Macroscope

“It hasn’t hurt you — yet. What possible thing could you learn worth the risk?”

“I don’t know.” That was the irony of it. He had no evidence there was anything to find. “But if there is any help for us, that’s where it has to be. They — the galactics, whatever they are — must be hiding something. Otherwise why have such a program at all? They can’t really be trying to destroy us, because this is a self-damping thing. I mean, a little of it warns you off, just as it did for the probs. But the discouragement would really be more effective if there were no signal at all. The signal itself is proof there is something to look for. It is tantalizing. It’s as though — well, interference.” He hoped.

“Interference!” she said, seeing it. “To prevent someone else’s program from getting through!”

“That’s the way I figure it. Must be something pretty valuable, to warrant all that trouble.”

“Yes. But it could be something philosophic or long-range. We need an immediate remedy. Something impossible, like an inertial nullifier or instantaneous transport — and that simply isn’t going to happen.”

“I thought I’d give it a try.”

Thus they oriented on Neptune, economy route. It was as good a long-range destination as any. As the vessel turned and began its steady drive toward the sun — actually a cometlike ellipse that would carry it within the orbit of Mercury and out again into space — Ivo gave it his try. He did not need to be concerned about the irregular shifts and pauses in acceleration (designed to confuse the pursuit) because the destroyer was everywhere, always in focus.

No, the alien signal was not difficult to locate. He knew its frequency — or, more aptly, its quality — and it was easier to drift into it than to avoid it. But he felt the perspiration on his body as he aligned the great receptor and allowed the pattern to develop. It was death he was toying with: the potential death of his mind, and perhaps with it, his body.

It came: the same devastating series whose terminus abolished intellect. The pictures built rapidly into symbolic concepts, the concepts into meaning…

Why did it always hit in sequence? Even if it were a recorded, endlessly repeating program, one would expect to pick it up randomly, begi

He broke the contact with a convulsion of the fingers that threw him far into the static of fringe reception and waited a few seconds. Then he approached again.

The sequence picked up at the begi

Startled, he broke again, glad that at least his prior experience had given him the strength to cut it off in mid-showing. Could it be adjusted to him, personally? A signal fifteen thousand years in the transition? The notion was ridiculous!

He reco

Once more he broke, alarmed by the implication as much as by the deadly series. This was not, could not be a recording in any normal sense. It was more like a — a programmed text. A series of lessons embodying their own feedback so that the pupil could constantly check himself and rethink his errors. Inanimate, yet governed by the capability of the student. Such a text was the closest approach of the printed word to an animate teacher, just as a programmed machine-instructor approached sentience without consciousness. It was the student’s burgeoning comprehension of the material that animated the machine or text and gave the illusion of awareness.

Strange that this had not occurred to him before! Yet it was implicit in the groundwork for the program. One had to comprehend the distinction between—

What a mind-expanding thing this was! Already the concepts of the program were spilling over into his human framework. The concepts were real, they were relevant, to himself and to the universe. Philosophy, psychology — even astrology were assuming new significance for him, as he fitted their postulates into his increasing comprehension.

“Afra,” he said, closing his eyes to the fascinating sequence.

She was there. “Yes, Ivo.”

“Is it possible to — to say something in such a way that it — that all possible—”

“That it applies to many situations?” she suggested, trying to help him.

“No. To all situations. I mean, so it is true no matter how you use it. True for a person, true for a rock, true for a smell, true for an idea—”

“Figuratively, perhaps. ‘Good’ might apply to all of these, or ‘unusual.’ But those are subjective values—”

“Yes! Involving the student. But objective too, so that everyone agrees. Everyone who understands.”

“I’m not sure I follow you, Ivo. It is impossible to have complete agreement while retaining individuality. The two are contradictory.”

“Not — personality. In learning framework. In comprehension. So anyone who understands — this — can understand anything. By applying the guidelines. A — a programmed mind, I think.”

“That almost sounds like the Unified Field Theory extended to cover psychology.”

“I don’t know. What does—”

“Albert Einstein’s lifework. He spent his last twenty-five years trying to reduce the physical laws of the universe to a unified formulation. In this way gravity, magnetism and atomic interactions could all be derived as special cases of the basic statement. The practical applications of such a system would be immense.”

“So that the theorems of one could be adapted to any other?”

“I believe so, if you thought of it that way.”

“Like adapting astronomy to human psychology? And to music and art and love?”

“I really don’t—” Once more the pause that portended trouble. “Are you taking up Harold’s line?”

“I don’t know. Whatever it is, the macroscope has it.”

“The Unified Field? Are you sure?”

“The whole thing. The set of concepts that apply to our entire experience, whoever or whatever we are.”

She pondered before answering. “That might be the key to the universe, Ivo.”

“No. It’s the mind-destroyer concept. I don’t quite follow it all yet, but a few more runthroughs—”

“Stop!” she cried. “Stay away from that!”

Was the anguish in her voice for him, or for the fate of the macroscope if he should fail? “I don’t mean that I’ll ride it to the… end. Just far enough to—”

“Just far enough to get hooked. Find some other way. Circle around it. Leapfrog it.”

“I can’t. I have to comprehend before I can go on. Otherwise I won’t be able to apply those advanced concepts.”

“Advanced con — Mindlessness!”

“I see it now. Things our species has never dreamed of. Concepts that supersede our realities. But I have to nullify this — this destructive aspect first, or I can never move on.”

“Ivo, you can’t control a fire by cooking yourself in it. You have to handle it remotely, never actually touching. The — the others tried to bathe in it—”

“I don’t think the information has to destroy. It’s many-faceted. If I can come at the right angle—”

“Ivo,” she said persuasively, and her voice gave him adolescent shivers. “Ivo, did you have to comprehend the mathematical theory of the sprouts game before you could win the tournament?”

“No. That’s — I just see the right course a step at a time, like a road through a forest, and I win. I don’t know anything about the math, really.”

“Then why do you feel you have to comprehend the destroyer? Isn’t it enough to know what to avoid and to pass it by, a step at a time? Think of it as a bad move, Ivo. A tantalizing but losing strategy. Skip it and go on to the next.”