On the door of his office someone had written in lipstick, in giant letters, COELUM. Baloyne spoke to me, of course, nonstop, but lit up expectantly when the retinue, as if cut off with a knife, remained outside the door and we could look each other in the eye — alone.
As long as we regarded each other with what I might call a purely animal sympathy, nothing marred the harmony of our reunion. But, though curious about the secret, I first questioned him on the Project’s position with respect to the Pentagon and the Administration, and, specifically, about the extent of freedom allowed in using the possible results of the research. He tried, though halfheartedly, to avail himself of that ponderous dialect employed by the State Department; I became, therefore, more acerbic with him than I intended, as a result of which a tension arose between us, and it was washed away only by the red wine (Baloyne must have wine) at dinner. I learned later that he had not at all contracted the infection of officialdom, but had spoken so as to invest the maximum amount of sound with the minimum of meaning — because his office was riddled with bugging devices. Practically all the buildings, and the labs, too, were packed with that electronic upholstery.
It was only after several days that I learned this, from the physicists, who were not in the least perturbed by the fact; they considered it a natural phenomenon, much like the sand in the desert. But none of them went anywhere without a little scrambling apparatus; they took a childish delight in foiling the ubiquitous protection placed over them. Out of humanitarian considerations, so that those occult minions (I never saw one in the flesh) who had to sit and listen through all that was recorded would not be too bored, the antibugging units were turned off — such was the custom — during the telling of jokes, particularly those off-color. But the telephones, I was advised, were not to be used for matters other than making dates with the girls that worked in administration. There were no people in uniform, as I said, not even the type who brought uniforms to mind, in the entire community.
The only nonscientist who took part in the sessions of the Science Council was Dr. (but of Law) Eugene Albert Nye, the best-dressed man in the Project. He represented Dr. Marsland (who, by strange coincidence, also was a four-star general). Nye was well aware that the younger scientists in particular liked to play jokes on him, passing index cards with cryptic diagrams and numbers, or secretly confiding to one another — ostensibly failing to notice him — outlandishly radical views.
The jokes he bore with saintly composure, and was able to conduct himself admirably when someone at the hotel canteen showed him a tiny transmitter with a microphone, not bigger than a safety match, which had been dug out from behind an outlet in one of the rooms. All this did not amuse me in the least, though I have a fairly active sense of humor.
Nye represented a very real power, and neither his manners nor his love of Husserl made him likable. He knew, of course, that the jokes, digs, and little incivilities shown him by his associates were compensatory, because in fact it was he who was the quietly smiling spiritus movens of the Project — or, rather, its velvet-gloved ruler. He was like a diplomat among natives. The natives, being helpless, seek to vent their resentment on the venerable personage, and sometimes, when their anger drives them, they may even tear something, or handle it roughly; but the diplomat easily tolerates such demonstrations, for that is the reason he is there, and he knows that even if he is insulted, the insult is not addressed to him personally but to the power he represents. Thus he can identify himself with that power — a convenient arrangement, since such impersonalization provides him with a sense of constant, safe superiority.
People who do not represent themselves but serve, instead, as a tangible, materialized symbol, a symbol fundamentally abstract though it may wear suspenders and a bow tie; who are a local, concrete instance of an organization that disposes individuals like objects — I detest such people, and am unable to transform the feeling into its comical or ironic equivalent. From the very beginning, sensing this, Nye gave me a wide berth, as one does with a vicious dog; otherwise the man would not have been able to fulfill his function. I showed him my contempt, and he definitely paid me back with interest, in his impersonal way, though he was always extremely polite. Which, of course, only irritated me the more. My human form was, in the eyes of people like him, a mere casing that contained an instrument needed for higher goals — goals known to them, inaccessible to me. What surprised me the most in him was that he apparently held actual views of some sort. But possibly they were only a good imitation.
Even more un-American and unsporting was Rappaport’s attitude toward Nye — Dr. Saul Rappaport, that first discoverer of the message from the stars. He once read me an excerpt from a nineteenth-century volume describing the raising of pigs trained to find truffles. It was a nice passage, telling, in an elevated style typical of that age, how man’s reason made use — in keeping with its mission — of the avid gluttony of the swine, to whom acorns were tossed each time they unearthed a truffle.
This kind of rational husbandry, in Rappaport’s opinion, was what awaited the scientists; it was in fact already being put into practice in our own case. He made me this prediction in all seriousness. The wholesale dealer takes no interest in the inner life of the trained pig that runs about for the truffles; all that exists for him are the results of the pig’s activity, and it is no different between us and our authorities.
The rational husbandry of scientists admittedly has been hindered by relics of tradition, those unthinking sentiments that came out of the French Revolution, but there is reason to hope that this is a passing phase. Besides the well-equipped sties — that is to say, the shining laboratories — other installations should be provided, to deliver us from any possible feeling of frustration. For example, a science worker might satisfy his instincts of aggression in a hall filled with mannequins of generals and other high officials specially designed for beating; or he could go to specific spots for release of sexual energy, etc. Availing himself appropriately of outlets here and there, the scientist-pig — explained Rappaport — can then, without further distraction, devote himself to the hunting of truffles, for the benefit of the rulers but to the undoing of humanity, as indeed the new stage in history will demand of him.
Rappaport made no attempt to hide these views. It was amusing to observe the reactions of our colleagues to his pronouncements (not made at the official meetings, of course). The younger ones simply laughed, which angered Rappaport, because the truth was that he thought and spoke entirely in earnest. But there was no help for it: one’s personal experience in life is fundamentally unconveyable. Nontransmittable. Rappaport came from Europe, which is equated by the “military-senatorial mind” (as he liked to put it) with the Red Menace. Thus he never would have got into the Project had he not accidentally become its coauthor. Only the fear of possible “leaks” landed him in our team.
He had emigrated to the States in 1945. His name was known to a handful of experts before the war. There are few philosophers with a genuinely thorough schooling in mathematics and the natural sciences; he belonged in that rare category, and consequently turned out to be extremely useful in the work of the Project. Rappaport and I lived next door to each other in the hotel at the compound, and it was not long before we became more closely acquainted. He left his native country as a man of thirty, alone, the Holocaust having claimed his entire family. He never spoke about it, except one evening, after I had let him in on — and he was the only one — my and Prothero’s secret. True, I am anticipating events in telling the story here, but I think this is indicated. Whether it was, oddly, to reciprocate my confidence with another, or for some unknown reason, Rappaport then told me how, before his eyes, a certain mass execution had taken place — the year was 1942, I think — in his hometown.
He was pulled off the street, a random pedestrian. They were shooting people in groups, in the yard of a prison recently shelled and with one wing still burning. Rappaport gave me the details of the operation very calmly. The executing itself could not be seen by those herded against the building, which heated their backs like a giant oven; the shooting was done behind a broken wall. Some of those waiting, like him, in his turn, fell into a kind of stupor; others tried to save themselves — in mad ways.