Methuselah's Children Read Online Free Page B

spoke with flat authority. "But I am not making a long-range prediction this time; I am talking about facts, no guesses, not wishful thinking-and with those facts a prediction so short-range that it is like predicting that an egg will break when you see it already on its way to the floor. But Eve is right . . . as far as she went. Individuals are kind and decent . . . as individuals and to other individuals. Eve is in no danger from her neighbors and friends, and I am in no danger from mine. But she is in danger from my neighbors and friends-and I from hers. Mass psychology is not simply a summation of individual psychologies; that is a prime theorem of social psychodynamics-not just my opinion; no exception has ever been found to this theorem. It is the social mass-action rule, the mob-hysteria law, known and used by military, political, and religious leaders, by advertising men and prophets and propagandists, by rabble rousers and actors and gang leaders, for generations before it was formulated in mathematical symbols. It works. It is working now.
    "My colleagues and I began to suspect that a mob-hysteria trend was building up against us several years ago. We did not bring our suspicions to the council for action because we could not prove anything. What we observed then could have been simply the mutterings of the crackpot minority present in even the healthiest society. The trend was at first so minor that we could not be sure it existed, for all social trends are intermixed with other social trends, snarled together like a plate of spaghetti-worse than that, for it takes an abstract topological space of many dimensions (ten or twelve are not uncommon and hardly adequate) to describe mathematically the interplay of social forces. I cannot overemphasize the complexity of the problem.
    "So we waited and worried and tried statistical sampling, setting up our statistical universes with great care.
    "By the time we were sure, it was almost too late. Sociopsychological trends grow or die by a 'yeast growth' law, a complex power law. We continued to hope that other favorable factors would reverse the trend-Nelson's work in symbiotics, our own contributions to geriatrics, the great public interest in the opening of the Jovian satellites to immigration. Any major break-through offering longer life and greater hope to the short-lived could end the smoldering resentment against us.
    "Instead the smoldering has burst into flame, into an uncontrolled forest fire. As nearly as we can measure it, the rate has doubled in the past thirty-seven days and the rate itself is accelerated. I can't guess how far or how fast it will go-and that's why we asked for this emergency session. Because we can expect trouble at any moment." He sat down hard, looking tired.
    Eve did not argue with him again and no one else argued with him at all; not only was Ralph Schultz considered expert in his own field but also every one of them, each from his own viewpoint, had seen the grosser aspects of the trend building up against their revealed kin. But, while the acceptance of the problem was unanimous, there were as many opinions about what to do about it as there were people present. Lazarus let the discussion muddle along for two hours before he held up a hand. "We aren't getting anywhere," he stated, "and it looks like we won't get anywhere tonight. Let's take an over-all look at it, hitting just the high spots:
    "We can-" He started ticking plans off on his fingers-"do nothing, sit tight, and see what happens.
    "We can junk the 'Masquerade' entirely, reveal our full numbers, and demand our rights politically.
    "We can sit tight on the surface and use our organization and money to protect our revealed brethren, maybe haul 'em back into the 'Masquerade.'
    "We can reveal ourselves and ask for a place to colonize where we can live by ourselves.
    "Or we can do something else. I suggest that you sort yourselves out according to those four major points of