There was a short pause. Then Danchekker clasped his fingers together, his elbows resting on the arms of his chair, and cleared his throat. “Can you be sure that there really is an identifiable cause of this ‘plague,’ as you put it, waiting to be tracked down?” he asked. “We know that in the case of Earth, the Jevlenese deliberately introduced nonsensical belief systems thousands of years ago and engineered supernatural workings to support them. But the Jevlenese have always been under the totally rational guidance of the Thuriens, which, one would suppose, should produce exactly the opposite results. That turns out not to have been the case, however.”
“Naturally, we wondered about that, too,” Shiohin said. “Do you have an explanation?”
Danchekker took off his spectacles and proceeded to wipe them with a handkerchief. “Only that possibly you’re thinking too much like Ganymeans, and not making sufficient allowance for the limitless human capacity for sheer, pigheaded obstinacy. The reason why socialism fell apart on Earth wasn’t because its ideals were unachievable–Ganymeans achieve them as a matter of course, instinctively. It failed because they are alien to human nature. And when its advocates tried to change human nature to make the fact fit their theory, people resisted. The social engineers didn’t understand that Newton’s third law applies to social forces as well as to physical ones.”
“Go on,” Garuth said, listening attentively.
Danchekker showed a hand in a reluctant acknowledgment that he, too, had no choice but to accept the facts as he found them. “And I can see humans, any humans, reacting in the same way to the kind of enticement by which the Thuriens tried to shape them—” He gestured at Garuth. “—and to the kind that you are attempting now. In other words, couldn’t what you’re up against be simply a fundamental, ineradicable human trait? Are you sure that what you’re looking for actually exists at all?” He drew a pad and pencil from his pocket and began scribbling some notes.
Garuth returned to his desk and sat down again. “We asked ourselves that, but we don’t think it’s the case,” he answered. “You see, there’s a distinct category of Jevlenese that the infection seems to spread from. They account for practically all of the cult founders and the agitators. All the trouble seems to emanate from them.”
“You mean like the one all these purple people have been getting into a frenzy over since yesterday?” Hunt interjected. “What was he called, Ayatollah, or something?”
“Ayultha,” Shilohin supplied.
‘‘Oh, yes.”
“There’s something very unusual about them,” Garuth said. “Something that can’t be explained as simply an extreme of some general human characteristic. There’s too much of a pattern, too much that’s systematic for it to be coincidental aberration.”
ZORAC interrupted. “Excuse me. I have a call for Professor Danehekker.”
Danchekker’s pencil broke, and the color drained visibly from his face.
“Who is it, ZORAC?” Hunt asked.
“Sandy, from the UNSA labs.”
“Put her through.”
“Oh, sorry to interrupt, but we’re wondering where to put your personal things, Professor,” Sandy’s voice said cheerfully. “Do you want to be out in the lab? Or I thought maybe one of the smaller offices would be better for privacy.”
Danchekker nodded rapidly and licked his lips. “Yes. . . yes, that would be preferable, thank you,” he agreed in a shaky voice.
“Okay.”
“Hold any more non urgent calls until we’re through, ZORAC,” Garuth instructed.
Hunt looked back at Garuth. “You were saying that there’s too much of a pattern to these ayatollahs,” he said.
Garuth nodded. “For one thing, they’re all very unscientific. Chronically unscientific. I don’t mean simply low in aptitude; they lack the basic conceptual machinery that makes any rational account of an objective world possible. They don’t seem to share the ordinary, commonsense notions of causality and consistency that you have to have, even to begin understanding the universe. You’d almost think they weren’t from this universe at all.”
“Can you give some instances?” Hunt asked.
“Fundamental things—things that any six-year-old wouldn’t think twice about,” Garuth answered. “We take it for granted, for example, that objects remain unaltered by changes in location or orientation; that things measure the same in the evening as they do in the morning; that the same causes always produce the same results. Children grasp such fundamentals naturally. But the—what did you call them?”