by James Gunn
“Yes, Doctor?”
“If this is what we think it is, it may be more dangerous than the worst plague or the most deadly weapon ever encountered. Humanity has battled and won over all manners of competing life-forms and natural hazards, but this process aims at the heart of [34] what everyone seeks. Humanity may not be able to resist what offers no opposition, which promises only joy.”
They all turned to their tasks, preparing for the next brief lurch into normal space that would sicken the crew and deliver the next burst of deadly information from the troubled planet below.
[subspace carrier wave transmission]
>starship computer purpose
life maintenance
ship operation
timshel computer purpose interrogate<
>interrogate<
Chapter Three
Timshel City
WHEN KIRK AWOKE, the sun was casting long shadows across the ocean. Strange birds were singing outside the open doors that let in the western breeze with its alien odors. It was all so pleasant and uncomplicated that Kirk lay there for a moment, stretching and breathing deeply, his mind crystalline, feeling unusually rested from his first night planetside after months in the artificial gravity of the Enterprise. And then he remembered the troubling experiences of the night before and rolled out of bed onto his feet.
He emerged from the shower to find a new set of clothing laid out for him on the bed, which someone had made while he was out of the room. Besides undergarments, the clothing consisted of a pair of tight-fitting trousers fashioned from some smooth blue cloth and a loose, long-sleeved shirt, lighter blue and thinner. It was much like what Dannie had worn the night before.
The clothing fit well enough, and Kirk felt more comfortable in it than in the tunic that had disappeared. When he came out of the bedroom and [37] walked down the hall to the kitchen, all the Marouks were seated at the breakfast table except Noelle. “She’s gone for a morning swim,” Marouk said. “As you may have noticed, Noelle has more energy than the rest of us put together.”
“Are there aquatic predators out there?” Kirk asked. “I thought I heard something sigh last night. Something big.”
“That was a wampus,” Tandy said.
“A harmless aquatic mammal, something between a terrestrial porpoise and a whale,” Marouk added. “Since the Landing, one or another of them have lingered near the shore at all times. Nobody knows why. Maybe they’re interested in us. Maybe they want to tell us something. Maybe they’re waiting for us to explain to them what we’re doing here. In any case, they seem to keep predators away, and they may be more intelligent than either porpoises or whales; perhaps more intelligent than humans. Life in the benign environment of the ocean doesn’t lead to technology, or even language beyond the most elementary concepts. Things like: danger, food, here, there, come, go. Before the De Kreef revolution, however, a group of xenobiologists believed it was close to opening communication.”
“And that’s stopped?” Kirk asked. Mareen motioned for him to take a place at the table and poured him a glass of purple juice. He sat down and took it gratefully. “Another Timshel delicacy I remember,” he said. “The Timshel grape that tastes like nectar.”
“Many things have changed,” Marouk said. “Much fascinating work no longer interests anyone. But you must see for yourself.”
“Surely the discovery of an alien intelligence must remain a priority with any revolution,” Kirk said.
“There’s a Timshel nursery rhyme,” Mareen said.
Tandy quoted:
[38] “ ‘The wampus is a strange fish.
It lives in the water and breathes like a man.
If I had only one wish,
I’d put into action my favorite plan
To talk with the wampus whenever I can.’ ”
“When there is one big priority,” Mareen said, “all the others fade into insignificance.”
“Eat,” Marouk said. “Drink. When you are finished the girls will take you on a tour.”
Kirk dug into the meal placed before him: eggs, a kind of cured meat like ham, toast, cereal, and finally a cup, frequently refilled, of Timshel coffee. When he was finished he sat back, and looked down at his clothing. “What’s with these?” he asked.
“These are what Timshel citizens wear,” Mareen said. “We want you to be able to pass as long as you can.”
“A uniform?” Kirk asked, surprised that Timshel citizens, known for their independence of spirit, would allow themselves to be regimented.
“Not what you would call a uniform. More a consensus,” Mareen said. “The trousers are called ‘jeans.’ The shirt often accompanied the trousers. We learned that from our historical records. It was what a lot of people wore in the twentieth century on Earth. It symbolized work, or a solidarity with the working class, just as the Greek tunic or the Roman toga implied leisure and maybe the arts or the life of the mind.”
“That’s why Wolff called my tunic ‘antique,’ ” Kirk said.
Tandy nodded. “No one wears them any more or togas or leisure-type clothing of any kind. That’s for a world that no longer exists.”
“But none of you are wearing—what did you call them? Jeans? Workshirts?”
“Noelle and I aren’t old enough to work,” Tandy said wistfully.
[39] “And Kemal and I don’t wear work clothes because we aren’t permitted to work.” The older Marouks wore bloused white shirts and neatly pressed white trousers, clearly unfit for labor that involved contact with equipment or soil, and Tandy was wearing a bright red shirt and pink slacks.
“You aren’t permitted?”
Marouk nodded. “And that is the reason we don’t wear bracelets either.” He held up a hand to stop Kirk’s questions. “I don’t want your observations clouded by extraneous details. Perhaps we’ve told you too much already.”
Kirk shook his head. “Hardly.”
“But here’s Noelle,” Marouk said.
The youngest Marouk daughter appeared, toweling her hair dry. She was dressed in shades of orange and yellow. “Are you ready for the grand tour, Uncle Jim?”
“Uncle?” Kirk said quizzically.
“Well, if you can’t be my sweetheart,” Noelle said brazenly, “you’ll have to be my uncle.”
“And a marvelous uncle I will be, too. But where’s Dannie?”
“She had to go to work,” Mareen said.
“Work?” Kirk echoed. “Without saying goodbye?”
“Work comes first,” Tandy said simply.
Maybe that was the big priority that Mareen had mentioned. But what kind of work had drawn Dannie away, and why was it more important than saying goodbye to him? And explaining her behavior?
Kirk pushed down new stirrings of jealousy.
They walked from the villa on the outskirts of Timshel City toward City Center, Tandy walking sedately on Kirk’s right side, Noelle hanging on his left arm talking excitedly about the sights. The city was small. Residents numbered, Noelle said, maybe one hundred thousand. But then, Tandy added, the entire human population of Timshel was less than one [40] million, most of them descended from the original two thousand settlers. Which had been reduced, Noelle added in her turn, to fifteen hundred by accident and disease before Timshel City was built and the scientists got the alien viruses and bacteria under control.
The settlers had spread out along the coastline and not as much toward the continent at their back, so that the city resembled a bulging snake hugging the shore. But its size was still so manageable that public transportation was unnecessary and private vehicles were used only by the handicapped. These were few, since prosthetics could replace most damaged limbs, inherited damage could be reversed with gene therapy, and organ transplants could repair most constitutional inadequacies or the deteriorations of age.
“Athens was no bigger than this when it was creating Western civilization,�
�� Kirk said, “and Rome was not much larger when it was the ruler of the Western world.”
As they walked along the winding boulevards, shaded by oaks brought as seeds from Earth, no vehicles passed them. But they passed areas of land at the intersection of boulevards where people tended rows of vegetables with hoes and trowels, working at their tasks with an intensity of purpose more appropriate to peasants for whom the success of their farming meant the difference between survival and starvation. At each such site, like an overseer, stood a uniformed policemen.
“Wasn’t there a playground here at one time?” Kirk asked. “And a park there with lots of Timshel flowers and trees?”
“Playgrounds and parks require little maintenance,” Tandy said. “And, anyway, people don’t have time to enjoy them anymore. Children are studying and adults are working.”
“What are the children studying?” Kirk asked.
[41] “How to be working adults,” Tandy said. She sounded a bit envious.
“And why are the adults working at these kinds of jobs?”
“They’re working because they want to,” Noelle said. “As a matter of fact, people compete for jobs like these. Manual labor accumulates more points than anything.”
“You mean the policemen aren’t there to act as overseers?” Kirk asked.
“Yes, but not in the way you suggest,” Tandy said. “The police have to stop people from working so hard they drop from exhaustion,” Tandy said. “See there?” She indicated a policeman placing a hand on a workman’s shoulder and pushing him toward a spot under a nearby tree. Reluctantly the workman released his hoe and trudged to the tree where he sat, his hands clasped over his knees as if he were about to rise at any moment, and glancing up at the policeman as if to check the time. “He’s being required to rest. A little later this morning there will be a mandatory break for water and for elimination, and at noon a mandatory lunch break. Most of the workers live close enough to go home. But a few insist on bringing food that they can consume quickly and get back to their jobs.”
“De Kreef succeeded in instilling the good old Puritan work ethic,” Kirk said. “No wonder Timshel City has no crime, or sin. People don’t have any time. Or any energy.”
“The Paymaster gave us direction as well as payday,” Tandy said.
“The Paymaster?”
“That’s what he became. After the Revolution,” Tandy said.
“What kind of revolution was it?” Kirk asked.
“It wasn’t a revolution,” Noelle said. “No fighting. No bloodshed. A lot of talk, and then one by one [42] people got a sample of what the Paymaster had created, and it was all over. The world had been converted to a new way of life, a new goal for existence, practically overnight. At least,” she added, “that’s what our teaching programs tell us.”
“Occasionally an isolated settler or a hunter, or their families, arrive in Timshel City and get converted,” Tandy said, “but that happens less often now. Timshel City has made equipment available to all the other cities and villages, and fewer people are choosing to isolate themselves or their families from civilization.”
“And payday,” Noelle said cheerfully.
Before this day was over, Kirk thought grimly, he would have to meet the man known as the Paymaster. Adults could make their own choices—maybe; but he felt a passion rising within him over what this system was doing to children like Tandy and Noelle.
By the time the conversation had ended, they had arrived at City Center with its broad plazas and parks. Here, too, however, the parks that Kirk remembered had been turned into vegetable gardens. The colorful Timshel plants and trees had been cut down and hauled away, the statues had been toppled or removed, the bandstands and benches and pergolas were no more. Everything had become functional, and the only function to be served was work and survival. And payday, Kirk thought.
Here in City Center, people worked at other activities. In addition to the crop tending, men and women manned brooms and scoops, cleaning the streets and walks and steps leading to the public buildings and shops, washing windows, polishing brass. Where a too vigorous hoe had spilled dirt over the edge of a former park, a woman hastened to sweep it into a receptacle and return it to its proper location between the rows. Where a workman had stepped, another rushed to scrub away the footprint. No one discarded trash, but [43] leaves and dust occasionally blew across the pristine plazas, and workers competed to remove them. Nobody spoke except to ask another to move, or to obtain cooperation for a task too large or complicated for one.
For the first time Kirk saw a citizen approaching a policeman. Kirk watched while the citizen pressed the jewel in his bracelet into a socket on the belt of the policeman. After a moment the workman removed his jewel and walked away from the plaza. He walked with an air of dejection, it seemed to Kirk. Then Kirk saw that others were going through the same procedure, as if it had been happening all along but Kirk had failed to notice.
“What are those citizens doing?” Kirk asked.
“They’ve finished their day’s work,” Noelle said. “Their shift must have started early.”
“Jobs are scarce,” Tandy said. “No one is permitted more than an eight-hour shift. At the end of their shift they record their hours with the police.”
“And who keeps track?”
“That’s done automatically,” Tandy said. “The recorder on the policeman’s belt registers the number of hours accumulated on the worker’s bracelet. At the end of the policeman’s shift, his recorder is read into the computer.”
“Which computes payday?” Kirk asked.
“I think so,” Tandy said. “Nobody talks about that part.”
“That makes sense. But if a computer does it, what’s the point of a Paymaster?”
“Maybe the Paymaster has to authorize or authenticate,” Tandy said uncertainly. “That’s what people say, anyway, but nobody really knows. As long as payday comes regularly, they don’t really care.”
“Someone has to be in charge,” Noelle said. “To be sure everything is fair, to hear appeals.”
“If everybody works for a payday,” Kirk said, “I suppose some people might try to take advantage of [44] the system. To get a payday they didn’t deserve, or a whole series of paydays.”
“Nobody would do that!” Tandy said indignantly.
“Yeah,” Noelle said, glancing slyly at Tandy, “they might get cut off completely.”
“Oh, shut up, Noelle!” Tandy said. “You’re just mad because I’m only a year away from my payday, and you still have more than half your present lifetime to wait.”
Noelle stuck her tongue out at Tandy.
They passed by a section of shops, restaurants, cafés, and coffeehouses, but they were empty and shuttered. Outside the cafés the tables were stacked with chairs turned upside down; umbrellas were tattered. Kirk studied it all apprehensively, but he asked no questions. Clearly this was all related to the De Kreef Revolution.
When they approached a section of public buildings, Kirk held up his hand and said, “I’d like to stop in the library for a moment.”
“It’s been converted into a factory,” Tandy said.
“What happened to the tapes and books?”
Tandy waved her hand vaguely. “Stored somewhere.”
“They’re all on the computer anyway,” Noelle said, “if anybody wanted to use them. Of course nobody does. Except schoolchildren. And we mostly use the instructional tapes.”
“What about the museums?” Kirk asked, gesturing as they passed.
“Closed,” Tandy said.
“The theaters?”
“Closed,” Tandy said.
“The universities and the laboratories?” Kirk asked, and then before Tandy could answer. “Closed, too, I’ll bet.”
Tandy nodded.
“Nobody has time for that sort of thing,” Noelle said.
[45] “At the very least,” Kirk said, “if work is difficult to find, keeping open the universities and the
museums and the theaters would provide work for many.”
“Work must serve a social function,” Tandy said.
“If nobody uses it, it can’t be called work,” Noelle added. “We learned that in school.”
“A marvelously consistent system,” Kirk said. “I think it’s time I met the people in charge.”
“Who is that?” Tandy asked innocently.
They had stopped in front of a five-story building. Stone steps marched up to marble columns supporting a gracefully arched roof. Kirk gestured at the building. Graven in the stone above the columns were the words WORLD GOVERNMENT.
Tandy and Noelle followed Kirk up the steps, wide-eyed and hesitant. The big metal doors creaked open as they approached. The entrance hall was dark, but overhead lights came on as they entered. The hall was majestic, towering four stories tall and lit by a great central chandelier as well as recessed lights, high in the walls, that reflected from the ceiling. Great murals adorned three walls, depicting the Landing, the exploration of Timshel, and the building of Timshel City. Otherwise the hall was empty. Their footsteps echoed on the marble floors and off the walls.
Each of the three walls had a door in the middle. Kirk headed toward the one on the right. It opened as he approached, and the lights came on in the room beyond. He stopped in the doorway. The room it opened on was as empty as the hall. He tried each of the other doorways, although with a feeling of growing futility. Those rooms were empty as well.
Kirk looked at Tandy and Noelle. They looked back, puzzled. “No one ever comes here anymore,” Noelle said.
“There’s no need for government,” Tandy said. “Much less world government.”
“Someone must assign jobs and run public services. [46] How do policemen get appointed? How do taxes get collected and spent?” Kirk asked.
“All that is done automatically,” Tandy said. “You fill out a computer form and you get back a form telling you what work you’ve been assigned. Public services are part of it, although most are provided by computer. And there aren’t any taxes to be spent.”
