"Isn't it clear that they're afraid of the Pumping phenomenon?"
"Not at all. If they were afraid, they would stop it. I think they're afraid, all right, but they're afraid that our side will stop it. You've gotten across your intention to them and if we stop it, as you want us to do, they've got to stop also. You said yourself they can't continue without us; it's a two-ended proposition. I don't blame them for being afraid."
Lamont sat silent.
"I see," said Chen, "that you haven't thought of that. Well, then, we'll push for immortality. I think that will be the more popular cause."
"Oh, popular causes," said Lamont slowly. "I didn't understand what you found important. How old are you, Mr. Chen?"
For a moment, Chen bunked rapidly, then he turned away. He left the room, walking rapidly, with his hands clenched.
Lamont looked up his biography later. Chen was sixty and his father had died at sixty-two. But it didn't matter.
Chapter 9
"You don't look as though you had any luck at all," said Bronowski.
Lamont was sitting in his laboratory, staring at the toes of his shoes and noting idly that they seemed unusually scuffed. He shook his head. "No."
"Even the great Chen failed you?"
"He would do nothing. He wants evidence, too. They all want evidence, but anything you offer them is rejected. What they really want is their damned Pump, or their reputation, or their place in history. Chen wants immortality."
"What do you want, Pete?" asked Bronowski, softly.
"Mankind's safety," said Lamont. He looked at the other's quizzical eyes. "You don't believe me?"
"Oh, I believe you. But what do you really want?"
"Well, then, by God," and Lamont brought his hand down flat on the desk before him in a loud slap. "I want to be right, and that I have, for I am right."
"You are sure?"
"I am sure! And there's nothing I am worried about, because I intend to win. You know when I left Chen, I came near to despising myself."
"You?"
"Yes, I. Why not? I kept thinking: At every turn Hallam stops me. As long as Hallam refutes me everyone has an excuse not to believe me. While Hallam stands like a rock against me, I must fail. Why, then, didn't I work through him; why didn't I butter him up, indeed; why didn't I maneuver him into supporting me instead of needling him into fighting me?"
"Do you think you could have?"
"No, never. But in my despair, I thought - well, all sorts of things. That I might go to the Moon, perhaps. Of course, when I first turned him against me there was as yet no question of Earth's doom, but I took care to make it worse when that question arose. But, as you imply, nothing could have turned him against the Pump."
"But you don't seem to despise yourself now."
"No. Because my conversation with Chen brought a dividend. It showed me I was wasting time."
"So it would seem."
"Yes, but needlessly. It is not here on Earth that the solution lies. I told Chen that our Sun might blow up but that the para-Sun would not, yet that would not save the para-men, for when our Sun blew up and our end of the Pump halted, so would theirs. They cannot continue without us, do you see?"
"Yes, of course I see."
"They why don't we think in the reverse. We can't continue without them. In which case, who cares whether we stop the Pump or not. Let's get the para-men to stop."
"Ah, but will they?"
"They said F-E-E-R. And it means they're afraid. Chen said they feared us; they feared we would stop the Pump; but I don't believe that for a moment. They're afraid. I sat silent when Chen made his suggestion. He thought he had me. He was quite wrong. I was only thinking at that moment that we had to get the para-men to stop. And we've got to. Mike, I abandon everything, except you. You're the hope of the world. Get through to them somehow."
Bronowski laughed, and there was almost a childlike glee in it. "Pete," he said, "you're a genius."
"Aha. You've noticed."
"No, I mean it. You guess what I want to say before I can say it. I've been sending message after message, using their symbols in a way that I guessed might signify the Pump and using our word as well. And I did my best to gather what information I've scrabbled together over many months to use their symbols in a way signifying