Raymond F. Jones - Person From Porlock.pdf - Raymond F. Jones - allforjesus2001

THE PERSON FROM PORLOCK

BY RAYMOND F. JONES

Borge, the chief engineer of Intercontinental, glanced down at the blue-backed

folder in his hand. Then he looked at the strained face of Reg Stone. his top

engineer.

"It's no use," said Borge. "We're canceling the project. Millen's report is

negative. He finds the BW effect impossible of practical application. You can

read the details. yourself."

"Canceling---!" Reg Stone half rose from his chair. "But chief. you can't do

that. Millen's crazy. What can he prove with only a little math and no

experimental data? I'm right on the edge of success. If I could just make you

see it!"

"I have seen it. I can't see anything that warrants our pouring out another

twenty-five thousand bucks after the hundred and fifty your project has

already cost the company."

"Twenty, then. Even fifteen might do it. Barge, if you don't let me go on with

this you're passing up the biggest development of the century. Some other

outfit with more guts and imagination and less respect for high-priced opinion

in pretty folders is. going to come through with it. Teleportation is in the

bag—all we've got to do is lift it out!"

"Majestic and Carruthers Electric have both canceled their projects on it.

Professor Merrill Hanford, who assisted Bots-Wellton in the original research,

says that the BW effect will never be anything of more than academic

interest."

"Hanford!" Reg exploded. "He's jealous because he doesn't have the brains to

produce a discovery of that magnitude. Bots-Wellton himself says that ass

effect will eventually make it possible to eliminate all other means of

freight transport and most passenger stuff except that which is merely for

pleasure."

"All of which is very well," said Borge, "except That it doesn't work outside

of an insignificant laboratory demonstration."

"Insignificant! The actual transfer of six milligrams of silver over a

distance of ten feet is hardly insignificant. As for Millen's math, we haven't

got the right tools to handle this."

"I was speaking from an engineering standpoint. Of course, the effect is of

interest in a purely-scientific way, but it is of no use to us. Millen's math

proves it. Take this copy and see for yourself. I'm sorry, Reg, but that's the

final word on it."

Reg Stone rose slowly, his big hands resting against the glass-topped desk. "I

see. I'll just have to forget it then, I guess."

"I'm afraid so." Borge rose and extended his hand. "You've been working too

hard on this thing. Why don't you take a couple of days off ? By then we'll

have your next assignment lined up. And no hard feelings over this

Bots-Wellton effect business?"

"Oh, no—sure not," Reg said absently.

He strode out of the office and back to the lab where the elaborate equipment

of his teleport project was strewn in chaotic piles over benches and lined up

in racks and panels.

A hundred thousand dollars worth of beautiful junk, he thought. He slumped in

a chair before the vast, complex panels. This cancellation was the fitting

climax to the delays, misfortunes, and accidents that had dogged the project

since it began.

From the first. everyone except a few members of the Engineering Committee and

Reg himself had been against it. Borge considered it a waste of time and

money. The other engineers referred to it as Stone's Folly.

And within Reg himself there was that smothering, frustrated, indefinable

sensation which he couldn't name.

It was a premonition of failure, and there had been a thousand and one

incidents to support it. From the first day, when one of his lab assistants

fell and broke a precious surge amplifier, the project seemed to have been

hexed. No clay passed but that materials seemed mysteriously missing or

blueprints turned up with the wrong specifications on them. He'd tried six

incompetent junior engineers before the last one, a brilliant chap named

Spence, who seemed to be the only one of the lot who knew a lighthouse tube

from a stub support.

With men and materials continually snafu it was almost as if someone had

deliberately sabotaged the whole project.

He caught himself up with a short, bitter laugh. The little men in white coats

would be after him if he kept up that line of thought.

He passed a hand over his eyes. How tired he was! He hadn't realized -until

now what a tremendous peak of tension he had reached. He felt it in the faint

trembling of his fingers. the pressure behind his eyeballs.

His disappointment and anger slowly settled like a vortex about Carl Millen,

the consulting physicist who'd reported negatively when Burge insisted to the

Engineering Committee that they get outside opinion on the practicability of

BW utilization.

The cool, implacable Millen, however. could hardly be the object of anything

as personal as anger. Yet,strangely enough, he had been the object of, keg

Stone's friendship ever since the two of them were in engineering school

together.

What each of them found in the other would have been hard to put into words,

but there was some complementary view of opposite worlds which each seemed

able to see through the other's eyes.

As for Millen's report on the BW project—Reg knew it had been utterly

impersonal and rendered as Carl Millen saw it, though the two of them had

often discussed it in heated argument in the past. But the very impersonality

of Millen's point of view made the maintenance of his anger impossible for

Reg.

But never in his life had he wanted anything so much as he wanted to be the

one to develop the Bots-Wellton effect from a mere laboratory demonstration to

a system able to transport millions of tons of freight over thousands of miles

without material agent of transfer.

Now he was cut off right at the pockets. He felt at loose ends. It was a

panicky feeling. For months on end lie had been working at top capacity. He

seemed to have suddenly dropped into a vacuum.

He debated handing in his resignation and going to sonic company that would

let him develop the project. But who would Majestic and Carruthers, two of the

largest outfits, had pulled out. Borge had said. Who else would pick it up?

There was one other possibility, he thought breathlessly. Reg Stone could take

it over!

Why not? He had a beautifully equipped back yard lab and machine shop. Tens of

thousands of dollars worth of equipment from the project would have to be

junked by I Intercontinental. Reg felt sure Borge would let him buy it as

junk.

Sure, it would be slow without the facilities of the Intercontinental labs,

but it would be better than scuttling the entire project.

He suddenly glanced at the clock on the wall. He'd been sitting there without

moving for over an hour. It was lunch time. He decided to go downtown where he

wouldn't meet anyone he knew, rather than eat in the company cafeteria. He

chose the Estate, a sea food restaurant three miles from the plant. As soon as

he walked in he knew Why he had chosen the Estate with subconscious

deliberation.

He saw Carl Millen across the room. He had meant to see him. Millen always ate

at the same place at the same time.

Millen spotted Reg almost simultaneously and beckoned to him.

"Sit down, Reg. You're the last person I expected to see here. What's new at

your shop?"

"Not much—except Borge received a report from Carl Millen Associates,

Consulting Engineers."'

Millen grinned wryly. "Did he blow his top ?"

"Why did you turn in a negative report?"

"Didn't you read it? I proved the BW effect is absolutely limited by the free

atomic concentration in the dispersion field. That limitation utterly forbids

any mass application of the principle."

Reg was silent as the waiter brought the menus.. They each ordered oysters on

the half shell.

"I remember," said Reg, When the waiter had gone. "about 1925 a then very

prominent aeronautical engineer wrote a learned piece proving absolutely that

planes could never reach five hundred miles an hour."

Millen laughed. "Yes, and there's also the gent that proved a steamship could

never carry enough fuel to get it across the Atlantic."

He stopped and looked seriously at Reg. "But for every one of those classic

boners there are thousands of legitimate negative demonstrations that have

saved engineering and industry untold millions. You know that as well as I do.

This is one of them."

"I'll admit the first, but not the second," said Reg. "I've not read your

report. I probably won't. It's faulty. It's got to be. The BW principle can he

utilized somehow and I'm going to prove it."

"Just how do you propose to do that ?" Millen asked, smiling gently.

"Something intuitive, no doubt ?"

"All right, have your fun, but come around and see me when you want to go on a

quick vacation via the Stone Instantaneous Transfer Co."

"Reg, that job I talked about a year ago is still open. I could offer you

Assistant Chief of Development. In a year I could let you in on a partnership.

It's worth twenty thousand now, thirty later."

"I could work on the BW outside?"

Millen, shook his head. "That's the only string attached. Our men haven't time

for anything but customers' projects. Besides, you'd have to get used to. the

idea of believing in math, not intuition."

"I don't ..think I'd do you much good."

"You could learn, for that kind of money, couldn't you? What does that cheese

factory pay you? About eight or ten?"

"Seven and a half."

"The lousy cheapskates! Three times that ought to be worth shelving your

intuition in favor of math."

Reg shook his head. "There isn't that much money in the world. Solving other

peoples' riddles for a fee is not my idea of living."

"Sometimes I think you're just a frustrated research physicist. In this

business you're in for the money. It's a cinch there's no glory."

The waiter brought their orders, then.

His depression continued with Reg that evening. His three boys sensed it when

he turned down a ball game. His wife, Janice, sensed it when he didn't poke

his head in the kitchen on the way to his study.

After dinner, and when the boys were in bed, he told her what had happened

that day.

"I don't understand why you feel so badly about the cancellation of this

particular project," she said when he finished. "Others have been cancelled,

too."

'Because it's one of the greatest phenomena ever discovered. It's ripe for

engineering application, but no' one else will believe it. It's as if they

deliberately try to block 'me in every step. All through the project it's been

that way. Now this—chucking-the whole business, when we've gone so far! I

can't see through the reasons behind it all. Except that they just don't want

it to succeed. I've got that feeling about it, and can't rid myself of it.

They want me to fail!" "Who does?"

"Everyone! In the drafting room. The lab technicians. The model shop. It seems

as if everybody's concern with the project is simply to throw monkey wrenches

in the gears."

"Oh, darling — you're just wrought up over this thing. Let's take a vacation.

Let the boys go to camp this summer and go off by ourselves somewhere. You've

got to have a rest."

He knew that. He'd known it for a long time, but teleportation was more

important than rest...He could take care of the neuroses at his leisure,

later. That's the theory he'd worked on. Now, all he had was a beautiful

neurosis. It couldn't be anything else, he told himself, this absolute

conviction that he was being sabotaged in his work, that others were banded

against him to prevent the full development of the BW principle.

"Perhaps in a few weeks," he said. "There are some more angles about this

business that I must follow up. Let's read tonight.

Something fanciful, something beautiful, something faraway—"

"Coleridge," Janice laughed.

They sat by the window overlooking the garden. Their one vice of reading

poetry together was some. thing of an anachronism in a world threatened with

atomic fires, but it was the single escape that Reg would allow himself from

his engineering problems.

Janice began reading softly. Her voice was like music out of a past more

gentle and nearer the ultimate Truths than this age.

"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree : Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

--that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !

A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As e'er beneath a waning moon,

was haunted—"

Reg suddenly stiffened and sat erect, his eyes on the distant golden cavern of

the sky..

"That's it," he breathed softly. "That's just how it is—"

Janice looked up from the book, her face puzzled. "What in the world are you

talking about?"

"The Person from Porlock. Remember how Coleridge wrote Kubla Khan ?"

"No. Who's the Person from Porlock ?"

"Coleridge wrote this poem just after coming out of a dope dream. He later

said that during his sleep he had produced at least two to three hundred

lines. While trying to get it on paper he was interrupted by a person from the

village of Porlock. When he finally got rid of the visitor, Coleridge could

recall no more of his envisioned poem.

"He was furious because this self-important busybody had interrupted his work

and he wrote a poem castigating the Person from Porlock and all other stupid,

busy people who hamper the really industrious ones."

"And so—?"

"Don't you see? it's these Persons from Porlock who have made it impossible

for me to complete my work. Borge, Millen, Dickson, the draftsman who bungled

the drawings; Hansen, the model shop mechanic who boggled tolerances so badly

that nothing would work. These Persons from Porlock—I wonder how many

thousands of years of advancement they have cost the world!"

In the near darkness now, Janice sat staring at Reg's bitter face. Her eyes

were wide and filled with genuine fear, fear of this malign obsession that had

overtaken him.

"The Persons from Porlock," Reg mused, half aloud. "Wouldn't it be funny if it

turned out that they were deliberately and purposely upsetting the works of

other men. Suppose it were their whole object in life--"

"Reg!"

He was scarcely able to see Janice in the settling gloom, but he felt her

fear. "Don't worry, Janice, I haven't gone off my rocker. I was just

thinking—Sure, it's fantastic, but Coleridge was one of the world's geniuses.

Perhaps he glimpsed something of a truth that no one else has guessed."

Reg went into Borge's office early the next morning. The chief engineer

frowned as he saw Reg Stone. "I thought you were going to take a few days."

"I came in to ask what you are going to do with the equipment that's been

built for my BW project."

"We'll store it with the miscellaneous plumbing for a while, then junk it. Why

"How about doing me a big favor-and declaring it junk right away and letting

me buy it—as Junk?"

"What do you want the stuff for ?"

"I want to continue the BW experiments on my own. You know, just putter around

with it in my shop at home."

"Still think it will amount to something, eh ?"

"Yes. That's why I'd like to buy the stuff, especially the velocitor chamber.

It would take me a couple of years to build one of those on my own."

"I'd like to do it as a favor to you," said Borge;-- "but Bruce, the new

manager has just made a ruling that no parts or equipment may be sold to

employees. It was all right during the war when the boys were outfitting their

WERS stations oncompany time and equipment. We were on cost plus then, but too

many are trying to refurnish their amateur stations now at our expense. So

Bruce cut it all out.

"But that doesn't make sense with such specialized. stuff as I've had built

for the BW. It's no good for anything else."

"Maybe you could talk Bruce out of it. You know him."

Yes, he knew Bruce, Reg thought. A production man who, like many of his kind,

considered engineers mere necessary evils. It was utterly useless to ask Bruce

to make an exception to one of his own regulations.

Persons from Porlock-

The words echoed like a tantalizing refrain in his mind as he went downstairs

towards his own lab. He knew he should forget that impossible concept, but the

words were like a magic chant explaining all his misfortunes.

This huge plant and all the technological advances that had come out of it.

could not exist without Borge and Bruce, and the others like them. Yet, at the

same time, these Persons from Porlock constituted the greatest stumbling

block to modern scientific development. Every engineer in the world at some

time had been stymied by one, of them—an unimaginative chief, a stupid factory

manager, incompetent draftsmen, model shop machinists, secretaries,

expediters, administrators.

As he passed the open door of the company's technical library he spotted

Dickson, his head draftsman on the BW project, sitting inside at a table. He

went in.

Dickson looked up. "Hello, Reg. I wondered where you were this morning. I just

heard about them junking the project. It's a devil of a tough break."

"Are you really sorry, Dickson ?" said Reg.

The draftsman looked sharply. "What do you mean? Of course I hate to work on a

project and see it canceled, Who wouldn't?"

"You know, looking back, it appears as if we hadn't made each one of about

fifty boners, the project would have succeeded. For example, that dimension on

the diameter of the focusing cavity in the assembly unit. It's the only one in

the assembly that wouldn't be obvious to the model shop, and it's the only one

on which you made a mistake in spite of our checking. A seven that looked like

a two in your dimensioning. That made the difference between success and

failure and lost us nearly four weeks while we looked for the bug in the

unit."

"Reg, I've told you twenty times I'm sorry, but I can't do anything about it

now. A hair on my lettering pen made just enough of a boggle of the figure so

that those dopes in the model shop misread it. It was a worse two than it was

a seven. They should have checked us on it even if we did miss it."

"Yeah, I know. It just seemed funny that it was that particular dimension you

were drawing when the hair got on your pen."

The draftsman looked at Reg as i f stunned by the unspoken implication. "If

you think I did that on purpose--"

"I didn't say that. Sure it was an accident, but why? Was it because you

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