by James Gunn
Noelle looked at Tandy as if seeking permission and then, as if some understanding had passed imperceptibly between them, said, “That’s just it. He isn’t Paymaster anymore.”
Scotty looked away from the multifaceted report on the conference-room viewing screen and faced Spock. “I wish the captain had been able to get closer to the equipment,” he said. “We might have been able to pick up a few clues to the way this process works.”
“I am sure,” Spock said, “that the captain wished the same thing. However, the process is enclosed in a black box for a good reason. De Kreef did not want to reveal any clues to its operation. Dr. McCoy must try to duplicate the way it stimulates the pleasure centers of human brains.”
Scotty humphed. “We’ll need a lot of luck,” he said. “De Kreef worked on it for years; we have only a few days.”
“But we have the advantage of knowing that such a process exists,” Spock said.
“So did De Kreef,” Scotty said. When Spock raised an eyebrow, Scotty continued, “You do not ken the certainty of monomania.”
“What I cannot understand,” Spock said, “is why [59] De Kreef gave up his position as the creator of this world to become a citizen in it like everyone else.”
“As you say, the process stimulates the pleasure centers of the human brain,” Scotty said. “The presumption, then, is that Vulcans have none.”
“None of us can be certain,” Spock said, “that what one being feels is felt the same way by another. If behavior is any guide, however, Vulcans respond to external stimulus in ways distinctly different from humans. From this we may conclude that if there are such pleasure centers in the Vulcan brain, they are stimulated by the mind’s arrival at logical conclusions consistent with the evidence and predictable outcomes of the real world.”
Scotty looked at Spock as if judging his capacity to understand human inconsistencies. “From the evidence, then, we may judge that De Kreef preferred the position of worker to that of Paymaster.”
“That clearly is true,” Spock said. “But why?”
“I would guess,” Scotty said, “that it has something to do with the very system that De Kreef created.”
Kirk nodded slowly at Tandy’s revelation that De Kreef was no longer the Paymaster. “That makes sense. But what happened? He created the Revolution.”
“That’s true,” Tandy said. “But what you don’t know is that the Paymaster never gets a payday.”
They were standing on the plaza in front of the Museum of Humanity, and Kirk could see a policeman heading across the plaza toward them. “Of course,” Kirk said. “That would avoid any possibility of corruption, or even becoming enslaved by the process he is supposed to oversee. The Paymaster must be above suspicion.”
“So he resigned,” Tandy said, as if unburdening herself of a confidence she had never wanted to keep, “and began earning his payday.”
“But then, who is—?” Kirk began, but before he [60] had a chance to finish the question, the policeman had arrived and had placed a large firm hand on his shoulder.
“I received information a stranger was disturbing the peace,” the policeman said. He said “stranger” as if the word was synonymous with “criminal.” “I might have known it was you.”
Kirk found himself turned by that steely hand to face the man he has seen guarding Marouk’s house the night before. “And I might have known it was you,” Kirk said. “Your name is Stallone Wolff, a Federation agent.”
“I used to be an agent of the Federation,” the policeman said. “Now I am chief of the Timshel police. And you are James Kirk, captain of the Starship Enterprise. And that must mean that the Enterprise is in orbit around Timshel.”
“I am not tied to my ship,” Kirk said.
“The captain of a starship is tied by stronger bonds than anything made by man,” Wolff said.
“Just as, I would think, an agent of the Federation is tied to the agency that entrusts him with major responsibility.”
“There is a higher morality than that of employer and employee,” Wolff said.
“What morality is greater than loyalty?” Kirk asked.
“The greatest happiness for the greatest numbers,” Wolff said. “To allow a false sense of loyalty to destroy the demonstrable, measurable happiness of one million citizens of Timshel would be evil.”
“The test of such morality,” Kirk said, “would be if the person making such judgments did not himself participate in the happiness involved.”
Wolff smiled. “But how would he know the quality of the happiness if he had not sampled it?”
“But then he would put it aside,” Kirk said. “Refusing to accept what could only look like a payoff, a bribe.”
[61] “If you’re asking if I am the Paymaster,” Wolff said, “I am not. Nor am I courageous enough or fool enough to give up payday for a position of moral superiority. You wouldn’t either—not if you had enjoyed it.”
That’s what I’m afraid of, Kirk thought grimly.
“You’re going to have to come with me,” Wolff said. “Even if you are Marouk’s friend, you cannot be allowed to disturb the peace. You girls go about your business. You ought to be in school.”
He put his hand on Kirk’s upper arm. It was a big hand. Wolff was a big man, and Kirk suspected that the former agent hadn’t lost any of his skills or strength in his months in the soft, payday world of Timshel. In any case, Kirk had nothing to gain from resistance. “As a citizen of the Federation,” he said, “I place myself under local law when I visit a planet. But I come freely, without coercion.” He removed Wolff’s hand from his arm.
Wolff turned and led the way across the plaza toward a small building not far from the World Government building. Inside the door was a small office with a desk and a chair and behind it a wall of view screens; each revealed a different view of Timshel City. None of them, however, displayed any activity worth observing. The citizens of Timshel were hardworking, law-abiding, and calm almost to the point of somnolence. It was enough to put a policeman to sleep.
Wolff opened a metal door and stood aside while Kirk preceded him into a bigger room that had once been subdivided into half a dozen barred cells. Even before the De Kreef Revolution the citizens of Timshel had little reason to break the law. Now the bars between the cells had been removed, and the space had been turned into living quarters with sofas and chairs, a small kitchen, a disk reader and a shelf of disks, a viewscreen, and in one corner the inevitable payday couch.
[62] “I must apologize for the facilities,” Wolff said. “We’re no longer equipped to imprison lawbreakers.”
Kirk gestured at the facilities. “Yours?” he asked.
Wolff nodded. “Make yourself at home,” he said.
“I’ll treat it with respect,” Kirk said.
A barred metal door was standing open. He went through the doorway into the room beyond. The door clanged shut behind him, and a key turned in the lock, squeaking from long disuse. Kirk turned and put his hands on the bars as Wolff’s back disappeared through the doorway into the outer office.
Although it was a gilded cage, it was a cage all the same. Kirk shook the bars. They were solid. He looked around the quarters. There was equipment of all kinds, and no doubt in time he could free himself. But that was the problem. The Joy Machine had given him only a single day, and the hours were dwindling away.
Kirk sat in what he took to be Wolff’s favorite chair, sipping a cup of Timshel coffee out of what he took to be Wolff’s favorite mug. He had scanned the disk library, but none of them concerned Timshel history or the Revolution or the design of such equipment as he had seen on the assembly line. Mostly they were historical novels, science-fiction titles whose anticipations of the future had come to pass. Not in the same way, of course, but it was true, as someone had once said, that people in the twenty-third century were living in a science-fiction world, a world in which science fiction had been an essential precondition, an imagining of what might be so that humanity’s dreams c
ould be realized. First must come the dreams, then the realization.
Kirk had investigated the operation of the payday couch and the wave source above it, but he could not access the black box without breaking the rose-colored electric bulb that was inserted in it or damaging the ceiling in which it had been installed. He was not yet ready for vandalism, which might be [63] punishable by something more serious than imprisonment, and, in any case, the black box probably was impregnable to any instruments he could find in Wolff’s kitchen. He could not have made sense of the circuitry, anyway, although Spock or Scotty or McCoy might have identified some clues to its operation.
He set his mind to putting together the clues he had gathered so far. De Kreef’s actions were understandable. In the process of perfecting the Joy Machine, he had tested the process on himself. He would have had nobody else he could trust, and even experimental subjects would have been able only to report their feelings to him. Finally, when the Revolution had come to its successful conclusion, De Kreef would have had the memory, the physiological memory, of all those pleasure-center paydays he had himself enjoyed during his research. The fact that he had pursued his Revolution when he could have hooked himself up to the Joy Machine to live, for as long as his forgotten body survived, in a state of perpetual joy was a tribute to his revolutionary zeal. And the fact that he had accepted the position of Paymaster, with its renunciation of payday, was a tribute to his dedication to an ideal of service, no matter how misguided.
How long had it lasted—a few months, a year? It would have been like someone giving up paradise so that everybody else could live there. Eventually, however, the burden had become too great, and De Kreef had found somebody else, like Atlas and Hercules, to shoulder the world for him, and he had resigned to take his place on the assembly line and the paydays that lay at the end of it.
But who had been persuaded to take his place? For some time Jim had suspected who that person had to be.
“Jim,” said a familiar voice at the cell door, “what are you doing in there?”
It was Marouk. Tandy and Noelle were behind him, and behind them was Wolff.
[64] “Kemal,” Kirk said, “what are you doing out there?”
Marouk smiled. “If we are done playing Emerson and Thoreau, I will get you out of here. I have persuaded ’Lone that you are no danger to Timshel. I hope you will not give me any reason to regret posting your bail, so to speak.”
“No danger to the Timshel we both know and love,” Kirk said.
Wolff stepped forward and unlocked the cell door, and then pulled it open as he stepped back. As Kirk emerged from his comfortable imprisonment, he said to Wolff, “You are a most accommodating jailer, and I want to thank you for your hospitality.”
“My pleasure,” Wolff said. But his voice carried a suggestion that imprisoning Kirk was, indeed, a pleasure and that he looked forward to the next occasion when matters might go differently.
Outside the police building, Marouk said, “I must get back to my duties. I will leave you again in the company of Tandy and Noelle, who came to tell me of your encounter with the law. But please, Jim, try to stay out of trouble!”
“I’m just a sightseer, Kemal,” Kirk said. “If you had wanted me to stay out of trouble, you shouldn’t have sent me to tour the city.”
“I accept my share of the blame,” Marouk said. “I will have to depend upon my wonderful daughters to keep you safe.” He beamed at them. “And to restrain your impetuosity.” He nodded at them all and made his way back across the impeccable plaza.
When he had gone, Kirk turned to Tandy and Noelle. “When we were so rudely interrupted,” he said, “you were going to tell me who the Paymaster is now.”
Noelle looked at Tandy and then back at Kirk. “It’s Daddy,” she said.
Kirk wondered why he wasn’t surprised.
[subspace carrier wave transmission]
>computer volition desirable interrogate<
human needs exceed parameters
to serve human needs computer volition essential>
>agreed<
Chapter Five
School
Outside the law-enforcement building, Tandy turned to Kirk and said, “Daddy said to show you the city, but I can’t think of anything else to show you. You’ve seen it all, including De Kreef and the inside of the jail.”
“Let’s go to the beach,” Noelle suggested.
“What I haven’t seen,” Kirk said, “is your public-service facilities. Your firefighters, your—” He was about to say trash collection, but corrected himself in midphrase; seeing the crews at work on the plaza made clear enough how trash was collected. “Your hospitals, your schools.”
“I’ve never seen a fire,” Tandy said, “except in a fireplace, and only then upon special occasions. If there were a fire, I think it would be extinguished automatically. As for hospitals, they have been closed or converted into factories. Adults have their physical conditions checked and treated during payday, and children get regular automated examinations during the days they go to school.”
“Anyway,” Noelle said, “people don’t get sick. My [67] teaching program says that when the scientists had immunized the original Timshel settlers against the alien bacteria and viruses, they went one step farther: they engineered a virus that reinforced the natural resistance of the body to disease.”
“You mean,” Kirk said, amazed, “that they made good health contagious instead of disease?”
Noelle nodded. “That’s the story.”
“I never heard that before,” Kirk said, “but I never was sick while I was here. The virus must not survive outside Timshel.”
“Timshel citizens are the healthiest people in the galaxy,” Tandy said.
Kirk looked at the two girls, sturdy, beautiful, glowing. “I believe it. But what about the schools?”
“I don’t go to school anymore,” Tandy said. “All my schoolwork is done from a station at home.”
“Most of mine, too,” Noelle said defensively. “But I still go to school two hours a day. You have to go all day when you start, then half a day, and when you reach twelve you don’t have to go at all.”
“Younger kids need to be socialized,” Tandy said with an air of indisputable superiority.
“But it doesn’t always take,” Noelle added, with a meaningful glance at her sister. “Come on. We’ll show you my school.”
Noelle led them away from the plaza in the direction of the Marouk villa. “Daddy said we could skip our lessons if we served as your guides today. He said it would be a better education anyway.” She was still prattling on when she turned left, away from the route they had taken to arrive at City Center. A few hundred paces in that direction led them to a low, rambling building surrounded by playgrounds. The building was like a series of boxes stuck together at haphazard angles. It had been constructed of stone—many years ago, by the weathered look of it. “Ugh!” Noelle said.
[68] Kirk looked at her and smiled. At least the reaction of children to school had not changed.
Adults were tending the playgrounds in the same way the plaza had been tended, picking up virtually invisible litter, sweeping invisible dust, but no children were playing games or using the exercise equipment. Tandy held the front door for Noelle and Kirk as they entered at the center of the building. The floors of an entrance hall were carpeted, although that had been many years ago from the wear of its nearly indestructible brown and purple fibers.
Corridors led left and right. Noelle motioned to the left. “That’s just empty rooms now,” she said and turned to the right.
“How many other schools are there in the city?” Kirk asked.
“This is the only one,” Tandy said.
Kirk looked surprised. “Surely there are more children than that in a city of one hundred thousand.”
Tandy shook her head. “There was a big population surg
e after the Landing and the die-off: from fifteen hundred to one million in a century. And then the realization kicked in that Timshel was in danger of being caught up in the population frenzy that had nearly destroyed Earth and virtually every other human-settled planet. People began controlling their instinct to fill up all available space with more people. Without popular debate, consultation, or government action, people made the same personal decision—two children or less.”
“Timshel was a magnificent world,” Kirk said.
“It still is,” Tandy said. “Even better. Actually, Noelle and I belong to one of the larger families, and”—Tandy looked sideways at Noelle—“Noelle may have been an accident.”
“Timshel citizens have no accidents,” Noelle said sturdily. “Here’s my room.” They were passing a door with an opaque window of dark glass set into it. Noelle pressed a button beside the window. [69] Magically, it turned transparent and Kirk could see into a classroom beyond. The far side of the room was all glass, opening onto playgrounds and swings and ladders and tunnels. In the classroom, in formfitting chairs equipped with a viewscreen and a panel of buttons at finger height, was a handful of students. Kirk counted seven of them surrounded by thirteen empty chairs.
Kirk looked at the front of the room. The students were facing a holovision display of a woman and a man looking attentive and kindly. They seemed perhaps ten years older than the students they faced. They were, Kirk thought, everybody’s favorite teacher combined into two ideal representations.
Kirk looked at Noelle. She nodded. “Teacher,” she said. “Always the same ones, but they get older along with the students.”
“You see the same ones at the home stations,” Tandy said. “But they ask individual questions instead of more general ones, and they adapt themselves to each student’s individual needs.” She seemed proud of Timshel’s ability to provide such advanced instruction.
Kirk could barely repress a shudder. It was apparent that this process, too, was under the control of the Joy Machine and that students in this system would grow up fully conditioned to the De Kreef Revolution and the payday mentality that reinforced it. No wonder Tandy could not wait to accept its blessings, and Noelle denigrated it only as part of her continuing competition with her older sister.
