you have to do that’s so important?

Please, Tomus, I’m concentrating.

On what, my navel?

No, your program. I have it almost finished.

I sit up in the chair. What do you know about—

I have been watching, learning. You made a mistake in the equations that describe the Orion nova.

Mistake? The upstart! The ingrate! Mistake, my foot!

It had better be yours. I have none. He laughs.

A joke, his first, an incongruity observed. A joke. I laugh. I laugh and keep laughing and laugh until tears run down my cheeks. Tension and weariness and anger drain from me.