“Right, only it’s not something just ‘left over.’ It’s something we still need today. The fact is that the need for protection has been around long enough for it to be hard wired into our systems, just as all of the rest of our basic needs are. Food, air, water, shelter, procreation, and protection. Without them, we can’t continue to exist. So, you feel pain when they are lacking and pleasure when they are satisfied. Evolution, or God, if you prefer, set it up so that we do what we have to do, without much recourse to our brains, which are still expensive, unproven, and newfangled gadgets, anyway.”
“Save it for a breakfast table discussion, Tom. Only, why do you call the brain expensive?”
“The brain makes extremely high energy demands on the body. The average person, sitting quietly, has an energy requirement of around a hundred watts. About thirty-five of those watts are consumed by two pounds of brain tissue. The other hundred and fifty odd pounds burns only sixty-five watts. It’s no big thing in our overfed civilized world, but we humans evolved out in the wilds, where the big problem is usually getting enough to eat. Back then, it was a very significant expense.”
“Huh. Is human energy output really that much higher than that of all the other animals?”
“Without your clothes, you’re naked, aren’t you? We are just about the only land mammal that has had to dispense with the thermal insulation and the physical protection that a coat of fur gives you. There has to be a reason for that.”
“It’s a thought. But back to what I was saying, Tom, I think that we’ve been spending too much of our effort on military weapons, and none at all on making the time machine work. I mean, isn’t that what we were originally planning to do? Build a time machine?”
“Yeah, but right now, we’ve got thirty projects going, in every stage of development. There’d be hell to pay if we stopped them all dead.”
“I’m not saying that we should do that. I’m just saying that we should stop, or at least slow down, initiating new military projects, and start spending more real effort on our main job.”
“I’ll agree with that in principle, but I still want to see this little fighter plane of mine fly,” I said.
“Fine, so put a small crew on it, if you want, even though you can’t properly call it a ‘plane,’ since it doesn’t use one to fly with.”
“Picky, picky, picky.”
* * *
So we went back to what we were doing in Michigan, before we were so pleasantly interrupted.
First, we had to map out the lateral displacement drifts in the local area. These turned out to have almost nothing in common with those we saw around Ann Arbor, except that the drift was still lateral, and the test object reappeared with the same gravitational potential as when it left. And the drift still tracked with the sidereal day.
But where it went and in which direction was now totally different. In one sense the project was set back a long ways.
On the other hand, we now had the incredible mass production facilities of the entire island behind us, so we could send out a lot more canisters, collecting a lot more data points, and without having to worry about salvaging anything.
Also, the canisters we now used were far more sophisticated, and better engineered. Before, we were just kluging up something workable, using existing components to get the job done in a hurry. Now, we had teams of technical people who were, I have to admit, better engineers than we were.
Beyond all doubt, the women we had working for us were extremely competent, superbly trained, and very hard working.
What they weren’t was creative.
It was hard to understand. You’d give a team of them a project, and they’d come back with something that was exactly what you had in mind in the first place. It was almost like magic, seeing your own thoughts rationally developed into something that was truly beautiful, in the esoterically technical sense of the word. And it was flattering as well. Because of this, it took a while before Ian and I realized that they weren’t putting anything of themselves into their projects.
There weren’t any of those little jumps of insight that a good engineer can’t help but put into his work, often to the frustration of his managers. After we realized what was happening, Ian and I each got to checking the work of the other’s teams, trying to find small creative things that would improve the final products.
Being inventive young men, we found a lot of places where we could make small improvements. These suggestions were always sent back to the team that did the original engineering, for incorporation into the design, or for rejection, if they could prove that we had screwed up, which we occasionally did.
It was the reactions of our engineers to what was really managerial meddling that confounded us. We expected them to feel anger and frustration, since we were messing with the children of their brains, and people are usually just as protective of those as they are of the children of their bodies.
Instead, they acted as if they were awestruck at our brilliance! At first, we both took that as mere sucking up to the boss, especially since our smiling subordinates were all women who badly wanted to get into our beds, and there to make full use of our willing bodies. Remember that these chicks were willing to eat cooked kibbie, if that’s what their boss was eating. But as the months went by, we became convinced that their feelings of admiration were actually genuine.
These intelligent, competent people were absolutely incapable of doing anything creative, and were truly amazed to see anyone else doing anything new!
Once our original incredulity wore off, our feelings became a bit more mixed. Mostly, they became sadness and anger.
“Dammit!” Ian said one day as we were discussing the situation, “This sick little culture has got to be all Hasenpfeffer’s doing, and that bastard has one hell of a lot to answer for!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I’m Getting Married!
After living on the island of San Sebastian for six months, it was time to have a talk with Barbara. I mean, I talked with her every day, since I slept with her every night, but she was as slippery as Hasenpfeffer when it came to sidestepping things she didn’t want to discuss. The only thing for it was to hit it straight on.
“Barb, we have been making love almost every night for six months, and you are still not pregnant. You once told me that you wanted to have children by me, so what’s the problem? Is it me? Should I have a doctor check out my sperm count, or something?”
“No, Tom. Stop worrying and go to sleep. You are perfectly healthy. Your last doctor’s visit proved that.”
“Your flat tummy suggests otherwise. Do you have some sort of problem?”
“No. I, too, am healthy. Roll over and I’ll rub your back.”
“Not right now. I want to know why there isn’t anybody on this island who’s pregnant. I don’t know about Hasenpfeffer, but Ian and I have been doing yeoman service around here for half a year, nailing well over five hundred women regularly, and I have yet to see one bulging belly on the whole damn island! Explain to me how this is possible.”
“James Hasenpfeffer has been as sexually active as you and Ian have.”
“That’s nice, but it wasn’t my question.”
“We get pregnant, and we have children, but you can’t expect us to have them here!”
“So what’s wrong with here? This island is a beautiful place. It’s idyllic, by any normal standard!”
“By your standards, maybe, Tom. Not by ours.”
“Then tell me one single thing that’s wrong with it.”
“It’s as I just said, Tom, our standards differ.”
“That’s a bullshit answer and you know it.”
“Tom, can’t you see that it’s dangerous here?”
“Dangerous? The only thing that I’ve seen around here that’s dangerous are the sharks at the north end of the island, and your people never swim there.”
“Tom, this whole twentieth-century world that you’ve lived in all your life is dangerous! There are dozens of countries out there with atomic bombs! There are hundreds of people dying every minute of horrible diseases! There are psychotics and gangsters and whole governments that kill people without any more reason than just for the fun of it! Why, the future history of this time isn’t even known! Anything could happen! We are willing to be here, for a while, because it is necessary, but you can hardly expect us to subject our precious children to all of this danger!”
“So you’re telling me that your people are so cowardly that you can’t face each new day without being afraid of it?”