Enemies of the System

by Brian W Aldiss

  “In this case, the explanation is only instructive,” Kordan said placatingly. She continued to stare out of the windows. He turned to the others. “Id was an entity of ancient superstition, like a ghost. Briefly, long ago in the epoch before the advent of Biocom, several perverted interpretations of the nature of man flourished. Most of them assumed that man was not a rational economic being. Such may arguably have been the case before communalism provided him with the necessary rational sociopolitical framework within which he could function as a unit. ‘Id’ was a term coined by one of those perverted interpretations—a particularly pernicious system, a blind alley of thought which, I’m happy to say, was always opposed, even by our first communist ancestors.”

  He had fallen into an easy lecture style. Sygiek looked down; the others stared at his face with some admiration. Kordan continued, “In those bygone days, the physiological conflict between the brain, the central nervous system, and the autonomic nervous system was not understood. Misunderstanding of man’s nature inevitably arose. The physiological conflict was interpreted as psychological, as originating in some hypothetical depth of the mind. The mind was regarded as very complex, like a savage independent world almost. In this erroneous model of human physiology—that’s what ‘mind’ really was—there was presumed to lurk in its muddy recesses various savage and socially destructive elements, waiting to overthrow reason. Those elements were bundled together under the term ‘id.’ It was a regressive force.”

  They had finished their meal. As Takeido pushed the sofa back, he said, “Instructive! How did the ancient term materialize here on Lysenka II a million or more years later, do you suppose, Jerezy Kordan?”

  “As I thought I had made clear, the term was coined in some long-vanished capitalist system—in part to explain and explain away its own organizational deficiencies. If you understand the retrogressive nature of the animals on this world, then you can understand that the—er, striking technicians must have picked up the term here.”

  “They should be criticized,” said Regentop, in a shocked voice. “It all sounds disgracefully non-utopian.”

  Sygiek stood up and remained looking down on the others, but Takeido leaned forward, clearly wishing to carry the subject further. Clasping his hands together earnestly, he said, “This is most interesting, Jerezy. If you are right—and of course I don’t doubt that—then the striking technicians have it wrong. ‘Earth is our Id’… Lysenka is the subversive forbidden place, so it should be the id and Earth should be … I don’t know the term. I’m just a simple exobotanist.”

  Regentop patted his back and smiled proudly.

  “‘Super-ego,’” said Kordan. “Earth should be the super-ego.” He laughed dismissively, disowning the term, and glanced up to see how Sygiek was taking the conversation.

  “This discussion is too self-indulgent,” she said. “‘Speaking of error is itself error.’ Let’s finish and get into the buses. Most of the others have already gone ahead.”

  “These old theories were nonsense, inevitably,” Kordan said to her, taking her arm as they left the dining room. “Medieval. Like alchemy.”

  She regarded him with slightly raised eyebrows and a smile he had not seen before. “But alchemy led somewhere, Jerezy Kordan, Academician. It provided one of the foundations of scientific advancement. Whereas psychoanalysis was a dead end.”

  “Ah ha, then you are also familiar with these ancient and interdicted models. Psychoanalysis!”

  “It is part of my job to acquaint myself with what is forbidden.”

  He looked searchingly at her. She met his gaze. He said nothing, and they moved out into the open. Kordan stood on the steps, breathing deeply as he looked ahead.

  Buses waited like great slumbering beasts.

  The exobotanist, Takeido, caught Kordan’s attention, coughed, and said apologetically, “It was a pleasure to listen to you talking at the breakfast table, Jerezy Kordan. Working on the Jovian moons, one is much alone. One thinks, one longs to talk … to talk about many things, such as the topics you touched on. May Jaini Regentop and I ride with you to Dunderzee?”

  Kordan looked at the youth, as if thinking how young and thin he was. He watched the black eyebrows twitch nervously on Takeido’s forehead.

  “You are at liberty to choose any seat you wish in the bus,” he said. “But language is much more precious and must be guarded. Better to be resolute than curious. ‘Resolution is the foe of deviation,’ as the saying has it. I imagine that applies as much on Jupiter and Lysenka as on Earth.”

  “Of course …” said Takeido, and swallowed.

  “Let’s get aboard the buses, then,” said Kordan smiling. He nodded at Sygiek. She nodded contentedly back, and they walked down the steps, fully in command of their world, toward the waiting buses.

  The gates in the fortified perimeter of the Unity Hotel slid open. Above them fluttered a banner with the device of the United System and the legend:

  STRIVE TOWARD THE SECOND MILLION YEARS OF BIOCOM-UNITY!

  As the LBD rolled through the gateway, Sygiek noticed that she was seated next to the stocky man who had made the remarks about chessputers on the gulfhopper not experiencing glee. He nodded genially, as if they were old companions.

  “A session of idle sightseeing!” Sygiek exclaimed to Kordan, turning away from the other man. “I have never done such a thing in my life, and half-doubt the propriety of it now. Days are more to be valued when fruitfully occupied.”

  Kordan scrutinized her, as if trying to read her thoughts. “Don’t reproach yourself with such sentiments, Millia. We are not idle. We are on Lysenka to restore our energies, so that we can return to the System better equipped to work for it and to appreciate its values.”

  The stocky man leaned forward, clasping his hands between his knees, and said, addressing them both, “Don’t be too strict with yourselves, friends. Savor enjoyment as a positive force in its own right. Idleness has virtues of its own.”

  “Exactly what I meant,” said Kordan, pleasantly. “Idleness restores our energies.”

  The stocky man introduced himself as Vul Dulcifer 057, Chief Engineer responsible for the air-conditioning systems of Iridium, on Venus. He had a big hard head, with big hard features. Gazing out of the window at the passing scenery, he said, “Like everyone else, I am never idle. My work keeps me going thirteen E-hours a day, and I run various committees. ‘Utopia is sustained only by hard work’—I know the party slogan, don’t remind me. The system’s a machine. If a few of us have made it to this Classified planet, with all these degenerate capitalist animals running about, then we are of the élite, and I maintain that we have earned some idleness. I frankly see idleness as a just reward, not simply one more obstacle on the assault course of World Peace.”

  As she watched and listened to him speaking, Sygiek thought that she and Dulcifer could never be compatible. He was as small and dark as she was tall and pale. He was thickset, with massive shoulders; his every movement expressed energy. The irises of his eyes were a dark sea-blue, rolling between black fringes of eyelash. His dark hair was sparse, and clung close to his square skull. She was aware as she watched the movements of his clearly defined lips of a disturbance within her, a disturbance chased by the reflection, “He regards Kordan and me merely as two standard products of the system, without minds of our own …”

  “To speak of idleness as a reward can lead swiftly to incorrect thinking, isn’t that so, Jerezy? Idleness can be no different on this planet from what it is anywhere in the System: a trap, a bait for deviationist ideas. How can those properties change? Creative idleness is a different matter.”

  A hostess, rosy of cheek, with long legs and a warm smile, came down in the aisle of the bus, pausing to exchange a word with everyone. She was trim in her red uniform; most of the tourists wore sloppy-maos.

  “Are you enjoying the primitive landscape?” she asked. “Isn’t it charmingly undeveloped? What an inspiring symbol of potential.”

&
nbsp; “Yes,” said Dulcifer. “And at the same time we’re exercising our minds like good utopianists with an argument about the nature of idleness.”

  Takeido and Regentop had been listening from the seat in front. The former turned and said to Dulcifer, “You seem to lack a little data, utopianist. You see, idleness is a physiological malfunction. It’s mistaken to treat it as a quality of mind, when injections can cure it as soon as it manifests itself.”

  As he spoke, he kept glancing at Kordan to see how he was taking this speech.

  A bureaucrat by the name of Georg Morits leaned across the aisle and said vehemently, “You’re right there, but let me remind you that idleness is still sometimes manifested as a mental quality in unfortunate throw-backs to homo sapiens. I know. I have to deal with quite a few committals of that sort of person, in my line of business. I’m in an office in Moscow, you know. The city of cities.” They did know. This dull person had been boasting during the banquet of how beautiful it was in Moscow, an old city which had been the capital of the first communist state and many times rebuilt. “You can be legally charged with being a homo sapien, you know. It’s in the statute banks now.”

  “Not on Venus, it isn’t,” said Dulcifer, sturdily. “That’s like charging an animal with the offense of being an animal.”

  They made no response to that. They knew all about Venus, and the devolutionary tendencies of Iridium City.

  “We are straying from the point. If I could remind you of the historical background to this argument—” Kordan began; but Sygiek cut him off, saying, “Shall we just forget this silly discussion?”

  Kordan looked hurt, but Dulcifer said, smiling to remove the sting from his remark, “You are too repressive for vacation-time, Utopianist Millia Sygiek! I’d like to hear what your companion was going to say. Frankly, scenery bores me—but I’ve never lost interest in my fellow human beings.”

  Warmth rose in Sygiek’s cheeks. She turned a gaze on him which would have melted iridium but she said nothing.

  “I was merely going to say—for the sake of the historical record—that those early genetic engineers who established homo uniformis, Man Alike Throughout, were the—”

  “Forgive me, Academician Kordan, but I am in technoeugenics, working on the Central Council,” said Jaini Regentop, giving him her polite smile, “and you are not correct in your phraseology. Those genetic engineers were merely instruments of change in the great progression from homo sapiens to homo uniformis; they took orders. First had to come the immortal work of physiologists and the great endotomists—”

  “Jaini, you should not interrupt Jerezy Kordan,” said Takeido. “He is an Academician.”

  “Then he will understand. Between them,” said Regentop, adopting something of Kordan’s lecturing manner, and addressing her remarks mainly to him, “the endotomists established the fact that man’s physiological structure comprised three governance systems which were in conflict. Owing to the rapid evolutionary development of man from animal, those governance systems were not entirely compatible. We might in the same way complain of a machine that it was faulty because it contained too much wiring. The problem was one of efficiency.”

  Kordan nodded and looked bored, but Regentop pressed on.

  “The great endotomists and physiologists developed a method whereby those governance systems could be developed into one harmonious super-system. The three governance systems I refer to, by the way, were known as Central Nervous System, primarily a motor system, Autonomic Nervous System, primarily a sensual system, and Neocortex, primarily a thought system.

  “To develop this more reliable super-system, the bio-shunt was introduced. As you probably know, the bio-shunt—there’s been a lot of talk about it in this anniversary year—is an in-built processor which phases out much of the activity of the old autonomic nervous system or renders it subject to the direct control of the thought system. An obvious example is the penile erection, once an involuntary act.

  “I frequently impress on my classes that the bio-shunt is the very basis of our great utopia. It has banished the emotional problems which always plagued homo sapiens. Wars, religions, romantic love, mental illness—all manifestations of outmoded physiological systems.”

  “This is what I mentioned earlier, Millia,” Kordan said heavily to Sygiek. “Please continue, Jaini Regentop, if you so wish. You express youself well.”

  She nodded in humility. “It is my duty to express myself well when speaking of so supreme an achievement. Rationality was something poor homo sapiens could never achieve. He was divided against himself physiologically. Therefore he was also divided against himself mentally and socially and politically and—well, in every way conceivable. He could not devise a stable society as we have done. Division was his lot.”

  Her voice took on a quieter note. “Division was his lot. Yet sapiens had vision, too. Yes, he even visualized Utopia, the perfect place.

  “And, in an ironic way, he achieved Utopia in the end, though it meant his extinction. When his physiotechnicians and early endotomists invented the whole principle of Biological Communism—the theory behind the bio-shunt itself—then it became possible to rationalize the inharmonious governance systems genetically, passing on the improvement to succeeding generations. Through chromosome microsurgery, sapiens did away with all manner of systemic weakness—thus eliminating himself and ushering in a virtual new race. A race without absurd evolutionary flaws. A race truly capable of establishing Utopia. In a word, us. Homo uniformis, Man Alike Throughout.”

  They regarded each other’s faces, smiling reflectively.

  “And what has this ancient tale to do with idleness, except that it is itself an idle tale by now?” asked Dulcifer.

  “It’s the birth tale of the World State, no less,” said Sygiek, frowning.

  “Jaini Regentop has just explained,” Takeido said to Dulcifer. “Idleness was an old sapiens weakness. It sprang from a lack of purpose, no doubt—from internal confusion. There’s no physiological reason for idleness in these enlightened days, utopianist. We’ve conquered it.”

  Dulcifer scratched his head. He laughed. “You’re a bit young for a conqueror!”

  Takeido slipped back into his seat.

  “There’s a Museum of Homo Sapiens in Moscow,” said Georg Morits, adding confidentially, “they were quite advanced for primitives, you know—even had a limited form of space travel—the principles of which were invented in Moscow. I can tell you such things, since you are of the élite, and not of the ignorant. You appreciate them. Ah, it’s good to talk among equals.”

  III

  They were sitting talking in the last bus. Three buses moved ahead of them, gradually drawing apart as they gathered speed down the embanked road. The great structure of Unity, which had dominated everything, dwindled behind them, swallowed by the everlasting landscape of Lysenka. Occasionally, as the road rose with the land, they could glimpse the shoulders of a distant plateau, riding above the warm obscurities of the plain.

  Kordan clutched Sygiek’s hand, but she soon withdrew it.

  The hostess in her neat red uniform with the Outourist insignia had exchanged a word with everyone individually. She reached the front of the LDB, where she took up a microphone and addressed the passengers, smiling as she did so.

  “Hello, friends of the system, my name is Rubyna Constanza 868, and I have the pleasure of being your guide for today. Welcome to the journey. We shall be away from Unity for two days, and shall spend tonight in comfortable quarters in the Dunderzee Gorge, which I feel sure you will enjoy. We shall view some of the wonders of this planet, and also some of its instructive blemishes. Refreshments will be served when we stop at midday. I am continually at your service. There are service bells by your fingertips.”

  “She’s very pretty,” Takeido whispered. Regentop frowned for silence.

  “First I would like to remind you of a few facts concerning this planet. You will be familiar with some of them, but facts take lif
e from their substitutes in reality.

  “This planet is large by the standards of the System Inner Planets, having an equatorial diameter of approximately 20,000 kilometers. Fortunately its mass is relatively light, so we do not suffer from oppressive gravity. Lysenka II revolves on its axis once every 33.52 E-hours, which makes for an inconveniently long day. You will be able to rest at refreshment-break, since your seats recline fully.

  “As we can observe, it is cloudy overhead. The sun rarely shines through in these latitudes, though cloud may clear at evening. Lysenka is rather a warm and drowsy planet at this period of its history.”

  She indicated the world rolling past their windows. “There is a grove of cage trees to our left. Otherwise, vegetation is sparse. Most of the planet is semi-desert, owing to soil paucity and lack of micro-bacterial activity.

  “Although the planet has been discovered for more than a million years, we established a base on it only ten years ago. The planet awaits development. The problem is an ideological one—what to do with the fauna. The World State is still considering this vital matter. Owing to the low energy life systems here, the fauna has not been able to establish itself over much of the globe. It would be possible to extirpate all the animals. That is a neat and attractive solution. On the other hand, they may prove invaluable for studies in behavior, and as a source for laboratory animals, etcetera.”

  Constanza had slightly hastened this part of her talk. She slowed her delivery again to add, “However, such problems need not enter our heads on your vacation, since the decisions rest with others. At this time, we need only enjoy the strange sights. On your right, you can see now a flock of kangaroo-like creatures. I assure you there is no danger, since we are in constant radio contact with surveillance satellites. Well, that is, just today we are out of touch because of the technical difficulties of the strike; we are out of touch, but in any case we are perfectly safe in the bus. Notice that the creatures are regarding us with respect.”