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INTERFERENCE
by Walter C. Davies
(Author of "Forgotten Tongues," "New Directions," etc.)



Alone in the emptiness of space, the two psychologists suffered the mental
static of whole planet, and no matter where they went the interference followed.



"TAKE IT EASY, now," warned the President of the United States. "A lot depends
on you--don't go off halfcocked. You only get one chance. That's all we can
afford."
Boyle took the extended hand and shook it heartily. "We'll certainly do our
best, sir," he said. And from the tone of his voice you could tell that he meant
it.
The vast field was crowded; beneath the hot summer sun sweated twenty thousand
people, surging, cheering, breaking through cordons of police lined up for their
own protection. Dips were doing a thriving business; more than one
light-fingered gentleman was planning to retire on the rich pickings from the
crowd. People were far too excited to consider whether or not it was their own
hands in their pockets or that of some total stranger of predatory instincts.
The crowd was in a holiday mood, exalted to be in the same rocket field with
Boyle and Cantrell.
The two objects of adoration were bearing up well under the strain, humble
psychologists though they had been up to a few weeks ago. After shaking the
President's hand and being clapped on their backs by enough distinguished
foreigners to fill an embassy the size of the great pyramid, they were blushing
a little and very happy at their good fortune.
"But," whispered Boyle from the corner of his mouth, "if we don't come back
they'll know we died trying." Suddenly grim, he surveyed the vast sea of faces
stretching before him. An emcee took him by the arm and led him to a mike
through which he would address the crowd.
"Hello--" he began, and then broke off, startled by the sound of his own voice
roaring out across the field. "Hello, all you people. My partner and I just want
to thank you before we leave in the Andros. If we don't return send out more
men, men better than Cantrell and I. Because we aren't coming back before we
crack the problem that's assigned to us. When--if--you see the jets of the old
Andros in the sky again, maybe in a week, maybe in a year, you'll know that the
answer is in our hands and that the plague, the spastitis, is over. Or as good
as over."
The roar that went up from the crowd was deafening as he modestly stepped back
from the mike. The emcee was yelling things into it, but the tremendous ovation
drowned out even the tornado of sound that the loudspeakers created.
Boyle waved at the crowd again. "All ready?" he snapped at Cantrell, his partner
in the enterprise. "Everything checked?"
"Betcha life," said Cantrell. "Get in." Like an insect disappearing in the
knothole of a giant tree trunk, Boyle eased through the tiny port in the grey,
slab-sided hull of the Andros. Cantrell vaulted in immediately after him, and
the huge plug of metal that sealed the ship swung into place from the inside.
The crowd had quieted, and the annunciators roared warnings to stand back from
the breath of the fiery Titan-that soon would roar its own message. Police
cleared the mob away from the firing area with squad cars driving masses of
people before them. Hastily the reviewing stand was rolled away from the ship.
The President got into his car, a long, low open Jefferson 22. He looked a
little ill. "I hope they make it," he said, with a visible effort. "They're
plucky young--" Then he could no longer contain himself. He began to cough
violently, his hands trembling toward his mouth.
Doctors clustered around as he collapsed. Even in unconsciousness his body
twitched grotesquely and his finely modeled hands trembled as if with cold.
she's got it," said one surgeon grimly. "The President has spastitis. It's
spreading faster than we thought. And there go the dream-boys who have to get
out into space to find a cure." He gestured at the Andros, which was ponderously
aiming itself at the zenith with its own self-elevators.
With a mind-staggering crash the ship took off. The wind of its departure almost
tore clothes from the surgeons at the Presidential car. Long after it had
vanished--seemingly dead into the sun--their ears rang with the concussion, and
breezes stiffly whipped along the field.
CANTRELL grinned feebly from the bunk. "I'm all right," he said weakly. "I can
get up. This damned space-sickness gets me every time. You ready to try out the
polyphone?"
The hardy Boyle grinned back through a tangle of electronics supplies. "It's all
rigged up and-ready for you. Catch." He tossed over a set of headphones
connected with the machinery and donned a similar set of his own. "Relax," he
warned. "If we're not far enough out this ought to be a full-blooded shock to
mind and body." He switched on a dull glowing tube.
Cantrell squinted his eyes shut and concentrated on the familiar thought
patterns of his partner. He caught them for a moment. Boyle was thinking of the
blackness of space through which they were speeding and wondering vaguely
whether the meteor interceptor would work as well under stress as it had in the
tests. He held up a hand with thumb and forefinger meeting, both crooked, in the
time-honored technicians' gesture of: coming over 100%.
Then there was a sudden rip in the smoothly unreeling pattern. It was as though
a panorama were being opened before his eyes; the panorama of his partner's
mind. Then a seam opened suddenly and without warning. He was reading the minds
of total strangers, people he'd never heard of.
In rapid sequence he caught the image of a grubby little room as seen by a short
man, and then surges of physical disgust at the sight--through this short
stranger's eyes--of a big, muscular woman. Following that image and impression
was a vision of staring dead into the sun, some fool who was looking for their
ship, no doubt. Back to the grubby room, but this time seen from the slightly
higher elevation of the muscular woman, who obviously didn't like the little man
she focused on any more than he liked her.
For a full hour Cantrell tried to claw his way back to the mind stream of the
man who was raptly sitting a few feet from him, but the obtrusive thoughts of
people back on earth insisted on popping up. For a full hour Cantrell plumbed
the depths of degradation in some minds, read the noble and exalted thoughts of
others. He tuned in on one murder and two suicides, seen in dizzy angles by the
different participants in the violence done.
Through them all was a continual undertone of abominable worry and expectancy of
death. Cantrell grunted softly whenever that image emerged. He recognized it
easily; that was what he and Boyle were out there in space to fight. It was the
ever-present dread of being struck down by the plague raging on Earth--the
shakes, spastitis malignant whatever you wanted to call it.
Cantrell saw people drop in the street, only to begin to tremble horribly at the
hands and feet with the disease. Finally he tore the headset off in disgust.
Boyle looked at him mildly.
"You try it solo," said Cantrell. "I can't get A damned thing out of the ether
except the pressure-waves from Tellus. And they aren't pretty."
Boyle removed his own set carefully. "It's eavesdropping," he said. "I tried to
get you every second. What were you doing?"
"Just what you were," grunted his partner. "Just exactly. I was trying to get
you, but you weren't to be had. We have to move on, Boyle. Do what you can with
the accelerators."
Boyle went to the instrument panel, worked the multiplex of levers. Too near the
Earth ! Too near to the suffering stew of human beings in agony, never knowing
who would be next with the shakes. That was what they had to get away from--the
emotional jags and lunatic vibrations from the home planet.
He and Cantrell had been carefully teamed as psychological mates for the full
utilization of the polyphone. Essentially the machine was intended to heighten
to the nth degree the rapport of a pair like this one. But they were too
sensitive for the machine. There was interference from the thousands who passed
in the street, from everybody all over the globe who was thinking consecutively
at the time.
And because the shakes was a disease of psychological degeneration you had to
fight it by probing into a mind and finding what was wrong. It didn't have to be
a diseased mind, for every normal mind has in its depths the seeds of every
psychological affliction that breaks out in wilder form. In Boyle's well-ordered
brain were minute traces of megalomania, satyriasis, schizophrenia, all the
words ending in philia and phobia as well as other unpleasant matters. Everybody
has them, whether he knows it or not.
The idea had been to shoot these two out into space, far from the influence and
interference of Earth; then they would work deeper and deeper into each other's
minds, finally to discover the seeds of the shakes that were inevitably lying
dormant.
One of the pleasant features of psychiatry is that once you have your problem
broken down it is already solved. The synthetic element of logic is superfluous;
analysis is sufficient. It might be that the shakes consisted of a fear of
technical progress reaching epidemic proportions through hysterical contagion.
You see a man fall in the street feebly kicking his heels in protest at being
deprived of the liberty to roam on grassy fields and your own elements of
protest are somewhat stirred. Then one day you feel despondent and they explode
when your censor band is not on guard against subversive urges like that. And
for the rest of your life you are a spastic, kicking and squirming
uncontrollably. Or until someone calmly explains to you what is wrong--about the
machine age and the rest. Then you are miraculously cured. And one cure breeds a
thousand as confidence grows.
Meanwhile there was the matter of interference from Earth. Boyle pushed the fuel
rod down to the limits of the outward bound trip. Dammit, they'd have to get
away from the static, he brooded.
"WHAT'S OUR POSITION?" queried Boyle. He was relaxing, Cantrell at the driving
panel.
"Practically ideal," said his partner. "I haven't checked, but we should be well
out of the range of anything from Earth. Going high and fancy, we are--per
second acceleration for two weeks. That's plenty far. Do you want to try out the
polyphone again?"
"Blow off the dust," grunted Boyle, swinging himself from the bunk. Gravity on
the ship was at Earth level; that had meant tons of extra equipment and power
consumption far above normal, but these two on whom the fate of their planet
depended could not be distracted by space sickness and flying soup.
Cantrell readied the polyphone, testing and checking the scores of minute
connections and solders that held the complex creation together. Some he
tightened, others he ripped out and replaced. At length the psychologist
reported: "All ready. Let's make this tryout a good one."
"Right. You stay open and receptive; I'll drive as deep into your mind as I can.
And Cantrell--I know it's not a nice thing to ask, but you'll have to have
complete confidence in me. I don't want you to seal off any sections at all from
me. I want you to stay as open as though you weren't being probed. You're a
specialist; you could close off whatever you wanted to. But we don't know where
the spastitis seeds lie. It may be in some group-unconscious engram or some
especially unsavory crime you've committed and forced yourself to forget. I'll
play square with you, Cantrell. For the sake of the whole planet back
there--don't keep any secret places."
His partner stared at him curiously. "Okay," he said at last. "You know best.
But if you find anything especially nasty, do me the favor of not telling me
about it."
"Agreed," said Boyle with relief. He switched on the machine as they donned the
head sets. The great tube glowed.
Cantrell relaxed in body and mind as he felt the probing fingers sent from his
partners brain pluck away at his gray matter. It wasn't an unpleasant sensation,
rather like a mental Swedish massage. Vaguely, images came through. He stiffened
a little. There shouldn't be any images here, and if there were he shouldn't get
them. For the moment putting aside the receptive mood, he reached out, shutting
his eyes and wrinkling his brow in an effort to encompass the foreign thought
vibrations that were filtering into his skull.
He saw a sky then through the eyes of some person on whose mind he had landed.
The sky was curiously dusky. And with the vision of the sky was a poignant sense
of longing that filled the mind of Cantrell's host. The words of it seemed to
be: "My loved one ! My loved one--on their side. Now we are enemies . . ."
A quick start of alarm. The sky swiveled away, and Cantrell saw through these
other eyes a group of horsemen bearing down on his host. A shrill scream of
terror, an intolerable wave of revulsion and regret, and then the blankness of
death. Cantrell's host had been ridden under the hooves of the horsemen.
The psychologist, not believing what he had experienced, reached out with his
mind and seized on one of the riders. He did know that there was a sense of
guilt in the rider's mind; what it meant he could not tell. He heard a
conversation begun with a shrill, nervous laugh. Then: "Damned rebel--we showed
him."
"Right. Fix them all up like that and this world will be worth living on, sir.
Where do we go now?"
"Keep scouting. Look for rebels and treat them the right way, like that dead
thing back there--"
Cantrell had suddenly lost interest in the conversation. The talk of rebels was
beyond him anyway. He had been studying, through his hosts eyes, the costume of
the riders. They were unfamiliar, and somehow totally alien to anything earthly.
Then, with a shock of terror Cantrell saw that the horses had peculiarly long
heads--and six legs !
HE TORE THE set from his head and stared, wide-eyed, at Boyle. "Where were you
?" he demanded. There was a shrill, hysterical note in his voice.
"Trying to get over," said Boyle as he switched off the set. "But there was
interference. We'll have to go farther yet. I tuned in on a series of love-
affairs from back on Earth."
"Sure of that?" countered Cantrell. "Are you sure it was from Earth that you got
the vibrations?"
"Why?" snapped Boyle. "What did you receive?"
Cantrell told him, and Boyle sat quietly for a long time, rattling his
fingernails on a tabletop. "Yeah," said Boyle at last. "I suspected something
like that. Those women reacted in wholly unearthly fashion. The anatomy of these
broadcasters is similar, but they aren't homo sapiens."
"Fourth dimension ?" wildly hazarded Cantrell. "Could we have tuned in on that?"
"No. For the reason that waves from the fourth dimension would have to be
vectorially sub-operative to the seventh power, at least, and the machine would
register any abnormal strain like that. No--not the fourth or any dimension
except this one. Are there any invisible planets floating around? That alone
would explain everything."
"None that I know of, and I used to specialize in astronomy. Maybe-- maybe we've
caught up with the thought-waves from Earth on a return trip from the end of
space? That would explain the talk about rebels."
"And your six-legged horses, of course. Don't be silly. We have to push on and
get so damned far away from this spot that we won't even remember where it is.
I'm going to gun the ship hard and fast. You get on the polyphone and tell me
when the thought-waves from the place begin to weaken and die out."
Boyle squared his jaw at the fuel gauge and began to reckon how much they could
allow for steerage and headway. How thin they could cut the corners for the
return trip to Earth when the problem of the shakes was solved.
Cantrell donned the head set and turned on the machine again. Again he reached
out probing fingers into the crazy planet where horses had six legs and you
could kill a man because he was a rebel against someone or something
unspecified.
On the screen of his mind things began to take shape. He had landed plumb in the
brain of a lady who was waiting for a lover whom she pictured as tall and
handsome. The lady turned slowly and surveyed a colossal city that rose about
her. She was standing just outside its walls. They were fine walls, solid and
ponderous, fitted with gates able to withstand the charge of a battletank.
Her lover strolled up and there was a tender scene of greeting. Cantrell,
feeling like a cad, reached out for another mind. He lighted on the brain of a
person within the city; a person who considered himself as being of vast
importance. All sorts of ponderous speculations were revolving through the
important person's head, principally when he would eat next. A young man, clad
in a sort of tunic, approached.
The important person smiled. "Ah," he cried. "My dear boy!"
The dear boy grinned briefly. "You'd better come. There's a strike on at the
tubing works. They seized possession of the whole plant." The important person
exploded with rage, swearing by strange gods. Cantrell shut off power and looked
up.
"When," he asked impatiently, "are you going to get going? It comes in as strong
as ever."
Boyle stared at him with a kind of sickly horror in his face. "Cantrell," he
said, "since you put on that set we've gone half a million miles at right angles
to our former course."
"Lord," whispered his partner. "They're following us!"
FROM RANDOM SNATCHES of thought, and casual, everyday conversation it is not
easy, it is almost impossible in fact, to reconstruct the politics, biology and
economics of an entire planet. Yet that, essentially, was what Boyle and
Cantrell had to do. For flee where they might, nearer to or farther from Earth,
they could not escape the vibrations from the land where horses had six legs.
From long periods of listening in and comparing, they discovered one important
fact: that evolution was proceeding on that planet at a staggeringly rapid pace;
that in fact the two partners had started out with a violently mistaken notion
of the place's tempo. It was swift, swifter than anything with which they were
familiar.
But their eavesdropping made it seem close to normal, for the human brain can
accommodate itself to any speed of delivery. It can assimilate and synthesize at
a faster rate than either of the two had previously suspected. It was natural
that this discovery should wait for a moment like this, for never before had the
human mind been called on to deliver at that rate.
They discovered that the nameless land was tearing along at a scale of one to a
million, approximately. When Cantrell had heard the horsemen curse the rebels,
that had been the equivalent of the Puritan revolution in England, period of
1650 or thereabouts. A few minutes later he tuned in on a general strike that
meant a lapse of about four hundred years.
In two weeks of voyaging through space the strange planet had arrived at a world
state which Earth had not yet attained.
Boyle, irritably tuning in on the lunatic planet one day, drew a deep breath.
"Cantrell !" he snapped. "Put your set on and follow my mind. I have a
conference of astronomers!"
His partner grabbed the ponderous metal bowl and clapped it on, groping out for
the familiar mind patterns of Boyle. He caught onto him in about three seconds,
then switched to one of Boyle's mental hosts. Through the eyes of that person he
saw a sizable hall built up into a structure like the inside of a mushroom. As
he studied the other persons in the hall he realized that physical evolution had
progressed a few more steps since yesterday, when he had last tuned in on the
place.
His host's mood was one of confusion; through it he was speaking to the large
gathering: "This symposium has been called on a somewhat abstract question. You
all know what it is, I presume; otherwise you would not be astronomers.
"As one looks back towards the glorious dawning days of our science the names of
those who were martyred in the cause of truth rise before us. Despots, with
their piddling knowledge and tiny telescopes, maintained that the world was
round, did they not ? It remained for the genius of our clan to demonstrate that
it was a truncated paraboloid.
"Jealous superstition preached that like all other worlds ours had a core of
rock in the state of stress fluid; it remained for us to prove that no such
thing was true of our world--that we alone of all planets lived upon a shell of
rhodium, and that that she]l, though inconceivably thick, was not solid, and
that our planet was definitely hollow."
Cantrell looked up. "Lord," he said softly. "Oh, Lordy! Now I know where those
six-legged horses came from."
"Yes," said Boyle as he turned off the machine. "That planet is our ship, and
those people are an entire civilization living on the shell of the old Andros.
No wonder we couldn't get away from them; they were being carried around with
us."
"It's perfectly logical," argued Cantrell. "We carry Earth gravity for our own
comfort; that's why we drew down a thin but definite atmosphere. Also dust and
organic particles which settled on the hull. There was warmth from the inside of
the ship, and that wonderful old Swede Arrhenius long ago demonstrated that
spores of life are always present in space, driven by light-pressure. They
landed on our hull, went through evolutionary stages, a man-like form emerged
and is rapidly reaching a more advanced civilization than our own."
"But," grunted Boyle, "that doesn't help us out with the shakes. If they're
swarming out there we'll never be able to probe each other. How can we shake
them off? Spray acid on the hull ?"
"No !" barked Cantrell. "We couldn't do that--they have as much of a right to
live as we. Perhaps--perhaps if we could communicate with them--?"
"Son," raved Boyle, "you've got it! The answer to our prayers! A super-race made
to order for the purpose of solving our problems. We'll have to adapt the
polyphone; that's the only equipment we have. Son, we're going to make this the
most useful interference ever recorded!"
WITH BLOODSHOT EYES and almost trembling fingers Cantrell tuned in the adapted
polyphone. Then, through the eyes of a host he was surveying from an apparent
altitude of twenty thousand feet A world enclosed in glass.
"Come in," he said to Boyle. "Work toward the most powerful single person you
can find." Feeling his own mind augmented by his partner's he probed deep into
the glassed-in world, toward the highest building he could find.
He landed in the brain of a highly trained mathematician and felt a swirl of
fantastically complicated figures and tables. Then the mathematician walked
through an automatic door into the presence of a person whom he regarded with
almost holy awe. Cantrell realized then how rapidly the acceleration of
evolution had curved upward on this tiny world. The personage was small and
weighed down with a staggering amount of braincells that could be seen pulsing
and throbbing under a transparent dura mater. The skull had been wholly
absorbed.
"Right," snapped Cantrell to his partner. "Push it out, son. Make it stick like
glue." The two psychologists united their minds in a staggering intellectual
effort; there were visible sparks as they fused into one perfect sending outfit.
Cantrell, only vaguely conscious of the personage and the mathematician, saw the
former start with alarm and heard him ask as if from a distance: "Do you feel
anything?"
"No," said Cantrell's host. "This matter of geodesics--"
"Leave me for a while," said the personage. "I sense a message of great
importance." The mathematician exited, and Cantrell abruptly severed his mind
from the host. For the first time he found himself to be a point of
consciousness hanging before the personage, seeing, hearing and sending.
He raised his hand in a choppy gesture. Boyle nodded, and shut his eyes. Sweat
stood out on his brow as he projected the message: "Boyle and Cantrell speaking.
Can you hear us?"
The personage jumped as if he had been shot at. He looked around cautiously and
said: "I can hear you. But who are you--where are you sending from?" In the
language of the mind there is no need of translation; with the polyphone any two
rational creatures can communicate.
The psychologists, now working as a perfect team, sent: "Speaking from the
inside of your planet. But it isn't a- planet; it's our space-ship. We're from
Earth--third planet around the sun. But let's skip the formalities. What do you
know about--" and they launched into a technical description of the shakes.
"Have you," asked the important personage, "tried polarizing the crystalline
lens of the eye? That should do it. It is not, as you thought, a
psychodeficiency lesion but--" In clear, concise thought images he gave a
complete outline of the cause and cure of spastitis malignans. And he knew what
he was talking about, for this personage later announced him self to be the
Chief Assimilator of the planetary division. He was the one who received all the
technical data and assembled it for reference and use. Specialization had raced
ahead on this planet.
"Thanks," said the psychologists at length. "Thanks a lot. We'll be heading back
to Earth now--" he broke off in dismay. "If we do, that's the end of your
people. Because as soon as our gravity plates switch off you get flung out into
space, and we can't land without switching off the plates."
"An interesting problem," brooded the Assimilator. "But not insoluble. We can
make our own plates if necessary. I advise you to set your ship-- my
planet--into an independent orbit around the Sun. In about twenty minutes of
your time we will have developed to the point where we will have our enclosed
cities reinforced against anything but collision with a major planet. We trust
you to set the orbit so that that will not happen. You must return to Earth by
some makeshift means." The Assimilator fell into a deep study, and the two
psychologists withdrew.
Boyle glanced at a stop-watch. "That whole interview," he said disbelievingly,
"lasted exactly one one-thousandth of a second. That was thinking under
pressure." Cantrell was dashing onto paper what the Assimilator had told him
about the shakes. And it made brilliant sense. He photographed his notes and
handed a copy to Boyle.
"And now?" asked Boyle, carefully buttoning the data into a pocket.
"Now we take the lifeboat," said Cantrell. He gestured distastefully at the
little bullet of metal lugged to the wall. "It's said to be the least pleasant
way of travel known to man." He turned to the control panel and set a simple
course around the sun that would maintain itself after the fuel was wholly gone.
JAMMED INTO THE little craft, cans of food floating about their ears and a
hammering roar of exhausts in their heads, they strained to see through the
little port that was the only communication from the outside. Boyle yelled
something inaudible.
"What?" shrieked Cantrell into his ear.
Boyle drew a great breath and pointed with one thumb at the little crescent of
light behind them--the Andros. "I said," he shrieked, "that it's a good thing we
got away from those submicroscopic Einsteins. They gave me an inferiority
complex."
Cantrell grinned briefly and strained his eyes to see until the world they had
made was quite invisible in the black of space.
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