‘However, I see no long-range hope for them. The tide is ebbing too strongly. And now, I hear, the masters have decided to eliminate Constitutionalism as a danger to the status quo. It is being very cleverly done, in the guise of free education; but it amounts to absorbing the next generation into the general ruck. Let me be grateful that this poor district does not qualify for a public school.
‘If we cannot reform society, then, can we save ourselves? There is a way. As the Old Americans would have put it: Get the hell out! The monastic orders of the post-Roman past, or of feudal India, China, and Japan, did this, in effect; and I note that their latter-day equivalent is becoming more prominent every decade. It has been my own solution too, though I prefer being an anchorite to a cenobite. The advice grieves me, Saburo, but this may be the only answer for you.
‘There was once another way, Christian leaving the City of Destruction in the most literal sense. American history is full of examples, Puritan, Quaker, Catholic, Mormon. And today the stars are a new and more splendid America.
‘But I fear this is not the right century for such an escape. The pioneering misfits I speak of departed from a vigorous society which took expansion for granted. It is not characteristic of moribund civilizations to export their radicals. The radicals themselves have scant interest in departure. I would personally love to end my days on this new planet Rustum, deep though my roots are here, but who would come with me?
‘Therefore, Saburo, we can only endure until…’
Anker’s hands fell off the keys. The pain through his breast seemed to rip it open.
He stood up, somehow, clawing for air. Or his body did. His mind was suddenly remote, knowing it had perhaps a minute to look down upon the fjord and out to the sky. And he said to himself, with a strange thankful joy, the promise three thousand years old, Odysseus, death will come to you out of the sea, death in his gentlest guise.
4
Everybody knew Jan Svoboda was estranged from his father, the Commissioner. But no orders for his arrest, or even his harassment, had ever come, so presumably an eventual reconciliation was possible. This would in fact, if not officially, re-elevate the young Citizen to Guardian status. Therefore it was advisable to stay on the right side of him.
And thus Jan Svoboda could never be sure how much of his rise was due to himself and how much to some would-be sycophant in the Oceanic Minerals office. With few exceptions, he could not even be sure how many of his friends really meant it. Nor did his attempts to find out, or his occasional blunt questions, lead anywhere. Obviously not. He became a bitter man.
His father’s educational decree provoked a tirade from him which brought envy to the eyes of his fellow Constitutionalists. They would have liked to make those remarks, but they weren’t Commissioners’ sons. Their own formal appeals were denied, and they settled down to make the best of a foul situation. After all, they were a literate, well-to-do, pragmatically oriented class; they could give supplemental instruction at home, or even hire tutors.
The new system was established. A year passed.
On a gusty fall evening, Jan Svoboda set his aircar down at home. Great gray waves marched from the west and roared among the house caissons. Their spume and spindrift went over the roof. The sky streamed past, low and ragged. Visibility was so narrow that he could see no other houses whatsoever.
Which suited him, he thought. A sea dwelling was expensive, and though well paid, he could only afford this one because a Constitutionalist normally led a quiet life. Even so, he felt the financial pinch. But where else could a man live these days within a horizon uncluttered by oafs?
His car touched wheels to the main deck, the garage door opened for him and closed behind, he got out into an insulated stillness. Faintly came a whisper that was gymbal mountings, gyrostabilizers, air conditioner, power plant; louder, though also hushed, were the hoot of wind and the ocean where it brawled. He had a wish to step out and take the cold wet air in his face. Those idiots in the office today, couldn’t they see that the ion exchange system now in use was inefficient at tropical concentrations and a little basic research could produce a design which – Svoboda hit the car with a knotted fist. It was no use. There was nothing to fight. You might as well try to catch water in a net.
He sighed and entered the kitchen: a medium-sized, rather slender man, dark, with high cheekbones and hooked nose and a deep, premature wrinkle between his eyes.
‘Hullo, darling.’ His wife gave him a kiss. ‘Ouch,’ she added. ‘That was like bussing a brick wall. What happened?’
‘The usual,’ grunted Svoboda. He heard startling silence. ‘Where’re the kids?’
‘Jocelyn called from the mainland and said she wanted to stay overnight with a girl friend. I said okay.’
Svoboda stopped. He stared at her for a long time. Judith took a backward step. ‘Why, what’s the matter?’ she asked.
‘What’s the matter?’ His voice rose as he spoke. ‘Do you realize that she and I broke off yesterday in the middle of the conformal-mapping theorem? She seems plain unable to get it through her head. No wonder, with her whole day at school given to Homemaking or some such ridiculous thing, as if her only choice in life fell between being a rich man’s toy or a poor man’s slave. And how do you expect she’ll ever be able to think straight, without knowing how language functions? Great horny toads! By tomorrow night she’ll have forgotten everything I did get her to understand yesterday!’
Svoboda grew aware he was shouting. He stopped, swallowed, and considered the situation objectively. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Shouldn’t have blown my top like that. You didn’t know.’
‘Perhaps I did,’ said Judith slowly.
‘What?’ Svoboda, who had been leaving the kitchen, spun on his heel.
She braced herself and told him: ‘There’s more to life than discipline. You can’t expect healthy youngsters to go to school on the mainland four days a week, six hours a day, meeting other children who live there, hearing games planned, excursions, parties – after school – and then return here, where there isn’t anyone their age, nothing but your lessons and your books.’
‘We go sailing,’ he argued, taken aback. ‘Diving, fishing … visiting … The Lochabers have a boy David’s age, and the de Smets —’
‘We see those people maybe once a month,’ interrupted Judith. ‘Josy’s and Davy’s friends are on the mainland.’
‘Fine lot of friends,’ snapped Svoboda. ‘Who’s Josy staying with?’ She hesitated. ‘Well?’
‘She didn’t say.’
He nodded, stiff in the neck muscles. ‘I thought so. You see, we’re old fogies. We wouldn’t approve of a fourteen-year-old girl at a harmless little marijuana party. If that’s all they have planned.’ He shouted again: ‘Well, this is the last time it happens! Any more such requests are to be turned down flat, and hell take their precious social lives!’
Judith caught a shaky lower lip between her teeth. She looked away from him and said, ‘It was so different last year.’
‘Of course it was. We had our own schools then. No need for extra instruction at home; the right things were taught during the regular hours. No need to worry about their schoolmates: our kind of kids; with decent behavior and sensible prestige symbols. But now, what can we do?’
Svoboda passed a hand across his eyes. His head ached. Judith came over and rubbed her cheek across his breast. ‘Don’t take it so hard, sweetheart,’ she murmured. ‘Remember what Laird used to say. ‘Cooperate with the inevitable.’’
‘You’re omitting what he meant by ‘cooperate,’’ replied Svoboda gloomily. ‘He meant to use the inevitable the way a judo master uses his opponent’s attack. We’re forgetting his advice, all of us are forgetting, now that he’s gone.’
She held him close for a wordless minute. The glory came back; he looked beyond the wall and breathed, ‘You don’t know what it was like. You were too young, you didn’t enter the movement till Laird was dead. I was only a kid myse
lf, and my father jeered at him. But I saw the man speak, both video and live, and even then I knew. Not that I really understood. But I knew here was a tall man with a beautiful voice, talking about hope to people whose kin lay dead in bombed-out houses. I think afterward, when I began to study the theory behind Constitutionalism, I was trying to get back the feeling I had then And my father could do nothing but make fun of him!’ He stopped. ‘I’m sorry, dear. You’ve heard this from me a hundred times.’
‘And Laird is gone,’ she sighed.
He blurted in reborn anger what he had never told her before: ‘Murdered. I’m sure of it. Not just by some chance-met Brother on a dark street – no, I got a word here, a hint there, my father had spoken privately to Laird, Laird had grown too big – I accused him to his face of having had Laird done away with. He grinned and did not deny it. That was when I left him. And now he’s trying to murder Laird’s work!’
He tore free of her and stormed from the kitchen, through the dining room and living room on his way out. A taste of the gale might cool the boiling in him.
On the living room floor, his son David sat cross-legged, swaying with half-shut eyes.
Svoboda halted. He was not noticed.
‘What are you doing?’ he said at last.
The nine-year-old countenance turned up to him, briefly dazed as if wakened from sleep. ‘Oh … hello, sir.’
‘I asked what you were doing,’ rapped Svoboda.
David’s lids drooped. Looking from beneath them, he had a curious sly appearance. ‘Homework,’ he muttered.
‘What the devil kind of homework is that? And since when has that flatheaded wretch of a teacher made any demand on your intellect?’
‘We’re to practice, sir.’
‘Quit evading me!5 Svoboda planted himself above the boy, fists on hips, and glared down. ‘Practice what?’
David’s expression approached the mutinous, but he seemed to decide on cooperation. ‘El … el … elementary attunement,’ he said. ‘Jus’ to get the technique. You need years to have the, the ack-shual experience.’
‘Attunement? Experience?’ Svoboda had again the sense of trying to net a river. ‘Explain yourself. Attunement to what?’
David flushed. ‘The Ineffable All.’ It was a defiance.
‘Now wait,’ said Svoboda, fighting for calm. ‘You’re in a secular school. By law. You’re not being taught a religion, are you?’ For a moment, he hoped so. If the government ever started favoring one of the million cults and creeds over another, it would guarantee trouble – which might make a wedge for —
‘Oh, no, sir. This is fact. Mr. Tse explained.’
Svoboda sat down on the floor beside his son. ‘What kind of fact?’ he asked. ‘Scientific?’
‘No. No, not eggzackly. You tol’ me yourself, science don’t have all the answers.’
‘Doesn’t,’ corrected Svoboda mechanically. ‘Agreed. To maintain that it does is equivalent to maintaining that the discovery of structured data is the sum total of human experience: which is a self-evident absurdity.’ He felt pleased at the easiness of his tone. There was some childish misunderstanding here, which could be cleared up with sensible talk. Looking down on the curly brown head, Svoboda was almost overwhelmed by tenderness. He wanted to rumple the boy’s hair and invite him to the sun-porch for a game of catch. However —
‘In normal usage,’ he explained, ‘the word‘fact’ is reserved for empirical data and well-confirmed theories. This Ineffable All is an obvious metaphor. It’s like when you say you’re full up to the ears with food. A way of talking, not a fact. You must mean you’re studying something about esthetics: what makes a picture nice to look at, and so on.’
‘Oh, no, sir.’ David shook his head vigorously. ‘It’s true. A higher truth than science.’
‘But then you are speaking of religion!’
‘No, sir. Mr. Tse told us about it. The older kids at school are already in, uh, a little bit in attunement. I mean, by this sort of exercise you don’t just ap, ap, apprehend the All. You become the All. You aren’t every day, I mean—’
Svoboda leaped back to his feet. David stared. The father said ill a voice that shook: ‘What sort of nonsense is this? What do those words All and Attunement mean? What structure has this identification, which is somehow only an identification on alternate Thursdays, got? Go on! You know enough basic semantics to explain. You can at least show me where definitions fail and ostensive experience takes over. Go on, tell me!’
David sprang up too. His hands were clenched at his sides and tears stood in his eyes. ‘That don’t mean anything!’ he yelled. ‘You don’t! Mr. Tse says you don’t! He says this playing with words and d-definitions, logic, it’s a lotta hooey! He says it’s down on the ma-material plane. Attunement’s real. This ole science isn’t real. You’re holding me back with your ole logic and, and, and the big kids laughed at me! I don’t want to study your ole semantics. I don’t want to. I won’t!’
Svoboda regarded him for an entire minute. Then he strode back through the kitchen. ‘I’m going out,’ he said. ‘Don’t wait up for me.’ The door to the garage shut behind him. Moments afterward, Judith heard his car take off into the storm.
5
Theron Wolfe shook his head. ‘Tsk-tsk-tsk,’ he chided. Temper, temper.’
‘Don’t tell me it’s immature to get angry,’ said Jan Svoboda in a dull tone. ‘Anker never wrote any such thing. Laird said once it was nonsane not to get angry, in atrocious situations.’
‘Agreed,’ said Wolfe. ‘And no doubt you relieved your glands considerably by flying to the mainland, storming into poor little Tse’s one-room apartment, and beating him up before the eyes of his wife and children. I don’t see that you accomplished much else, though. Come on, let’s get out of here.’
They left the jail. A respectful policeman bowed them toward Wolfe’s car. ‘Sorry about our mistake, sir,’ he said.
‘That’s okay,’ said Wolfe. ‘You had to arrest him, since he was not doing his brawling in Lowlevel and you did not know he was the Psychologics Commissioner’s son.’ Svoboda curled a weary lip. ‘But you did well to call me as he insisted.’
‘Do you wish to file any charges against the Tse person?’ asked the officer. ‘We’ll take care of him, sir.’
‘No,’ said Svoboda.
‘You might even send him some flowers, Jan,’ suggested Wolfe. ‘He’s only a hack, executing his orders.’
‘He doesn’t have to be a hack,’ Svoboda barked. ‘I’m sick of this whine, ‘Don’t blame me, blame the system.‘ There isn’t any system: there are men, who act well or badly.’
Wolfe’s Jovian form preceded him into the car. The merchant took the controls and they murmured along the ramp and into the air. It was still night, still windy. The jeweled web of Highlevel illumination stretched thin above Low-level darkness. Near the eastern horizon, a hunchbacked moon sent flickers of light off a black restless Atlantic.
‘I had your car sent to my place, and shot Judith a message so she won’t worry,’ said Wolfe. ‘Instead of rousing her when you stumble in, how about staying overnight with me and taking a holiday tomorrow? You need to unkink.’
‘All right.’ Svoboda slumped.
Wolfe put the autopilot on Cruise, offered a cigar, and struck one for himself. Its red glow as he sucked sketched his features upon shadow, a bearded Buddha with a faint smile of Mephistopheles. ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘you were always a hairtrigger type, but basically levelheaded. Otherwise you wouldn’t be a Constitutionalist. Let’s examine the situation objectively. Why do you care what your children become? I mean, naturally you want them to be happy and so on, but does it have to be your kind of happiness?’
‘Let’s not get into the hedonistic fallacy,’ said Svoboda with a tired annoyance. ‘I want my kids to become the right sort of human adults.’
‘In other words, not only individuals, but cultures have an instinct to survive,’ said Wolfe. ‘Very good. I agree wi
th you. Our particular culture, yours and mine, emphasizes the conscious mind – perhaps too much for perfect health, but still we think we’ve potentially got the best way to live. It’s being swallowed up by a new culture which exalts a set of as-yet-undefined subconscious and visceral functions. So we’re like the Jewish Zealots, English Puritans, Russian Old Believers, any sect trying to restore certain basics that its members feel have been corrupted. (And actually, like the others, we’re creating something altogether new; but let’s not dim that fine fresh purposefulness of yours with too much analysis.) Also like them, we’re more and more at odds with the surrounding society. At the same time, our beliefs are becoming popular with a certain class of people, throughout the world. This in turn alarms the custodians of things-as-they-are. They act to curb our influence. We react. Friction increases.’
‘Well?’said Svoboda.
‘Well,’ said Wolfe, ‘I don’t see how we can avoid the continued exacerbation of the conflict; and physical force remains the ultima ratio. But I don’t advise putting well-meaning little teachers in the hospital.’
Svoboda sat straight with a jerk. ‘You don’t mean another rebellion?’ he exclaimed.
‘Not like the last fiasco,’ said Wolfe. ‘Let’s not end up like the Old Believers. The Puritan Commonwealth is the analogy we desire. It’ll take patience … yes, and prudence, my friend. What we must do is organize. Not too formally, but we must be able to act as a group. It won’t be hard to achieve that much; you aren’t the only man who resents what’s being done to his children. Once organized, we can start making our weight felt. Boycotts, for instance; bribes to the right officials; and please don’t look shocked when I put out that Lowlevel is full of skilled assassins with very reasonable fees.’
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