If the consequences were good, the note would then be sent.
If they were bad, the Secretary could destroy the note and try
others--until he composed one that produced the desired result.
Humanac's flaw was that it had no way of explaining the predictions
produced on its screen. It merely showed what would happen when and
if certain things were done. It left it up to the human operator to
figure out why things happened that way.
This was what was troubling Dr. Peccary.
He could see not the remotest relationship between his Y Hormone and
the fact that a mathematical probability named Miss Terry should refuse
another mathematical probability named Paul permission to climb to the
top of a six-foot playground slide.
Meanwhile Staghorn had been using the fine adjustment on the geographic
locator and now grunted his satisfaction. "Good! We're in the building,
at least."
On the screen was a dusky corridor. On either side of it were classroom
doors, some closed, some ajar. Staghorn moved his hand from the fine
adjustment to the even more delicate vernier control which permitted
him to shift the geographic focus inches at a time. The focus drifted
slowly forward to one of the half-open doors, and then he and Dr.
Peccary were able to see into the classroom.
It was deserted. Desks were thick with dust. Books, yellow with age,
were strewn on the floor.
Staghorn's hand sought the vernier control again. The picture led them
on down the corridor to another open door.
Again it was a scene of desolation.
"This can have nothing to do with my Y Hormone!" Peccary insisted.
"Then why is your picture on the wall there?" Staghorn said with a note
of malicious pleasure.
Dr. Peccary looked and started. On the classroom wall was a faded
photograph of himself. Except that he was wearing a different suit
in the picture, he looked just as he looked at the present moment.
Staghorn got a closer focus on the photograph so that Peccary could
read the legend beneath it. _Dr. Clarence Peccary, the man who gave the
world the Y Hormone._
"All right then," said Peccary, somewhat mollified by this tribute. "If
they put my picture on school room walls a hundred years from now, it
means I'm an honored man, a man the world admires. And therefore the Y
Hormone _can't_ be the cause of all this desolation!"
"I've found that Humanac's reasoning and human reasoning differ in many
ways," said Staghorn. On the screen they were out in the corridor again
when from somewhere ahead came a woman's voice.
"You may recite now, Paul. Please stand up."
"Ah, that sounds like Miss Terry," said Staghorn. He fingered the
vernier control. The focal point slid forward along the corridor.
"Stand up and recite, Paul," Miss Terry said more sharply.
"I think they're in the room on the left," said Peccary.
II
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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