“Okay to cut?”
“Yep. That just about does it.”
Aub took the system through its shutdown sequence. The glow died from the center of the circle and silence gradually descended as one by one the huge machines became quiet and the last row of lights went out. Aub sat back and wiped the perspiration from his forehead.
“Phew,” he said. “Okay, I’ll buy it—the space integral is unity. And you tried to tell me you weren’t a salesman. Jeez.” He shook his head.
“C’mon, it wasn’t that risky and you know it,” Clifford taunted. “If it wasn’t unity, the detectors would have spotted an excess long before we wound the power up. There was no hazard really.”
“Okay, you’ve made your point. We’ve proved we can focus the return energy. Now what?”
At once Clifford’s grin snapped off and his mood became serious. “Tomorrow we talk to Al and Peter and put them in the picture,” he said. “It doesn’t matter now if there’s hell to pay because this is rapidly going to become a lot bigger than both of them. What Peter has to do is get in touch with Washington and fix us an appointment for as soon as he can with Foreshaw and his merry men.” He leaned across and slapped Aub on the shoulder. “You keep telling me I have to be a salesman, my friend. Okay—I, or, rather, we, are going to make the most mind-blowing sale ever. No salesman ever walked into the Pentagon with anything like what we’ve got. They want bombs? We are going to give them a bigger damn bomb than they ever dreamed of!”
Chapter 19
Clifford stood at the head of the large oval conference table and gazed along the line of unsmiling attentive faces. The Defense Secretary was seated at the far end with the rest—service chiefs, technical advisers, presidential aides, and defense planners—seated around on either side. Aub was at the end near Clifford, flanked by Morelli and Peter Hughes.
“Long speeches are not my line,” Clifford began. “The reason I’m standing here today is essentially to protest—to protest at a society that perpetuates a system of values that are becoming insane. Throughout history man’s greatest enemies—from which practically all our other problems follow—have been two: ignorance and superstition. The most powerful weapon that man has developed to combat these enemies is science—the acquisition and harnessing of knowledge. And yet with every day that goes by, we see more and more science being used not to solve the problems of mankind but to aggravate them. Science is being subordinated to the service of our lowest instincts.”
He paused and looked around the room, half-expecting to be interrupted. But although a few aghast stares were in evidence, everybody seemed too taken aback to voice any comment, so he continued. “I am a scientist. I live in a world that is being torn apart by hatred and mistrust that I’ve had no part in making, and the reasons for them don’t interest me. The situation is the making of people I don’t know but who claim to act in my name. Those same people now presume the right to expect me to give up my own life in order to meet obligations that they feel I owe them. Just to make my position clear, I’ve never acknowledged any such obligations.”
At the table, in front of where Clifford was standing, Morelli was massaging palms that were becoming moist. Next to him, Peter Hughes flinched and swallowed hard. A few sharp intakes of breath from around the room greeted Clifford’s opening remarks. The gathering was not accustomed to being addressed so bluntly, and yet there was something about Clifford’s compelling calm and poise—an assuredness of purpose that stemmed from somewhere deep inside him—that made them bite their tongues and hear him out. They sensed that the buildup was leading to something big.
After a pause Clifford continued. “During the scientific Renaissance in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, men found out for the first time how to distinguish fact from fancy, truth from falsity, and reality from dreams. From genuine knowledge came inventiveness . . . industry . . . intellectual freedom . . . affluence. Europe was unique among civilizations. This country was founded on that same tradition and our society was to be based on those same principles.” He paused again and made no attempt to hide the accusing light in his eyes as he took in the faces before him.