Clifford Simak - The Thing in the Stone - And Other Stories

Chambers went on, almost as if Allen hadn’t spoken. “The relief ship to Jupiter came back today. Brought back one man, mind entirely gone. The rest were dead. One of them had cut his throat. The relief men came back too. Refused to stay after what they saw.”

Allen grimaced. “Can’t say I blame them.”

“Those men were perfectly sane when they went out,” declared Chambers. “Psychologists gave every one of them high ratings for mental stability. They were selected on that very point, because we realized Jupiter is bad—probably the most alien place in the entire Solar System. But not so bad every one of them would go mad in three short months.”

Chambers matched his fingers. “The psychologists agree with me on that point.”

Hannibal stirred a little, sharp claws scratching the desk top. Allen reached out a hand and chucked the little creature under the chin. Hannibal swiped angrily at the hand with an armored claw.

“I’m getting desperate, Moses,” Chambers said.

“I know,” said Allen. “Things getting worse all the time. Bad news from every corner of the Solar System. Communications breaking down. Machines standing idle. Vital installations no good because the men crack up when they try to run them.”

They sat in silence. Allen scowling at his cigarette, Chambers stiff and straight behind his desk, almost as if he were sitting on the edge of his chair, waiting for something to happen.

“Situational psychoneurosis.” said Allen. “That’s what the experts call it. Another sixty-four dollar word for plain insanity. Men walking out on their jobs. Men going berserk. The whole Solar System crumbling because they can’t do the jobs they’re meant to do.”

Chambers spoke sharply. “We can’t get anywhere by ranting at it, Moses. We have to find the answer or give up. Give up the dream men held before us. The dream of an integrated Solar System, integrated by men and for men, working smoothly, making the life of the human race a better life.”

“You mean,” said Allen, slowly, “what have I done about it?”

Chambers nodded. “I had that in mind, yes.”

“I have been working on a lot of angles,” Allen declared. “Canceling out most of them. Really just one big one left. But you won’t find the answer in sabotage. Not that I won’t work to find it there. Because, you see, that’s my business. But I feel in my bones that this really is on the up and up—would know it was, except for one thing. To solve this problem, we have to find a new factor in the human mind, in human psychology—a new approach to the whole problem itself.

“Geniuses are our trouble. It takes geniuses to run a Solar System. Just ordinary intelligence isn’t enough to do the job. And geniuses are screwy. You can’t depend on them.”

“And yet,” said Spencer Chambers, almost angrily, “we must depend on them.”

And that, Allen knew, was the truth—the bitter truth.

For years now there had been a breakdown of human efficiency. It had started gradually, a few incidents here, a few there. But it had spread, had progressed almost geometrically; had reached a point now where, unless something could be done about it, the Solar System’s economic and industrial fabric would go to pot for lack of men to run it and the power plants and laboratories, the mills, the domed cities, the communication system men had built on all the planets encircling the Sun would crumble into dust.

Men were better trained, better equipped mentally, more brilliant than ever before. Of that there was no question. They had to be. Hundreds of jobs demanded geniuses. And there were geniuses, thousands of them, more than ever before. Trouble was they didn’t stay geniuses. They went insane.

There had been evidence of a mass insanity trend as far back as the twentieth century, stemming even then from the greater demands which an increasingly complex, rapidly changing, vastly speeded-up civilization placed upon the human brain, upon human capabilities and skills. With the development of a scientific age, man suddenly had been called upon to become a mental giant. Man had tried, had in part succeeded. But the pace had been too fast—the work of man had outstripped his brain. Now man was losing out.

Today the world was a world of specialization. To be of economic value, men had to specialize. They had to study harder than ever to fit themselves into their world. College courses were tougher and longer. The very task of educating themselves for a place in their civilization placed upon them a nervous tension that was only intensified when they took over the strenuous, brain-wearing workaday tasks to which they were assigned.

No wonder, Allen told himself, that there came a time when they threw up their hands, walked out, didn’t give a damn.

“You’ve got to find out what’s wrong with the bright boys,” he said. “You have to find what’s in their make-up that makes them unstable. Maybe there’s something wrong with their education, with the way it’s dished out to them. Maybe—”

“The educators and psychologists are conducting research along those lines,” Chambers reminded him, shortly.

“I get it,” said Allen. “I’m to stick to my own field. All right, then. I’m going to tell you something that will make you madder than hell.”

Chambers sat silent, waiting. Hannibal shifted himself along the desk, edging closer to Allen, almost as if he were listening and didn’t want to miss a word.

“It’s this Sanctuary business,” Allen said. “You’ve seen the ads—”

He stopped in flustered embarrassment, but Chambers nodded.

“I see them, yes. I read the papers, Moses. I spread them out and Hannibal looks at them and I read them, just as well as you do. You needn’t be so sensitive about my blindness.”

“Sanctuary has those ads plastered all over the place,” said Allen. “In papers, on signboards, everywhere. Sometimes they call themselves a rest home, sometimes a sanitarium. Sometimes they don’t even bother to call themselves anything. Just use a lot of white space, with the name ‘Sanctuary’ in big type. Refined, all of it. Nothing crude. Nothing quackish about it. They’ve run about all the other mental sanitariums out of business. Nobody thinks of going anywhere but Sanctuary when they go batty now.”

“What are you getting at?” snapped Chambers.

“I told you it would make you sore,” Allen reminded him. “They’ve fooled you, just like they’ve fooled all the rest of us. Let me tell you what I know about them.”

Chambers’ lips were thin and straight. “Whatever made you investigate them, Moses? Sanctuary is—” He faltered. “Why, Sanctuary is—”

Allen laughed. “Yes, I know what you mean. Sanctuary is lily-white. Sanctuary is noble. It’s a shining haven in a world that’s going haywire. Yeah, that’s what you think and everyone thinks. I thought so myself. I started looking them up on a hunch. I hated myself. I felt like I ought to go and hide. But I had a hunch, see, and I never pass one up. So I gritted my teeth and went ahead. And I’m convinced that Sanctuary is either the greatest racket the Solar System has ever known or it’s tied up with this insanity some way. My best guess is that it’s a racket. I can’t figure any angles the other way except that maybe they’re doing something to drive people nuts just to boost their business and that doesn’t add up for a lot of reasons. If it’s a racket, I’m wasting my time. There’s bigger game to hunt than rackets these days.”

He took a deep breath. “First I checked up on Dr. Jan Nichols, he’s the fellow that runs it. And he’s a nobody, far as I can find out. Certainly not a psychiatrist. Was in the Solar Service at one time. Headed a party making a survey of mineral resources out in the Belt. Had a minor degree in mineralogy. Just that, nothing more, no specialization. An opportunist, I would deduce. Took just enough education to get a job.