Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 20: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

18 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION or give a lecture, that we are con- trolling the thought and action of others?” “It isn’t the same,’’ Joe insisted. “You normals are blind and fumbling and crude about it. You just bump into one another in your threshing about. And you can always refuse to obey one another.” “Not really, Joe,” Billings said. “How long would a man last in his freedom if he refused to do the million things society required of him? I doubt if there’s much essential difference in the kind of pressure you could bring, and the kind which the whole society brings upon a man. You say we fum- ble, while you could do it expertly. I think I’d rather have an expert work on me than a fumbler. What is the difference in your planting the thought of what these scientists should do, and my sending them a written order? Great Scott, boy, if you can get them to accomplish this thing, then you must go ahead.” ‘Whatever I think needs to be done to accomplish it, doctor?” “Whatever the project requires to carry it to completion,” Billings de- fined, “remembering that this thing can be the solution for mankind, push him up to the next revolutionary rung.” Joe was silent for a little while, and then spoke slowly. “But they mustn’t know. Outside of a man’s own isolated field of knowl- edge, he’s as superstitious as all the rest. They've got all kinds of the wildest ideas about how dangerous and evil a telepath might be. They mustn’t know. You’ve got to remember that sanity in a person or a civilization is like a small boat on the surface of an ocean. If the subterranean depths get roiled up enough, the boat capsizes and there’s nothing but the storming chaos of madness.” “Is that the way we appear to you, Joe?” “That’s the way man is,” Joe said simply. “Then if you can keep from rocking the boat when you direct their think- ing on this project, you can depend on me to keep it secret, Joe.”’ Billings said reassuringly. “It’s perfectly ethical, all right, for me to control their thinking on this project, then?” “Perfectly all right, Joe,” Billings said with emphasis. And he thought he meant it. The door opened wider. It was Hoskins, in charge of the cybernetic aspects, who put the gen- eral feeling into words a few days later. “I’ve often observed,’ Hoskins said to no one in particular, as several of them sat around the general meeting room, “‘that you'll be faced with a problem which looks completely un- solvable—there’s just no point at which you can grab hold of it—then suddenly for no reason at all, the whole things smooths out.” Billings darted a quick look at Joe, but the young man, busy at a small table over in the corner of the room, did not look up from his job of as- sembling various reports into order. Another, perhaps even more signifi- cant piece of evidence became appar- ent, that the men were incorporating the problem into their thinking nor- mally. The thing acquired a name— Bossy. Suddenly everyone was using it. The animal husbandry department had supplied it. “Anybody who has ever handled cows knows they can be the most onery, cantankerous, stubborn critters you ever saw one minute, and com- pletely gentle and obedient the next,” Cconmicloooks.Cc© iin