Farrari modestly murmured his thanks.
“I polled the entire classification team a month ago,” Paul said. “No one disapproved of your presence here, everyone thought the assignment of a CS man to an IPR team a good idea, and many were enthusiastic. You’ve done a job for us, you haven’t got in anyone’s way, and you’ve worked harmoniously whenever the interests of another specialist touched upon yours. I’ve said some nice things about you in my reports, and I expect to say more before you’re recalled. In short your worries, if you have any, are entirely without foundation.”
“Even so,” Farrari persisted, “I have the feeling that someone expects me to do something… something—”
“Significant?” Paul suggested. “Or maybe even dramatic?” He chuckled. “Ever hear of a world named Gurnil?”
“No, sir.”
“I’m surprised. Where IPR is concerned there is always a problem—THE problem. On Gurnil it went on for four hundred years. Then someone had a brainstorm and brought in a CS officer. Prior to that we’d always kept CS out until we’d certified a world nonhostile, meaning until it was eligible for Federation membership. The CS officer solved the Gurnil problem with a brilliant stroke that the Bureau doesn’t understand yet and probably never will. Immediately the Bureau requested CS men for all of its classification and direction teams. There weren’t enough to go around, which is why your class was jerked out of the academy before it finished its training. Bureau higher-ups are hopeful that Gurnil-type miracles will pop out all along the frontier. They won’t. The CS officer who solved the Gurnil problem was undoubtedly a veteran and the most brilliant man available. You youngsters aren’t about to pull off anything like that, but you can learn, you can acquire valuable experience, and you can help out with routine tasks that touch on your specialized knowledge. If once in a century, or once in a millennium, we get another Gurnil, that’s just an unexpected bonus. My advice: carry on as you have. You’re doing fine.”
“Thank you, sir. But what is THE problem?”
Paul’s fingers drummed thoughtfully on his desk. “Didn’t they issue you an IPR manual?”
“No, sir.”
“They should have.” He scribbled a memo and handed it to Farrari. “Take that to Graan. If he doesn’t have a manual in stock I’ll be shocked, and tell him he’s to loan you his personal copy until he gets one for you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“One moment, Farrari. Manual 1048-K is a mountain of fine print and capitalized nuggets of what the Bureau chooses to consider wisdom. I’m not giving you one with the idea that you’ll read it, because you won’t. At least, I hope you won’t. The contents are highly technical, and it takes a Bureau man several years to work his way through it. A little browsing in it won’t injure you—not much, anyway—but while you’re browsing never forget one thing: the entire manual concerns the Bureau’s dealings with people—with intelligent beings. That’s all, Farrari.”
Dazedly Farrari saluted and made his exit.
In Isa Graan’s office he exchanged his memo for a copy of PR Field Manual 1048-K. It was thick, oblong volume of some three thousand pages, zip-bound in tough, reinforced covers.
“So you think you’re ready for the Holy Word,” Graan drawled. “You’re agreeing not to remove the manual from this base without the coordinator’s permission, or divulge its contents or any part thereof to any unauthorized person or persons.”
“What’s the penalty?”
“No idea. As far as I know it’s never happened.”
Farrari scrawled his signature. “I’m not sure that I’m ready for quite this much of the Holy Word,” he said ruefully. “I suppose you people have to memorize it.”
“It only seems that way,” Graan said.
Farrari opened the cover. On the first inside page he read, “DEMOCRACY IMPOSED FROM WITHOUT IS THE SEVEREST FORM OF TYRANNY.” He glanced at the wall behind Graan, where the same motto hung. “It just occurred to me,” he said, “that thing is on display in every room in the base—except my rooms.”
“Regulations say every room,” Graan said. “It kind of seemed that we were turning your rooms over to the Cultural Survey, and we didn’t know but what CS had a motto of its own, so we took ours down.”
“I see.” Farrari turned a handful of pages and peered dubiously at the fine print. He flipped another page and saw a framed block of large, black capital letters. DEMOCRACY IS NOT A FORM OF GOVERNMENT. IT IS A STATE OF MIND. PEOPLE CANNOT BE PLACED ARBITRARILY IN A STATE OF MIND.
“I don’t suppose there’s an abridged version,” Farrari said wistfully. He turned another handful of pages. ONE MEASURE OF THE URGENCY OF REVOLUTION IS THE FREEDOM THE PEOPLE HAVE, COMPARED WITH THE FREEDOM THEY WANT.
“It’s very carefully organized,” Graan said. “Here—the table of contents is at the back. History of the Bureau, Basic Principles, Classification Data, Specimen Cases—that’s half the manual, includes all the classic cases and representative examples of every classification. Then Procedures, and so on.”
“Where would I find instructions for classifying this planet?”
Graan patted the manual. “Actually, this is classroom stuff. I doubt that any IPR team has to calculate a classification ratio these days. We send all of our data to headquarters, it’s fed into a special computer, and someone reads off the classification. The ticklish problem is in compiling the data—not to overlook anything. In simple terms, the classification is political factors over technological factors. It reads like a fraction. The smaller the fraction, the healthier the situation—what we call a low-high condition—and with proper evolution the technological factor ascends and the political factor descends. One over one hundred would mean pure democracy and the highest technological level. The computer rarely gives us whole numbers, though-1.3785 over 99.7481 would round off at 1/100 for convenient reference.”
“What about Branoff IV?”
“It’ll be the opposite—a nasty variant of a high-low condition. The God-Emperor, a small class of intermarrying nobility, military establishment mainly aimed at keeping the population in check, and the majority of the emperor’s subjects in a state of slavery. Politically somewhere in the high eighties. Considering the level of culture the technology is surprisingly weak. Not even ten on the revised scale—say 87/8. The Bureau is certain to oh-oh the planet.”
“What does that mean?”
“Observation only. It’ll be at least a couple of millennia before we really can go to work here.”
“And what is the Bureau’s problem—THE problem?”
“Our mission,” Graan said slowly, “is to raise the technological level, and to reduce the political factor to a point where all of the population can benefit from the technological advances. Ultimately, to achieve a minimal level then democracy, which would make the planet eligible for Federation membership. THE problem, from which all of our other problems derive, is that this must be achieved by the people themselves. History has recorded many instances where outside forces have artificially raised a level of technology and imposed a democracy on a population. The result is inevitably catastrophic. Democracy imposed from without—”
Farrari groaned.
“Something similar could be said for technology imposed from without,” Graan went on. “THE problem is to somehow move the people toward the achievement of these things by themselves, without any apparent outside intervention. This means that the Bureau has to work with the local population completely unaware of its existence. If its presence is so much as suspected, it must withdraw for years, maybe centuries, and then make a fresh start. Needless to say, the Bureau proceeds cautiously in even its small endeavors. THE problem is never exactly the same twice, because intelligent beings are so damned inventive. That’s why the manual is so thick—why there are so many specimen cases. What works wonderfully well on one world may not work at all on another where conditions seem to be similar. The first thing an IPR man has to learn is that he’s deali
ng with people, and people can be confidently relied upon not to conform to any preconceived pattern.”
“Coordinator Paul just told me something like that.”
“Then that makes it official,” Graan said with a grin. “You’ll also find it mentioned once or twice in the manual.”
Farrari carried the manual to his quarters and flopped down on his bed to read. The contents seemed either distressingly boring or appallingly technical, and the fine print quickly gave him a headache. For a time he amused himself by flipping the pages rapidly and reading the succinct messages that flashed at him in capitals.
THE BUREAU DOES NOT CREATE REVOLUTION. IT CREATES THE NECESSITY FOR REVOLUTION. GIVEN THAT NECESSITY, THE NATIVE POPULATIONS ARE PERFECTLY CAPABLE OF HANDLING THE REVOLUTION.
FUNDAMENTAL TO ANY DEMOCRACY IS THE PEOPLE’S RIGHT TO BE WRONG. NO DEMOCRACY HAS SURVIVED THE ABOLISHMENT OF THAT PRINCIPLE.
DEMOCRACY HAS BEEN TOUTED AS A SYSTEM UNDER WHICH ANY MAN CAN BE KING. SUCH A SYSTEM WOULD NOT BE DEMOCRATIC, BUT ANARCHIC. IN A DEMOCRACY, NO MAN CAN BE KING.
… OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, AND FOR THE PEOPLE …
Farrari zipped the covers and pushed the manual aside.
PEOPLE. All of these words concerned intelligent beings who were born, attained maturity, loved, or through some related process, reproduced their kind, tasted joy and sorrow, health and sickness, and died, thus advancing their civilizations a fractional point up the technological scale and down the political scale. Or perhaps, in one of the retrogressions that must occur, sending it stumbling in the wrong direction.
PEOPLE.
In Farrari’s intensive studies at the Cultural Survey Academy he had learned to analyze and evaluate and classify any work of art set before him. He had plodded wearily, but efficiently, through kiloreams of prose and poetry, and kilohours of music, and kilometers of art and architecture with no more than a passing thought to the minstrels and writers and poets and musicians and painters and sculptors and architects who created those things.
He had given no thought at all to the people for whom those works of art were intended. It was occurring to him for the first time that the art of the universe had not been called into being solely for the study and diversion of the Cultural Survey. The aspiration and sense of beauty of living beings—of people—were the generative impulse behind each word, each note, each stroke of the brush or chisel.
Just as human perspiration and blood throbbed behind each casual statement of the word revolution in IPR Manual 1048-K.
This world of Branoff IV. Farrari had seen one class of its inhabitants every day since his arrival. He had seen the emperor, or kru, and his little coterie of nobility portrayed in bas-relief sculpture of a surprising strength and maturity. He had seen the valiant deeds of the kru’s warriors—who were not so much an army as an elite palace guard—depicted in sculpture and painting, celebrated, in legend, praised in song.
What of the people?
He searched his memory. He had hundreds of teloid cubes in his workroom files, neatly cataloged and instantly available to project a three-dimensional time image with natural color and sound. Every palace and temple had been meticulously photographed in all of its rich detail: its masterful bas-reliefs; its wall paintings—which were stylistic monstrosities because the paints were of poor quality and the paintings had been continuously restored and touched up by successive generations of artists; its lovely tile friezes; its tapestries; its bungled attempts at full sculpture—which continued to puzzle him because the relief carving was so excellent. He had teloids of carved and etched weapons, of ceramics, of jewelry and ornaments, of illuminated scrolls, even a teloid of one of the hand-painted robes that were ceremoniously burned after the kru had worn them once. He had more than a hundred teloids of the exterior details of the kru’s Life Temple and its astonishing Tower-of-a-Thousand-Eyes that he had unhesitatingly classifed as unique, to the undisguised amusement of Jan Prochnow, the expert in comparative theology. (“It’s only a minor variant, my boy, and a rather naïve one at that.”) He had teloid cubes of every kind of art, ornamental, or practical, and as many specimens as the IPR field team had been able to surreptitiously ferret out for him, and he had been studying them for months. He had not even been aware of the existence of a people, of the masses of intelligent beings that those thousand eyes of the kru’s tower stared out upon. Did they pass by quickly, with lowered gaze, or did they pause and boldly stare back?
Suddenly he wanted to know.
He sprang from his bed and hurried to the records section. “I’d like to take a few teloids,” he announced.
Ganoff Strunk hauled himself from behind his desk, an expression of wounded dignity on his lined face. “Did we miss something? I thought we gave you everything.”
“You did,” Farrari assured him. “I’d just like to take a few teloids of the slaves.”
“The olz. Yes. What do you mean—you’d like to take a few teloids?”
“Well—”
Strunk clutched his ample belly and laughed convulsively. “You think all you have to do is walk up to an ol, point your camera, and say, ‘Smile’? See here, my boy, as far as the ol is concerned, you are a thing, from the nether regions, and don’t ever forget it! Before you can approach a native you have to be a native—in dress, mannerisms, speech and character. What role would you take? Slave, overseer, soldier, artisan, merchant, priest, nobleman—why, you couldn’t walk along a city street without getting yourself stoned as a degenerate! You don’t even know which finger the well-bred ol uses to pick his nose. The first time you sneezed in the presence of a durrl, a slave overseer, you’d be executed for insubordination. Nobody—and I do mean nobody—gets close to a native until he’s been exhaustively trained and strenuously examined. Even so, we lose agents. Especially on planets such as this one we lose agents, because life is held in such low esteem that a soldier will likely as not run a spear through the first ol he meets of a morning just for practice, or the general hell of it. We lose them, but we certainly don’t throw them away.”
Farrari said protestingly, “There has to be a first time for everyone. Who trained the first IPR agents?”
“They trained themselves, my boy, and a damnably touchy business it is for those making an initial contact. They photographed and recorded and observed endlessly, and stole garments and tools when they could get away with it, and they studied—intensive study such as you never dreamed of at your snug academy. Their lives depended on it. Usually it’s a year, at least, before an IPR agent even allows a native to see him from a distance—if he can help it. And you want to take a few teloids! Look here. You want teloids of the olz? Just tell me how many thousand you need. We have them.”
“Oh, I don’t need that many.”
“Just enough to give you a glimpse of life on Branoff IV? Here are some duplicates we’ve made up for the Bureau Archives. They’re yours until the next supply contact.”
“Thanks. They’ll do nicely.”
“I’ll warn you, though. It isn’t a pleasant life. You won’t like it.”
Farrari hurried back to his workroom, snapped the first tube of teloid cubes into the projector, threw the switch—and recoiled in horror.
The three-dimensional projection filled the room in front of him. A slave woman lay on her back, her arms and legs threshing in a convulsion of agony, while a durrl calmly lashed at her with an unpruned branch. The whistle of the whip, the solid whup of its landing, the woman’s screams of torment, the durrl’s grunts blended in a terrifying melange of sounds. White-faced, wincing at every flick of the whip, Farrari was sickened into immobility. The blows struck with ruthless precision—now on the swollen abdomen, now on the already unrecognizable face, now on the churning limbs. Each downward stroke pealed away gruesome ribbons of flesh; each upswing flecked bright globules of blood into the cheerful sunlight.
The cube ran its five-minute course; at the very end the woman’s body heaved in a final, wracking paroxys
m of pain, and she gave birth.
Farrari waited helplessly for the next cube, but the projector was set to repeat. It clicked, and the abhorrent scene ran its course again. And again. Despite his numbing nausea, his overwhelming urge to turn away, to shut off the projector, to flee the room, he watched hypnotically and began to pick out small details. The woman had been working on the harvest. A pile of dirt-encrusted tubers stood near her battered head. One lay in the foreground, almost at Farrari’s feet, its bulging diameter neatly incised with teeth marks. The emaciated arms and legs completed the story: the woman was starving; she had stolen a bite of food.
The cube was on its fourth repetition when Farrari abruptly became aware that the central characters in the violent drama were not alone. Two naked men, a woman wearing a loincloth, and a naked child watched with apparent indifference, as though they had seen it all before and it was anyway of no concern of theirs. Yet their eyes flashing beneath low, protruding brows, transfixed Farrari. Where the faces were utterly devoid of emotion, the eyes were alive—with the tragic accumulation of generations of loathing and terror? He knew that he would never forget those dead faces and their pathetically alive, staring eyes.
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