The Lighter Side (46 page)

"It's more than an impulse. It's a necessity! I need more food than a bowl of egg-flower soup without egg flowers!"

"All pleasure impulses, when oversatisfied, become destructive; controlled, the instincts can be very useful. Anger, for example. Here nature has provided a behavioral mechanism to deal with those situations in which aggression seems indicated. It can override other impulses, such as fear. When you are angry, you are stronger, less sensitive to pain, and immune to panic. You desire only to close with your enemy and kill. Before combat males of many species customarily set about working themselves into a rage."

"I'm well on the way."

"You'll learn to control the anger impulse, and evoke it at will without losing control. Now we must move on to the next training situation."

"More?" Chester protested. "I'm exhausted."

"The laziness instinct again," said Kuve. "Come along, Chester."

The sun was setting. Chester and Kuve stood at the base of an eighty-foot tower beside a pool. A steep flight of steps led to a lonely platform at the top.

Kuve handed Chester a small locket. "Climb to the top of the tower. This will enable me to talk to you at a distance. Tomorrow a similar device will be surgically implanted. Now, up you go."

"Let's just go back to that glass floor and pretend some more."

"Simply climb slowly and steadily."

"What's the point in risking my neck up there?"

"Chester, intellectually you are aware that you should co-operate with me. Ignore the distractions of instinct and follow your mind."

"I'll freeze on the ladder. You'll have to send three men up to pry my fingers loose."

"Last week I watched you at the dancing terrace. You sat at a table and ate a large amount of food. You watched the dancers. A girl called to you to join in. You patted your stomach and shook your head."

"What's that got to do with flagpole sitting?"

"The dance they were performing requires great skill and strength and endurance. Had you joined in, would you now enjoy recalling it?"

"Of course, I'd like to be able to—"

"Remembered moments of high achievement satisfy; remembered excesses disgust. Next week will you look back with pleasure on having refused the tower?"

"Not if I fall off and break my neck."

"You have the power to mold your memories—but only before they become memories. This is your opportunity to endow yourself with a recollection worth having."

"Well, just to humor you, I'll start—but I won't guarantee I'll go all the way."

"One step at a time, Chester. Don't look down."

Chester mounted the stairs cautiously, gripping the slender handrail. "This thing wobbles," he called back from ten feet up.

"It will hold. Just keep going."

Chester moved higher. The steps were of wood, eight inches wide and four feet long. The handrail was aluminum, bolted to uprights every fourth step. Chester concentrated his attention on the wood and metal. A buzz sounded from the locket at his throat. "You're going very well. Halfway up now."

The sunset sky flared purple and orange. Chester paused, breathing hard.

"A few more steps, Chester," said the tiny voice in the communicator. He went on. The top of the tower was before him now. Clinging to the rail, he made his way up the last few steps. Far away a twinkle of light showed against the dark forest on the skyline. Red light reflected from a river winding down the valley. The low white building of the Center glowed peach-colored in the fading light. Chester looked down at the pool below.

He dropped flat, eyes shut. "Help!" he croaked.

"Move to the steps, feet first," Kuve said calmly. "Lower your legs, then start down!"

Chester felt the first step under his foot, edged down, one step at a time.

"Halfway down," Kuve's voice said. Chester was moving faster now. At ten feet from the bottom, Kuve halted him.

"Look at the water. Can you jump in from there?"

"Yes, but . . . "

"Go back up a step. Can you jump from there?"

Chester balked three steps higher.

"Jump."

Chester held his nose and sprang into the water. He surfaced, climbed out of the pool.

"Do it again."

After three jumps, Chester went a step higher. Half an hour later, in bright moonlight, he made the jump from twenty feet, whistling down to splash tremendously, then paddling, puffing, to the ladder.

"That's enough for this session," said Kuve. "In a week you'll jump from the top—where you couldn't stand upright today. Now, back inside. While you're getting into some dry garments, I want to talk to you about the nature of reality."

"This is the time of day I usually retire," Chester said, panting. "Couldn't reality wait for tomorrow?"

"You'll have no trouble with insomnia here," Kuve assured him. "By the time you go to bed, you'll be ready to sleep."

In a narrow room with a high window, Chester looked critically at a padded bench three feet wide.

"I'm supposed to sleep on that?"

"There is no mattress like weariness," Kuve said.

Chester kicked off his sandals and lay down with a sigh. "I guess you're right at that, Kuve. I'm going to sleep for a week."

"Four hours," said Kuve. "In addition, you'll have a two-hour nap daily at noon."

There was a buzz from the communicator still on Chester's neck. "Not-is is not is-not," said a soft feminine voice. "Is-not is not not-is. Is is not not-is-not . . . "

"What the devil's this gibberish?"

"The basic axioms of rationality. You'll interpret this material at a subconscious level while you sleep."

"You mean this is going on all night?"

"All night. But you'll find it doesn't interfere with sleep."

"What does it mean—is-not is not not-is?"

"This is a simple statement of the nonidentity of symbolic equivalents."

"Um. You mean 'the map is not the territory . . . ' "

Kuve nodded. "An apparent banality. But by dawn you'll have grasped the implications at a basic level."

"I won't sleep a wink."

"If not tonight, then tomorrow," said Kuve, matter-of-factly.

"Not-is-not is not is," the soft voice insisted gently.

"Only three hundred and sixty-four days to go," answered Chester.

The first gray of dawn had not yet lighted the sky when Chester tottered into the softly lit gymnasium. Kuve, fresh and immaculate in white, looked up from a small table set up in the middle of the room.

"Good morning, Chester. You slept well?"

"Like a four-day corpse. And I feel equally lively now. I just came to tell you that I'm permanently crippled from yesterday's overexertions. You'd better get a doctor out here. I ought to be in bed, but . . . "

Kuve held up a hand. "Chester, you're expecting me to make much of you and urge you on with inspirational talk. However, I'm afraid we can't spare the time for a pep rally."

"Pep rally? I'm a sick man."

"Still, you're out of bed at the appointed time, dressed for work. And since you're here, you might just take a look at this."

Chester hobbled over to the table. Under a surface of beaded glass, pinpoints of red, green and amber light winked off and on in an unpredictable sequence.

"I want you to analyze the pattern here. When you're ready, put your finger on the button here at the edge which matches the color of the light which you think will blink on next."

Chester studied the light board. A red light blinked, then a green, another red, another, an amber, a green . . . He touched the red light. The board blanked off.

"That means you chose wrongly. Try again with a new pattern." Chester followed the lights. Green, red, amber, red, amber, green, red, green, red . . . 

He touched the amber light. The board blanked.

"Never accept the first level of complexity as a solution to a problem, Chester. Look beneath the surface; find the subtler patterns. Try again."

The lights blinked in steady sequence. On Chester's fifth try the entire board lit up. Chester looked pleased.

"Good," said Kuve. "When you have three correct solutions in sequence, we'll move on to patterns of a higher complexity."

"I had to think three lights ahead on the last one, Kuve. The patterns seem to change while I'm watching them."

"Yes, there's a simple developmental progression involved in this set."

"I have more the poetic type mind. I'm no electronic calculator."

"You'll think you are before the year is out. This training, in its advanced phases, by applying pressure of a type never encountered in ordinary experience, will develop cortical areas hitherto unused."

"I don't think I'm going to enjoy that last part," said Chester dubiously. "What does it mean?"

Kuve pointed to the far wall. "Look over there. Keep your eyes rigidly before you." He held up a hand at the edge of Chester's field of vision.

"How many fingers am I holding up?"

"I don't know; I can just barely tell there's a hand there."

Kuve waggled a finger. "Did you notice that movement?"

"Certainly."

Kuve moved a second finger, stilling the first, then a third finger, and a fourth.

"You saw the movement each time," he summed up, "which indicates that all four fingers are within your field of view." He extended two fingers. "Now how many fingers am I holding up?"

"I still can't tell."

"You can see the fingers, Chester; you've proven that. And yet you are, quite literally, unable to count these fingers which you see. The message sent to your brain through the portion of the optical mechanism concerned with peripheral vision is channeled to an undeveloped sector of your mind, a part of the great mass of normally unused cells in the cortex. The intelligence of this portion of your intellect is about at a par with that of a faithful dog which recognizes a group of children but is unable to formulate any conception of their number." He lowered his hand. "It is that portion of the brain which we shall train. Now, try this next pattern."

Chester leaned against the rail at the top of the eighty-foot tower, feeling the sun hot on his shoulders, watching as Kuve adjusted the ropes stretched across the pool below.

"This gives you a four-foot target," Kuve's voice said from the rice-grain-sized instrument set in the bone behind Chester's left ear. "Remember your vascomuscular tension patterns. Wait for the signal."

A beep sounded in Chester's ear—and he was in the air, wind shrieking past his ears, his chin to his chest, arms extended with hands flat, feet pointed.

He struck, twisted, shot above the surface, swam to the edge, and pulled himself up with a single smooth motion.

"You've come along well these first two weeks," Kuve said, motioning Chester to the table where a small steak waited. "You've explored the parameters of your native abilities; you've established an awareness of the values we're dealing with, and overcome the worst of the metabolic inertia. Your musculature is in good tone, though you still have a long way to go in developing bulk and power. Now you're ready to attack the subtler disciplines of balance, timing, precision, endurance and pace."

"You make it sound as though I haven't done anything. What about the high dives? That four-foot target isn't very big from eighty feet up."

"That exercise was designed to develop your self-confidence. Now you'll begin the real substance of your studies. We'll begin with simple games like fencing, riding, rope work, juggling, dancing and sleight-of-hand, and proceed by degrees into the more abstract phases."

"What are you training me for, a side show?"

Kuve ignored the interruption. "Your academic studies will be concentrated on dual attention, self-hypnosis, selective concentration, categorical analysis, advanced mnemonics, and eidetics, from which we will proceed to autonomics, cellular psychology, regeneration, and—"

"Let's go back to fencing. At least I know what that is."

"After you've dined we'll begin. In the meantime, tell me what the word 'now' means."

" 'Now' changes," said Chester, chewing. "It moves along with time. Every moment is 'now' for a while, and then it isn't."

"For a while? How long?"

"Not very long; an instant."

"Is 'now' a part of the past?"

"Of course not."

"The future?"

"No, the future hasn't happened yet. The past is already finished. 'Now' falls between them."

"How would you define a point, Chester?"

"The intersection of two lines," Chester said promptly.

"The
position
of intersection, to be more precise," said Kuve. " 'Line' and 'point' are terms referring to positions, not things. If a sheet of paper is cut in two, every molecule of the original sheet is contained in the two halves. If the cut edges are placed together, every particle is still to be found in the two parts; none fall between them. The line we see dividing the halves is only a position, not a material object."

"Yes, that's obvious."

"Past time may be considered as one of the parts of the paper, future time as the other. Between them is . . . nothing."

"Still, I'm sitting here eating my lunch. Now."

"Your ability to conceptualize falls short of the ability of the universe to proliferate complexities. Human understanding can never be more than an approximation. Avoid dealing in absolutes. And never edit reality for the sake of simplicity. The results are fatal to logical thinking."

Mina appeared on the terrace, wearing a close-fitting pink coverall and carrying foils and face masks. Chester finished his steak, pulled on a black coverall of tough resilient material, took the foil that Mina handed him.

Mina took her position, gripped her slender épée, arm and wrist straight, feet at right angles, left hand on hip. She tapped Chester's blade, then with a sudden flick sent it flying into the pool.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Chester. You weren't ready."

Chester retrieved the foil, assumed a stance in imitation of Mina's. They crossed blades—and Chester oofed as Mina's point prodded his chest. Mina laughed merrily. Chester blushed.