Appointment in Tomorrow
 
 
 BY FRITZ LEIBER
 
 Illustrated by ED ALEXANDER
 
 [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
 
 


 Is it possible to have a world without moral values? Or does lack of morality become a moral value, also?
 
 
 
 The first angry rays of the sun—which, startlingly enough, still rose in the east at 24 hour intervals—pierced the lacy tops of Atlantic combers and touched thousands of sleeping Americans with unconscious fear, because of their unpleasant similarity to the rays from World War III's atomic bombs.
 
 They turned to blood the witch-circle of rusty steel skeletons around Inferno in Manhattan. Without comment, they pointed a cosmic finger at the tarnished brass plaque commemorating the martyrdom of the Three Physicists after the dropping of the Hell Bomb. They tenderly touched the rosy skin and strawberry bruises on the naked shoulders of a girl sleeping off a drunk on the furry and radiantly heated floor of a nearby roof garden. They struck green magic from the glassy blot that was Old Washington. Twelve hours before, they had revealed things as eerily beautiful, and as ravaged, in Asia and Russia. They pinked the white walls of the Colonial dwelling of Morton Opperly near the Institute for Advanced Studies; upstairs they slanted impartially across the Pharoahlike and open-eyed face of the elderly physicist and the ugly, sleep-surly one of young Willard Farquar in the next room. And in nearby New Washington they made of the spire of the Thinkers' Foundation a blue and optimistic glory that outshone White House, Jr.
 
 It was America approaching the end of the Twentieth Century. America of juke-box burlesque and your local radiation hospital. America of the mask-fad for women and Mystic Christianity. America of the off-the-bosom dress and the New Blue Laws. America of the Endless War and the loyalty detector. America of marvelous Maizie and the monthly rocket to Mars. America of the Thinkers and (a few remembered) the Institute. "Knock on titanium," "Whadya do for black-outs," "Please, lover, don't think when I'm around," America, as combat-shocked and crippled as the rest of the bomb-shattered planet.
 
 Not one impudent photon of the sunlight penetrated the triple-paned, polarizing windows of Jorj Helmuth's bedroom in the Thinker's Foundation, yet the clock in his brain awakened him to the minute, or almost. Switching off the Educational Sandman in the midst of the phrase, "... applying tensor calculus to the nucleus," he took a deep, even breath and cast his mind to the limits of the world and his knowledge. It was a somewhat shadowy vision, but, he noted with impartial approval, definitely less shadowy than yesterday morning.
 
 Employing a rapid mental scanning technique, he next cleared his memory chains of false associations, including those acquired while asleep. These chores completed, he held his finger on a bedside button, which rotated the polarizing window panes until the room slowly filled with a muted daylight. Then, still flat on his back, he turned his head until he could look at the remarkably beautiful blonde girl asleep beside him.
 
 

 
 Remembering last night, he felt a pang of exasperation, which he instantly quelled by taking his mind to a higher and dispassionate level from which he could look down on the girl and even himself as quaint, clumsy animals. Still, he grumbled silently, Caddy might have had enough consideration to clear out before he awoke. He wondered if he shouldn't have used his hypnotic control of the girl to smooth their relationship last night, and for a moment the word that would send her into deep trance trembled on the tip of his tongue. But no, that special power of his over her was reserved for far more important purposes.
 
 Pumping dynamic tension into his 20-year-old muscles and confidence into his 60-year-old mind, the 40-year-old Thinker rose from bed. No covers had to be thrown off; the nuclear heating unit made them unnecessary. He stepped into his clothing—the severe tunic, tights and sockassins of the modern business man. Next he glanced at the message tape beside his phone, washed down with ginger ale a vita-amino-enzyme tablet, and walked to the window. There, gazing along the rows of newly planted mutant oaks lining Decontamination Avenue, his smooth face broke into a smile.
 
 It had come to him, the next big move in the intricate game making up his life—and mankind's. Come to him during sleep, as so many of his best decisions did, because he regularly employed the time-saving technique of somno-thought, which could function at the same time as somno-learning.
 
 He set his who?-where? robot for "Rocket Physicist" and "Genius Class." While it worked, he dictated to his steno-robot the following brief message:
 
 Dear Fellow Scientist:
 
 A project is contemplated that will have a crucial bearing on man's future in deep space. Ample non-military Government funds are available. There was a time when professional men scoffed at the Thinkers. Then there was a time when the Thinkers perforce neglected the professional men. Now both times are past. May they never return! I would like to consult you this afternoon, three o'clock sharp, Thinkers' Foundation I.
 
 
 Jorj Helmuth
 
 Meanwhile the who?-where? had tossed out a dozen cards. He glanced through them, hesitated at the name "Willard Farquar," looked at the sleeping girl, then quickly tossed them all into the addresso-robot and plugged in the steno-robot.
 
 The buzz-light blinked green and he switched the phone to audio.
 
 "The President is waiting to see Maizie, sir," a clear feminine voice announced. "He has the general staff with him."
 
 "Martian peace to him," Jorj Helmuth said. "Tell him I'll be down in a few minutes."
 
 

 
 Huge as a primitive nuclear reactor, the great electronic brain loomed above the knot of hush-voiced men. It almost filled a two-story room in the Thinkers' Foundation. Its front was an orderly expanse of controls, indicators, telltales, and terminals, the upper ones reached by a chair on a boom.
 
 Although, as far as anyone knew, it could sense only the information and questions fed into it on a tape, the human visitors could not resist the impulse to talk in whispers and glance uneasily at the great cryptic cube. After all, it had lately taken to moving some of its own controls—the permissible ones—and could doubtless improvise a hearing apparatus if it wanted to.
 
 For this was the thinking machine beside which the Marks and Eniacs and Maniacs and Maddidas and Minervas and Mimirs were less than Morons. This was the machine with a million times as many synapses as the human brain, the machine that remembered by cutting delicate notches in the rims of molecules (instead of kindergarten paper-punching or the Coney Island shimmying of columns of mercury). This was the machine that had given instructions on building the last three-quarters of itself. This was the goal, perhaps, toward which fallible human reasoning and biased human judgment and feeble human ambition had evolved.
  This was the machine that really thought—a million-plus!
 
 
 This was the machine that the timid cyberneticists and stuffy professional scientists had said could not be built. Yet this was the machine that the Thinkers, with characteristic Yankee push, had built. And nicknamed, with characteristic Yankee irreverence and girl-fondness, "Maizie."
 
 Gazing up at it, the President of the United States felt a chord plucked within him that hadn't been sounded for decades, the dark and shivery organ chord of his Baptist childhood. Here, in a strange sense, although his reason rejected it, he felt he stood face to face with the living God: infinitely stern with the sternness of reality, yet infinitely just. No tiniest error or wilful misstep could ever escape the scrutiny of this vast mentality. He shivered.
 
 

 
 The grizzled general—there was also one who was gray—was thinking that this was a very odd link in the chain of command. Some shadowy and usually well-controlled memories from World War II faintly stirred his ire. Here he was giving orders to a being immeasurably more intelligent than himself. And always orders of the "Tell me how to kill that man" rather than the "Kill that man" sort. The distinction bothered him obscurely. It relieved him to know that Maizie had built-in controls which made her always the servant of humanity, or of humanity's right-minded leaders—even the Thinkers weren't certain which.
 
 The gray general was thinking uneasily, and, like the President, at a more turbid level, of the resemblance between Papal infallibility and the dictates of the machine. Suddenly his bony wrists began to tremble. He asked himself: Was this the Second Coming? Mightn't an incarnation be in metal rather than flesh?
 
 The austere Secretary of State was remembering what he'd taken such pains to make everyone forget: his youthful flirtation at Lake Success with Buddhism. Sitting before his guru , his teacher, feeling the Occidental's awe at the wisdom of the East, or its pretense, he had felt a little like this.
 
 The burly Secretary of Space, who had come up through United Rockets, was thanking his stars that at any rate the professional scientists weren't responsible for this job. Like the grizzled general, he'd always felt suspicious of men who kept telling you how to do things, rather than doing them themselves. In World War III he'd had his fill of the professional physicists, with their eternal taint of a misty sort of radicalism and free-thinking. The Thinkers were better—more disciplined, more human. They'd called their brain-machine Maizie, which helped take the curse off her. Somewhat.
 
 

 
 The President's Secretary, a paunchy veteran of party caucuses, was also glad that it was the Thinkers who had created the machine, though he trembled at the power that it gave them over the Administration. Still, you could do business with the Thinkers. And nobody (not even the Thinkers) could do business (that sort of business) with Maizie!
 
 Before that great square face with its thousands of tiny metal features, only Jorj Helmuth seemed at ease, busily entering on the tape the complex Questions of the Day that the high officials had handed him: logistics for the Endless War in Pakistan, optimum size for next year's sugar-corn crop, current thought trends in average Soviet minds—profound questions, yet many of them phrased with surprising simplicity. For figures, technical jargon, and layman's language were alike to Maizie; there was no need to translate into mathematical shorthand, as with the lesser brain-machines.
 
 The click of the taper went on until the Secretary of State had twice nervously fired a cigaret with his ultrasonic lighter and twice quickly put it away. No one spoke.
 
 Jorj looked up at the Secretary of Space. "Section Five, Question Four—whom would that come from?"
 
 The burly man frowned. "That would be the physics boys, Opperly's group. Is anything wrong?"
 
 Jorj did not answer. A bit later he quit taping and began to adjust controls, going up on the boom-chair to reach some of them. Eventually he came down and touched a few more, then stood waiting.
 
 From the great cube came a profound, steady purring. Involuntarily the six officials backed off a bit. Somehow it was impossible for a man to get used to the sound of Maizie starting to think.
 
 

 
 Jorj turned, smiling. "And now, gentlemen, while we wait for Maizie to celebrate, there should be just enough time for us to watch the takeoff of the Mars rocket." He switched on a giant television screen. The others made a quarter turn, and there before them glowed the rich ochres and blues of a New Mexico sunrise and, in the middle distance, a silvery mighty spindle.
 
 Like the generals, the Secretary of Space suppressed a scowl. Here was something that ought to be spang in the center of his official territory, and the Thinkers had locked him completely out of it. That rocket there—just an ordinary Earth satellite vehicle commandeered from the Army, but equipped by the Thinkers with Maizie-designed nuclear motors capable of the Mars journey and more. The first spaceship—and the Secretary of Space was not in on it!
 
 Still, he told himself, Maizie had decreed it that way. And when he remembered what the Thinkers had done for him in rescuing him from breakdown with their mental science, in rescuing the whole Administration from collapse he realized he had to be satisfied. And that was without taking into consideration the amazing additional mental discoveries that the Thinkers were bringing down from Mars.
 
 "Lord," the President said to Jorj as if voicing the Secretary's feeling, "I wish you people could bring a couple of those wise little devils back with you this trip. Be a good thing for the country."
 
 Jorj looked at him a bit coldly. "It's quite unthinkable," he said.
"The telepathic abilities of the Martians make them extremely sensitive. The conflicts of ordinary Earth minds would impinge on them psychotically, even fatally. As you know, the Thinkers were able to contact them only because of our degree of learned mental poise and errorless memory-chains. So for the present it must be our task alone to glean from the Martians their astounding mental skills. Of course, some day in the future, when we have discovered how to armor the minds of the Martians—"
 
 "Sure, I know," the President said hastily. "Shouldn't have mentioned it, Jorj."
 
 Conversation ceased. They waited with growing tension for the great violet flames to bloom from the base of the silvery shaft.
 
 

 
 Meanwhile the question tape, like a New Year's streamer tossed out a high window into the night, sped on its dark way along spinning rollers. Curling with an intricate aimlessness curiously like that of such a streamer, it tantalized the silvery fingers of a thousand relays, saucily evaded the glances of ten thousand electric eyes, impishly darted down a narrow black alleyway of memory banks, and, reaching the center of the cube, suddenly emerged into a small room where a suave fat man in shorts sat drinking beer.
 
 He flipped the tape over to him with practiced finger, eyeing it as a stockbroker might have studied a ticker tape. He read the first question, closed his eyes and frowned for five seconds. Then with the staccato self-confidence of a hack writer, he began to tape out the answer.
 
 For many minutes the only sounds were the rustle of the paper ribbon and the click of the taper, except for the seconds the fat man took to close his eyes, or to drink or pour beer. Once, too, he lifted a phone, asked a concise question, waited half a minute, listened to an answer, then went back to the grind.
 
 Until he came to Section Five, Question Four. That time he did his thinking with his eyes open.
 
 The question was: "Does Maizie stand for Maelzel?"
 
 He sat for a while slowly scratching his thigh. His loose, persuasive lips tightened, without closing, into the shape of a snarl.
 
 Suddenly he began to tape again.
 
 "Maizie does not stand for Maelzel. Maizie stands for amazing, humorously given the form of a girl's name. Section Six, Answer One: The mid-term election viewcasts should be spaced as follows...."
 
 But his lips didn't lose the shape of a snarl.
 
 

 
 Five hundred miles above the ionosphere, the Mars rocket cut off its fuel and slumped gratefully into an orbit that would carry it effortlessly around the world at that altitude. The pilot unstrapped himself and stretched, but he didn't look out the viewport at the dried-mud disc that was Earth, cloaked in its haze of blue sky. He knew he had two maddening months ahead of him in which to do little more than that. Instead, he unstrapped Sappho.
 
 Used to free fall from two previous experiences, and loving it, the fluffy little cat was soon bounding about the cabin in curves and gyrations that would have made her the envy of all back-alley and parlor felines on the planet below. A miracle cat in the dream world of free fall. For a long time she played with a string that the man would toss out lazily. Sometimes she caught the string on the fly, sometimes she swam for it frantically.
 
 After a while the man grew bored with the game. He unlocked a drawer and began to study the details of the wisdom he would discover on Mars this trip—priceless spiritual insights that would be balm to war-battered mankind.
 
 The cat carefully selected a spot three feet off the floor, curled up on the air, and went to sleep.
 
 

 
 Jorj Helmuth snipped the emerging answer tape into sections and handed each to the appropriate man. Most of them carefully tucked theirs away with little more than a glance, but the Secretary of Space puzzled over his.
 
 "Who the devil would Maelzel be?" he asked.
 
 A remote look came into the eyes of the Secretary of State. "Edgar Allen Poe," he said frowningly, with eyes half-closed.
 
 The grizzled general snapped his fingers. "Sure! Maelzel's Chess player. Read it when I was a kid. About an automaton that was supposed to play chess. Poe proved it hid a man inside it."
 
 The Secretary of Space frowned. "Now what's the point in a fool question like that?"
 
 "You said it came from Opperly's group?" Jorj asked sharply.
 
 The Secretary of Space nodded. The others looked at the two men puzzledly.
 
 "Who would that be?" Jorj pressed. "The group, I mean."
 
 The Secretary of Space shrugged. "Oh, the usual little bunch over at the Institute. Hindeman, Gregory, Opperly himself. Oh, yes, and young Farquar."
 
 "Sounds like Opperly's getting senile," Jorj commented coldly. "I'd investigate."
 
 The Secretary of Space nodded. He suddenly looked tough. "I will. Right away."
 
 

 
 Sunlight striking through French windows spotlighted a ballet of dust motes untroubled by air-conditioning. Morton Opperly's living room was well-kept but worn and quite behind the times. Instead of reading tapes there were books; instead of steno-robots, pen and ink; while in place of a four by six TV screen, a Picasso hung on the wall. Only Opperly knew that the painting was still faintly radioactive, that it had been riskily so when he'd smuggled it out of his bomb-singed apartment in New York City.
 
 The two physicists fronted each other across a coffee table. The face of the elder was cadaverous, large-eyed, and tender—fined down by a long life of abstract thought. That of the younger was forceful, sensuous, bulky as his body, and exceptionally ugly. He looked rather like a bear.
 
 Opperly was saying, "So when he asked who was responsible for the Maelzel question, I said I didn't remember." He smiled. "They still allow me my absent-mindedness, since it nourishes their contempt. Almost my sole remaining privilege." The smile faded. "Why do you keep on teasing the zoo animals, Willard?" he asked without rancor. "I've maintained many times that we shouldn't truckle to them by yielding to their demand that we ask Maizie questions. You and the rest have overruled me. But then to use those questions to convey veiled insults isn't reasonable. Apparently the Secretary of Space was bothered enough about this last one to pay me a 'copter call within twenty minutes of this morning's meeting at the Foundation. Why do you do it, Willard?"
 
 The features of the other convulsed unpleasantly. "Because the Thinkers are charlatans who must be exposed," he rapped out. "We know their Maizie is no more than a tealeaf-reading fake. We've traced their Mars rockets and found they go nowhere. We know their Martian mental science is bunk."
 
 "But we've already exposed the Thinkers very thoroughly," Opperly interposed quietly. "You know the good it did."
 
 Farquar hunched his Japanese-wrestler shoulders. "Then it's got to be done until it takes."
 
 Opperly studied the bowl of mutated flowers by the coffee pot. "I think you just want to tease the animals, for some personal reason of which you probably aren't aware."
 
 Farquar scowled. "We're the ones in the cages."
 
 

 
 Opperly continued his inspection of the flowers' bells. "All the more reason not to poke sticks through the bars at the lions and tigers strolling outside. No, Willard, I'm not counseling appeasement. But consider the age in which we live. It wants magicians." His voice grew especially tranquil. "A scientist tells people the truth. When times are good—that is, when the truth offers no threat—people don't mind. But when times are very, very bad...." A shadow darkened his eyes.
"Well, we all know what happened to—" And he mentioned three names that had been household words in the middle of the century. They were the names on the brass plaque dedicated to the martyred three physicists.
 
 He went on, "A magician, on the other hand, tells people what they wish were true—that perpetual motion works, that cancer can be cured by colored lights, that a psychosis is no worse than a head cold, that they'll live forever. In good times magicians are laughed at. They're a luxury of the spoiled wealthy few. But in bad times people sell their souls for magic cures, and buy perpetual motion machines to power their war rockets."
 
 Farquar clenched his fist. "All the more reason to keep chipping away at the Thinkers. Are we supposed to beg off from a job because it's difficult and dangerous?"
 
 Opperly shook his head. "We're to keep clear of the infection of violence. In my day, Willard, I was one of the Frightened Men. Later I was one of the Angry Men and then one of the Minds of Despair. Now I'm convinced that all my reactions were futile."
 
 "Exactly!" Farquar agreed harshly. "You reacted. You didn't act. If you men who discovered atomic energy had only formed a secret league, if you'd only had the foresight and the guts to use your tremendous bargaining position to demand the power to shape mankind's future...."
 
 "By the time you were born, Willard," Opperly interrupted dreamily,
"Hitler was merely a name in the history books. We scientists weren't the stuff out of which cloak-and-dagger men are made. Can you imagine Oppenheimer wearing a mask or Einstein sneaking into the Old White House with a bomb in his briefcase?" He smiled. "Besides, that's not the way power is seized. New ideas aren't useful to the man bargaining for power—only established facts or lies are."
 
 "Just the same, it would have been a good thing if you'd had a little violence in you."
 
 "No," Opperly said.
 
 "I've got violence in me," Farquar announced, shoving himself to his feet.
 
 

 
 Opperly looked up from the flowers. "I think you have," he agreed.
 
 "But what are we to do?" Farquar demanded. "Surrender the world to charlatans without a struggle?"
 
 Opperly mused for a while. "I don't know what the world needs now. Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher's stone. Which Newton did the world need then?"
 
 "Now you are justifying the Thinkers!"
 
 "No, I leave that to history."
 
 "And history consists of the actions of men," Farquar concluded. "I intend to act. The Thinkers are vulnerable, their power fantastically precarious. What's it based on? A few lucky guesses. Faith-healing. Some science hocus-pocus, on the level of those juke-box burlesque acts between the strips. Dubious mental comfort given to a few nerve-torn neurotics in the Inner Cabinet—and their wives. The fact that the Thinkers' clever stage-managing won the President a doubtful election. The erroneous belief that the Soviets pulled out of Iraq and Iran because of the Thinkers' Mind Bomb threat. A brain-machine that's just a cover for Jan Tregarron's guesswork. Oh, yes, and that hogwash of
'Martian wisdom.' All of it mere bluff! A few pushes at the right times and points are all that are needed—and the Thinkers know it! I'll bet they're terrified already, and will be more so when they find that we're gunning for them. Eventually they'll be making overtures to us, turning to us for help. You wait and see."
 
 "I am thinking again of Hitler," Opperly interposed quietly. "On his first half dozen big steps, he had nothing but bluff. His generals were against him. They knew they were in a cardboard fort. Yet he won every battle, until the last. Moreover," he pressed on, cutting Farquar short, "the power of the Thinkers isn't based on what they've got, but on what the world hasn't got—peace, honor, a good conscience...."
 
 The front-door knocker clanked. Farquar answered it. A skinny old man with a radiation scar twisting across his temple handed him a tiny cylinder. "Radiogram for you, Willard." He grinned across the hall at Opperly. "When are you going to get a phone put in, Mr. Opperly?"
 
 The physicist waved to him. "Next year, perhaps, Mr. Berry."
 
 The old man snorted with good-humored incredulity and trudged off.
 
 "What did I tell you about the Thinkers making overtures?" Farquar chortled suddenly. "It's come sooner than I expected. Look at this."
 
 He held out the radiogram, but the older man didn't take it. Instead he asked, "Who's it from? Tregarron?"
 
 "No, from Helmuth. There's a lot of sugar corn about man's future in deep space, but the real reason is clear. They know that they're going to have to produce an actual nuclear rocket pretty soon, and for that they'll need our help."
 
 "An invitation?"
 
 Farquar nodded. "For this afternoon." He noticed Opperly's anxious though distant frown. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Are you bothered about my going? Are you thinking it might be a trap—that after the Maelzel question they may figure I'm better rubbed out?"
 
 The older man shook his head. "I'm not afraid for your life, Willard. That's yours to risk as you choose. No, I'm worried about other things they might do to you."
 
 "What do you mean?" Farquar asked.
 
 

 
 Opperly looked at him with a gentle appraisal. "You're a strong and vital man, Willard, with a strong man's prides and desires." His voice trailed off for a bit. Then, "Excuse me, Willard, but wasn't there a girl once? A Miss Arkady?"
 
 Farquar's ungainly figure froze. He nodded curtly, face averted.
 
 "And didn't she go off with a Thinker?"
 
 "If girls find me ugly, that's their business," Farquar said harshly, still not looking at Opperly. "What's that got to do with this invitation?"
 
 Opperly didn't answer the question. His eyes got more distant. Finally he said, "In my day we had it a lot easier. A scientist was an academician, cushioned by tradition."
 
 Willard snorted. "Science had already entered the era of the police inspectors, with laboratory directors and political appointees stifling enterprise."
 
 "Perhaps," Opperly agreed. "Still, the scientist lived the safe, restricted, highly respectable life of a university man. He wasn't exposed to the temptations of the world."
 
 Farquar turned on him. "Are you implying that the Thinkers will somehow be able to buy me off?"
 
 "Not exactly."
 
 "You think I'll be persuaded to change my aims?" Farquar demanded angrily.
 
 Opperly shrugged his helplessness. "No, I don't think you'll change your aims."
 
 Clouds encroaching from the west blotted the parallelogram of sunlight between the two men.
 
 

 
 As the slideway whisked him gently along the corridor toward his apartment, Jorj was thinking of his spaceship. For a moment the silver-winged vision crowded everything else out of his mind.
 
 Just think, a spaceship with sails! He smiled a bit, marveling at the paradox.
 
 Direct atomic power. Direct utilization of the force of the flying neutrons. No more ridiculous business of using a reactor to drive a steam engine, or boil off something for a jet exhaust—processes that were as primitive and wasteful as burning gunpowder to keep yourself warm.
 
 Chemical jets would carry his spaceship above the atmosphere. Then would come the thrilling order, "Set sail for Mars!" The vast umbrella would unfold and open out around the stern, its rear or Earthward side a gleaming expanse of radioactive ribbon perhaps only an atom thick and backed with a material that would reflect neutrons. Atoms in the ribbon would split, blasting neutrons astern at fantastic velocities. Reaction would send the spaceship hurtling forward.
 
 In airless space, the expanse of sails would naturally not retard the ship. More radioactive ribbon, manufactured as needed in the ship itself, would feed out onto the sail as that already there became exhausted.
 
 A spaceship with direct nuclear drive—and he, a Thinker, had conceived it completely except for the technical details! Having strengthened his mind by hard years of somno-learning, mind-casting, memory-straightening, and sensory training, he had assured himself of the executive power to control the technicians and direct their specialized abilities. Together they would build the true Mars rocket.
 
 But that would only be a beginning. They would build the true Mind Bomb. They would build the true Selective Microbe Slayer. They would discover the true laws of ESP and the inner life. They would even—his imagination hesitated a moment, then strode boldly forward—build the true Maizie!
 
 And then ... then the Thinkers would be on even terms with the scientists. Rather, they'd be far ahead. No more deception.
 
 He was so exalted by this thought that he almost let the slideway carry him past his door. He stepped inside and called, "Caddy!" He waited a moment, then walked through the apartment, but she wasn't there.
 
 

 
 Confound the girl, he couldn't help thinking. This morning, when she should have made herself scarce, she'd sprawled about sleeping. Now, when he felt like seeing her, when her presence would have added a pleasant final touch to his glowing mood, she chose to be absent. He really should use his hypnotic control on her, he decided, and again there sprang into his mind the word—a pet form of her name—that would send her into obedient trance.
 
 No, he told himself again, that was to be reserved for some moment of crisis or desperate danger, when he would need someone to strike suddenly and unquestioningly for himself and mankind. Caddy was merely a wilful and rather silly girl, incapable at present of understanding the tremendous tensions under which he operated. When he had time for it, he would train her up to be a fitting companion without hypnosis.
 
 Yet the fact of her absence had a subtly disquieting effect. It shook his perfect self-confidence just a fraction. He asked himself if he'd been wise in summoning the rocket physicists without consulting Tregarron.
 
 But this mood, too, he conquered quickly. Tregarron wasn't his boss, but just the Thinker's most clever salesman, an expert in the mumbo-jumbo so necessary for social control in this chaotic era. He himself, Jorj Helmuth, was the real leader in theoretics and all-over strategy, the mind behind the mind behind Maizie.
 
 He stretched himself on the bed, almost instantly achieved maximum relaxation, turned on the somno-learner, and began the two hour rest he knew would be desirable before the big conference.
What is the plot of the story?
101
586401e9268b4ce0b0d7846bff808bd9
Following World War III at the end of the 20th century, American society is dependent upon a machine created by the Thinker's Foundation; this machine, named Maizie, has the ability to answer any question posed to it, and it is used often by politicians and public figures for societal decision making. Jorj Helmuth, a Thinker with hypnotic abilities, awakes with a girl, Caddy, asleep beside him. Jorj is struck with a revelation about new developments in his work towards space domination, and he sends a letter to a group of physicists calling for a meeting later that afternoon. Jorj is then alerted that the President has arrived to consult Maizie. He commences the daily procedure of feeding the machine questions through a tape, and meanwhile attention turns to a broadcast of a rocket taking off to Mars. The Secretary of Space, who joined the President, is wary of his exclusion in this project, but disregards it as he credits Maizie for the decision. Jorj discloses that the Thinkers plan to find ways to gain access to and control of Martian minds. As Maizie begins answering questions, one of them sparks curiosity, asking whether Maizie is short for Maelzel. The machine responds with "no" as the officials are perplexed by the question, which references a character in a story by Edgar Allen Poe in which a machine was found to be fake and operated by a man. Apparently, the question came from a member of Opperly's group, a team of physicists; Jorj advises that the issue be looked into. Later, scientists Opperly and Farquar discuss the previous events. Opperly says that he covered for Farquar, who submitted the question, but still disagrees with his decision to dig at the Thinkers. Farquar believes that the Thinkers, along with Maizie, are fakes and ought to be exposed. Farquar and Opperly go back and forth, debating whether or not exposing the Thinkers is worth violence or energy, when Farquar receives a message from Jorj regarding the meeting about his space project. Opperly is skeptical of Jorj's motives, but Farquar plans to go anyway. On his way home, Jorj ponders the future of the Thinkers with excitement, eagerly awaiting a future where they would be on the same level of the Scientists, and where they would build the true Maizie.
102
25ab2bf309d14aeaa7cd2a7d7585aa1d
In an alternate history of America, wherein World War III has occurred, Jorj Helmuth wakes up and turns off the device which enables him to learn in his sleep. Jorj is a forty year old Thinker, a class of individuals who work with the US government on various projects, such as monthly rockets to Mars and a super-intelligent computer Maizie. As Jorj prepares for his day, he receives a call from the President, who is waiting to see Maizie. 
Maizie, a large computer with large panels, controls, indicators, and terminals occupies a two-story room in the Thinkers’ Foundation, in which the President and members of his cabinet are waiting. It is described as many times more intelligent than humans, and was built by the Thinkers despite the skepticism of cyberneticists and scientists. The president, his secretary, two generals, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Space regard Maizie with reverence, speaking in hushed tones for fear that it could overhear them despite the knowledge that it only receives input from the ticker tape fed to it. Jorj enters onto the tape questions from the officials, before noticing an errant question, which he learns is from Morton Opperly’s group of physicists. He feeds the tape to Maizie, which begins to emit a noise indicative of the start of its processes.
As they await Maizie’s answers, Jorj directs their attention to a television screen broadcasting the launch of a rocket to Mars. We learn that Martians have imparted profound wisdom through the Thinkers to the world, which still suffers from the effects of the third world war. In response to the President’s wish that Martians be brought to Earth to directly share their mental science, Jorj reminds him that only the Thinkers’ minds can safely interact with the Martians’. 
The narrator reveals that inside Maizie is, rather than complicated machinery etching the edges of molecules to store information, a man who manually answers the input questions. He pauses when he reaches the question from Opperly’s group, which asks if Maizie stands for Maelzel. He types out a response in the negative and continues. It is also revealed that the rocket launched for Mars only travels acutely beyond the ionosphere, rather than to its advertised destination. The astronaut, who is accompanied by his cat, reads about the knowledge which he would pass off as Martian wisdom upon his descent to Earth. 
Maizie has returned the output tape, and the Secretary of Space wonders aloud who Maelzel is. One of the generals recalls that it is from a story about a chess automaton inside which was actually a man. They dismiss Opperly’s group as confused. 
In Opperly’s residence however, Opperly and Willard Farquar discuss the Thinkers’ deception. Though Farquar aims to reveal the sham, Opperly is unsure he will succeed, citing that people want to be told what they wish were true. Farquhar receives an invitation from Jorj, which they surmise is because of a demand for rockets in the near future.

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The story is set after World War III. Jorj is a Thinker that occasionally uses hypnotic control on a girl named Caddy to make her agreeable with him. The Thinkers have made big claims that they have achieved great technological feats. They claim that they have created a cubic brain-machine that is intelligent and knows everything. They say the machine event helped finished building itself. They also have claimed that they have nuclear powered Mars rockets. This too is not true. They send a person to space pretending that the person is headed towards Mars, when in reality that person will be circling the Earth for two months. Not everyone knows of the lies, the President and secretary of state do not. 

During a review of the tapes for Maizie, the group comes across an unusual question asking about Maizie. Jorj finds out that the question was written by Opperly’s group. Opperly and Farquar are two scientists that know of the Thinkers deception. Farquar is the one who wrote the question, to Opperly’s dismay. Caddy was previously with Farquar, before she went with Jorj. 

Opperly and Farquar disagree over how they should respond to the Thinker’s deceptions. Farquar wants to act with violence to continue to try to expose them. Opperly reasons that they tried to expose the Thinkers before and nothing happened, so they should cut their losses. Farquar suggests that the Thinkers are vulnerable because their technology does not exist and it would be easy to attack them. Opperly is concerned that the Thinkers may be able to buy Farquar off if they offer Caddy back to him. 

At the end of the story, Jorj has plans to make sure the Thinkers no longer have to use deception. He excitedly thinks of how the Thinkers can build the true Mars rocket and even perhaps the true Maizie and goes to sleep with these thoughts in his mind. 

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After waking up, Jorj Helmuth, a Thinker, sends a message to Farquar and the other professionals so that he can get help in building a rocket. He states that he has funds from the government and wishes to work together. Importantly, the girl, who is sleeping next to Jorj, is controls hypnotically by Jorj, and she is somehow connected to Farquar. 

The president then shows up waiting to see Maizie. Standing before the two stories high electrical brain, he feels like he is seeing the actual God. Not only does he feels so, the generals wonders if this is the Second Coming, the Secretary of State feels the power and respect in wisdom that this machine has, the Secretary of Space is relieved that the Thinks are the ones who built it rather than the professional physicists who does not get things done but simply tell you how things should be done. While surprised at the question that the Opperly’s group asked, Jorj simply entered all the questions for Maizie to solve on the tape. Then he suggests that the government officials should watch the takeoff of the rocket that is going to Mars. While the Secretary of Space is somewhat angry at Jorj for not even informing him about the spaceship, he tells himself that the Thinkers had rescued him from breakdowns and will be bringing mental discoveries from Mars. 

As Maizie continues to work, the readers learn that there is actually a person that work on the questions as they enter into Maizie. He reads the questions and write down their answers. Interestingly, he also notices the question from the Opperly’s group. It makes him somewhat angry. After the rocket goes into space, Jorj gives the answers that are produced by Maizie to each government official. Then we learn that the Opperly’s group is asking about Maelzel. Maelzel was a chess playing machine that was proven to have a man hidden inside it. Later we learned that the Opperly’s group knows that Maizie also has a man hidden in it, and they wanted to tease them. Which is why they wrote the question. Apparently they succeeded, since the question got Jorj angry.

We then see two physicists, namely Opperly and Farquar, arguing over whether the world needs a magician or a physicist right now when the invitation that Jorj previously sent arrives. Opperly is suspicious of the invitation and what they will do to Farquar, mentioning the girl that ran off with a Thinker. Indeed, Jorj is not only thinking of building a Mars rocket, he also want to have other things built such as Maizie, so that the Thinkers will be farther ahead from with the scientists. But Farquar does not think so.
How does Maizie work, and how is this significant to the story?
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586401e9268b4ce0b0d7846bff808bd9
Maizie is a large contraption that occupies a room in the Thinker's Foundation. It consists of various controls, cables, and synapses, more than the human brain. It reads questions through information fed on a tape. Once Maizie processes the questions and conjures up answers, it delivers information back through a man who translates the tape into an answer. The main point regarding Maizie is that little to no one knows how it truly works, which is why it is regarded even by the President as a superior guide for intelligence. Maizie appears to be intimidating with its incomprehensible parts and gadgets, but the process in which it delivers simple answers to questions allows the public to trust it with decisions.
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25ab2bf309d14aeaa7cd2a7d7585aa1d
Maizie, which is regarded as a super-intelligent computer capable of answering complex problems about governance and political strategy, is in fact merely a unit housing a man who manually answers the questions posed to the machine. Jorj Helmuth, a member of a group called the Thinkers, inputs questions onto tape which are fed to Maizie, and the tape rolls along inside the machine and emerges in the room containing the man. He tapes out answers, which are output and given by Jorj to those who asked the question. 
This deception is a common strategy of the Thinkers, who have also faked travel to Mars, among other inventions. However, they hope to one day be able to construct all those things in order to stand on equal footing as scientists.
Maizie is a means by which the Thinkers have influenced politics, and through which they have acquired power. It is hypothesized by Opperly, an elderly physicist, who knows how Maizie works, that the success of the deception is a result of their era, which yearns for fantastical solutions. The decision to reveal Maizie to the world is a topic of conversation between Opperly and a younger member of his group, Willard Farquar, who wants to expose the machine. 

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Maizie is a brain machine built by the Thinkers. The Thinkers publicly claim that is a million times more synapses than a human brain. They say that Maizie has incredible intelligent capabilities. The reason Maizie is significant to the story is that Opperly and Farquar reveal how Maizie is actually fake. Someone records the answers for Maizie to recite. The Thinkers came into power because they were able to present incredible feats of technology like Maizie, but the technology turns out to not actually exist. Jorj Helmuth claims to be the mind that is behind the ‘mind’ of Maizie. 
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Maizie is supposed to be the thinking machine that has a million times more synapses than human brains have. It should take in the questions by humans entering it on the tape, and report answers back. Maizie was set up to work for the humans or the right-minded leaders of humans. However, Maizie does not work the way that the government believes it does, or the way that the Thinkers want them to believe. Instead, there is literally a fat man sitting in the middle of the room, he looks through the tapes that are sent in to his room and then writes down the answers to each of those questions. To the government officials, this is magical and believable, and they take advises from the machine. However, apparently the physicists knew the actual way that Maizie works, they do not want to be fooled and teased the Thinkers by sending them a question. On the question, it asks if Maizie stands for Maelzel. Maelzel is a chess playing machine that turned out to have a man inside it, exactly the same with Maizie. While the government officials did not seem to understand the mockery in it, the Thinkers did.
Who are the Thinkers and how are they significant to the story?
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586401e9268b4ce0b0d7846bff808bd9
The Thinkers are magicians who dominate the current society. When America was in crisis post-World War III, they provided solutions to problems and questions, and acted as a more structured, moral, "human" group for leadership than physicists prior. The Thinkers are the creators of Maizie, a brain-like computer that answers any question; Maizie is used by many in government to make drastic decisions with the goal of preserving humanity. The Thinkers are also working towards a larger plan of moving their work to Mars, ultimately dominating Martians the same way they dominated Earth. There is also controversy surrounding the Thinkers, mainly from the Physicists, who believe that their work relies on the desperation of society and is fraudulent.
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25ab2bf309d14aeaa7cd2a7d7585aa1d
The Thinkers are a group of individuals led by Jorj Helmuth. Their members include Helmuth, a man who is an intermediary between government officials and the Thinkers’ super-intelligent machine Maizie, Tregarron, the man inside Maizie who produces its responses, and an unnamed astronaut who the world thinks travels to Mars and returns with Martian wisdom, when in fact he merely floats in the upper atmosphere. 
The Thinkers have deceived government officials, including the President of the United States and his cabinet, with the use of Maizie, a machine which is advertised as being able to solve complex problems of every type. In fact, Maizie is operated by a man who writes its responses. The story revolves around an interaction between the President, his cabinet and Maizie; a discussion is also had between two physicists, Farquar and Opperly, who are aware of the Thinkers’ deception but are in disagreement with one another about whether their information should be more thoroughly shared. 

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The Thinkers are a group of people that won a Presidential election. Farquar exclaims that their power was not earned because of their technology but because the world is not at peace. The Thinkers are significant to the story because they make many claims about their technologies and innovations. They claim they built a cube called Maizie which is a brain machine. In addition, they have told people that they built Mars rockets with nuclear motors designed by Maizie. Neither of the two inventions are true, but rather they are deceptions. Farquar calls them Charlatans for the magician-like trickery they practice. 
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The Thinkers are a group of charlatans that tells people what they wish to hear. But because of the times that they are in, people chooses to believe in magic. As Opperly mentions, when the time is good, people don’t need magicians. But when the time is bad, people would do anything just to get the magic cures. As Farquar sees, the Thinkers are simply lucky and are talented with their stage-managing skills. They uses the brain-machine to justify their guesses. The Thinkers have faked Maizie as well as rocket landing on Mars in order to have control over the government. All government officials would do exactly as what the Thinkers order them to do. However, the physicists knew what the Thinkers are doing, they know that their rocket did not go to Mars, Maizie is not a human-brain machine, and the mental science of the Martians is fake. But since they got the government’s support, Jorj sends an invitation to the physicists to support Jorj and the other Thinkers in building those actual machineries. Farquar thinks he should go while Opperly suggests it might be a trap. 
What effect does Farquar have on the story?
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586401e9268b4ce0b0d7846bff808bd9
Farquar sparks the driving conflict of the story; the question he submits threatens the authority and legitimacy of the Thinkers, implying that the machine that guides society's decisions is a fake. This question disturbs the officials present at Maizie's event. Farquar also attempts to convince Opperly, a major Scientist, that the Thinkers should be exposed and called out for their deception. He is eager to take action against them. Farquar plays an additional role in the story as someone who Jorj must turn to for help; he is a skilled physician that the Thinkers need in order to develop their idea for a nuclear rocket. Farquar determines the fate of Jorj and the Thinkers as someone who both poses a threat to them and is needed by them.
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Willard Farquar is a physicist who is a member of Morton Opperly’s group. He is a large individual with strong and ugly features. He has traced the path of the Thinker’s spaceship and found that, contrary to the Thinkers’ claims, the spaceships do not travel to Mars. Through Opperly, Farquar submits a revealing question to the Thinkers’ machine Maizie, antagonizing the Thinkers. 
In Opperly’s residence, Farquar proposes further chipping away at their deception, saying that they shouldn’t avoid a task merely because of its difficulty. Opperly, who is from the previous generation of academic physicists, disagrees. Farquar condemns his generation, saying that they wasted the power of atomic energy which they could have used to influence humanity. As he is saying that the Thinkers will soon need the help of scientists to support their bluffing, an invitation from the leader of the Thinkers arrives, inviting Farquar to the Thinkers’ Foundation. We learn that one of Farquar’s previous love interests had left him for a Thinker. 

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Farquar creates a question for an examination that hints to the Secretary of State and Jorj that he knows the secret that they are hiding. He knows that Maizie is not the intelligent and amazing piece of machinery that they claim. He knows that there is a person behind Maizie that is helping to create the illusion that Maizie is an intelligent cubic piece of machinery. Farquar wants to fight in an act of violence against the Thinkers because of their deceit towards the population. He is upset that they lie about Maizie’s capabilities, their Mars rockets, and their Martian mental science.  
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Farquar is a physicist who knows that the Thinkers do not have a real Maizie. He has sent the question about whether Maizie is a Maelzel to the Thinkers, teasing them. Farquar’s argument with Opperly allow us to learn about the Thinkers and the physicists. The Thinkers have the government’s control because they seems to be able to do things that the physicists are not able to, such as going to Mars, learning about their mental sciences, as well building a human-brain machine. However, we learn from Farquar that none of that is true. There is no landing on Mars, designing a human-brain machine, which is why they need the physicists help. 

Jorj indeed decide to send an invitation to the physicists after seeing the girl that he hypnotically controls, thus the girl should be the reason that the invitation is sent to Farquar. Later we learn from Opperly that there was a girl named Miss Arkady who had been with Farquar. She could be the Caddy that Jorj mentioned. Miss Arkady apparently went off with a Thinker, and Opperly thinks that this could be the reason that they are sending this invitation to them. However, Farquar does not believe it.
How are Opperly and Farquar alike and different?
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Opperly and Farquar are both physicists. They both have the same role in society as possessing knowledge and abilities to create technology and machinery. However, despite their similar titles, they are drastically different, both in appearance and character. Opperly is an elderly man, who looks timid and meek, though wise, next to the young, large, and impulsive Farquar. Opperly acts as a rational voice, discouraging Farquar from his rebellious and violent nature, specifically towards the Thinkers. Opperly, having lived through history, is hesitant to threaten the authority of the Thinkers and instead understands that society is in need of them. He believes that scientists should not have a place in taking action and being violent, and instead should allow the Thinkers to uphold the nation. Farquar, on the other hand, is a man of action who believes the Thinkers are immoral and inauthentic. He contrasts Opperly's reasonable nature with passion and free thinking.
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Morton Opperly and Willard Farquar are both physicists, though they hail from different generations. They share in the knowledge that the Thinkers’ have deceived members at the highest level of government and have exposed them, to little success. Opperly, an older physicist from the age of academic scientists, is reserved and skeptical about future attempts to do the same. Farquar, however, is youthful and frustrated about their situation. Whereas Opperly is unable to imagine scientists such as Einstein and Oppenheimer using violence to achieve their ends, Farquar condemns them for wasting their opportunities to shape the future with their knowledge of atomic power. 
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Morton Opperly is an elderly physicist. William Farquar is much younger and he too is a scientist. Opperly’s positions reflected his elderly age with his living room having books, pen and ink, and a Picasso painting. Farquar wants to continue to poke at the Thinkers to expose them for their lies. Opperly does not agree with this strategy because he does not know what is best for the planet. While he does not agree with Farquar’s desire to act upon their knowledge of the Thinkers’ lies, he does call them animals. Farquar responds by saying that he feels like an animal because he feels trapped in a cage. Opperly believes it is not worth fighting with the Thinkers, but Farquar wants the fight and he wants violence. 
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Opperly believes that the world needs magicians right now, not them, the physicists. In the bad times, people would go desperately looking for the magic cure, while in the good times the magicians are laughed at and physicists respected. He understands that the power of the Thinkers lies in what they do not have at the moment, which is peace, honor, good conscience, etc. Farquar on the other hand thinks that they need to perform action. Thus after overruling Opperly, Farquar and other physicists decided to send teasing questions for Maizie to answer. This question indeed got Jorj, the Thinker, unhappy, and he tells the Secretary of Space to investigate it. 

Farquar predicts that the Thinkers will need their help in building all those machineries that they faked. Indeed, the invitation gets to them, and it is sent by Jorj stating that they should work together, and mentioning that the Thinkers have quite a lot of government funds. While Opperly thinks that the Thinkers did not simply send the invitation asking for their help, Farquar believes that he will not be persuaded to change his mind at all.  