She shrugged. "I can't help it. We were doing physiology of the sensory
organs, trying to settle the oldie about focusing the eye, and I got to
grubbing around the pre-Lieberman texts looking for light in the
darkness. Some of it sounded so--not sensible, but _positive_ that I ran
off one of Lieberman's population checks. And the old boy had been dead
wrong. _Mengenlehre_ constructs correspond quite nicely to the actual
way people's minds work. I kept checking and the schools that were
destroyed as hopelessly fallacious a century ago checked out, some
closely and some not so closely, as good descriptions of the way the
mind works. Some have predictive value. I used _mengenlehre_ psychology
algorithms to compute the conditioning on you and me, including the
trigger release. It worked. You see, Charles? We're on the rim of
something tremendous!"
"When did this Lieberman flourish?"
"I don't have the exact dates in my head. The breakup of the schools
corresponded roughly with the lifetime of John G. Falcaro."
That pin-pointed it rather well. John G. succeeded Rafael, who succeeded
Amadeo Falcaro, first leader of the Syndic in revolt. Under John G., the
hard-won freedom was enjoyed, the bulging store-houses were joyously
emptied, craft union rules went joyously out the window and builders
_worked_, the dollar went to an all-time high and there was an all-time
number of dollars in circulation. It had been an exhuberant time still
fondly remembered; just the time for over-enthusiastic rebels against a
fusty scholasticism to joyously smash old ways of thought without too
much exercise of the conscience. It all checked out.
She started and he got to his feet. A hardly-noticed discomfort was
becoming acute; the speedboat was pitching and rolling quite seriously,
for the first time since their escape. "Dirty weather coming up," he
said. "We've been too damned lucky so far." He thought, but didn't
remark, that there was much to worry about in the fact that there seemed
to have been no pursuit. The meager resources of the North American Navy
wouldn't be spent on chasing a single minor craft--not if the weather
could be counted on to finish her off.
"I thought we were unsinkable?"
"In a way. Seal the boat and she's unsinkable the way a corked bottle
is. But the boat's made up of a lot of bits and pieces that go together
just so. Pound her for a few hours with waves and the bits and pieces
give way. She doesn't sink, but she doesn't steam or steer either. I
wish the Syndic had a fleet on the Atlantic."
"Sorry," she said. "The nearest fleet I know of is Mob ore boats on the
great lakes and they aren't likely to pick us up."
The sea-search radar pinged and they flew to the screen. "_Something_ at
273 degrees, about eight miles," he said. "It can't be pursuit. They
couldn't have any reason at all to circle around us and come at us from
ahead." He strained his eyes into the west and thought he could see a
black speck on the gray.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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