"S_Fowler_Wright_Brain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wright S Fowler)

He had spoken as though Time had pre-existed Space, and the heavy lids of Professor Sturmie's eyes had lifted for a moment, and surveyed him with a puzzled wonder. He didn't often show his ignorance in that assembly by talking outside the limits of his own Homology.

Even to the untrained mind to attempt imagination of Space without Time, or of Time without Space, should be enough to show its absurdity. Even Einstein's elementary speculations of sixty years ago had passed the bounds of such childlishness.

He had roused Professor Sturmie to bring up the subject. Sturmie cared for no one, if his own subjects were left alone, but he had a gift of sarcasm, which had made him dreaded in controversy. He could be trusted to make the President look the fool he was. And when that had happened, what influence would he have left?

After that episode, he would ask for an order for the children he needed. If it were refused . . . ? He would claim a vote. It was the kind of point on which he would be sure to get it.

Then he would suggest the propriety of resignation. Probably, after that, there would be swift deaths on the Council. Well, if so, he had his own secret powers. He would not be unready. . . .

Thirty years ago Queen Hermione had presented Buckingham Palace to the nation (perhaps not very willingly) as a home for South American monkeys whose gland-extractions were required to increase the virility of members of the House of Commons.

Professor Borthin ceased his activities in the corridor. He went to look at the monkeys.

The silent occupant of the Studio of Contemplation was not unaware of his danger.

He had regretted that florescence of oratory the moment that he had met the sardonic glance of Professor Sturmie's heavy eyes, as they had been lifted toward him.

Professor Sturmie seldom looked, or spoke, or voted.

His attendants wheeled his chair into position at the Council table, and he sat there, his hands motionless before him, his face a blank passivity, till the proceedings ended.

But he was held in a very great respect. He was supposed to know more on each of his colleagues' subjects than they knew themselves.

Twenty years ago as Principal of the Birmingham University, it had become known that, in case of sudden indisposition, he could take the place of any of his professors, and lecture brilliantly on their own subjects at a moment's notice. There had been plots to test this capacity, but he had always been equal to them.

If he should now be roused to attack the intellectual eminence of the President, that gentleman knew that the assault could be delivered from no deadlier quarter.

He knew that there were other members of the Council whose knowledge both of Physics and Mathematics was greater than his own. There was nothing in that. Each man specialised, and was supreme in his own dominion. But he was not expected to talk dogmatic fallacies upon his neighbours' subjects. And the position of a President was different from that of others. He, of all men, must not be open to ridicule.

But, after all, it had only hastened the conflict, which was inevitable. Borthin meant to rule and the difference was not of men only. It was one of fundamental principles. Professor Brisket had never been known as a sentimentalist. He would pour human blood on the altars of Science as readily as he would have sacrificed a mangel-wurzel. He had not hesitated to give the order which had evaporated Bristol. But he believed in a vague way, that all he did was for the Higher Good of Humanity.

Professor Borthin had no such illusion, and no such object. For the Higher Good of Humanity he did not care a bean. He worshipped Science for its own sake, and it was its own justification.

To him, President Brisket was a sentimentalist, and an obstruction, and the time had come to remove him.

The two men were thus of one mind as to the necessity for removing the other. They were united in decision that the time had come. They were agreed as to the time and place of the conflict. They were alike in thinking that the first step must be to discredit the adversary before the Council. They only differed in the fact that the younger man was the attacker, that he fought from a less vulnerable situation, and that he was confident of success, whereas his older and more cautious opponent was aware of being forced to give battle on ground which he had not chosen, and was very far from comfortable as to the defence he could offer, or the strength of the counter-attack which he must be prepared to deliver. . . .

And yet his mind held to the point that Space and Time were not identical. They were not merely two aspects of one quality. There was an absolute difference. But how could he prove it in a way which would convince the Council, and confound his opponents? Of the difference he was convinced. Of his own random metaphor - of the pre-existence of Time - he was much less confident.

He reflected that Space is motionless. It remains. It must have been - always. Full or empty, it must have been there. Timeless, perhaps, but there. Was this not the very opposite of the idea which he had advanced so randomly?

Must have been, if it had no conscious occupants? Yes, surely.

Then how about Time? A condition of Time of which there had never been, now would be, conscious knowledge vexed his mind with a lack of reality. He was less sure.

Supposing that there were two separate realms of consciousness, not adjoining. Would not the unconscious interval be a Space, although it had no conscious occupant? Was it so in itself, or was it made such by the facts of the conscious realms which were contiguous to it? But he had first postulated that Space. . . . He became aware that he was speculating vaguely, whereas the thoughts of Professor Sturmie on such a subject would be clear and sure, and his words decisive.

It was not thus that he would be armed for conquest. He must be prepared not only to resist, but to rout with a returning ridicule. He could not afford to fail. He could not even afford an indecisive contest.