Ossian's Ride (20 page)

Earnshaw sat back and grinned in the manner of a death’s head, no doubt imagining that he was unbending in a pleasant style. “Many people seem to think that there lies a mystery where in fact there’s no mystery at all. I.C.E. is
science,
science in control of itself, an organization run by scientists. In the world at large science is forced to serve many masters; here scientists are asked to serve only science itself. This is the real explanation of why we are forging far ahead, of why in a few short years we shall have none to rival us.”

“That makes everything a good deal clearer.”

“I am glad of it. Let me put things more crudely in terms of money. The great nations of the world value science so poorly that less than one-tenth of one per cent of their productivity is spent on basic scientific research. In contrast we spend approximately twenty per cent. In fact we are now spending more in total on basic research than all the nations of the world. This may seem an astonishing statement but it is true nevertheless, for the expenditure of the rest of the world is only a little more than one hundred million pounds per annum—a trifling sum, my dear fellow.”

I said that it all sounded like a great opportunity for a young man to have.

“A very great opportunity. There is no telling how far an able young man like yourself may be able to rise.”

In this at least the man was prophetic. Had he been able to foresee the course of events I think he would have expired instantly.

“Well now,” he purred, “this is all very satisfactory. I have a few papers here which I’ll sign for you. Then you can take off straightaway for Headquarters.”

He handed me the papers. “Now let’s hope you’ll have no more trouble, Mr. Sherwood.”

Two of the policemen led me outside and onto the beautiful grassy plateau of the island. As if to maintain the theme, a helicopter was waiting.

There was still the possibility, admittedly remote, that some “accident” was to be staged.

We took off and gained height over the bay. Everywhere along the coast was a line of foam, a reminder of the passing storm. The islands were similarly girdled as they lay in blue water. There were high clouds, streaked by upper winds that were still strong, and the bright purple color of the mainland seemed even more intense than I had remarked earlier in the day.

But it wasn’t to this scene of wild beauty that my attention was mainly directed. An aerial trip provided a unique opportunity for getting an idea of the layout of the I.C.E. industrial plants, as they ranged over the flat boglands around Cahirciveen. Now I could see them clearly on our right, so vast and extensive as to suggest interesting notions. It was very easy to pick them out because of the great roads with which the whole system was linked.

But it was the new city of Caragh that really took the eye, built in the beautiful valley some five miles to the south of the lake from which it takes its name. Instead of the grays and dull browns of the average city seen from the air, Caragh is ablaze with color. Instead of standing apart from the surrounding countryside through its drabness, it is distinguished by its brilliance. This is achieved largely by the cultivated flowers which occupy much of the total area of the city. The buildings themselves are chiefly noticeable from the air for the flashes of reflected sunlight, mainly a golden effect achieved by some translucent dispersive material.

The buildings become immediately more dominant as soon as one lands, their colors more alight. Caragh is not a vast, unwieldy collection of small hutches, like the other cities of the world. It contains but sixty-odd buildings laid out in great avenues, no more than seven or eight to any particular avenue. Taking advantage of the natural slope of the land, and of the ample water supply, small rivers run past the buildings. At night, the whole city is lit by a soft diffuse light.

Let me dispose now of my own petty affairs. On landing I was directed to a place which seemed to be a species of high-grade recruiting office. I was given a temporary room in what I supposed might be described as an hotel, and was handed a preliminary cash advance of twenty pounds Irish, not that I had any real need of the latter. I bought various necessaries and a volume of Shakespeare’s
Comedies.
Then I sought out the best restaurant in the city and treated myself to a wonderful meal, by way of celebrating an entry into a new life.

After dinner I spent a couple of hours walking entranced though the city. At last I was where I wanted to be—I was “in.”

Now I must deal with a question that might possibly trouble a reader of this report. Wouldn’t it have been vastly more simple to have reached Caragh by the straightforward method of applying for a job with I.C.E.? Why go to all this fantastic trouble?

There were two reasons for the apparently indirect, roundabout approach that I had actually adopted, each a strong one. It is not in my nature to be actively deceitful. I simply couldn’t have set myself to work against an employer who had accepted my services in good faith. I would, moreover, have reached Caragh without any real confidence in myself, a solitary individual pitted against an enormously powerful organization.

This was of course the situation now. But curiously I felt no misgivings. The successful descent of the cliffs of Inishtooskert seemed to have given me an enormous confidence. Moreover, this latter affair had left me fighting mad, and this was perhaps the most important of the two reasons I mentioned above. If I had not been in a deep cold rage I would soon have been seduced by this beautiful city. I would soon have taken off my coat and worked in earnest for I.C.E.

At length I returned to my room. Before turning in I read a couple of acts of
Twelfth Night.
This gives a picture of the apex of society as it was four centuries ago, I thought. There are many things that we can’t do nowadays: we can’t write like Shakespeare. But of a certainty no earlier generation than ours could have built such a city as Caragh. The society of four centuries ago would have thought themselves on another planet if by some magic they could have been transported here. Indeed to people of our own age it almost looks like authentic science fiction. But Caragh is something strange but real, for it is the city of the third millennium, the city of the future.

In my conceit I imagined that the logical taproot of I.C.E. would soon be exposed. Now that I had reached the nerve center of this great enterprise, I even began to think about ways and means of getting out of Kerry once I had accumulated the necessary information. I little suspected that I was embarking on the most baffling section of the whole affair.

Luckily, during the first months at Caragh I started to work quite genuinely. For some time I’d wanted to learn about modern field theories in physics, and as the winter progressed I became more and more engrossed in this subject. So I was able to preserve some degree of sanity as difficulties began to pile up all around me.

But I did make odd scraps of progress. One day I had occasion to refer to a paper in the
Astrophysical Journal.
In flicking through the volume in question, I noticed a place where a couple of exclamation marks had been inserted in the margin. I was too bound up in the thoughts of the moment to pay much attention to this minor detail. A few days later, however, when I needed to look up the same paper in order to settle a remaining small point, I remembered the exclamation marks and decided to see what they were about. But the marks in the margin were nowhere to be found.

Feeling still only mildly curious, I then looked for traces of rubbing out, but I couldn’t find any. I have a good memory, as I think I’ve mentioned before, and there was no doubt in my mind, within a page or two, where the defacement had occurred. The surface of the paper in the margins was entirely smooth, in a way it couldn’t possibly have been if a rubber had been used, even very lightly. This was an entirely different copy of the volume but in a similar binding. Why?

Naturally I read through the investigation that happened to be situated at the place where I believed the marks to have been inserted. It dealt with the problem of electrical pinches in the solar atmosphere. The general idea was that the solar atmosphere is pervaded by tubes of magnetic force, rooted below the photosphere. These tubes become twisted through the motion of the dense material at their roots, but this twisting doesn’t in itself produce any serious instability. If for instance a tube becomes so seriously twisted that contraction sets in at any place, the very action of the pinch itself increases the pitch of the helix, and so restores stability.

The main notion was to let two such tubes come together at a particular place. Then if the fields penetrate each other at the point of contact, a violent contraction must occur when the helices are so wound that the longitudinal components cancel and the circular components of the magnetic field augment. In this case a region of instability is held firmly out from the solar surface by the strength of the stable supporting arms of the tubes, which act as the filaments of an arc.

In a flash I remembered the “corpus” floating in the sea—what was it? Twin helices, senses opposite! This might well be the clue to the thermonuclear reactor. Here was a way in which a high temperature region could be held away from the boundary of a vessel, on magnetic springs.

It was obvious what had happened. Some informed person had noticed this paper, containing quite unawares the germ of the right idea. Unable to restrain himself he had added the exclamation marks.

Another point was equally obvious. My movements must be under very close surveillance. Even so, this business with the
Astrophysical Journal
had been rather clumsily managed. I reinserted the exclamation marks and returned the volume to the shelves.

I think perhaps that I ought to give some outline of my ideas about the real nature of I.C.E. as I had them at this early stage. In certain respects the general picture didn’t turn out to be too far wrong, although the most essential step was still completely beyond my comprehension. Here then is the position as I saw it.

Starting with straightforward matters, it appeared that I.C.E. employed about half a million persons, working and living for the most part on the south side of Dingle Bay. I was curious at first to understand how this large population was housed without its being necessary to construct at least one tolerably large city.

I suppose that in ordinary homes each person has a space allowance of roughly 100 cubic yards. A large building, say with a volume of 200,000 cubic yards, suitably shaped to be divided into apartments, would house about 2,000 persons. It followed that the whole population could be fitted into about 250 such buildings, which together would cover an area of only some 400 acres. Since I suppose the area of land available must be some 30,000 acres, it was clear that an impression of enormous spaciousness could be achieved—each building could be surrounded by more than 100 acres of garden, woodland and seashore.

In my opinion a lot of nonsense is talked about lack of privacy under such conditions. There is one overriding prerequisite; complete soundproofing. Provided this is satisfied there is no reason why one shouldn’t feel just as private, just as remote from one’s neighbors, in an apartment as in a detached house. I had learned this when I lived for three years in College at Cambridge.

The often-heard argument that apartments are unsuitable for families with children is of course correct if the apartment block is set in a city, surrounded by busy streets. But the argument is scarcely true for an apartment block set in woods and fields, with a nearby stream.

So I had to reckon on half a million well-paid, well-satisfied employees of I.C.E.

This number of people may seem large at first sight. Yet it was plainly out of proportion—in the sense of being small—compared to the industrial activities of I.C.E. This could mean only that enormous use must be made of automation.

Now let me say something of the scale of this industry. By now I could see clearly the difference between I.C.E. and the older established industries of Europe and America. The latter grew up around specialized mineral deposits—coal, oil, metallic ores. Without these deposits the older style of industrialization was completely impossible. On the political and economic fronts, the world became divided into “haves” and “have-nots,” depending whereabouts on the earth’s surface these specialized deposits happened to be situated.

Britain ran ahead, first of Spain, then of France, because Britain was more of a “have” than her rivals. America ran ahead of Britain because she was still more of a “have.” Russia based its rise to dominance not so much on the invention of new techniques as on the deployment of hitherto unused resources. Sweden was a “have,” Austria was a “have-not.” All this was industrialization of an early primitive kind.

In the second phase of industrialism, the industrialism now apparently perfected by I.C.E., no specialized deposits are needed at all. The key to this second phase lies in the possession of an effectively unlimited source of energy. Everything here depends on the thermonuclear reactor, the clue to which had fallen so recently into my hands. With a thermonuclear reactor, a single ton of ordinary water can be made to yield as much energy as several hundred tons of coal—and there is no shortage of water in the sea. Indeed, the use of coal and oil as a prime mover in industry becomes utterly inefficient and archaic. With unlimited energy the need for high-grade metallic ores disappears. Low-grade ones can be smelted—and there is an ample supply of such ores to be found everywhere. Carbon can be taken from inorganic compounds, nitrogen from the air, a whole vast range of chemicals from sea water.

So I arrived at the rich concept of this second phase of industrialization, a phase in which nothing is needed but the commonest materials—water, air and fairly common rocks. This was a phase that can be practiced by anybody, by any nation, provided one condition is met: provided one knows exactly what to do. This second phase was clearly enormously more effective and powerful than the first.