Part 2

"Eh?" Arch sat bolt upright. "What do you mean? Why, this stuff is going to revolutionize not only electronics, but all power--dammit, everything!"

"Dr. Arch," said Gilmer regretfully, "you must not have considered the matter of capital investment. Do you know how many billions of dollars are sunk in generators, dams, lines, motors--"

"Gasoline," said Elizabeth. "We've thought of that angle too."

"We _can't_ throw all that in the discard!" went on Gilmer earnestly. He seemed more human, all at once. "It may take twenty years to recover the investment in, say, a local transmission network. The company would go broke overnight if that investment were suddenly made valueless. Millions of people would be thrown out of work. Millions more would lose their savings in stocks and bonds--"

"I always said stocks were a mug's game," interrupted Arch. "If the two or three shares owned by the widow and orphan you're leading up to go blooey, it won't break her. For years, now, I've had ads dinning the wonders of the present economic system into my ears. One of its main features, I'm told, is progress. All right, here's a chance to leap a hundred years ahead. Let's see you take it."

Gilmer's pink cheeks reddened. "I'm afraid you still don't understand," he replied. "We have a responsibility. The world is watching us. Just imagine what those British Socialists would say if--"

"If you're against socialism," said Elizabeth with a laugh, "why not start at home? Public schools and federal highways, for instance. I fail to see where personal liberty is necessarily tied to any particular method of distribution."

Gilmer seemed, for a moment, to lose his temper. "This is no place for radicals," he said thickly. "We've all got to have faith and put our shoulders to the wheel. We--" He paused, swallowed, and smiled rather stiffly. "Excuse me. I didn't mean to get worked up. There are a lot of stories about wonderful new inventions which the greedy corporations have bought up and hidden away. They simply are not true. All I'm after is a gradual introduction of this material."

"I know those wonderful inventions are pure rumor," said Arch. "But I also know that just about everything I buy is made to wear out so I'll have to buy some more. It's cheaper, yes, but I'd rather pay twice as much to start with and have my purchase last ten times as long. Why can't I buy a decent kitchen knife? There's not one that keeps its edge. My wife finally made eyes at the butcher and got one of his old knives; _it_ lasts.

"A big thing like capacitite represents a chance to change our whole philosophy into something more rational. That's what I'm after--not just money. There needn't be any unemployment. Capacitite makes increased production possible, so why not--well, why not drop the work day to four hours for the same wages? Then you can employ twice as many people."

"It is not your or my place to make carping criticisms," retorted Gilmer. "Fundamental changes aren't as easy as you think. Dr. Arch, I'm sorry to say that unless you'll agree to proper terms, none of the companies I represent will be interested in your material."

"All right," snapped Arch. "I can make it myself. Make it by the ton if I like, and sell it for a dollar a pound."

"You may find yourself undersold."

"My patent--"

"It hasn't gone through yet. That takes time, plenty of time if you don't want to cooperate. And even if it is granted, which I by no means guarantee, you'll have to sue infringers; and do you know how crowded court calendars are? And how expensive a series of appeals can make such a suit?"

"Okay," said Elizabeth sweetly. "Go ahead and make it. You just got through telling us why you can't."

Gilmer looked out the window. "This is a great country," he said, with more sincerity than Arch had expected. "No country on earth has ever been so rich and happy. Do you know how it got that way?"

"By progressing," said Arch. "For your information, I am not a leftist; I'll bet I'm far to the right of you. So far, that I still believe in full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes."

Gilmer rose, with a certain dignity. "I'm afraid tempers are getting a little short," he said quietly. "I beg of you to reconsider. We'll fight for the public interest if we must, but we'd rather cooperate. May I leave my card? You can always get in touch with me."

He made his farewells and left. Arch and Elizabeth looked somewhat blankly at each other.

"Well, Killer," said the girl at last, "I hope we haven't taken too big a chaw to swallow."

* * * * *

Culquhoun dropped over in the evening and listened to their account. He shook his head dubiously. "You're up against it, laddie," he said. "They'll defend their coffers to the bitter end."

"It isn't that." Arch stared moodily into the darkness. "I don't think they're a bunch of monsters--no more than anybody else. They just believe in the status quo. So do you, you know."

"How?" Culquhoun bristled. "I'll admit I'm not the hell-fire revolutionary of my undergraduate days, but I still think a basic change is called for."

"Not basic," said Arch. "You just want to change part of the mechanism. But you'd keep the same ant-heap industrial society. I believe the heart went out of this land after the Civil War, and the death warrant was signed about 1910. Before then, a man was still an individual; he worked for himself, at something he understood, and wasn't afraid to stand up and spit in the eye of the world. Now he spends his daily routine on an assembly line or behind a desk or counter, doing the same thing over and over for someone else. In the evening he watches the same pap on his television, and if something goes wrong he whines his way to the apartment superintendent or the VA or the Social Security office.

"Look at the progress of euphemism. Old people are Senior Citizens. Draft becomes Selective Service. Graveyard to cemetery to memorial park. We've become a race of dependents. And we can't break away: there isn't any frontier left, there isn't any alternative society, one man can't compete with a corporation. Or with a commissar, for that matter.

"What we need is not to go back to living in log cabins, but to make the means of sustenance and the sources of energy so cheap that every man can have them in sufficient quantity to live and work. I don't know--maybe I'm being vainglorious, but it does seem as if capacitite is a long step in that direction."

"I warn you, you're talking good Marxism," said Culquhoun with a grin. "The means of production determine the type of society."

"Which is pure hogwash," answered Arch. "Egypt and Assyria had identical technologies. So did Athens and Sparta. So do America and Russia. The means of production only determine the _possible_ societies, and there are always many possibilities.

"I'd like to see the possibility of individualism available again to the American people. If they're too far gone to accept it, to hell with them."

* * * * *

The government can work fast when it wants to. It was just the following afternoon when the phone rang again. Elizabeth came out to the lab, where Arch and Bob Culquhoun were preparing a batch of capacitite, with a strained look on her face. "Come inside, dear," she said thinly. "I've got some bad news." When he was in the house, she added: "Two FBI men are on their way here."

"What the devil?" Arch felt a gulp of fear. It was irrational he told himself. The FBI was no Gestapo; on the whole, he approved of it. Maybe some friend had given his name as a security reference. "All right. We'll see what they want."

"I'm going to start some coffee," said Elizabeth. "Lucky we've got a cake too."

"Huh?"

"You'll see." She patted his cheek and managed a smile. "You're too innocent, sweetheart."

Sagdahl and Horrisford turned out to be hard young men with carefully expressionless faces. They introduced themselves very politely, and Arch led the way into the living room. Horrisford took out a notebook.

"Well," said Arch a little huskily, "what can I do for you?"

"You can answer some questions, if you please," said Sagdahl tonelessly. "You don't have to answer any, and whatever you say can be used in evidence."

"I haven't broken any laws that I know of," said Arch feebly.

"That remains to be seen. This is an investigation."

"Whatever _for_?"

"Dr. Arch," said Sagdahl patiently, "yesterday you published an article on a discovery of potential military importance. It has upset a great many plans. Worse, it has been released with no discretion whatsoever, and the consequences aren't easy to foresee. If we'd had any inkling, it would never have been published openly. As it is, you went outside regular channels and--"

"I didn't have to go through channels," said Arch. "I've never gotten any confidential data, or even applied for a clearance. I work for myself and--" He saw Horrisford busily writing, and his words dried up.

The realization was appalling. The military applications of capacitite had crossed his mind only vaguely and been dismissed with an escapist shrug.

"Let's get down to business," said Sagdahl. "Everything will be a lot easier if you cooperate. Now, where were you born?"

Arch hadn't imagined anyone could be so thorough about tracking down a man's entire life. He answered frankly, feeling he had nothing to hide. Of course, there _had_ been his roommate at M.I.T., and the roommate had had a girl friend one of whose other friends was a Communist, and...

"I see. Now, when you graduated--"

Elizabeth entered from the kitchen with a tray. "Pardon me," she smiled. "I think refreshments are in order."

Sagdahl's face didn't change, but his eyes bugged slightly. Elizabeth put a coffee cup in his hand and a plate of cake on one knee. He looked unhappy, but mumbled dutiful thanks.

"Oh, it's a pleasure," said Elizabeth blandly. "You boys are doing your duty, and really, this is very exciting."

Sagdahl got down a mouthful of cake. Valiantly, he tried to resume the staccato flow: "Now, when you graduated, Dr. Arch, you took a vacation, you say. Where was that?"

"Up in Quebec. About three months. Just driving around and--"

"I see. Then you returned to school for a master's degree, right? Did you at this time know a Joseph Barrett?"

"Well, yes, I shared an office with him."

"Did you ever discuss politics with him?"

"Drink your coffee before it gets cold," said Elizabeth. "There's plenty more."

"Oh--thanks. Now, about this Barrett?"

"We argued a lot. You see, I'm frankly a reactionary--"

"Were you associated with any political-action group?"

"Mr. Horrisford," said Elizabeth reproachfully, "you haven't touched your cake."

"No, I wasn't that interested," said Arch. "Didn't even bother to vote in '50."

"Here, Mr. Sagdahl, do have some more cake."

"Thanks!--You met some of Barrett's friends?"

"Yes, I was at some parties and--"

"Excuse me, I'll just warm your coffee."

"Did you at this time know anyone who had worked in the Manhattan Project?"

"Of course. They were all over the place. But I never was told anything restricted, never asked for--"

"Please, Mr. Horrisford! It's my favorite recipe."

"Ummm. Thank you, but--"

"You met your future wife when?"

"In--"

"Excuse me, there's the phone... Hello. Mrs. Arch speaking... Oh?... Yes, I'll see... Pardon me. There's a man from the Associated Press in town. He wants to see you, dear."

Sagdahl flinched. "Stall him off," he groaned. "Please."

"Can't do that forever," said Arch. "Not under the circumstances."

"I realize that, Dr. Arch." Sagdahl clenched his jaw. "But this is unprecedented. As an American citizen, you'll want to--"

"Certainly we'll cooperate," said Elizabeth brightly. "But what shall I tell the AP man? That we're not supposed to say anything to anyone?"

"No! That won't do, not now. But--are all the technical details of this public?"

"Why, yes," said Arch. "Anybody can make capacitite."

"If you issued a denial--"

"Too late, I'm afraid. Somebody's bound to try it anyway."

Sagdahl looked grim. "You can be held incommunicado," he said. "This is a very serious matter."

"Yes," said Elizabeth. "The AP man will think so too, if he can't get a story."

"Well--"

"Oh, dear! My Russell Wright coffee cup!"

* * * * *

Nothing happened overnight. That was the hardest thing to believe. By all the rules, life should have been suddenly and dramatically transformed; but instead, there were only minor changes, day by day, small incidents. Meanwhile you ate, slept, worked, paid bills, made love and conversation, as you had always done.

The FBI held its hand as yet, but some quiet men checked into the town's one hotel, and there was usually one of them hanging around Arch's house, watching. Elizabeth would occasionally invite him in for a snack--she grew quite fond of them.

The newspapers ran feature articles, and for a while the house was overrun with reporters--then that too faded away. Editorials appeared, pointing out that capacitite had licked one of the Soviet Union's major problems, fuel; and a syndicated columnist practically called for Arch's immediate execution. He found some of his neighbors treating him coldly. The situation distressed him, too. "I never thought--" he began.

"Exactly," rumbled Culquhoun. "People like you are one reason science is coming to be considered a Frankenstein. Dammit, man, the researcher has to have a social conscience like the rest of us."

Arch smiled wearily. "But I do," he said. "I gave considerable thought to the social effects. I just imagined that they'd be good. That's been the case with every major innovation, in the long run."

"You've committed a crime," said Culquhoun. "Idealism. It doesn't fit the world we inhabit."

Arch flushed angrily. "What was I supposed to do?" he snapped. "Burn my results and forget them? If the human race is too stupid to use the obvious advantages, that's its own fault."

"You're making a common error, dear," said Elizabeth. "You speak of the human race. There isn't any. There are only individual people and groups of people, with their own conflicting interests."

For a while, there was a big campaign to play down the effects of capacitite. It wasn't important. It meant nothing, as our eminent columnist has so lucidly shown. Then the attempt switched: capacitite was dangerous. So-and-so had been electrocuted working with it. There was cumulative poisoning... Such propaganda didn't work, not when some millions of people were seeing for themselves.

Petroleum stock began sagging. It didn't nosedive--the SEC and a valiantly buying clique saw to that--but it slipped down day by day.

Arch happened to drop in at Hinkel's garage. The old man looked up from a car on which he was laboring and smiled. "Hello, there," he said. "Haven't seen you in a long time."

"I--well--" Arch looked guiltily at the oil-stained floor. "I'm afraid--your business--"

"Oh, don't worry about me. I've got more business than I can handle. Everybody in town seems to want his car converted over to your type of engine. That young Bob is turning out the stuff like a printing press gone berserk."

Arch couldn't quite meet his eyes. "But--aren't your gasoline sales dropping?"

"To be sure. But cars still need lubrication and--Look, you know the old watermill down by Ronson's farm? I'm buying that, putting in a generator and a high-voltage transformer and rectifier. I'll be selling packaged power. A lot easier than running a gas pump, at my age."

"Won't the power company be competing?"

"Eventually. Right now, they're still waiting for orders from higher up, I guess. Some people can charge their capacitors right at home, but most would rather not buy the special equipment. They'll come to me, and by the time the power outfit gets wise to itself, I'll 've come in on the ground floor."

"Thanks," said Arch, a little shakily. "It makes me feel a lot better."

If only everybody had that Yankee adaptability, he thought as he walked home. But he saw now, as he wished he had seen earlier, that society had gone too far. With rare exceptions, progress was no longer a matter of individual re-adjustments. It was a huge and clumsy economic system which had to make the transformation... a jerry-built system whose workings no one understood, even today.

He wanted to call up Gilmer and make what terms he could, but it was too late. The snowball was rolling.

He sighed his way into an armchair and picked up the paper.

Item: the bill before Congress to make capacitite a government monopoly like uranium, and to enforce all security restrictions on it, had been sent back to committee and would probably not pass. A few senators had had the nerve to point out that security was pointless when everybody could already make the stuff.

Item: the government was setting up a special laboratory to study the military applications. Arch could think of several for himself. Besides simplifying logistics, it could go into cheap and horrible weapons. A bomb loaded with several thousand coulombs, set to discharge instantaneously on striking--

Item: a well-known labor leader had denounced the innovation as a case of business blundering which was going to take bread from the working man. A corporation spokesman declared that it was all a leftist trick designed to cripple the private enterprise system.

Item: _Pravda_ announced that Soviet scientists had discovered capacitite ten years ago and that full-scale production had long been under way for peaceful purposes only, such as making the Red Army still more invincible.

Item: two more men in America electrocuted due to incautious experiments. Nevertheless, capacitite was being manufactured in thousands of homes and workshops. Bills in various state legislatures to ban vehicles so powered were meeting indignant opposition everywhere save in Texas.

Arch reflected wryly that he wasn't getting paid for any of this. All he'd gotten out of it so far was trouble. Trouble with the authorities, with crank letters, with his own conscience. There were, to be sure, some royalties from Bob Culquhoun, who was becoming quite an entrepreneur and hiring adults to take over when school opened in fall.

Speaking of tigers by the tail--

* * * * *

Autumn, the New England fall of rain and chill whistling wind, smoky days and flame-like leaves and the far wild honking of southbound geese. The crash came in late September: a reeling market hit bottom and stayed there. Gasoline sales were down twenty-five percent already, and the industry was laying men off by the hundreds of thousands. That cut out their purchasing power and hit the rest of the economy.

"It's what you'd expect, laddie," said Culquhoun. They were over at his house. Outside, a slow cold rain washed endlessly down the windows. "Over production--over-capitalization--I could have predicted all this."

"Damn it to hell, it doesn't make _sense_!" protested Arch. "A new energy source should make everything cheaper for everybody--more production available for less work." He felt a nervous tic beginning in one cheek.

"Production for use instead of for profit--"

"Oh, dry up, will you? Any system is a profit system. It has to show a profit in some terms or other, or it would just be wasted effort. And the profit has to go to individuals, not to some mythical state. The state doesn't eat--people do."

"Would you have the oil interests simply write off their investment?"

"No, of course not. Why couldn't they--Look. Gasoline can still run generators. Oil can still lubricate. Byproducts can still be synthesized. It's a matter of shifting the emphasis of production, that's all. All that's needed is a little common sense."

"Which is a rather scarce commodity."

"There," said Arch gloomily, "we find ourselves in agreement."

"The trouble is," said Bob earnestly, "we're faced with a real situation, not a paper problem. It calls for a real solution. For an idea."

"There aren't any ideas," said Elizabeth. "Not big sweeping ones to solve everything overnight. Man doesn't work that way. What happens is that somebody solves his own immediate, personal problems, somebody else does the same, and eventually society as a whole fumbles its way out of the dilemma."

Arch sighed. "This is getting over my head," he admitted. "Thanks for small blessings: the thing has grown so big that I, personally, am becoming forgotten."

He rose. "I'm kind of tired tonight," he went on. "Maybe we better be running along. Thanks for the drinks and all."

He and his wife slipped into their raincoats and galoshes for the short walk home. The street outside was dark, a rare lamp glowing off slick wet concrete. Rain misted his face and glasses, he had trouble seeing.

"Poor darling," Elizabeth took his arm. "Don't worry. We'll get through all right."

"I hope so," he said fervently. No money had come in for some time now. Bob's enterprise was levelling off as initial demand was filled, and a lurching industry wasn't buying many electronic valves. The bank account was getting low.

He saw the figure ahead as a vague shadow against the night. It stood waiting till they came up, and then stepped in their path. The voice was unfamiliar: "Arch?"

"Yes--"

He could see only that the face was heavy and unshaven, with something wild about the mouth. Then his eyes dropped to the revolver barrel protruding from the slicker. "What the devil--"

"Don't move, you." It was a harsh, broken tone. "Right now I'm aiming at your wife. I'd as soon shoot her, too."

Fear leaped crazily in Arch's breast. He stood unable to stir, coldness crawling in his guts. He tried to speak, and couldn't.

"Not a word, you--. Not another word. You've said too goddam much already." The gun poked forward, savagely. "I'm going to kill you. You did your best to kill me."

Elizabeth's face was white in the gloom. "What do you mean?" she whispered. "We never saw you before."

"No. But you took away my job. I was in the breadlines back in the thirties. I'm there again, and it's your fault, you--Got any prayers to say?"

A gibbering ran through Arch's brain. He stood motionless, thinking through a lunatic mind-tilt that there must be some way to jump that gun, the heroes of stories always did it, that might--

Someone moved out of the night into the wan radiance. An arm went about the man's throat, another seized his gun wrist and snapped it down. The weapon went off, sounding like the crack of doom in the stillness.

They struggled on the slippery sidewalk, panting, the rain running over dimly glimpsed faces. Arch's paralysis broke, he moved in and circled around, looking for a chance to help. There! Crouching, he got hold of the assassin's ankle and clung.

There was a meaty smack above him, and the body sagged.

Elizabeth held her hand over her mouth, as if to force back a scream. "Mr. Horrisford," she whispered.

"The same," said the FBI man. "That was a close one. You can be thankful you're an object of suspicion, Arch. What was he after?"

Arch stared blankly at his rescuer. Slowly, meaning penetrated. "Unemployed--" he mumbled. "Bitter about it--"

"Yeah. I thought so. You may be having more trouble of that sort. This depression, people have someone concrete to blame." Horrisford stuck the gun in his pocket and helped up his half-conscious victim. "Let's get this one down to the lockup. Here, you support him while I put on some handcuffs."

"But I wanted to help his kind," said Arch feebly.

"You didn't," said Horrisford. "I'd better arrange for a police guard."

* * * * *