"I get it now," Fuller broke in musingly. "So that's what your suitcase is for, Andy." Then his voice sharpened with protest. "But it ... it's ridiculous! I just can't believe it's possible."
"The young man of average intelligence speaking," Pearce murmured.
"Yeah?" Fuller swung to Ellen. "What do you think?"
She shook her dark head slightly, lower lip caught between her teeth. "I'm trying not to think... Go on, Andy—before I start thinking."
"Hate to have that happen, if Dave's mental acrobatics are any example." Pearce abruptly sobered, glancing at his watch. "Well," he resumed, "Nela and the others foresaw the difficulties they would encounter in obtaining help, and they figured out what they hoped would be a fool-proof method of approach. What happened in my case shows what this was. It seems Nela first scouted out a group of specialists to find a couple with the right qualifications. The man she wanted had to be young and adventurous, without any family or romantic ties. Then she narrowed her field still further by tracing her selection back to childhood and making direct contact there.
"It was clever—for after all, the child is father to the man. A child is credulous and imaginative to an extent a man is not. And a child is adventurous, will let his enthusiasms carry him spontaneously where a man will hesitate and look for a catch. Most of all a child is impressionable and can be imbued with an idea which he will follow like a beacon light all his life.
"I was the child Nela finally settled on. The Andy Pearce she had first scouted still existed in time, and nothing would change for him. But no paradox is involved, for what we call time is an illusion, a subjective quality arising from an awareness of objective conditions—and these conditions are not quite what we think they are. That first Andy Pearce was something like a bubble moving in a glass tube. All Nela did was put another bubble in motion. The tube itself was not affected, nor was time shifted, bent, nullified, or anything of the sort. Each bubble was as real as anything can be said to be real, each existed in its own particular space-time, each was completely distinct and independent of the other.
"Nela visited me here several times, while she told me all the details of her mission. She was also getting acquainted with me and giving me time to thoroughly digest the idea of going with her. I agreed to go, of course. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to do, and I didn't change my mind. Once she had satisfied herself on that score, she worked out a plan of operations for me to follow until I was finally ready to leave. The plan took in schools, subjects, finances, and the like. Nela, you see, was making a big improvement on the first Andy Pearce.
"I never saw Nela again after those first visits. It was quite unnecessary, as I can see now. For she and her people understood the mind with an amazing thoroughness, and during her talks she subtly injected me with knowledge, emotions and ideals that set me in motion toward my goal as effectively and undeviatingly as though I had been hypnotized. And I suspect that she set other bubbles in motion as well, to guide and assist me and generally keep me moving in one direction."