Free His Master's Voice by Stanislaw Lem Page A

the misgivings felt by this or that scientist about the administration's representatives, the attention given the Project now by the Secretary of State and now by the President himself, the warm words of encouragement, expressive of the hope placed in "such minds"—all this created an atmosphere in which the posing of a plain question as to the time limit, the deadline for lifting the secrecy on the work, would have sounded discordant, impolite, positively boorish.
    I can also imagine, though in my presence no one ever breathed a word on that delicate subject, how the noble Baloyne gave instruction in the principles of diplomacy (coexistence, that is, with politicians) to his less worldly colleagues, and how with his characteristic tact he kept putting off inviting and qualifying me to join the Council. He must have explained to the more impatient that first the Project had to win the trust of powerful patrons; only then would it be possible to follow what in all conscience the scientific helmsmen of HMV considered the most appropriate course. And I do not say this with irony, for I can put myself in Baloyne's shoes: he wished to avoid friction on both sides, and was well aware that in those high circles I had the reputation of being unreliable. So I did not take part in the launching of the enterprise; this, however—as I was told a hundred times—was all to my advantage, because the living conditions in that ghost town situated a hundred miles east of the Monte Rosa mountains were at first quite primitive.
    I think it best to present what happened in chronological order, and therefore will begin with what I was doing just before the arrival at New Hampshire, where I was teaching, of the emissary from the Project. Best, because I entered its course when many of the general concepts had already been formed; as a "greenhorn" I needed to be introduced to—to acquaint myself with—everything, before I could be harnessed, like a new draft horse, to that huge machine (numbering twenty-five hundred people).
    I had only recently come to New Hampshire, invited there by the chairman of the Mathematics Department, my old classmate Stewart Compton, to conduct a summer seminar for doctoral candidates. I accepted the offer; with a load of only three hours a week, I could spend whole days roaming the woods and fields in the area. Even though I had a full vacation coming to me, having completed, that June, a year-and-a-half collaboration with Professor Hayakawa, I knew—knowing myself—that I would not be able to relax unless I had at least some intermittent contact with mathematics. Rest gives me, immediately, the guilty feeling that I am wasting valuable time. Besides, I have always enjoyed meeting new practitioners of my esoteric discipline, about which prevail more false notions than about any other field.
    I cannot call myself a "pure" mathematician; too often have I been tempted by outside problems. Such temptation led to my work with young Thorpe (his contribution to anthropology remains unappreciated, because he died young: in science, too, one's biological presence is required, because, despite appearances, a discovery needs credentials louder than its own merit)—and, later on, with Donald Prothero (whom I found at the Project, to my great surprise), and with James Fenniman (who subsequently received the Nobel Prize), and, finally, with Hayakawa. Hayakawa and I had built a mathematical backbone for his cosmic-origin theory, which was, unexpectedly, to make its way—thanks to one of his rebellious students—into the very center of the Project.
    Some of my colleagues looked down their noses at these guerrilla raids of mine into the preserves of the natural sciences. But the benefit usually was reciprocal: the empiricists not only received my aid, but I, too, in learning their problems, began to see which directions of our Platonic Kingdom's development lay along the lines of the main strategic assault on the future.
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