CONSPIRACY OF GENIUS His height barely reached five feet, his spindly legs supported a bulging chest, and his eyes protruded grotesquely from a gnome-like head - but within that absurd-looking man lay the mind of a genius. It was a genius that had carried mankind deep into the secrets of creation and was now on the verge of producing living organisms from test tubes filled with inert chemicals. The world, however, ridiculed the theories of Professor Cheslin Randolph and the government refused to advance the millions needed for the final series of experiments. But Professor Randolph was determined to get the money - even if it meant turning his powerful brain to robbing a spaceship in mid-flight, using trained viruses as his accomplices.
Release date:
July 2, 2012
Publisher:
Gateway
Print pages:
320
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AFTER REMORSELESS pressure and attack succeeding attack with merciless and sacrificial ruthlessness, Black Queen scissored across the board in the final onslaught like a teeth-heavy monster of the deeps. White’s black bishop crumpled, was removed. White’s king’s rook, engulfed, was laid back in the box. The white king, at bay, surrounded and under heavy fire, covered by a lone and pitiable pawn, surrendered unconditionally.
“Mate,” said Professor Cheslin Randolph, and turned away from the chess table, picked up the latest copy of Nature and leafed through the slick pages. “Have you seen Kishimura’s letter? He claims to have synthesised poly-amino acids using Matsuoka’s nought-nine-seven technique. Oh, I know he’s using a whole primitive planet as a laboratory under stringently sterile conditions, just as I shall on Pochalin Nine; but—”
Professor Randolph stopped speaking, lifting his gnome’s head to return his guest’s deep and half-amused stare.
“You’re an amazing man, Cheslin,” said Dudley Harcourt, Vice-Chancellor. “Your mind has just grappled with the utmost concentration on a complex chess situation, yet you turn away the second the game is over and just as intensely concentrate on a fresh subject.”
“Chess is just a game. Speed, decision, attack—to win is not very clever. And it grows less amusing week by week. I’m chafing to space out to Pochalin Nine.”
The two men sat comfortably ensconced under discreet lighting in Randolph’s chambers. About them the unseen but omnipresent breath of the University pulsed beyond the glass and porcelain walls. The decanter and tobacco jars caught vagrant gleams of light as the men moved. The chambers were furnished with meticulous taste, heavy, authoritative, somehow mechanical, completely lacking any feminine grace.
“Are you over-working, Cheslin?” The Vice Chancellor spoke with the brutal frankness he reserved for friends. “Your own work devours you. Why not give it a rest—for a little time. Take a long holiday.”
Professor Randolph dropped the copy of Nature. He selected a cigar and, uncharacteristically, sniffed it, looking up with his frog’s-eyes over the rolled leaves at the Vice Chancellor. Randolph stood five feet in his socks, and his chest measurement was proportionate; only his head appeared in normal proportion to a grown man’s—and that appearance was deceptive.
“Vice Chancellor,” he now said with precise meaning. “You invite yourself for our friendly contest over the chess board. I accept because for an hour I can spare the time from my laboratory. But then you suggest: one, that I rest for a little time, and, two, that I take a long vacation.” Randolph’s smile transferred the image of his Black Queen to his own creased face. “What is it you have to say to me?”
As he had on the chess board, the Vice Chancellor crumpled under the directness of the attack.
Dudley Harcourt, as Vice Chancellor, had grown wearily resigned to swinging to the winds of desires in the University. Like some moss-encrusted weathercock, he merely pointed up the trend of events. When he exercised his own discretion, he did so deviously, through third parties. He had been unable to find anyone willing to risk the barrage of fire from tiny Professor Cheslin Randolph. So, here he was himself, uncomfortably mustering his own arsenal of weapons to combat this frightening gnome.
Harcourt had not been born on Earth. His outward face to the Galaxy was the usual tough, cynical, relaxed countenance of the star colonial, very much a stock figure, and an expected one. Over that he had carefully laid the shining veneer of academic distinction so that, at this point in his career, he was Vice Chancellor of Lewistead and not too unhappy with progress so far. Unfortunately, Professor Cheslin Randolph, occupying the chair of extraterrestrial micro-biology, posed the type of problem best represented by a nine-inch crowbar between the spokes of a turning wheel.
Unused to prolonged delay in response to a question—even from backward students—Professor Randolph took the cigar from his mouth and said, “Well, Dudley?”
Harcourt lifted both hands and let them fall, softly, onto his knees. He did not look at Randolph.
“It’s the Maxwell Fund.”
“You mean there’s a hold up? I thought everything had been settled—more negotiations? What now?”
“As I said to the Trustees. Unfortunately, this year there very well may be—further negotiations.”
Randolph sat forward, hunched in his own special chair. His tiny feet stamped impatiently on his footstool. His creased, wide face with its angry frog’s-eyes might, in a lesser man, have been merely ludicrous. When Professor Randolph puffed up his face, turned down the corners of his mouth, suddenly and with devastating effect slitted those protruding eyes, he became even to the Vice Chancellor of Lewistead a formidable and daunting figure.
When he spoke the habitual rasp had left his voice; he purred like a cat with a mouse.
“Is there to be more delay with the Maxwell Fund? This is my year for it. I’ve waited ten years for this. All my work is arranged, the Extraterrestrial Bureau has granted me Pochalin Nine, I’ve taken on Doctor Howland as chief assistant—everything for the last decade has been built up ready for this coming year. You know that. The whole establishment knows it. With the equipment I’m buying with the Maxwell Fund I shall initiate a series of experiments on Pochalin Nine culminating in—life!”
He leaned back, and his thoughts now were gripped by the obsession of his life’s work.
“I am absolutely convinced, despite certain scoffers, that I can create artificial life—of a rudimentary type, naturally. And to do that I need equipment and funds far beyond the normal college allowance. Old Maxwell with his Nuclear Weapons and his conscience created the Maxwell Fund—I’ve waited ten years. Ten years!” His cramped face radiated the tenseness which even a minor obstacle could create these days. “I’m opening up the future, Dudley! Don’t hold me back now!”
The glass and porcelain walls filtered the ribald sounds of students; in the all electric rooms not even the ticking of a clock could serve to abate the ominous silence.
At last: “Well, Dudley? This is my year for the Fund. What is your problem?”
“Cast your mind back a moment, Cheslin. Last year the Fund went to Gackenbach of Managerial Ratio-analysis. Year before to Mesarovic for Wave Mechanics. Year before that to Lewis for Endocrinology. Before that—ah—”
“Physics or Nucleonics, I expect. But what of it? That’s what the Fund is designed for. And my whole department is geared for the new equipment—we’re hungry for it.”
Randolph had refused to read into the Vice Chancellor’s attitude any menace of serious threat—the Fund was his all right—but something was bothering Harcourt. “If there is a delay my whole department would suffer. Doctor Howland is a great asset; but he’s only here on the strength of the new work. All my work would be wasted if—My results cannot be published until they have been shown to be so. I’m convinced I can do what I claim, even if people like Kawaguchi scoff. But we cannot wait too long for the Fund!”
“As you know, Cheslin, the Fund has been scheduled for a considerable number of years into the future. We have to look very carefully at the relative degrees of importance—”
“I must have the Fund—this year. It’s mine!”
“Nothing has ever been officially agreed—”
“Officially!” Something very like panic touched Randolph now; an emotion he could not at first recognize. His calm scientific manner began to fray under the ruthless ambition that was his chief characteristic, and the dominance of his personality sought blindly for a concrete target to smash and destroy. Nothing was going to stand in the way of his life’s work—nothing!
“I’m very sorry, Cheslin.” Vice Chancellor Harcourt spoke stiffly, finding the words red-hot in his mouth. “You must by now have realized that there has been a change in plan for the Maxwell Fund.”
“No! I don’t believe it! They—the Trustees—you, you wouldn’t take the fund away now …”
“It’s not a question of taking away the Fund, Cheslin. No firm decision had been reached on its disbursement this year.”
“But it was to come to me. That had been agreed as long ago as ten years …”
“No, Cheslin.” Slowly Harcourt shook his head. “Not so. Nothing was said, nothing was written—”
“But it was implied! The Chancellor himself told me the fund would be mine this year.”
“If that is so, Cheslin, the Chancellor has no memory of it.”
“No memory!”
Randolph’s tiny hand groped for the arm of his chair, gripped and clutched as though seeking the feel of a solid object in an ocean of madness. “No memory …”
“I can only say I am sorry. We’ve been good friends, Cheslin. I rather hope that will not be altered by all this, this unfortunate development.” Harcourt stared at the little man hunched in the deep armchair. Hesitatingly, he went on, “Quite off the record, I will say that my loyalty to the Chancellor and the Trustees has been seriously strained over this decision. There was talk of a resignation—mine. But you can’t fight all the deadweight of authority, Cheslin. The men with the power see they keep the power—and to hell with anyone else.”
“Power,” said Randolph, softly.
Harcourt felt profound unease. He had never before seen the little Professor so crushed, so woeful, so shattered. And that reaction surprised him. He had expected anger, indignation, righteous wrath. Those Randolph had displayed; but he had gone through them at dizzy speed to end up like this—beaten.
“Tell me, Dudley. What is to happen to the Fund this year?”
“Those people who have received the Fund over the past ten or eleven years. They have one thing in common.”
“They’ve all been lucky.”
Harcourt shook his head. “No. They’re all of the Sciences. The Maxwell Fund was designed for the use of the faculty as a whole.”
“Am I, then, no longer a member of the faculty?”
Harcourt ignored that, went doggedly on. “This year the Maxwell Fund is going to Professor Helen Chase—”
“The glamorous female with the titian hair?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve never really understood what it is she does.”
“She holds the chair of Shavian Literature—”
“The what?”
“Chair of Shavian Literature.”
Professor Randolph had to make a conscious effort to remember just what that was. He had to bring his mind away from the universe of science, back to a world and a galaxy around him that he took for granted and never thought about from one decade to the next.
“Does that mean she’s a member of the weirdies? Those odd people who creep about muttering outlandish tongues, dead these thousand years, who don’t know a parsec from an electron volt?”
“The Humanities, my dear Cheslin. The Arts.”
“And they’re the infestation stealing the Fund from me … This is a mockery! What do they need the Fund for?”
“The University badly needs a new tri-di live theatre—we have rather a good name in the Galaxy for our work there, you know.”
“Why can’t they watch television like everyone else?”
Harcourt smiled sadly. “That’s commercial. Here we are dealing with Art—with an oversize capital ‘A’.”
. . .
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