Agent of Chaos M

by Norman Spinrad

  Duntov shrugged. “Something much too big and powerful and eternal for me or any other man to really know,” he said. “Something greater than Man, a force which rules the universe. … Surely, even you have felt the need to know that there was something, somewhere greater than the human race …?”

  Fantastic! Gorov thought. Of course the man doesn’t realize it, but he’s talking about the concept the ancients called “God.” An arcane new thought tickled Gorov’s mind. Although all knowledge of the God-thesis had perished with the Millenium of Religion, was it possible that there existed in certain men an inborn need for this thing, a desire to discover and believe in some supernatural order or being, a desire that had no secific object, that was, in a sense, its own object?

  An interesting theory indeed! he thought. Perhaps … perhaps if I survive all this, it will not be a total loss. Knowledge truly may be gained in the most unlikely places!

  “Into your Cocoons, gentlemen,” the voice of Arkady Duntov said over the intercom. “Touchdown in five minutes.”

  Johnson climbed into his Cocoon as the cabin viewscreen came on, showing a tiny, barren, seemingly uninhabited rock floating in empty space. The stress filaments enveloped him, but the antigravs did not cut in—the natural gravitic attraction of such a pebble would be nil, and any internal artificial gravity would not affect a body approaching it.

  He saw that the ship was approaching the asteroid rapidly, as if Duntov were quite familiar with it, arcing toward it, and around to the far side in a fast, low trajectory. But there seemed to be nothing at all on the little planetoid—hardly a level spot on which to land. It was mostly jagged peaks and deep crevaces—a huge drifting boulder.

  Then, as the ship rounded the asteroid and started to decelerate, one of the jagged cracks that marked the asteroid’s surface suddenly began to enlarge, almost like a clam-shell opening, and Johnson saw that what he had taken for a natural rift in the surface was really part of a cleverly designed and camouflaged entrance portal—two huge sliding slabs, one on either side of the crack, covered with rock and opening smoothly to reveal a great pit dug into the surface of the asteroid itself at the bottom of which he could make out a metal-floored landing area … and a large one at that.

  As the ship lowered itself into the concealed landing pit, Johnson saw that there were five similar ships sitting on the left half of the landing pad.

  But the ship that occupied the right half of the pit was really a monster. It was huge, the biggest ship he had ever seen, bigger than anything the Hegemony had, as far as he knew. And the design was unlike anything he had ever heard of—a smooth, silvery hull with no visible drive, an elongated egg pointed at both ends with two broad bands of intricate-looking metalwork encircling the hull about its middle.

  Even before the ship had touched down, the great doors were already sliding back into place above it, concealing the landing pit from any ship that might happen by, restoring the illusion of a completely uninhabited asteroid.

  “What is that thing?” Johnson shouted at the intercom as he felt the ship touch down.

  “The Prometheus,” Duntov said. “The future of humanity. … And someday I’ll be on it, and we’ll go where there is no Hegemony to—”

  “The Hegemony is everywhere!” Khustov shouted. “You can’t escape from it!”

  “Perhaps,” Duntov said quickly, as if covering up some unguessable slip. “Al I know is what I’m told—and I’ve been told to tell you no more. You’ll know soon enough … those of you who Robert Ching means to let know. Now get out of your Cocoons, all of you. You’re going to meet the most … the wisest man I’ve ever met.”

  But Boris Johnson was not thinking of the enigmatic Robert Ching, in whom Duntov seemed to place such blind trust as he climbed out of the Cocoon.

  Where there is no Hegemony … he thought. How can any ship go where there is no Hegemony? The Hegemony extends from Mercury to Pluto! Unless … unless … but everyone claimed that that was impossible! Everyone knew why it was impossible—

  Or did the Hegemony just want people to believe that it was impossible?

  “Order, being anti-entropic, requires a fixed and limited context within which to exist. Chaos contains all such limited contexts within it as insignificant eddies temporarily resisting the basic universal tendency towards increased Social Entropy.”

  —Gregor Markowitz, The Theory of

  Social Entropy

  11

  ROBERT CHING sat alone at the great rock table in the meeting chamber. This day, this moment was to be a pinnacle in his life, in his career as First Agent—and there was no duality between his life and his career—and it was to be shared with no man.

  Three men … Ching thought, all of them fearing imminent death at the hands of something they could not fathom. Yet none of them will die, unless by their own highly unlikely choice. Salvation for two of them and something perhaps worse than death for the third—certainly more Chaotic than simple extinction, at any rate.

  Yes, all was falling rapidly into place like a centuries-long drama building to a climax. The Prometheus would be ready for its voyage in not too many more weeks. And Random Factors were proliferating in the Hegemony at the greatest rate in history. …

  The League, the “Disloyal Opposition,” was destroyed. Now, whenever anything untoward occurred, the Hegemonic Council would have to admit to itself—perhaps even to the Wards, if Brotherhood action took a more public and dramatic turn—that it was the work of the Brotherhood of Assassins, a force unknown, unpredictable, acting toward unguessable ends, not the work of an adolescent conspiracy like the League which could be readily comprehended and dealt with.

  And the change on the Hegemonic Council itself would also lead to increased Social Entropy, Ching thought. Jack Torrence, opportunist that he is, will be far more flexible than Khustov—though even more ruthless. When the Prometheus at last opened the closed system of the Hegemony to infinite Chaos, Torrence, unlike Khustov, would try to use the new conditions to his own advantage rather than mautile attempt to suppress the inevitable. An opportunist, even a near-psychopath like Torrence, was a much better type to have in power during a great social upheaval than a fanatic … Especially when the fanatic, partially discredited, was still around to keep him off balance. Yes, a live Vladimir Khustov could, in his way, serve Chaos. …

  The intercom buzzer interrupted Ching’s reverie. He turned the audio on. “Yes?”

  “The prisoners are outside, First Agent.”

  “Send them in,” Robert Ching said. “And send them in alone. But have guards waiting outside in case of trouble.”

  A moment later, the chamber door opened, and Johnson, Gorov and Khustov were half-shoved inside by burly Brothers. Robert Ching studied their faces as the three men stood uncertainly before the table.

  Boris Johnson seemed confused, skeptical perhaps, but not overly hostile. He seemed to be looking things over as if hoping to discover a new world, a world that might replace the one he had so suddenly lost. He had been stripped of all his illusions, Ching saw, and was hungry for new ones. A promising, if not entirely admirable attitude. …

  The face of Vladimir Khustov was an open book. He was clearly terrified, but there was hate in his eyes too, and something akin to disgust—the loathing one fanatic feels for what he imagines to be another fanatic serving an alien creed. And perhaps, Ching half-conceded to himself, perhaps there is an element of truth in what his instincts tell him. …

  Gorov, on the other hand, was quite unreadable. His face was a bland, self-contained, emotionless mask. His reputation as a human robot, a creature motivated only by the lust for knowledge, a thinking machine, seemed to be well-justified. Yet, though Ching found Gorov quite repellent, he also felt a curious affinity to the man. Though they differed in all else, they both had a respect for the wonders of the universe around them that, though Gorov would certainly never admit it, bordered on the mystical. And of the three, Ching knew that Gorov would most eas
ily understand what he was about to tell them.

  “Welcome to the headquarters of the Brotherhood of Assassins,” Ching said. “Please be seated, gentlemen.”

  Boris Johnson immediately seated himself at the far end of the table from Ching and stared at the First Agent with a naked curiosity that Robert Ching found quite engaging. The Johnsons, he realized, were by and large the best type that the human race could produce under the conditions of the Hegemony—instinctive rebels, viscerally dogmatic in their unthinking opposition to the Order of the Hegemony, but uncommitted and curiously flexible when it came to final ends.

  Gorov hesitated for a moment, then sat down beside Johnson. Vladimir Khustov, however, made no move to seat himself, glared defiantly at Ching.

  “Come, come, Mr. Khustov,” Ching chided. “Surely you will not force me to summon guards to place you in your seat. It makes me uneasnlyave you standing there like that, and I insist that you seat yourself. Don’t make me use force. I abhor pointless violence.”

  “You … you …” Khustov stammered, sinking at last into a chair. “You abhor violence! You! The Brotherhood of Assassins! Murderers! Madmen! Insane fanatic killers! You abhor violence!”

  “I said I abhor pointless violence,” Robert Ching said mildly. “But the conditions of the Hegemony force violence upon even the most unreasonable of men. Only through violence may the Hegemony be destroyed.”

  “Then Arkady was telling the truth?” Boris Johnson exclaimed. “You are enemies of the Hegemony? But… but why’ve you opposed us at every turn? Surely you must know that the Democratic League is an enemy of the Hegemony! We could’ve cooperated. …” Johnson said almost wistfully. “We’re the enemy of your enemy, if nothing else. Why have you fouled us up all along?”

  How to explain to a man like Johnson that he has served that which he opposes by his very opposition? Ching thought. How to explain it without breaking him?

  “You are familiar with the Law of Social Entropy?” Ching asked tentatively.

  Johnson stared at him blankly.

  Ching sighed. No, of course not! he thought. “You have heard of Gregor Markowitz, at least?”

  “The prophet from the Millenium of Religion …?” Johnson said. “The rumor is that you’re his followers. Is it true that you base your decisions on reading the entrails of animals according to something called the ‘Bible’? Is that why nothing you do makes sense?”

  Ching laughed. “The entrails of animals!” he exclaimed. “The Bible! My friend, the Hegemony has kept you in ignorance more abysmal than I had ever imagined. We are not sorcerers and Markowitz was not a prophet as you think of it. He was what was once called a ‘Social Scientist,’ a man who studied human societies. The Theory of Social Entropy is not a book of prophecy, but a scientific treatise. I assure you, we are utterly logical in our actions. Our actions only appear illogical because they are Random.”

  “The two words mean the same thing,” Johnson insisted.

  “Yes, that is what the Hegemony would have you believe,” Robert Ching said. “Order is logical, Chaos illogical. Those who serve Order are pragmatists and those who serve Chaos religious fanatics. But consider the Law of Social Entropy. Let me state it in terms you can understand. The natural tendency in the physical realm is toward ever-increasing randomness or disorder, what we call Chaos or entropy. So too, in the realm of human culture. To locally and temporarily reverse the trend towards entropy in the physical realm requires energy. And so too in human societies—Social Energy. The more Ordered, thus unnatural, anti-entropic, a society, the more Social Energy is required to maintain the unnatural condition. And how is this Social Energy to be obtained? Why, by so ordering the society as to produce it! Which, as you can see, requires more Order in return. Which creates a demand for more Social Energy, and so forth, in a geometric progression that spirals as long as the society attempts to achieve Order. You see the paradox, do you not? The more Ordered a society becomes, the more Ordered it must become to maintain its original Order, requiring still more Social Energy, and never really catching up. Thus a society can tolerate less and less randomness as it grows ever more Ordered.”

  Ching saw that Johnson was struggling with the concept, his face knotted in perplexion.

  “Think of it in specific terms,” Ching suggested. “The Hegemony is a highly Ordered and unnatural structure, opposed to the basic Chaotic nature of the universe. The approach of your Democratic League was to fight that Order in an Ordered manner—and since the Hegemony is far more Ordered than the League could ever be, you could never obtain the Social Energy needed to substitute your Order for the existing Order. In fact, the League, as the ‘Disloyal Opposition,’ absorbed much of the random hostility to the Hegemony and converted these Random Factors to predictable ones and thus actually contributed to the Order of the Hegemony. We, on the other hand, by acting randomly, by introducing intolerable Random Factors, are assured of eventual success, since Chaos, the nature of the universe itself, is, in a very real sense, on our side.”

  “How long do we have to listen to this nonsense?” Vladimir Khustov exclaimed. “Kill us and be done with it! Do you have to add boredom to murder?”

  “Kill you?” Ching said, smiling. “Indeed, that would be the logical, predictable thing to do, would it not? You are the enemy—kill the enemy, eh? Certainly what you would do in my position. But you serve Order, and I am an agent of Chaos. Therefore, I do the Chaotic thing, and the Chaotic thing in this situation is to let you go.”

  Ching grinned wryly as he saw the expressions on the faces of Khustov and Johnson. Hope on Khustov’s face, more than a little contempt, and a thousand plans. Confusion on Johnson’s. Only Constantine Gorov’s face was calm, seemed perhaps knowing. It had been a wise decision indeed, to remove Gorov from the Hegemonic Council. The man was brilliant and lusted almost obscenely for knowledge. Had that lust been combined with an equal lust for power. … Gorov in the Coordinatorship would’ve been a formidable opponent indeed!

  “But of course,” Ching continued, “you will be asked to tarry a while as our guest at another Brotherhood base. Six standard months seem like a suitable period. After that, you will be released. The reaction of Jack Torrence to your sudden reappearance after a six month stay with the Brotherhood of Assassins should be most … Chaotic.”

  Khustov paled. “You can’t do that!” he cried. “The Council will think that I’ve been aligned with the Brotherhood all along. Torrence has been filling their ears with that innuendo. They’ll … they’ll have me executed!”

  “Perhapsnue21; said Robert Ching. “Then again, perhaps not. Since we’ve given Torrence the Coordinatorship, I think it only fair that I supply you with a suggestion that may insure your survival. Consider: you might point out to the Council that the execution of a former Coordinator would not look good for the Hegemony—especially if it were implied that you had been an agent of the Brotherhood. It would imply that the Brotherhood had been able to infiltrate the Hegemonic Council itself. Moreover, even eliminating you from the Council would be a bad move for the same reason—it would raise questions in the minds of the Wards for which there would be no easy answers. A man of your talents should be able to convince the Council to let you remain a Councilor until you came up for election again.”

  Ching pressed a button on his communicator. “Send in the guards to remove Mr. Khustov,” he said.

  A moment later, the door opened and five armed Brothers entered. Ching watched Khustov being conducted from the chamber with a feeling of deep satisfaction. Social Entropy had indeed been maximized. Khustov and Torrence, for the remaining years of Khustov’s term on the Council, would exchange places, with Torrence as Coordinator and Khustov as a focus of opposition. And the Brotherhood, by suitable action, could even make it seem that Torrence was in league with it. Once again, a divided Council. And long before Khustov came up for election, the Prometheus would return from its mission, would return to confront a Hegemonic Council divided against itse
lf. With the forces of Order deeply divided, and the forces of Chaos backed up by the proof that the Galaxy was a great, infinite concourse of civilizations, a knowledge too vast, too revolutionary to long deny or suppress The Hegemony of Sol faced certain doom, and the centuries of holding actions, of introducing minor Random Factors into the closed system of the Hegemony would at last be vindicated. And Chaos would reign supreme forever!

  When Khustov had been removed, Constantine Gorov spoke for the first time.

  “So my supposition was correct all along,” Gorov said. “The seemingly senseless acts of the Brotherhood really were the introduction of random factors into the Hegemonic Order in line with the work of Markowitz. An interesting body of work, to be sure, but one with flaws, flaws which insure your eventual defeat.”

  “Ah yes, Gorov …” Ching said, somewhat amused. “No doubt a man of your intellect should be able to shoot all kinds of holes in a theory that has stood up for over three centuries.”

  “Quite so,” Gorov said, totally humorlessly. “You see, the basic flaw in Markowitz’ thinking is his very obsession with universality and infinity. In the abstract, I must grant that a closed system such as the Hegemony must eventually succumb to random factors as Order increases towards the absolute. In the long run—the very long run. But we are dealing with specifics, not abstractions. In the long run, the Hegemony is doomed—as are all the works of men, since the evolutionary span of the human race: itself is finite. But time is the factor that works against you, time is what the Theory of Social Entropy so blandly ignores. Certainly, your strategy would work—if you had eternity in which to make it work. But you don’t have anything like eternity. In the long run, Man, like every spe before him, will become extinct, when the sun grows cold, and probably long before that, destroyed by factors at which we cannot even guess. And that extinction will occur long before you can bring down the Hegemony—for the Hegemony too plays for time, and soon the Hegemony will exercise total control over the entire Solar System, over the entire habitat of Man. It will be a perfect closed system. While it may be true that such a system will be able to tolerate ever fewer random factors, it is also true that it will be harder and harder to introduce such factors, and the Hegemony will be able to stave off its demise for millions of years—in fact for the entire span of existence of the human race. You’re not the only ones capable of taking the long view—and therein lies the fatal flaw in your strategy.”