The Sensitive Man Read online

of the world's food supply was now beingderived from modified strains of seaweed. The percentage wouldincrease rapidly, he knew.

  Elsewhere were mineral-extracting plants, fishery bases, experimentaland pure-research stations. Below the floating city, digging into thecontinental shelf, was the underwater settlement--oil wells tosupplement the industrial synthesizing process, mining, exploration intanks to find new resources, a slow growth outward as men learned howto go deeper into cold and darkness and pressure. It was expensive butan over-crowded world had little choice.

  Venus was already visible, low and pure on the dusking horizon.Dalgetty breathed the wet pungent sea-air into his lungs and thoughtwith some pity of the men out there--and on the Moon, on Mars, betweenworlds. They were doing a huge and heart-breaking job--but he wonderedif it were bigger and more meaningful than this work here in Earth'soceans.

  Or a few pages of scribbled equations, tossed into a desk drawer atthe Institute. Enough. Dalgetty brought his mind to heel like aharshly trained dog. He was also here to work.

  The forces he must encounter seemed monstrous. He was one man, aloneagainst he knew not what kind of organization. He had to rescue oneother man before--well, before history was changed and spun off on thewrong course, the long downward path. He had his knowledge andabilities but they wouldn't stop a bullet. Nor did they includeeducation for this kind of warfare. War that was not war, politicsthat were not politics but a handful of scrawled equations and abookful of slowly gathered data and a brainful of dreams.

  Bancroft had Tighe--somewhere. The Institute could not ask thegovernment for help, even if to a large degree the Institute was thegovernment. It could, perhaps, send Dalgetty a few men but it had nogoon squads. And time was like a hound on his heels.

  * * * * *

  The sensitive man turned, suddenly aware of someone else. This was amiddle-aged fellow, gaunt and gray-haired, with an intellectual castof feature. He leaned on the rail and said quietly, "Nice evening,isn't it?"

  "Yes," said Dalgetty. "Very nice."

  "It gives me a feeling of real accomplishment, this place," said thestranger.

  "How so?" asked Dalgetty, not unwilling to make conversation.

  The man looked out over the sea and spoke softly as if to himself."I'm fifty years old. I was born during World War Three and grew upwith the famines and the mass insanities that followed. I sawfighting myself in Asia. I worried about a senselessly expandingpopulation pressing on senselessly diminished resources. I saw anAmerica that seemed equally divided between decadence and madness.

  "And yet I can stand now and watch a world where we've got afunctioning United Nations, where population increase is leveling offand democratic government spreading to country after country, wherewe're conquering the seas and even going out to other planets. Thingshave changed since I was a boy but on the whole it's been for thebetter."

  "Ah," said Dalgetty, "a kindred spirit. Though I'm afraid it's notquite that simple."

  * * * * *

  The man arched his brows. "So you vote conservative?"

  "The Labor Party _is_ conservative," said Dalgetty. "As proof of whichit's in coalition with the Republicans and the Neofederalists as wellas some splinter groups. No, I don't care if it stays in, or if theConservatives prosper or the Liberals take over. The question is--whoshall control the group in power?"

  "Its membership, I suppose," said the man.

  "But just who is its membership? You know as well as I do that thegreat failing of the American people has always been their lack ofinterest in politics."

  "What? Why, they vote, don't they? What was the last percentage?"

  "Eight-eight-point-three-seven. Sure they vote--once the ticket hasbeen presented to them. But how many of them have anything to do withnominating the candidates or writing the platforms? How many willactually take time out to _work_ at it--or even to write theirCongressmen? 'Ward heeler' is still a term of contempt.

  "All too often in our history the vote has been simply a matter ofchoosing between two well-oiled machines. A sufficiently clever anddetermined group can take over a party, keep the name and the slogansand in a few years do a complete behind-the-scenes _volte-face_."Dalgetty's words came fast, this was one facet of a task to which hehad given his life.

  "Two machines," said the stranger, "or four or five as we've got now,are at least better than one."

  "Not if the same crowd controls all of them," Dalgetty said grimly.

  "But--"

  "'If you can't lick 'em, join 'em.' Better yet, join all sides. Thenyou _can't_ lose."

  "I don't think that's happened yet," said the man.

  "No it hasn't," said Dalgetty, "not in the United States, though insome other countries--never mind. It's still in process of happening,that's all. The lines today are drawn not by nations or parties, butby--philosophies, if you wish. Two views of man's destiny, cuttingacross all national, political, racial and religious lines."

  "And what are those two views?" asked the stranger quietly.

  "You might call them libertarian and totalitarian, though the latterdon't necessarily think of themselves as such. The peak of rampantindividualism was reached in the nineteenth century, legally speaking.Though in point of fact social pressure and custom were morestrait-jacketing than most people today realize.

  "In the twentieth century that social rigidity--in manners, morals,habits of thought--broke down. The emancipation of women, forinstance, or the easy divorce or the laws about privacy. But at thesame time legal control began tightening up again. Government tookover more and more functions, taxes got steeper, the individual's lifegot more and more bound by regulations saying 'thou shalt' and 'thoushalt not.'

  "Well, it looks as if war is going out as an institution. That takesoff a lot of pressure. Such hampering restrictions as conscription tofight or work, or rationing, have been removed. What we're slowlyattaining is a society where the individual has maximum freedom, bothfrom law _and_ custom. It's perhaps farthest advanced in America,Canada, and Brazil, but it's growing the world over.

  "But there are elements which don't like the consequences of genuinelibertarianism. And the new science of human behavior, mass andindividual, is achieving rigorous formulation. It's becoming the mostpowerful tool man has ever had--for whoever controls the human mindwill also control all that man can do. That science can be used byanyone, mind you. If you'll read between the lines you'll see what ahidden struggle is shaping up for control of it as soon as it reachesmaturity and empirical useability."

  "Ah, yes," said the man. "The Psychotechnic Institute."

  Dalgetty nodded, wondering why he had jumped into such a lecture.Well, the more people who had some idea of the truth thebetter--though it wouldn't do for them to know the whole truth either.Not yet.

  "The Institute trains so many for governmental posts and does so muchadvisory work," said the man, "that sometimes it looks almost as if itwere quietly taking over the whole show."

  Dalgetty shivered a little in the sunset breeze and wished he'dbrought his cloak. He thought wearily, _Here it is again. Here is thestory they are spreading, not in blatant accusations, not all at once,but slowly and subtly, a whisper here, a hint there, a slanted newsstory, a supposedly dispassionate article.... Oh, yes, they know theirapplied semantics._

  "Too many people fear such an outcome," he declared. "It just isn'ttrue. The Institute is a private research organization with a Federalgrant. Its records are open to anyone."

  "All the records?" The man's face was vague in the gathering twilight.

  Dalgetty thought he could make out a skeptically lifted brow. Hedidn't reply directly but said, "There's a foggy notion in the publicmind that a group equipped with a complete science of man--which theInstitute hasn't got by a long shot--could 'take over' at once and, bymanipulations of some unspecified but frightfully subtle sort, rulethe world. The theory is that if you know just what buttons to pushand so on, men will do preci
sely as you wish without knowing thatthey're being guided. The theory happens to be pure jetwash."

  "Oh, I don't know," said the man. "In general terms it sounds prettyplausible."

  Dalgetty shook his head. "Suppose I were an engineer," he said, "andsuppose I saw an avalanche coming down on me. I might know exactlywhat to do to stop it--where to plant my dynamite, where to build myconcrete wall and so on. Only the knowledge wouldn't help me. I'd haveneither the time nor the strength to use it.

  "The situation is similar