"Certainly! I made him buy me a tax-paid annuity that pays me more than enough to get by on. I don't want wealth, Mr. Elshawe—just comfort. And that's why I gave it to him."
"I don't follow you."
"Let me tell you about Malcom Porter. He is one of that vast horde of people who want to be someone. They want to be respected and looked up to. But they either can't, or won't, take the time to learn the basics of the field they want to excel in. The beautiful girl who wants to be an actress without bothering to learn to act; the young man who wants to be a judge without going through law school, or be a general without studying military tactics; and Malcom Porter, the boy who wanted to be a great scientist—but didn't want to take the trouble to learn science."
Elshawe nodded. He was thinking of the "artists" who splatter up clean canvas and call it "artistic self-expression." And the clodheads who write disconnected, meaningless prose and claim that it's free verse. The muddleminds who forget that Picasso learned to paint within the strict limits of classical art before he tried new methods, and that James Joyce learned to handle the English language well before he wrote "Finnegan's Wake."
"On the other hand," Skinner continued, "I am ... well, rather a shy man. As soon as Malcom told me what the device would do when it was properly powered, I knew that there would be trouble. I am not a fighter, Mr. Elshawe. I have no desire to spend time in prison or be vilified in the news or called a crackpot by orthodox scientists.
"I don't want to fight Malcom's claim, Mr. Elshawe. Don't you see, he deserves the credit! In the first place, he recognized it for what it was. If he hadn't, Heaven only knows how long it would have been before someone rediscovered it. In the second place, he has fought and fought hard to give it to humanity. He has suffered in prison and spent millions of dollars to get the Polarizer into the hands of the United States Government. He has, in fact, worked harder and suffered more than if he'd taken the time and trouble to get a proper education. And it got him what he wanted; I doubt that he would have made a very good scientist, anyway.
"Porter deserves every bit of credit for the Polarizer. I am perfectly happy with the way things are working out."
Elshawe said: "But what if the FBI gets hold of the evidence I have?"
"That's why I have told you the truth, Mr. Elshawe," Skinner said earnestly. "I want you to destroy that evidence. I would deny flatly that I had anything to do with the Polarizer, in any case. And that would put an end to any inquiry because no one would believe that I would deny inventing something like that. But I would just as soon that the question never came up. I would rather that there be no whisper whatever of anything like that."