Dolphin Island - Arthur C. Clarke [23]
The fisherfolk were friendly, good-natured, and not too hard-working. There was no need for hard work, in a place where it was never cold and one had only to reach into the sea to draw out food. Every night, it seemed, there would be a dance or a movie show or a barbecue on the beach. And when it rained—as it sometimes did, at the rate of several inches an hour—there was always television. Thanks to the relay satellites, Dolphin Island was less than half a second from any city on Earth. The islanders could see everything that the rest of the world had to offer, while still being comfortably detached from it. They had most of the advantages of civilization and few of its defects.
But it was not all play for Johnny by any means. Like every other islander under twenty (and many of them over that age), he had to spend several hours a day at school.
Professor Kazan was keen on education, and the island had twelve teachers—two human, ten electronic. This was about the usual proportion, since the invention of teaching machines in the middle of the twentieth century had at last put education on a scientific basis.
All the machines were coupled to OSCAR, the big computer which did the Professor's translating, handled most of the island's administration and bookkeeping, and could play championship chess on demand. Soon after Johnny's arrival, OSCAR had given him a thorough quiz to discover his level of education, then had prepared suitable instruction tapes and printed a training program for him. Now he spent at least three hours a day at the keyboard of a teaching machine, typing out his responses to the information and questions flashed on the screen. He could choose his own time for his classes, but he knew better than to skip them. If he did so, OSCAR reported it at once to the Professor
—or, worse still, to Dr. Keith.
At the moment, the two scientists had much more important matters to bother about.
After twenty-four hours of continuous work, Professor Kazan had translated the message that Einar had brought back—and it had placed him fairly and squarely on the horns of a dilemma. The Professor was a man of peace. If there was one phrase that summed him up, it was "kindhearted." And now, to his great distress, he was being asked to take sides in a war.
He glared at the message that OSCAR had typed out, as if hoping that it would go away.
But he had only himself to blame; after all, he was the one who had insisted on going after it.
"Well, Professor," asked Dr. Keith who, tired and unshaven, was slumped over the tape-control desk, "now what are we going to do?"
"I haven't the faintest idea," said Professor Kazan. Like most good scientists, and very few bad ones, he was never ashamed to admit when he was baffled. "What would you suggest?"
"It seems to me that this is where our Advisory Committee would be useful. Why not talk it over with a couple of the members?"
"That's not a bad idea," said the Professor. "Let's see who we can contact at this time of day." He pulled a list of names out of a drawer and started running his finger down the columns.
"Not the Americans—they'll all be sleeping. Ditto most of the Europeans. That leaves—
let's see—Saha in Delhi, Hirsch in Tel Aviv, Abdullah in———"
"That's enough!" interrupted Dr. Keith. "I've never known a conference-call do anything useful with more than five people in it."
"Right—we'll see if we can get these."
A quarter of an hour later, five men scattered over half the globe were talking to each other as if they were all in the same room. Professor Kazan had not asked for vision, though that could have been provided, if necessary. Sound was quite sufficient for the exchange of views he wanted.
"Gentlemen," he began, after the initial greetings, "we have a problem. It will have to go to the whole Committee before long—and perhaps much higher than that—but I'd like your unofficial opinions first."
"Ha!" said Dr.