Albert Teichner

“ Harta, next to him, trembled as she adjusted to the strange hardness of these four dimensions. “Being is a thin thing here,” she said.
“Thin, yes,” Creno smiled. “An almost dead world. But there is a mystery in that almost to make the journey worth the coming.”
“What mystery?” But Creno was of the wisest on the home planet and her sense feelers scanned once more to find what he must mean. “I do feel it! Everything dead but that one great mental thing moving, and a four-dimensional stream coming out in the vibrations of this world!” ”

“ When a tale of woe piles up too many details it looks ridiculous, unreal. So here, at the outset, I want to say my life has not been a tragic one—whose life is in this day of advanced techniques and universal good will?—but that, on the contrary, I have enjoyed this Earth and Solar System and all the abundant interests that it has offered me. ”

“ Marie had the right answer for him, the one she had learned by rote in early childhood: "All life moves in cycles. Creation and progress must be preceded by destruction. In ancient times that meant we had to destroy each other; but for the past century our inherent need for negative moments has been sublimated—that's the word the news broadcasts use—into proper destruction." His wife smiled. "I'm only giving the moral reason, of course. The practical one's obvious."
Obvious it was, he had to concede. Men needed to work, not out of economic necessity any more but for the sake of work itself. ”

“ Newbridge sighed. "We had harnessed infinite complexities to our needs. But the success was too complete. Ever since then humanity has become more and more dependent on what was to be essentially a tool and nothing more. Each generation became lazier and there's no one alive who can keep this Central System in proper working order." He leaned forward to emphasize his point. "You see, it's very slowly breaking down. There's a steady accretion of inefficiency mutations in the axons and that's why more and more switching mistakes are being made—as in your case." ”

“ Lowen, four-square solid and close to seven feet in height, almost automatically became the spokesman for the trio. "We have the best news of all for your final phase," he said with bluff kindliness. "The electron leakage problem has been solved."
The old man's eyes widened and a network of hairfine lines proliferated around them. "It can't be done," he said, wistfully gazing out his window at the night sky, then at the shelves of antique bottles that ringed the room. "We're the eternal prisoners of the solar system. You shouldn't tease an old man." ”

“ If we have a pleasant sensation it doesn't matter whether it's caused by a rose or a chemical imitation of a rose or by making a brain imagine a rose—doesn't matter except that the real rose itself is the hardest thing to control. So it can't be as intensely real as its imitations."
"Mr. Tinker, isn't that crucial enough for you?" Mrs. Stahl asked. Her voice was so rich and warmly rounded that Smith stared wonderingly at her, as if trying to fathom an alien tongue. ”

“ Two things are working against us—the supply's easily replenishable and testing equipment's much too common for us to put over any white lies."
"Still hard for you to understand, isn't it?" Chisholm sighed. "Cramer, a terribly big percentage of the population has become passive and bored, just looking for some easy diversion. We have all we can do just to keep this social cancer from spreading without germ-joy. With it, matters can get out of hand. And I don't care how automated and wealthy a society is it can't get by if we develop that big a burden of non-thinking freeloaders." ”

“ For the last few centuries we've been in this phase and it has given us the power to spread across the Galaxy and assure one common level of humanity everywhere. Individual and social consciousness interacting—what, we have wondered, would be the next stage to arise from it? But we have done everything to prevent the next stage because we feared any one planet developing along unique lines, lines that might end in a threat to the rest of us. Nodar deliberately isolated itself to be temporarily unique. ”

“ Hart, we are engaged in an activity of so-called subversion for a positive reason, not merely to avoid insufficient work load. Your reason shows you are still being moved by the values that you despise. We want to cut the work-production load on people. We want them to face the problem of leisure, not flee it."
"There's a heart-warming paradox here," Burnett explained. "Every excess eventually undermines itself. Everybody in the movement starts by wanting to act for their beliefs because work appears so attractive for its own sake. ”

“ You are a sharp sensor, Harta. Focus to it.”
She strained and then relaxed, speaking: “The circuits are closed into themselves. It learns nothing from outside itself except to move and extend its metal feelers for food. Soil is its food. Soil is its energy. Soil is its being.”
“Can it be alive?”
“It is alive.”
All his legs rested now in a row along the ridge. He too was relaxed as one mystery disappeared. “I feel your feelings, but the thing is not alive. It is a machine.” ”

“ I struggled to laugh but even gave up that little gesture. "Another operation? No, it can't make any difference."
"It might. We don't know."
"How could it?"
"Suppose, Treb, just suppose you do come out of it all right. You'd be the first man to be completely of second matter!"
"Erics, it can't work. Forget it."
"I won't forget it. You said we're not immortal but, Treb, your survival would be another step in that direction. The soul's immortality has to be taken on faith now—if it's taken at all. ”

“ Lowen was the first to pull himself out of their attack of space ecstasy. "We will start sending data following the first node," he intoned. "Twenty minutes to first report."
Then, suddenly, they were entering the area of continuous creation and looked out with awe on the one mystery in the universe that was even greater than that of life itself. The electron loss started to ease off at an accelerating rate, reached balance and finally moved into active acquisition. All around them the latticework of matter that was the New Cosmos was filling up again. ”

“ As they watched, the splotches on the back of each hand exploded into running sores. While an assistant took a sample from one of the evil, flowering things, Jonas held an anaesthetic bottle to the sinking man's nostrils. But it had no effect and he only groaned the louder, demanding surcease.
More sores opened up on the neck while most of the team frenziedly attended to the Analyzer. One of them came up to the foot of the couch where Cramer was standing with Chisholm and Jonas and whispered to them: "Now it's a silicon virus and it's inducing massive flash-cancers!" ”

“ Synthetic foods meet gourmet needs better than traditional ones do anyway. (Of course, I don't mean the dull compacted stuff we get on long space hops but the food served on Terran planets themselves.) Any Earthman eating flesh back home is deliberately trying to taste the atavistic sensations of savagery.
"You know how immoral that is," I told him.
"Hacker, let's forget the moral issue," Barnes said, considering him with disgust. "Let's just be sensible. We don't know enough about Newtane yet to eat anything."
Hacker laughed. "Why, it smells just like our own food, only better." ”

“ I immediately recognized new-mown grass in it but the factor making the true difference escaped me until I realized the faint odor belonged to roses. At that point, my senses reeling with delight, I composed in my mind most of my long poem, The Nature of Nature, grasping intuitively an experience more intense, more valuable, than any "real" one. ”

“ The pavement approach to Nodar's Central Headquarters was evenly laid out but, wherever repairs had been made, there was no sign of an attempt to cover the patches up and maintain pleasing visual symmetry. "There'll have to be a Glia Expeditionary Force," Linder muttered, unable to remain silent in the face of such deliberate disorganization. "They're suffering from some weird disease. They'll need all the help every planet can send."
At this Jackson, who had not seemed to be listening, turned around and gave them all the most icy glance they had ever encountered. ”

“ In the morning, as he went out, Marie asked him where he was going.
"I want to observe the preparations for the Preliminary Rites."
"Now that," she grinned, "is what I call healthy thinking."
For a while he did stand around the Central Plaza along with thousands of other idlers, watching the robot dump trucks assemble the piles of discarded equipment. The crowd cheered loudly as an enormous crane was knocked over on its side.
"There's fifty millions worth out there!" a bystander exulted. "It's going to be the biggest Preliminary I've ever seen." ”

“ Death is too rare and anachronistic a phenomenon today. "You're the one who needs treatment, Doctor. Overwork, too much study, one idea on the brain too much."
Resigned, he shrugged his shoulders. "All the first matter should be removed except for the spinal chord and the vertebrae. You'd still have that."
"Very kind of you," I said, and walked away, determined to have no more of his lectures now or in the future.
Marla wanted to know why I seemed so jumpy. "Seems is just the word," I snapped. "Never felt better in my life." ”

“ None of them could ever be the great pioneer that he had been but even a midget standing on a giant's shoulder could see further than the giant himself.
"We now know there is continuous creation of matter out in space." Lowen paused dramatically for the point to sink in but the ancient only continued to look incredulous. He hurried on. "It was simply a matter of incorrect methodology, Learned Master. We have always assigned too many of the decision-functions in this area to computers when it was too purely a creative problem for anything but human minds." ”

“ Connor exploded. "It got rid of me awfully easily."
His wife tried to calm him. "Listen, dear, then decide."
"You're surviving as a pariah, Mr. Newman, aren't you? Your wife tells me you've even started to study robot controls, valuable knowledge for the future and personally satisfying now. Millions of people do survive as outsiders, as do the planetary colonists who only have limited access so far to social telepathy. The System has built into it defenses against Subscribers who lack confidence in it—if it didn't it would collapse. But people in the System are not forced to remain there. ”

“ It continued to repair itself, as if a child of the race that had started all this would come by it at any moment to tip an eager pinky in the still-warm taffy to taste its tangy sweetness. But there were no human beings. ”

“ Linder gave a sour laugh as he moved down the catwalk, throwing one communication circuit after another to ON position. "I imagine they're going to play very coy before we wangle an answer out of them—but not because they're indifferent, Stern. It's impossible for people to be indifferent to their fellows—cooperation or hate, those are the two possibilities, and Nodar alone refuses to cooperate. Why should they be indifferent? What could they have to develop beside the universe of people around them?" ”

“ A minute later a robot arm proffered a loaded plate to Hacker and he started back to us with it. Barnes rose to stop him, but before Hacker reached us he had taken two mouthfuls of the meat.
I have never seen such sheer self-satisfied delight on a human face as after those first bites. ”

“ There was Hartley's face at the window, peering anxiously at him, and, for some inexplicable reason, that sight was even funnier. Shaking helplessly, Cramer slapped his knee and kept pointing at the face. Life is so wonderfully wonderful! ”

“ Dozens of great physicians, flown in from every sector of the Solar System, have examined me. "I'm leaving my body to science," I told one particularly prodding group, "but you're not giving it a chance to die!" It is easy for me to die now; when you have truly resigned yourself to death nothing in life can disturb you. ”

“ Connor was dazed by it all. "What's going to be the upshot, I mean, how is it going to break down?"
Newbridge threw up his hands. "I don't know—it's probably a long way off anyway. I guess the most likely thing is that more and more errors will accumulate and plenty of people will be Suspended just because Central is developing irrational quirks. Maybe the critical social mass for change will exist only when more are outside the System than inside. I suspect when that happens we'll be able to return to direct telepathic contact. As things are, our projection attempts are always blocked." ”

“ He swung imperceptibly, across the surface of his new home as it streamed in an arcing line along the invisible orbit of the asteroid belt. And always at the right interval another floating flake.
When the voices came to him they were hardly wanted and totally unneeded but, although he did not listen, he heard them and even identified their owners.
"He's hooked now," Hartley was saying.
"I guess so," Neilson answered. "But it's not physiological."
"Who cares about that? Psychologically he's going to want the stuff from now on—any sensible person would. ”

“ Linder broke in. "Fine analysis jobs our psychology people are doing these days! They're supposed to weed out every fearmonger before a hyperspace team takes off." He leaned toward Stern, all his frustrations finally achieving a point of focus. "You'll never get another expedition if we make it back. Get this straight—my job isn't primarily to protect our hides. It's to make obvious to our hosts that Glia Council is supreme everywhere, the one, ultimate institution for maintaining stability throughout the Galaxy." ”

“ Burnett exploded. "Credit me with a little understanding. All right, Hart, what you say is true. But why? Because most men have always worked too hard to achieve the fruits of curiosity."
"I hate to keep being a spoil-sport, but what does that prove? Some men who had to work as hard as the rest have been interested in things beyond the end of their nose." ”

“ Yet how could he say it was the old ship when everything about it was a substitution? The question was too much for him. When he came to Athens he turned the problem over to the wise men of that city, refusing ever to think about it again."
My mind was now in turmoil. "What," I demanded, "what did they decide?"
Erics frowned. "Nothing. They could not answer the question. Every available answer was equally right and proved every other right answer wrong. As you know, philosophy does not progress in its essentials. It merely continues to clarify what the problems are." ”