by Ian Wallace
Subliminally I was interpreting the situation in context with its global background. My assignment had targeted me on Holofemes, an applaneted star in the Large Magellanic Cloud. This planet, Holofemes II, called itself Mojud, and it was aflame with war. The aggressor nation was Fust; its three chief antagonists were Vania, Columbia, and Pirov. My assignment was in Fust—in the Fustian capital—in the office of the Führer—in the presence of this emaciated prisoner named Makrov who seemed unimportant.
With distaste, the Führer was telling Makrov: “I will not hide my disgust at having to confide in you, to lecture you, to depend on you. Your stinking race that calls itself thz Lord-people is a cancer imbedded in our noble Fustian race. You are one of those whom I mean to extirpate—totally, even the memory of you. When you do for me what you will do for me, I will not thank you for it, because doing it will be in your own self-interest. Your personal reward will be that I will have you exterminated promptly and painlessly under conditions of pleasure—instead of—what you know, what you have anticipated. Your larger reward will be that I will remove from misery those whom you profess to love: your wife, who is of our pure race, and your children who are therefore half-pure. Well? what do you say?”
Makrov touched thin lips with a dry pale tongue and, after several attempts, replied hoarsely: “I do not know what to say. I do not know what this is all about. They took me out of the concentration camp and brought me here. That is all I know.”
Sampling the brain of my host, the Führer’s henchman, I grasped that my host knew a good deal more, being one of five in the Führer’s inner group. However, I was mainly listening to the Führer—who now ruled Fust, one of the two most potent nations on Mojud, and who had involved his planet in a world war that was bidding fair to end in the rule of all Mojud by Fust and its leader.
“Well?” barked the Führer at the end of his bombastic proposition. Stiffly he paced in short turnings, a hand slapping a hand behind his back, while he awaited Makrov’s reply.
Makrov’s weak voice dazedly emerged from his dry throat. “May I say it again, in my own way?” Reply would be condescension: the Führer kept pacing. Makrov ventured: “You have learned that my wife is first cousin to the Chancellor of your enemy Vania. The Chancellor is about to participate in a summit meeting at sea with his allies the President of Columbia and the Chairman of Pirov. Your Intelligence has already used its counterespionage to get word to the Chancellor that his dear cousin and her children and husband are set to be spirited out of Fust into Vania; that her husband—me, that is—is unusually well informed about Fustian war plans; and that the summit meeting would profit from having me present for questioning. You will send me and my family to Vania, and you will get me into that summit meeting. I will be a bomb; and I will explode, killing the three national leaders.”
“Correct. Well?”
“Why is it that you need my consent?”
“There are three possible ways to detonate you at the right instant. One is to time the bomb, but the timing would be far too uncertain. A second is to detonate the bomb by remote control; but our chances of getting an agent with you into the meeting to bring off this detonating are small, and he would probably be searched and his equipment discovered. This leaves the third alternative: you must detonate yourself. For this, obviously, we need your consent.”
“Who would want to explode himself?”
“It will be pleasant rather than painful. You will have a capsule concealed beneath your tongue. At the right instant, you will chew into the capsule, and five seconds later you will explode. Meanwhile, however, the ingredients of the capsule will plunge you into an orgy of pleasure beyond your wildest dreams, an orgy that will subjectively continue for many hours; at its terminus, you will drop deliriously exhausted into unconsciousness, during which you will explode without ever knowing about it.”
“The Führer makes it sound inviting. And if I refuse?”
“Your wife and children will continue to languish in misery; and you will die as you would otherwise have died—and this is not the way that I would choose to die.”
Makrov brooded.
“Your consent,” yapped the Führer, “must be total and sincere! No hidden resolution to warn anybody, or to fail to go through with it at the last! If either happens, we will surely get your family back here out of Vania—and they will die as you would have died!”
After long hesitation, Makrov closed eyes and uttered: “I want to see my family first.”
The Führer looked directly at my brain-host—that is to say, at me.
My henchman-host told Makrov acidly: “Request granted. However, you will be accompanied by select armed guards who know about this planning. If either of them detects that you are communicating any of this, we will kill your children, and you and your wife will be brought back for prolonged torment.”
Still unready to enter the brain of Makrov, I made a series of transfers that left me finally in the brain of one of Makrov’s guards in a command car that was bumping the party of three down a back road through a wilderness of bomb desolation. I tried to read Makrov’s mind on his face. Makrov’s emaciation revealed nothing but apathy.
What kept me out of his brain was the very slight danger that there I might involuntarily affect the course of his thought and action; and until I would understand the subjective situation better, I dared not risk this.
Having passed through a dirty little village and negotiated a barren terrain, our command car approached and stopped at the door of a ramshackle hut which apparently presided over a small, wasted truck farm. The guards bounced out over the side of the car,, and the guard whose brain was currently hosting me took Makrov roughly by a skinny bicep and half helped, half dragged him over. Guards were posted at this door, which had suddenly become valuable to the state of Fust. Intricate watchwords were interchanged; ID papers were displayed. At length Makrov and his guards were allowed to enter.
Pausing just inside the door behind Makrov, with the other guard behind, I-in-my-host saw beyond the stooped shoulders of Makrov a piteous tableau. A woman stood bent-legged, embracing two small children. Her blond hair looked bleached (Makrov’s was balding-dark), and so did her pale-blue eyes; her dress was cheap-clean and ragged; she had scarcely any shoulders or breasts, and her bare arms were wasted. She stared at Makrov, trembling a little, saying nothing, clutching the children.
“Get behind her,” said the other guard. My host stationed himself behind the woman; and now my visual field was almost hers—dark-balding emaciated haunt-eyed Makrov half-cringing before his suffering wife and starved children.
The tableau held.
Makrov tried to say her name: “Meri—” No sound came, but his lips said it.
Her voice was cracked. “It is you, Ben. They have brought you, so it must be bad. But it is good.”
The little girl set up a wailing; the slightly older boy hugged his mother’s leg, staring at the father-stranger.
His mother hugged them, and her voice came a little stronger: “It is your father, children. Of course you have almost forgotten—but it is not his fault, and we love him.”
Makrov, gazing at them, suffered.
Suddenly Meri freed herself of the children and hurried to her husband. They embraced, sobbing. She thrust him away, turned, held his hand, and beckoned the children. They came hesitant. Makrov dropped to his knees and held out his arms. Frightened, they stood. Gently Meri shepherded them in. He embraced them. Then all four were sobbing.
My host-guard cleared his throat. The other guard was frozen in a feet-apart stance, watching objectively, a hand on his pistol.
Hugging the children, Makrov raised a wet face to his wife. He told her: “We have to talk.”
Taking each child by a hand, gently she raised them to their feet. “Go out and play,” she said.
But now they did not want to go.
But she made them go. And then she turned to her husband, glancing at the guards. “Come si
t on the bed,” she suggested. “We’ll talk there, and we won’t care about these listening swine, they can’t understand our kind of talk anyway.”
My host gripped his pistol, and the other guard’s gun came half out of its holster; but my host snapped: “Cool it. We can’t act unless he does something wrong.”
So I had been saved any immediate need to act. My host-guard followed them to the door of the hovel and lounged in the doorway while they sat on the bed and talked, ignoring him.
Makrov: “I love you.”
Meri: “I love you.”
“I love the children and you.”
“I love them and you, Ben. But mostly you.”
“You mustn’t say that, Meri. They are more important than we.”
“Is that what your Lord teaches?”
“Not necessarily. What does your Master teach?”
“Theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.”
“There. You see, Meri?”
“Nevertheless I love you most. I would give them for you. You do not have to feel the same way. If you would give me for them, I would understand. But that is how I feel about you.”
“I feel that way about you, too. But I think it must be wrong.”
“Probably it is all right in feeling, but it would be wrong in action—do you think?”
“You mean, we can love each other most, but in a pinch we have to be ready to give each other up for them?”
“What do you think, Ben?”
“That is what I think.”
“This is a funny way to be talking, when we come together after two years.”
“Yes. I would rather kiss you. But there they are.” He nodded at the guards.
“They wouldn’t—”
“No. They wouldn’t leave.”
“Maybe it’s just as well. I have no lips anymore—or anything else.”
“Neither have I.”
Pause. The sense of the pause was that these were trifles.
“I’ve hardly seen the children, Meri. We sent them away to play. I think that’s funny, too.”
“Everything is funny, Ben. That’s a hell of a word.”
“You never used to swear.”
“Funny is a hell of a word.”
“Yes.”
Long silence, during which Meri’s thin hands massaged his bony hands, and they suffered, and the guards tried not to fidget. Then: “Ben—”
“Meri?”
“I’m stewing a rutabaga. Do you—”
He shook his head.
“Ben—”
“Meri?”
“They brought you here for something. What?” She was tense, and the guards tensed: I felt my host stiffen and mentally prepare himself for swift pistol draw.
After thought, during which he looked about him slowly and vaguely, Makrov stared at my host, telling Meri: “You were taught, Meri, that your Master’s Father put us into this world for testing. I was taught that this world is probably all there is, and that in it our Lord God expects us to be virtuous. So I look around, and here we are, a couple of innocents, philosopher-farmer and farmer’s daughter, dusted-off and screwed into dry dirt because of the purposes of great men that we cannot touch or influence. And it crosses my mind that most of us are like this. You have it harder than most members of your pure race, because you are the wife of an impure man; but even among those of your pure race, most of them are bad off, maybe not so bad as you, maybe worse. Many of them are dying in the war, taking orders from corporals. These two guys right here, they are fat and sassy, but even they are—”
He cut it off and by habit shrank back (against his wife) as the second guard advanced threateningly on Makrov. I was at the point of intervening—but my host took initiative to bark: “NO, Fritz!” I got the mental message: the guards were to intervene only if Makrov should begin to hint at the Secret.
Meri was hugging Ben hard to her, shushing him. He struggled with her weakly; she let him be; he got himself upright and glared at the second guard, but common sense told Makrov to let it go.
Looking then at Meri, he continued, valorously brushing off the interruption: “I am not talking only about our own country. I think it is so everywhere. Even in the southeast, many of my own people are shrinking from hostile men of their own race but of different nationalities, and then counterkilling in self-defense; and their dead enemies understand no better than my people do. It is the leaders, Meri; and if we become enthusiastic, it is because they enflame us; and if we suffer, it is because they use us. So—”
The extreme dryness of his throat had almost cut off his voice. She was hugging him again, but she was not trying to stop him—sensing, I grasped with a sudden sharp shot of sympathy, that this talking was a must for her man who could not expect to go on living anyway.
Having got saliva into his throat, Makrov struggled on—working with his enfeebled brain, as now I electrically comprehended, to find out something from Meri without revealing anything to her: “I am too weak to propose solutions. They say that in the far west there are peoples who can really influence their leaders, and it may be so; but I bet their influence is only relatively better and their knowledge only a little better; and I bet that when they choose their leaders, they have only a few leader-chosen candidates to choose from. And maybe this is just how it is with people in the world. And this is why I am saying what I am saying, Meri—wait, I’ve almost forgotten what I was getting at—”
He struggled with his thought as he had struggled with his voice. Then he clutched her shoulders, looking with his popeyes into her faded eyes, and he said fiercely: “If my Lord God is right, that there is no future and we must be virtuous here for Him, then He allows us precious little chance to be virtuous! And if your Master is right, that this world is His Father’s testing for hereafter, then this is a cruel testing by a God who is supposed to be a loving Heavenly Father! Meri—tell me how it is!”
She stared at him, stricken, clutching his arms as he gripped her shoulders. And I knew that she knew that this was a great deal more personal than a mere discussion of theology.
The silence was very long. This turn of the discussion was boring both guards: the second guard had actually turned his head away, brooding with a foot on a stool; and for the first time I had to exercise subtle influence in order to keep my host’s eyes on the tortured couple so I could watch.
Meri quietly said: “Hold me, Ben.” After an instant he released his grasp on her shoulders to enfold her in his arms, and she pressed her head against his chest, and Ben laid his lips on the back of her neck, and I watched her thinking.
I knew how it was!
Perhaps now was when I should intervene?
I forced myself to remain passive in the guard’s brain. They must play it out themselves.
Then why was I here? When should I act?
Meri was talking low, it was hard to hear: “I think your God is right, and I think my God is right. I don’t know whether they are the same God; I think they are, but I am too stupid to know. But I think they are both right.”
“I am a philosopher. Tell me how they can both be right.”
“I think that this is a testing for hereafter. And I also think that in this testing we must behave as though it were all. My religion stresses the hope. Your religion stresses the strength of hopeless loyalty. It is all one. Let us not talk about our Gods, let us talk about our prophets. If our prophets are right, then we must behave as your prophets say in order to earn the blessed hereafter. If your prophets are right, and there is no hereafter, then my hope will help me to behave as your prophets tell me I must behave.”
He said harshly: “You reduce it to a question of educational psychology.”
With her mouth on his wrist, she said simply: “I reduce it to a question of hope and virtue. I think we must be courageous.”
“And suffer?”
“Yes, if we cannot virtuously help it.”
He wet his lips and asked the question, coming as close as
he dared to the real issue. “What if you knew that I had knowingly acted in such a way as to intensify your suffering—and the misery of our children?”
In a kind of sluggish double-take, the second guard’s attention went back to them.
She asked low: “Do you love us?”
“Yes.”
“Do you love God?”
“Whatever God is—yes, I love God.”
“Then you have your decisions to make. Be virtuous.”
They stayed that way quietly for a while. And then the hour was done.
After that the guards command-carried Makrov back to the capital; and Makrov knew just as well as I that Makrov’s wife and children would be following. I longed to enter his brain, to gauge him subjectively in this piteous crisis; but still something was warning me out, so I stayed out.
Instead, I abandoned Makrov to stay in my guard-host as both guards went in to report to the Führer’s deputy. This was the same man whom I had occupied during the first Führer-interview with Makrov: this man was small and stooped, skinny and dark, and one leg was crooked, and he was a saturnine genius.
He said: “Tell me.”
My host reported: “Nothing. They exchanged sentiments. They talked religion.”
The dark man squinted. “How did they talk religion?”
The guard stiffened: he was select, no fool, a college graduate, a trusted confidential lieutenant in this enterprise; and now, grasping that he may have muffed something, he went to work on memory reconstruction. With hardly any perceptible hesitation he stated: “They were concerned about the ironies of their respective religious teachings. He thought that one of their gods must be wrong, because one taught that there was no hereafter and yet life was unjust, while the other taught that life is a testing for hereafter but it was an unjustly rough testing. She said that they must behave as though both gods were right—that they must be virtuous no matter what. He seemed to accept this.”
“That was all?”
“That was all. But it was very subversive.”
