Chapter 2

The focus shifted to the open door and then Peccary and Staghorn could see into the classroom. This one was in slightly better order than the others and was occupied by two people. In front sat Miss Terry, obviously the teacher, and at one of the desks sat Paul. He seemed to be the entire class. At Miss Terry’s urging he was coming to his feet, his face still stained with tears. He held his book a few inches from his nose and stared over the top of it sullenly.

“Go ahead, Paul,” said Miss Terry, sweetly stubborn. “I’m waiting.”

Paul looked at his book and read from it in a monotone, enunciating each word carefully as though it had no relationship to the other words. “I am a human being and as long as I obey the six rules I shall live forever.”

“Very good, Paul. Now read the six rules.”

Paul sniffled loudly and commenced reading again. “Rule one: I must never go near fire or my clothing may catch aflame and burn me up. Rule two: I must keep away from deep water or I may fall in and drown. Rule three: I must stay away from high places or I may fall and dash my brains out.” He paused to sniffle and wipe his nose on his sleeve, then sighed and continued dismally. “Rule four: I must never play with sharp things or I may cut myself and bleed to death. Rule five: I must never ride horses or I may fall off and break my neck.” Paul paused, lowering his book.

“And the sixth rule?” said Miss Terry. “Go ahead and read the sixth rule.”

Reluctantly Paul lifted his book. “Rule six: Starting when I’m twenty-one I must take Dr. Peccary’s Y Hormone once a week to keep me young and healthy forever.”

“Excellent, Paul!” said Miss Terry. “And which rule were you breaking just now on the playground?”

“I was breaking Rule Three,” Paul said, then quoted sadly, “I must stay away from high places or I may fall and dash my brains out.”

Dr. Peccary was on his feet stomping around in front of the computer. “Sheer idiocy,” he muttered. “He doesn’t have any brains to dash out! I’ll admit that a computer with sufficient information about the state of the world might be able to make accurate predictions of events a few months or possibly a year into the future--but not one hundred years! In that long an interval even the most trivial error could distort every circuit in the machine.” He jabbed a finger toward the screen where Paul was seated at his desk again. “And that’s what that picture is--a distortion. I’m not going to let it influence me one bit in what I intend to--” He broke off because of what was happening on the screen.

From somewhere outside the school building came the wail of a deep-throated alarm. Both Miss Terry and Paul were on their feet and by their expressions, terrified.

“The Atavars!” Paul cried, his entire body shaking.

“To the basement, Paul!” Miss Terry’s face was blanched as she grasped Paul’s hand and headed toward the door. But halfway there, both came to a halt, breathless and staring.

A powerful bearded man strode into the classroom.

Paul and Miss Terry fell back as he advanced. He was a man of about fifty, his bushy hair shot with gray, his eyes cold and blue. He was followed by two younger men who studied Paul and Miss Terry with interest. All three wore rough work clothing.

The bearded man pointed at Paul. “There’s the boy,” he said quietly. “Take him.”

Paul let out a shriek of terror and fled into a corner as the two men advanced. He clawed futilely as they laid hands on him. “For God’s sake, shut up,” one of the men said with more disgust than anger. He pinioned Paul’s arms while the other man bound them together with a strip of cloth.

Miss Terry meanwhile had collapsed into her chair. One of Paul’s captors glanced at her and spoke to the bearded man. “What about her?”

The bearded man stepped close to Miss Terry and put a hand on her shoulder. She recoiled as from a snake. “How old are you?” he asked. Miss Terry made some inarticulate squeaks and the man spoke more sharply. “When were you born?”

“Two thousand four,” she managed to stutter.

The bearded man considered this and shook his head. “Over fifty. By that time they’re hopeless. Leave her and bring the boy.”

Miss Terry let out an agonized wail of protest and fainted across her desk. One of the men slung Paul over his shoulder and the bearded leader led the group from the room.

“Amazing,” murmured Staghorn. “Absolutely amazing. One never knows what to expect.”

“Pure gibberish,” said Peccary, then betrayed his interest by saying, “Can you follow them?”

“I’m trying to.” Staghorn worked at the geographic adjustment and finally got the screen focused on the corridor again. It was deserted. The bearded man and his companions had already departed. Staghorn touched the controls again, the screen flickered and once more the little park came into focus. But now it, too, was deserted. None of the ragged men and women were in sight, neither in the park nor on the street beyond. Staghorn twisted the focus in all directions without discovering anyone.

“That whistle we heard was obviously some kind of alarm,” he said. “Everyone must be in hiding--from the Atavars, whoever they are. I strongly suspect that bearded fellow of being one.”

“You might as well shut it off, Staghorn,” Dr. Peccary said coldly. “It’s too much nonsense for any sane man to swallow. And unless that machine can provide a full and satisfactory explanation as to why my Y Hormone will bring about the conditions depicted on that screen, I see no reason to keep the hormone off the market.”

Staghorn turned from the controls to study his companion. “The only possible way that Humanac could give us the entire background of events leading up to what we’ve just seen would be to set the time control to the present and then leave the machine running until it arrived at this same period again. That would take a hundred years, and I’m not going to sit here that long. What’s more, I’m not going to touch your Y Hormone even if you do put it on the market.”

“There’ll be plenty who will!”

“That’s what Humanac says, yes.”

Dr. Peccary gestured despairingly. After all, he did have a conscience. “I simply don’t believe my hormone can be responsible!”

“I’ll remind you that your picture was on the classroom wall and that the sixth rule read by that boy indicated that he was supposed to start using your hormone when he reached the age of twenty-one. That would be about the age to stop growing older.”

“That boy is nothing but a mathematical probability!”

“That’s all you and I are,” Staghorn said owlishly. “Mathematical probabilities. Despite Omar, nothing exactly like either of us has ever existed before or will exist again.”

“But damn it, Staghorn...” Dr. Peccary sat down, his face in his hands. “It’s worth millions! I’ve invested years of work and all the money I could scrape together. I don’t see anything wrong in a scientist’s profiting by his discoveries. And to keep it off the market just because that insane computer says that a hundred years from now--” He broke off, glaring at Humanac’s screen which was still focused on the deserted park. “It simply doesn’t make sense! The machine doesn’t give any reasons for anything. If there were a way I could talk directly to some of those mathematical probabilities, question them, ask them what it’s all about...” He was on his feet, striding back and forth before the computer again.

“Perhaps there is a way,” Staghorn said quietly.

“Eh?”

“I said that it may be possible for you to talk with them.”

“How?”

“By making your mind a temporary part of the computer.”

Peccary studied the huge machine apprehensively--its ranks of memory units, its chambers of flickering tubes, the labyrinth of circuits. “How would you go about it?”

“I put you in the transmitter,” Staghorn said. He stepped away from the console and slid back a panel to reveal a niche with a seat in it. Above the seat was a sort of helmet that resembled a hair drier in a beauty parlor, except that it was studded with hundreds of tiny magnets and transistors. Staghorn indicated the helmet. “This picks up and amplifies brain waves. I’ve used it to record the cephalic wave pattern of about a hundred men and women. The recordings are built into the computer, enabling Humanac to assign a mathematical evaluation to the influence of human emotion in making historic decisions. In your case, instead of making a recording of your brain waves, I’d feed the impulses directly into Humanac’s memory units.”

“And what would happen then?”

“I’m not altogether sure,” said Staghorn, and it seemed to Peccary that Staghorn was finding a definite relish in his uncertainty. “I’ve never tried the experiment before.”

“I might get electrocuted?”

“No. There’s no danger of that happening. The current that activates the transmitter comes from your own brain, and as you know, such electrical impulses are extremely feeble. That isn’t what worries me.”