"Incommunicado" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maclean Katherine)

With a violent sweep of his arm, Cliff wiped the panel clean of all setting, and stood up.

“Thanks,” said the automatics mechanically. There was no meaning in the vodar voice. It always switched off with that word.

The little American touched his arm, asking anxiously, “Que pasa? Que tiene usted?”

Cliff looked down at his hands and found them shaking. He had almost wiped off the Reynolds’ tapes with them. He had almost destroyed the old librarian’s life work, and crippled the automatic controls of Station A, merely from a rage and a wild unverified suspicion. The problem of the madness of Station A was a problem for a psychologist, not for a blundering engineer.

He used will power in the right direction as Brandy had shown all the technicians of the station how to use it, and watched the trembling pass. “Nada,” he said slowly. “Absolutamente nada. Go take in a movie or something while I straighten this mess out.” He fixed a natural smile on his face and headed for the control room.

Pierce was due to be passing the station in beam range.



Cliff had preferred taking the psychologist at face value, but now he remembered Pierce’s idle talk, his casual departure, apparently leaving nothing done and nothing changed, and added to that Spaceway’s known and immutable policy of hiring only the top men in any profession, and using them to their limit.

The duty of a company psychologist is a simple thing, to keep men happy on the job, to oil the wheels of efficiency and co-operation, to make men want to do what they had to do. If there were no visible signs of Pierce having done anything, it was only because Pierce was too good a craftsman to leave traces—probably good enough to solve the problem of Station A and straighten Archy out.

In the control room Cliff took a reading on Pierce’s ship from blinker buoy reports. In four minutes the station automatics had a fix on the ship and were trailing it with a tight light beam. “Station A calling flitter AK 48 M. Hi Pierce.”

“Awk!” said a startled tenor voice from the wall speaker. “Is that Cliff Baker? I thought I left you back at Pluto. Can you hear me?” Behind Pierce’s voice Cliff could hear a murmur of other voices.

“I hear too many.”

“I’m just watching some stories. I’ve been bringing my empathy up with mirror training. I needed it. Association with you people practically ruined me as a psychologist. I can’t afford to be healthy and calm; a psychologist isn’t supposed to be sympathetic to square-headed engineers, he’s supposed fo be sympathetic to unhealthy excitable people.”

“How’s your empathy rating now?” Cliff asked, very casually.

“Over a hundred per cent, I think,” Pierce laughed. “I know that’s an idiotic sensitivity, but it will tone down later. Meanwhile I’m watching these stereos of case histories, and living their lives so as to resensitize myself to other people’s troubles.” His voice sharpened slightly. “What did you call for?”

Cliff dragged the words out with effort. “Something strange is happening to everybody. The way they talk is… I think it is in your line.”

“Send for a psychiatrist,” Pierce said briskly. “I’m on my vacation now. Anna and I are going to spend it at Manhattan Beach with the baby.”

“But the delay—?”

“Are they in danger?” Pierce asked crisply.

“I don’t know,” Cliff admitted, “but they all—”

“Are they physically sick? Are they even unhappy?”

“Not exactly,” Cliff said unwillingly. “But it’s… in a way it’s holding up Pluto Project.”

“If I went over now, I couldn’t reach Earth in time.”

“I suppose so,” Cliff said slowly, beginning to be angry, “but the importance of Station A and Pluto Station against one squalling baby—”

“Don’t get mad,” said Pierce with unexpected warmth and humor. “Ann and I think this is a special baby, it’s important, too. Say that every man’s judgment is warped to his profession, and my warp is psychology. My family tree runs to psychology, and we are working out ways of raising kids to the talent. Anna is a first cousin; we’re inbreeding, and we might have something special in this kid, but he needs my attention. Can you see it my way, Cliff?” His voice was pleading and persuasive. “Communication research is what my family runs to, and communication research is what the world needs now. I’d blow up Pluto Station piece by piece for an advance in semantics! Cultural lag is reaching the breaking point, and your blasted space expansion and research are just adding more rings to the twenty-ring circus. It is more than people can grasp. They can’t learn fast enough to understand, and they are giving up thinking. We’ve got to find better ways of communication, before it gets out of hand.” Pierce sounded very much in earnest, almost frightened. “You should see the trend curves on general interest and curiosity. They’re curving down, Cliff, all down.”