“I’ve read what Bradley Clifford produced and, yes, I follow what he’s done. But I couldn’t do it, no way. I’m essentially an applications man; I can take the rules that somebody else figures out and apply them to a specific range of problems. I accept that I’m not a creative thinker; that requires a completely different kind of mind. I can follow Clifford’s work as far as it goes, but there’s no way I could work out what comes next. There’s just no way that anybody here or anywhere else can command me to be creative.”
“Clifford needs to be part of this project,” another of the scientists declared. “Lots of us here could serve on the team, but somebody like him has to head it.”
“Why isn’t he here anyhow?” the man next to the speaker asked.
“He quit,” Senchino answered.
“I know, but why?”
“That’s a separate matter that doesn’t concern this meeting,” Corrigan broke in. “Let’s just say for now that despite his intellectual talents, he would not have fit in because of the project’s sensitive nature. He exhibited distinctly undesirable ideological and temperamental traits; in a nutshell, he was unstable, rebellious, and had all the makings of a high-security risk. As a matter of fact, he deliberately and openly defied security directives.” The looks from the scientific side of the table were skeptical. Nevertheless, Corrigan pursued his point. “The topic we are discussing could result in a decisive trump card for the West. To involve somebody of Clifford’s disposition would have been unthinkable. He might well have ended up making a present of the whole package to the other side.”
Camerdene read the expressions that greeted Corrigan’s explanation.
“Clifford had his strengths, but only in his own narrow field,” he said. “He was just a man, not a superman. Nobody is indispensable. I can’t see any reason why we shouldn’t be able to set up a nucleus of specialists who can carry on just as well as he could. You’ve only got to look at the amount of talent in this room right now, never mind the whole country . . .” He waited a second for some reaction to the compliment but it had no visible effect. “After all, a scientist is a scientist; you’re all familiar with the same facts and possess comparable skills. You’re all trained to understand a specialized jargon, it’s true, but no more so than an accountant who knows how to read a balance sheet . . .”
“Clifford was an innovator,” one of the scientists insisted wearily. “People can’t be trained to innovate. You’ve either got it or you haven’t.”
“I refuse to accept that there was anything so special about Clifford that you can’t get along without him,” Corrigan retorted sharply. “If a surgeon becomes sick before an operation, the hospital can always find somebody else to perform it. If Clifford hadn’t stumbled on a new piece of theory when he did, somebody else would have done so sooner or later . . . and still might. If that somebody else turns out to be in Beijing or somewhere, then we’re in real trouble.” He screwed up his face as if experiencing a nasty taste. “And yet all we’ve heard all day has been lame excuses.”
Senchino took a deep breath and clenched his fists until the knuckles showed white.
“You can’t treat the human mind like some kind of machine that you pour raw material into at one end and get finished products out the other. The only way you can . . .”
And so it went on . . . and on . . . and on.
* * *
Meanwhile, in the Clifford household, Aub and Sarah were watching intently as Clifford finished describing the sequence of recent events to Zimmermann. Throughout, Zimmermann had listened attentively and without interrupting, though his face became increasingly more troubled as the details unfolded.
“Well, Dr. Clifford . . . I really don’t know what to say,” he replied. “The whole situation is deplorable . . . disgraceful.”
Clifford hesitated, wondering if the question was too presumptuous, but asked anyway. “Can . . . can I take it then that you didn’t know this was happening?”