The Gods Themselves

by Isaac Asimov

“I point out that at the same time that the plutonium-186 appeared, a sample of tungsten, made up of several stable isotopes, including tungsten-186, disappeared. It may have slipped over into the parallel Universe. After all, it is logical to suppose that it is simpler for an exchange of mass to take place than for a one-way transfer to do so. In the parallel Universe, tungsten-186 may be as anomalous as plutonium-186 is here. It may begin as a stable substance and slowly become increasingly radioactive. It may serve as an energy source there just as plutonium-186 would here.”

Well, duh! Right?

“It is a mistake,” he said, “to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. We know that well enough from our experience in the environmental crisis of the twentieth century. Once it was well known that cigarettes increased the incidence of lung cancer, the obvious remedy was to stop smoking, but the desired remedy was a cigarette that did not encourage cancer. When it became clear that the internal-combustion engine was polluting the atmosphere dangerously, the obvious remedy was to abandon such engines, and the desired remedy was to develop non-polluting engines. “Now then, young man, don’t ask me to stop the Pumping. The economy and comfort of the entire planet depend on it. Tell me, instead, how to keep the Pumping from exploding the Sun.”

But Dua was so non-Emotional an Emotional! She didn’t seem to care that Odeen and Tritt were so close, and she had no close friendships among the Emotionals to make her care. Of course that was it; she was so non-Emotional an Emotional. Odeen loved having her so interested in his work; loved having her so concerned and so amazingly ready of comprehension; but that was an intellectual love. The deeper feeling went to steady, stupid Tritt, who knew his place so well and who could offer so little other than exactly what counted—the security of assured routine.

Melting, somehow, would eliminate the fear.… Maybe it was because melting was like passing on. There was a period of time when you were not conscious, yet it did not hurt. It was like not existing and yet it was desirable.

“I don’t think so. The Earth has retreated. Mankind has retreated, everywhere but on the Moon. The Lunar colony is man’s frontier not just physically, but psychologically, too. Here is a world that doesn’t have a web of life to disrupt; that doesn’t have a complex environment in delicate balance to upset. Everything on the Moon that is of any use to man is man-made. The Moon is a world constructed by man from the start and out of basics. There is no past.” “Well?” “On Earth, we are unmanned by our longing for a pastoral past that never really existed; and that, if it had existed, could never exist again. In some respects, much of the ecology was disrupted in the Crisis and we are making do with the remnants so that we are frightened, always frightened.… On the Moon, there is no past to long for or dream about. There is no direction but forward.”

uhm...

I’m your Intuitionist. An Intuitionist who knows no mathematics, for heaven’s sake. So what if he knows that? What does it matter if I have intuition? How many times have you told me that my intuition has no value till it is backed by mathematical rigor and experimental observation?

“Oh, yes. Some math, too, but I was never good at

that. Come to think of it, I wasn’t particularly good in physics, either. I used to guess the answers when I was desperate; you know, guess what I was supposed to do to get the right answers. Very often, it worked and then I would be asked to explain why I had done what I did and I couldn’t do that very well. They suspected me of cheating but could never prove it.”