As Long As You Wish Read online

  Produced by Greg Weeks and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  Transcriber's Note: This e-text was produced from Astounding ScienceFiction, June, 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidencethat the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

  AS LONG AS YOU WISH

  _If, somehow, you get trapped in a circular time system ... howlong is the circumference of an infinitely retraced circle?_

  By JOHN O'KEEFE

  Illustrated by van Dongen

  The patient sat stiffly in the leather chair on the other side of thedesk. Nervously he pressed a coin into the palm of one hand.

  "Just start anywhere," I said, "and tell me all about it."

  "As before?" Without waiting for an answer, he continued, the coinclutched tightly in one hand. "I'm Charles J. Fisher, professor ofPhilosophy at Reiser College."

  He looked at me quickly. "Or at least I was until recently." For asecond his face was boyish. "Professor of Philosophy, that is."

  I smiled and found that I was staring at the coin in his hand. He gaveit to me. On one side I read the words: THE STATEMENT ON THE OTHER SIDEOF THIS COIN IS FALSE. The patient watched me with an expressionlessface; I turned over the coin. It was engraved with the words: THESTATEMENT ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THIS COIN IS FALSE.

  "That's not the problem," he said, "not _my_ problem. I had the coinmade when I was an undergraduate. I enjoyed reading one side, turningit over, reading the other side, and so on. A fiendish enjoyment likeboys planning where to put the tipped-over outhouse."

  I looked at the patient. He was thirty-eight, single, medium build, hadan M.A. and Ph.D. from an eastern university. I knew this and more fromthe folder on my desk.

  "Eight months ago," he continued, "I read about the sphere found onPaney Island." He stopped, looking at me questioningly.

  "Yes, I know," I said. I opened my desk drawer, took out a clippingfrom the newspaper, and handed it to him.

  "That's it."

  I read the clipping before putting it back in the drawer.

  Manila, Sept. 24 (INS) Archeologists from University of California have discovered in earth fault of recent quake a sphere two feet in diameter of an unidentifiable material.

  Dr. Karl Schwartz, head of the group, said the sphere was returned to the University for study. He declined to answer questions on the cultural origin of the sphere.

  "There wasn't any more in the newspapers about it," he said. "I have afriend in California who got me the photographs."

  _He looked at me intently. "You won't believe any of this." He pressedthe coin into the palm of his hand. "You won't be able to."_

  "The photographs," he continued, as if lecturing, "were of charactersprojected by the sphere when placed before a focused light. The spherewas transparent, you see, imbedded with dark microscopic specks. Bymoving the sphere a certain distance each time, there was a totalprojection of three hundred and sixty different characters in eighteendifferent orderings. Or nineteen different orderings if you count onewhich was a list of all the characters."

  I made a mental note of the numbers. I felt they were significant.

  "As I said," he continued, "I obtained the photographs of thecharacters. Very strange shapes, totally unlike the characters ofOriental languages, but yet that is the closest way to describe them."He jerked forward in his chair, "Except, of course, ostensively."

  "Later," I said. I wanted to get through the preliminaries first. Therewould be time later to see the photographs.

  * * * * *

  "The characters projected by the sphere," he said, "weren't like thecharacters of any known language." He paused dramatically. "There wasreason to believe they had origin in an unknown culture. A culture morescientifically advanced than our own."

  "And the reasons for this supposition?" I asked.

  "The material ... the material of the sphere. It could only be roughlyclassified as _ferro-plastic_. Totally unknown, amazing imperviousness.A synthetic material, hardly the product of a former culture."

  "From Mars?" I said, smiling.

  "There were all kinds of conjectures, but, of course, the importantthing was to see if the projection of characters was a message. Themessage, if any, would mean more than any conjecture."

  "You translated it?"

  _He polished the coin on his jacket. "You won't dare believe it," hesaid sharply._

  He cleared his throat and stiffened into a more rigid posture. "Itwasn't exactly translation. You see, _to us_ none of the characters haddesignation. They were just characters."

  "So it was a problem of decoding?" I asked.

  "As it turned out, no. Decoding is dependent on knowledge of languagecharacteristics--characteristics of known languages. Decoding wastried, but without success. No, what we had to find was a key to thelanguage."

  "You mean like the Rune Stone?"

  "More or less. In principle, we needed a picture of a cow, and a signof meaning indicating one of the characters.

  "For me, there was no possibility of finding similarities between thecharacters and characters of other languages--that would requiretremendous linguistic knowledge and library facilities. Nor could I usea decoding approach--that would require special knowledge of techniquesand access to electronic computers and other mechanical aids. No, I hadto work on the assumption that the key to the sphere was implicit inthe sphere."

  "You hoped to find the key to the language in the language itself?"

  "Exactly. You know, of course, some languages do have an implicit key?For example hieroglyphics or picture language. The word for _cow_ is apicture of a cow."

  _He looked at the toes of his shoes. "You won't be able to believe it.It's impossible to believe. I use the word impossible in its logicalsense._

  "In most languages," he continued, looking up from his shoes, "thesound of some words themselves indicates the meaning of the word.Onomatopoetic words like _bowwow, buzz_."

  "And the key to the unknown language?" I asked. "How did you find it?"

  * * * * *

  I watched him push the coin against the back of his arm, then lift itto read the backward letters pressed into his skin. He looked up at meand smiled.

  "I built models of the characters. Big material ones, exactlyproportionate to the ones projected. Then--quite by accident--I viewedone of them through a glass globe the size of the original sphere. Whatdo you think I saw?"

  "What?" I noticed he had the boyish look again.

  "A distortion of the model. But that's not what's important. Thedistortions, on study, gave specific visual entities. Like when lookingat one of those trick pictures and suddenly seeing the lion in thegrass. The lines outlining the lion are there all the time, only theobserver has to view them as the outline of a lion. It was the samewith the models of the characters, except the shapes that appeared werenot of lions or other recognizable things. But they did suggest."

  _He pressed the coin against his forehead, closed his eyes and appearedto be thinking deeply. "Yes, impossible to believe. No one can believeit."_

  "In addition to the visual response, the distortions gave me definitefeelings. Not mixtures of feelings, but one definite emotionalexperience."

  "How do you mean?"

  "One character when viewed through the globe gave me a visual imageand, at the same time, a strong feeling of light hilarity."

  "I take it then that these distortions seemed to connote meanings,rather than denote them. You might say that their meaning was conveyedthrough a Gestalt experience on the part of the observer."

  "Yes, each character gave a definite Gestalt. But, the Gestalt was thesame for each observe
r. Or at least for thirty-five observers there wasan eighty per cent correlation."

  I whistled softly. "And the translation?"

  "Doctor, what would you say if I told you the translation wasunbelievable; that it couldn't be seriously entertained by any man?What if I said that it would take the sanity of any man who believedit?"

  "I would say that it might well be incorrect."

  He took some papers from his pocket and laughed excitedly, slumpingdown in the chair. "This is the complete translation in idiomaticEnglish. I'm going to let you read it, but first I want you to considera few things."

  He hid the papers behind the back of his chair; his face became evenmore boyish, almost as if he were deciding on where to put the tippedover outhouse.

  "Consider first, doctor, that there was a total projection of threehundred and sixty different characters. The same number as the numberof degrees in a circle. Consider also that there were eighteendifferent orderings of the characters, or nineteen counting thealphabetical list. The square root of three hundred and sixty would liebetween eighteen and nineteen."

  "Yes," I said. I remembered there was something significant about thenumbers, but I wasn't at all sure that it was this.

  "Consider also," he continued, "that the communication was through themedium of a sphere. Moreover, keep in mind that physics accepts thepath of a beam of light as its definition of a straight line. Yet, thepath is a curve; if extended sufficiently it would be a circle, thesection of a sphere."

  "All right," I said. By now the patient was pounding the coin againstthe sole of one shoe.

  "And," he said, "keep in mind that in some sense time can be thought ofas another dimension." He suddenly thrust the papers at me and sat backin the chair.

  I picked up the translation and began reading. The patient sat stifflyin the leather chair on the other side of the desk. Nervously hepressed a coin into the palm of one hand.

  "Just start anywhere," I said, "and tell me all about it."

  "As before?" Without waiting for an answer, he continued, the coinclutched tightly in one hand. "I'm Charles J. Fisher, professor ofphilosophy at Reiser College."

  He looked at me quickly. "Or at least I was until recently." For asecond his face was boyish. "Professor of philosophy, that is."

  I smiled and found that I was staring at the coin in his hand. He gaveit to me. On one side I read the words: THE STATEMENT ON THE OTHER SIDEOF THIS COIN IS FALSE. The patient watched....

  THE END