I Am Crying All Inside and Other Stories (19 page)

“I came to talk with you,” he said precisely, “about the pending proposal to investigate religious origins.”

Spencer winced mentally. It was a tender subject.

“Dr. Ravenholt,” he said, “that is a matter I have given a great deal of attention. Not myself alone, but my entire department.”

“That is what I've heard,” Ravenholt said drily. “That is why I'm here. I understand you have tentatively decided not to go ahead with it.”

“Not tentatively,” said Spencer. “Our decision has been made. I'm curious how you heard it.”

Ravenholt waved an airy hand, implying there was very little he did not know about. “I presume the matter still is open to discussion.”

Spencer shook his head.

Ravenholt said, icily, “I fail to see how you could summarily cut off an investigation so valid and so vital to all humanity.”

“Not summarily, Dr. Ravenholt. We spent a lot of time on it. We made opinion samplings. We had an extensive check by Psych. We considered all the factors.”

“And your findings, Mr. Spencer?”

“First of all,” said Spencer, just a little nettled, “it would be too time-consuming. As you know, our license specifies that we donate ten per cent of our operation time to public interest projects. This we are most meticulous in doing, although I don't mind telling you there's nothing that gives us greater headaches.”

“But that ten per cent …”

“If we took up this project you are urging, doctor, we'd use up all our public interest time for several years at least. That would mean no other programs at all.”

“But surely you'll concede that no other proposal could be in a greater public interest.”

“That's not our findings,” Spencer told him. “We took opinion samplings in every area of Earth, in all possible cross-sections. We came up with—sacrilege.”

“You're joking, Mr. Spencer!”

“Not at all,” said Spencer. “Our opinion-taking showed quite conclusively that any attempt to investigate world-wide religious origins would be viewed by the general public in a sacrilegious light. You and I, perhaps, could look upon it as research. We could resolve all our questioning by saying we sought no more nor less than truth. But the people of the world—the simple, common people of every sect and faith in the entire world—do not want the truth. They are satisfied with things just as they are. They're afraid we would upset a lot of the old, comfortable traditions. They call it sacrilege and it's partly that, of course, but it's likewise an instinctive defense reaction against upsetting their thinking. They have a faith to cling to. It has served them through the years and they don't want anyone to fool around with it.”

“I simply can't believe it,” said Ravenholt, aghast at such blind provincialism.

“I have the figures. I can show you.”

Dr. Ravenholt waved his hand condescendingly and gracefully.

“If you say you have them, I am sure you have.”

He wasn't taking any chances of being proven wrong.

“Another thing,” said Spencer, “is objectivity. How do you select the men to send back to observe the facts?”

“I am sure that we could get them. There are many men of the cloth, of every creed and faith, who would be amply qualified …”

“Those are just the ones we would never think of sending,” said Spencer. “We need objectivity. Ideally, the kind of man we need is one who has no interest in religion, who has no formal training in it, one who is neither for it nor against it—and yet, we couldn't use that sort of man even if we found him. For to understand what is going on, he'd have to have a rather thorough briefing on what he was to look for. Once you trained him, he'd be bound to lose his objectivity. There is something about religion that forces one to take positions on it.”

“Now,” said Ravenholt, “you are talking about the ideal investigative situation, not our own.”

“Well, all right, then,” conceded Spencer. “Let's say we decide to do a slightly sloppy job. Who do we send then? Could any Christian, I ask you, no matter how poor a Christian he might be, safely be sent back to the days that Jesus spent on Earth? How could one be sure that even mediocre Christians would do no more than observe the facts? I tell you, Dr. Ravenholt, we could not take the chance. What would happen, do you think, if we suddenly should have thirteen instead of twelve disciples? What if someone should try to rescue Jesus from the Cross? Worse yet, what if He actually were rescued? Where would Christianity be then? Would there be Christianity? Without the Crucifixion, would it ever have survived?”

“Your problem has a simple answer,” Ravenholt said coldly. “Do not send a Christian.”

“Now we are really getting somewhere,” said Spencer. “Let's send a Moslem to get the Christian facts and a Christian to track down the life of Buddha—and a Buddhist to investigate black magic in the Belgian Congo.”

“It could work,” said Ravenholt.

“It might work, but you wouldn't get objectivity. You'd get bias and, worse yet, perfectly honest misunderstanding.”

Ravenholt drummed impatient fingers on his well-creased knee. “I can see your point,” he agreed, somewhat irritably, “but there is something you have overlooked. The findings need not be released in their entirety to the public.”

“But if it's in the public interest? That's what our license says.”

“Would it help,” asked Ravenholt, “if I should offer certain funds which could be used to help defray the costs?”

“In such a case,” said Spencer, blandly, “the requirement would not be met. It's either in the public interest, without any charge at all, or it's a commercial contract paid for at regular rates.”

“The obvious fact,” Ravenholt said flatly, “is that you do not want to do this job. You may as well admit it.”

“Most cheerfully,” said Spencer. “I willingly wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole. What worries me right now is why you're here.”

Ravenholt said, “I thought that with the project about to be rejected, I possibly could serve as a sort of mediator.”

“You mean you thought we could be bribed.”

“Not at all,” said Ravenholt wrathfully. “I was only recognizing that the project was perhaps a cut beyond what your license calls for.”

“It's all of that,” said Spencer.

“I cannot fully understand your objection to it,” Ravenholt persisted.

“Dr. Ravenholt,” said Spencer gently, “how would you like to be responsible for the destruction of a faith?”

“But,” stammered Ravenholt, “there is no such possibility …”

“Are you certain?” Spencer asked him. “How certain are you, Dr. Ravenholt? Even the black magic of the Congo?”

“Well, I—well, since you put it that way …”

“You see what I mean?” asked Spencer.

“But even so,” argued Ravenholt, “there could be certain facts suppressed …”

“Come now! How long do you think you could keep it bottled up? Anyway, when Past, Inc., does a job,” Spencer told him firmly, “it goes gunning for the truth. And when we learn it, we report it. That is the one excuse we have for our continuing existence. We have a certain project here—a personal, full-rate contract—in which we have traced a family tree for almost two thousand years. We have been forced to tell our client some unpleasant things. But we told them.”

“That's part of what I'm trying to convey to you,” shouted Ravenholt, shaken finally out of his ruthless calm. “You are willing to embark upon the tracing of a family tree, but you refuse this!”

“And you are confusing two utterly different operations! This investigation of religious origins is a public interest matter. Family Tree is a private account for which we're being paid.”

Ravenholt rose angrily. “We'll discuss this some other time, when we both can keep our temper.”

Spencer said wearily, “It won't do any good. My mind is made up.”

“Mr. Spencer,” Ravenholt said, nastily, “I'm not without recourse.”

“Perhaps you're not. You can go above my head. If that is what you're thinking, I'll tell you something else: You'll carry out this project over my dead body. I will not, Dr. Ravenholt, betray the faith of any people in the world.”

“We'll see,” said Ravenholt, still nasty.

“Now,” said Spencer, “you're thinking that you can have me fired. Probably you could. Undoubtedly you know the very strings to pull. But it's no solution.”

“I would think,” said Ravenholt, “it would be the perfect one.”

“I'd still fight you as a private citizen. I'd take it to the floor of the United Nations if I had to.”

They both were on their feet now, facing one another across the width of desk.

“I'm sorry,” Spencer said, “that it turned out this way. But I meant everything I said.”

“So did I,” said Ravenholt, stalking out the door.

III

Spencer sat down slowly in his chair.

A swell way to start a day, he told himself.

But the guy had burned him up.

Miss Crane came in the door with a sheaf of papers for his desk.

“Mr. Spencer,” shall I send in Mr. Hudson? He's been waiting a long time.”

“Is Hudson the applicant?”

“No, that is Mr. Cabell.”

“Cabell is the man I want to see. Bring me his file.” She sniffed contemptuously and left.

Damn her, Spencer told himself, I'll see who I want to see when I want to see them!

He was astounded at the violence of his thought. What was wrong with him? Nothing was going right. Couldn't he get along with anyone any more?

Too tensed up, he thought. Too many things to do, too much to worry over.

Maybe what he ought to do was walk out into Operations and step into a carrier for a long vacation. Back to the Old Stone Age, which would require no indoctrination. There wouldn't be too many people, perhaps none at all. But there'd be mosquitoes. And cave bears. And saber-tooths and perhaps a lot of other things equally obnoxious. And he'd have to get some camping stuff together and—oh, the hell with it!

But it was not a bad idea.

He'd thought about it often. Some day he would do it. Meanwhile, he picked up the sheaf of papers Miss Crane had dropped upon his desk.

They were the daily batch of future assignments dreamed up by the Dirty Tricks department. There was always trouble in them. He felt himself go tense as he picked them up.

The first one was a routine enough assignment—an investigation of some tributes paid the Goths by Rome. There was, it seemed, a legend that the treasure had been buried somewhere in the Alps. It might never have been recovered. That was S.O.P., checking up on buried treasure.

But the second paper—

“Miss Crane!” he yelled.

She was coming through the door, with a file clutched in her hand. Her face changed not a whit at his yelp of anguish; she was used to it.

“What is the matter, Mr. Spencer?” she inquired, at least three degrees too calmly.

Spencer banged his fist down on the pile of sheets. “They can't do this to me! I won't stand for it. Get Rogers on the phone!”

“Yes, sir.”

“No, wait a minute there,” Spencer interrupted grimly. “This I can do better personal. I'll go up and see him. In fact, I'll take him apart barehanded.”

“But there are those people waiting …”

“Let them wait for a while. It will make them humble.”

He snatched up the assignment sheet and went striding out the door. He shunned the elevator. He climbed two flights of stairs. He went in a door marked
Evaluation
.

Rogers was sitting tilted back, with his feet up on the desk top, staring at the ceiling.

He glanced at Spencer with a bland concern. He took his feet down off the desk and sat forward in his chair.

“Well? What's the matter this time?”

“This!” said Spencer, throwing the sheet down in front of him.

Rogers poked it with a delicate finger. “Nothing difficult there. Just a little ingenuity …”

“Nothing difficult!” howled Spencer. “Movies of Nero's fire in Rome!”

Rogers sighed. “This movie outfit will pay us plenty for it.”

“And there's nothing to it. One of my men can just walk out into the burning streets of Rome and set up a movie camera in an age where the principle of the camera hasn't yet been thought of.”

“Well, I said it would call for some ingenuity,” said Rogers. “Look, there'll be a lot of people running, carrying stuff, trying to save themselves and anything they can. They won't pay any attention to your man. He can cover the camera with something so that it will look …”

“It'll be an ugly crowd,” insisted Spencer. “It won't like the city being burned. There'll be rumors that the Christians are the ones who set the fire. That crowd will be looking for suspicious characters.”

“There's always an element of danger,” Rogers pointed out.

“Not as dangerous as this!” said Spencer, testily. “Not deliberately asking for it. And there is something else.”

“Like what?”

“Like introducing an advanced technology to the past. If that crowd beat up my man and busted the camera …”

Rogers shrugged. “What difference if they did? They could make nothing of it.”

“Maybe. But what I'm really worried about,” Spencer persisted, “is what the watchdog group would say when they audit our records. It would have to be worth an awful lot of money before I'd take a chance.”

“Believe me, it is worth a lot of money. And it would open up a new field for us. That's why I liked it.”

“You guys in Dirty Tricks,” said Spencer, bitterly, “just don't give a damn. You'll hand us anything …”

“Not everything,” said Rogers. “Sales pushed us pretty hard on this one …”