J. R. Pierce - The Whimper Effect [ss]

A strange assortment of people read science fiction. There are not all that many, but they are everywhere. SF is a sort of Esperanto of literature. It is a small but sparse cult scattered all over the world, in high places as well as low. A science fiction writer who has been published widely has acquaintances everywhere, some of whom he has met and more whom he will meet as he passes by. The Whimper Effect took me to many places. Or rather, I took the Whimper Effect to many places, some of them odd indeed.

My story of the Whimper Effect starts in the Soviet Union. I had resisted going there for many years. Friends who returned thence invariably recited their disappointments and troubles with food, accommodations, shoddy goods and interminably frustrating bureaucracy. They always followed the dismal catalogue with the words, "You really should go there." I had never seen why.

But I was flattered when, over a period of years, Gyorgi Alexandrovich Kolganin had translated several of my novels. He wrote me first for permission, explaining that royalties would accumulate in the Soviet Union but must be spent there, and he sent me several of his SF stories. The indecipherable Cyrillic characters which stood between me and his stories intrigued me so much that I learned to read Russian after a fashion, and I translated several of his short stories into English. The personal style, the Russian allusions, the native turns of thought escaped me completely, but, you can't put such things into another language of another culture anyway. The science fiction came through. It was good, straight stuff, with current ideas, strong story lines and adequate characters whose individualities didn't get in the way of the plot or the message. I felt that I had found a like mind in a far land, and I began to think differently about visiting the Soviet Union.

Most SF writers are as poor as church mice. By some happy circumstance, I've escaped this. I don't know much science (I was a history major), but I do have a sense of the topical. I know a great many scientists, and talking to them has given me some idea of what is about to be important, or interesting, or startling just a little before TV, the newspapers and the magazines have caught up with it. Thus, when I was young I wrote about robots and cybernetics and space before and during the greatest excitement about these themes, and I dropped them as newer things came along. This has worked for me even in small matters. I got out a novelette about polywater just before it became apparent that this seemingly intriguing substance was a practical joke that eager and careless physical chemists had played on themselves.

Because the movies and TV have picked up several of my topical stories, and because I've always been willing to do literary or journalistic chores, especially when these involve traveling, I've made out pretty well. Still, I'm careful. I prefer interesting company to high living, and I try to travel profitably, as well as for pleasure. So, I had my royalties and the possibility of fresh story ideas in mind when I arranged to go to the Soviet Union.

I won't dwell on the trip or on the commonplaces of Moscow. St. Basil's is wonderful and gaudy in a way beyond anything else. Red Square and the subways are impressive. Hotels and stores are depressing. One can scarcely believe the bureaucracy of hundreds of women with their hand-written lists and ledgers, even while one watches it. None of these has to do with the Whimper Effect. I came upon that in quite different surroundings and circumstances.

From my hotel I called the number that my SF colleague and translator had given me. I was answered in Russian, of course. I had already found that my limited reading knowledge of the language simply did not talk. I repeated firmly and persistently the name of Gyorgi Alexandrovich Kolganin, interspersed with "I am an American." Finally a heavily accented voice asked in English what I wanted. I gave my name and said that Gyorgi Alexandrovich Kolganin had asked me to call him when I was in Moscow.

"Oh, John, John," the voice said. "Welcome to Moscow, my colleague. When can you come to see me? We will collect your royalties."

When I asked where I should come, he gave me the name and address of the Lebedev Institute and spelled it out in Cyrillic, which proved to be no mean feat over the telephone. The conversation concluded, I approached a taxi with my dubious piece of paper. Happily, it worked, and after a wild and confusing drive I was deposited before a building of considerable size. I entered and gave Gyorgi Alexandrovich's name. Following a telephone call, my translator, colleague - and friend - appeared. He proved to be a beaming, burly man in his forties, warmer than anything I could have imagined in any other country. Off we went to his office and his colleagues.

When people question me about the Lebedev Institute I try to give reasonable answers, but they aren't much help. The whole place looked as if it had seen better days, but I have concluded that Russian buildings are built that way. The laboratories were full of what appeared to be scientific equipment, and it must have been. Gyorgi and his colleagues tried to explain their work to me, but I'm not really very knowledgeable about science. I confined myself to maintaining a bright expression, nodding and stifling my yawns.

One thing I did learn was that Gyorgi had considerable status in the Institute. His office was large as well as stuffy, and there were two telephones on his desk. He was obviously respected by his colleagues. I concluded that he must be either a good scientist, or a political wheel, or both. I later learned that he was a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences, which is, I guess, pretty good in the Soviet Union. How he found time to write science fiction I don't know, and it was even stranger that he had translated my novels. I suppose that he read through them, dictating a simultaneous translation to a secretary.

We spent a pleasant afternoon talking, and at the end Gyorgi and a number of men and women whom I had met insisted on taking me out to dinner, which was alcoholic, heavy and convivial. They all read English and spoke a version of it badly, but good intentions, my scant but growing, ability to speak Russian and a general feeling of comradeship triumphed over all linguistic deficiencies. At the end of the dinner, Gyorgi told me, "We are going to a party," and we all swept off.

The Lebedev Institute has an indirect connection with my learning about the Whimper Effect. Gyorgi found me a cubbyhole where I could write during those mornings and afternoons when I wasn't out sightseeing with my Intourist guide. I came to make it the afternoons, for it was the parties that mattered. Almost every day, at the end of work, I was swept off by some group to some apartment, small and dingy or occasionally large and dingy, where everyone ate cold food, drank, listened to the phonograph and talked incessantly. In one large apartment, a composer 'of whom even I had heard played the piano between floods of talk.

During these evenings I met musicians, artists and writers, but it was clear that scientists were the elite. An artist's wife gained stature and glamor through an affair with a scientist. I was of interest because I wrote SF, and because I was Gyorgi's friend and had translated his stories.

Most of the partying Russians could drink endlessly with no effect beyond prolonged high spirits or sentimental sadness. I learned the hard way to stay within my capacity, even in the face of continual encouragement. But occasionally I met someone who was neither gay nor sentimentally sad. One evening a small, dark, morose man, three-quarters drunk, got me into a dark corner of a larger than usual apartment and proceeded to force upon me two things that I didn't want - vodka and ideas for science fiction stories. I didn't need any more of the one, and the other is almost always no good.

This went on too long before I finally latched onto the fact that as the dark man's tongue became thicker and his English less certain, he was turning to some actual science that he thought I could make into a story.

"You don't know how microwaves change people," he said, "but we are finding out." Or, that's an English equivalent of his words.

This sounded like something good, and I led him on as best I could, enlisting the vodka bottle and miscellaneous toasts when he faltered. As nearly as I could make out, too much microwave energy did more than make the lenses of your eyes opaque. Over a long time, a great deal less microwaves had a profound effect on behavior, or temperament, or character.

"Look at me," he said. "Me. Once I was happy. Now look at me," and he took a drink on his own.

He told me that this effect was uncertain, and hard to evaluate because it was so slow. No one had found a physiological correlate. It affected some people differently, or even oppositely. "We had a black man from Africa in my Institute," he said. "He became frenzied, but off and on. Me, just depressed. What is it your poet Eliot says? `Not with a bang, but a whimper'?"

But at that point the party went into some sort of convulsion and I was carried off to another apartment. A few days later, my royalties collected and nothing in the stores worth buying, I was off for a seaside vacation in the Crimea. I spent this pleasantly enough finishing the novel I was working on and doing other enjoyable things. Then I was on my way home, my faint urge to see the Soviet Union satisfied forever.

Once home, the Whimper Effect came repeatedly to my mind. I couldn't recall the name of the dark, morose man who had told me about it. I hadn't pried while I was in Moscow, for fear of getting an indiscreet drinker into trouble. I later realized that I couldn't even give a very good description of the man. But, as occasion offered, I tried to find out if there was anything in what he had said.

The first opportunity occurred shortly after I returned. When I encountered a long-time acquaintance and fan in Washington and told him that I had been to the Soviet Union and had met Gyorgi, he asked me if I'd mind dropping around and talking my visit over. Of course I agreed. He gave me the address, toward the west side of the city, and named an hour.

The small, old building I went to was still identified as belonging to the Navy, but it became clear that some other organization was in possession. There was nothing ostentatious. I merely gave my name and that of my acquaintance to the girl at the desk. I signed the book and was given a badge. My acquaintance came, picked me up and took me to his office, where he introduced me to two colleagues.

The questioning that followed was polite but very persistent. The trouble was that I didn't know anything about what these men were interested in, which was cybernetics. I hadn't visited the Institute for Automation and Control. If Gyorgi and his colleagues had anything to do with cybernetics, I didn't know about it.

At the end of a half hour I was given up as a non-source of information. It was then that I asked about the Whimper Effect. I recounted the whole conversation. My acquaintance and his colleagues listened with a show of politeness. His only comment was, "Thanks. I'm afraid we can't tell you anything about that." But I was certain that he just wasn't interested. I felt obstinately that they should be interested. But, what could I do?

I didn't have any luck with my next chance, either. Of course, I inquired casually here and there, in what I was sure were the wrong places. But about a year later I met an old friend at a party, and he turned out to be the Deputy Director of the Office of Science and Technology. He had been in Washington about a year and was full of amusement and exasperation concerning things that were still fresh to him.

"By the way," he said as we were about to part, "I think that my boss would like to meet you. He's something of a science fiction fan."

The next morning I got a call. I was indeed free for lunch. So, a little before noon I walked up the long stairs of that gray, many-tiered wedding-cake building just west of the White House. I identified myself to the guard at the desk inside the door. He found my name on the list. This time there was no badge, only directions to go up the stairs on the left and then back to the office at the far end of the corridor.

I had never been in the Executive Offices before. In this day of austerity and glass, the interior seemed rather grand. I admired the broad staircase, the high, wide halls, the heavy wood doors with ornate insignia on the solid brass knobs and the elaborate decorated frames and arches over the doors. (I later found that these were of cast iron, of all things!) So, I found myself in the huge office of the President's Science Adviser. The grand effect of his office was marred only by the metal electrical conduits fastened to the impenetrable plastered brick walls.

Dr. Blank was surprisingly young and energetic, and very cordial. He took me down the stairs and across the alley into the staff entrance of the White House. There we passed one very nice dining room ("White

House Mess" is the right term, I found) and into an even nicer room, where we had a good lunch while I answered questions about SF. But I wasn't going to be put off about the Whimper Effect, and I told Dr. Blank all about my encounter in Moscow, and my experience when I had tried to tell about it a year ago.

"I wonder if there's anything in it?" he commented. "The Soviet Union's standards on allowed microwave radiation are a lot lower than ours. But those people you talked to were off on a cybernetics threat when you saw them. They wouldn't have been interested in anything else. I'll put you in touch with someone who might know."

Sure enough, next morning I got a call from someone who would be glad to see me immediately. So I took a taxi to the Pentagon, where there are no guards at all, and having got lost several times and inquired anew from anyone who was passing by in the halls, I finally reached my man. He had an office near to a door. marked Deputy Director Defense Research and Engineering and I think that he was the Deputy's aid. Anyhow, he listened to me most politely and took numerous notes. When I shook his hand on leaving I got the impression that, having done his duty, he was about to put the whole matter from his mind, and I'm sure that he did.

I pretty much put the Whimper Effect from my mind, too. Then, in San Diego a couple of years later I was invited to visit a Naval laboratory thereabouts. I'm always game when a friendly fan asks me. I was intrigued when I found that the laboratory had both experimental psychologists and physiologists and microwave engineers as well.

During my visit I had an opportunity to tell my whole Whimper Effect story to a pleasant young SF fan who was also a physiologist. For once I had an attentive listener. When I was through, the young physiologist looked thoughtful for several minutes and then came to a decision.

"I suppose I shouldn't tell you," he said. "The fact is, we've been looking into something of the sort."

"Is it classified?" I asked. "I don't want to get you into trouble."

"No, not exactly," he told me. "Actually, it's been in the open literature. Your dark, morose friend was S. E. Primakof. He put out one short note on the effect. There hasn't been another word. He committed suicide a couple of years ago, by the way. Most people have thought that his paper was nonsense. I've had a look at it with animals, and I think I have positive results. If anything does occur, it certainly occurs at a very low level of radiation, and at a very particular frequency. But, it takes a very long exposure, too, and the effect is extremely erratic. Sometimes lethargy. Sometimes alternate excitement and lethargy. I've tried cats and mice, and the effect, if there is one, is species dependent."

I was overwhelmed. I realized that the Whimper Effect had been a good idea for a story. Maybe that was what had been haunting me. But then again, maybe it was something else.

"How long will it be before you make sure?" I asked.

"A long time, I'm afraid," he said. "I'm sort of bootlegging the work. I really can't ask for support on the basis of what I have. The lab director would think I was crazy."

"But this might be important," I told him, with perhaps a little too much excitement.

"How?" he asked, idly, I thought. "Well," I said, "suppose the Russians really made it work?"

He looked as if he expected to hear more. I thought a moment.

"They might aim microwaves at our embassy in Moscow. They could do that, couldn't they?"

The physiologist laughed.

"That would serve those striped-pants boys right, wouldn't it?" he commented.

I could see that he didn't take me seriously.

"What about satellites?" I asked. "They're sending them up regularly now. And my friends tell me that we don't know what a lot of them are for."

"The level of exposure is low, but it can't be that low," he pronounced.

"Do you know that much about Soviet satellites?" I asked.

That was a mistake.

"Do you know that much about science?" he asked me in return.

I managed to laugh, and that was the right thing to do, but I was nettled. Nonetheless, I let the Whimper Effect lie for another couple of years.

Last week I visited my friend J. J. Coupling at the Bell Laboratories. He writes some SF and has always been a fan. At the end of the day, after I had had my fill of lasers and talking computers, I told him my whole story of the Whimper Effect. He listened attentively, like the SF connoisseur that he is.

"Well?" I asked.

"Well," he said, "suppose it is true. What would people do?"

"That's what I'm asking you," I told him.

"For one thing, it would be very hard to verify," he said. "Psychology and physiology are a lot more difficult than physics."

"If that deterred psychologists and physiologists, there wouldn't be any," I said.

"No," he replied. "But they tend to play it safe, to do what others are doing."

There was a thoughtful silence. Then he continued.

"There's another thing," he told me. "The fellow who told you about this said that it affected a visiting African differently from the way it affected Russians."

"Well?" I asked.

"That labels it as racism," he said. "Psychologists in particular shy away from anything connected with race. Chinese, or Indians, or Negroes can't be thought of as more or less muscular, or musical, or intelligent, or susceptible to microwave radiation than white Anglo-Saxon Protestants."

'Why not?" I asked.

"That would be racism," J. J. asserted with a long face.

We both laughed. But I got the point. No psychologist was likely to spend his time studying an effect that was both uncertain and professionally dangerous.

"What can I do about the Whimper Effect?" I asked.

"I don't know," he told me.

"Aren't you interested?" I asked.

"Sure," he said, "but I've got enough troubles of my own."

Everyone does. But the Whimper Effect continues to bother me. It's years since that disturbed, morose and drunk man who must have been S. E. Primakof told me about the Whimper Effect in .a Moscow apartment. Not long after that, he committed suicide.

At that time, my country was a cheery place, full of enthusiasms. We feared the Russians a little, but we were excited about the challenges of science, and particularly about the challenges of space. And what has happened? There has been a gradual change to apathy, discontent and despair, punctuated first by frenzied riots and later by somewhat less violent student demonstrations.

I know that this sounds like science fiction. But, suppose that the Whimper Effect is real? Suppose that the Soviet scientists have got the effect under control, or partially under-control? Suppose that they are beaming radiations of the proper frequencies weakly but persistently over our nation, and perhaps over Europe as well? Suppose that the Communists are bringing our world to its end, not with a bang but a whimper?