by David Karp
“What?” Burden asked softly, half rising from his pillow.
“I know it must disturb you to hear that. But it’s the truth. In fact, we have a mimeographed booklet of around a hundred and forty pages listing each of your heresies and the sources from which the heresies were found.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Oh, but it’s true. It took a good deal of reading and research and a lot of listening to recorded conversations, but the list is very complete. And very discouraging—to us, at least.”
“They can’t be true,” Burden said, sitting upright in bed now, his eyes fixed on Lark, his mind a jumble of thoughts that he couldn’t arrange.
“Professor Burden, these heresies are taken from your own reports, from recordings of your own voice. They don’t derive from hearsay or the reports of others. These are things you yourself have written or said. And to us they represent only the visible fraction of an iceberg. Just from what we can see of your heresy, Professor Burden, we know the rest must be of enormous size and importance.”
“I’ve always been loyal to the State,” Burden said faintly, feeling his voice failing him.
“The fact of the matter is that you have not. You are a heretic—a deeply profound heretic whose emotions and thinking and, yes, actions, too, are fundamentally at variance with custom and doctrine of the State and the society in which you live. You’re a rare animal, Professor Burden—a strange, exotic, unhappy animal in our midst.”
“This is incredible,” Burden said, his voice now hollow, his senses numbed. “Of all the errors that have been made this far, this is the most terrible, the most incredible. I can’t believe that any organization can be this stupid. I can’t believe it of the Department. I simply can’t believe it.”
“You will be given a copy of the booklet containing a list of your heresies, Professor Burden. You will be allowed to read it, question it, study it, and then decide for yourself. But would you like me to quote some of the heresies we have discovered about you?”
“I defy you to name those heresies,” Burden said, waiting, alert now, his heart pounding. Now they would have to be specific. Now he could pound at things that had dimension, limit, surface, and meaning. Before it had been a kind of slippery, elusive intellectual game of hide-and-seek.
“Let us go back to your first interview with Frank Conger,” Lark said calmly. “When you first met him you said—and I’ll try to remember the exact words—I had the rather naive idea that I was going to be complimented, officially, for my work. Do you recall that, Professor Burden?”
“Yes, I do. I said something very much like that.”
“It’s most important that you remember exactly what you said—particularly the choice of words. I am especially thinking of the word naive. Did you use that word?”
“I think I did. Yes, I suppose I did.”
“Do you remember using it?”
“Well, get on with it, Mr. Lark. What does one word matter more or less?”
“Well, I’m afraid it matters quite a bit, Professor Burden. You see, the word that first comes to your lips is a revelatory word. I suppose you know the elementary principles of the word-association test in psychology?”
“Yes, I know that,” Burden said, pondering the significance of naive. It meant innocent, unsophisticated. What sinister meaning did it have in the catalogue of heresy?
“You used the word naive. Believe me. I have heard the recorded conversation a dozen times and I know you used the word. However, if you don’t believe that you did, I can arrange to have the recording equipment with the recorded electrical tape brought to this room and you may have the entire conversation repeated for you.”
“No, no, don’t bother with all that, Mr. Lark. Please get on with this.”
“Now, don’t hurry, Professor. This is not a minor point. I want you to believe me when I tell you that you actually said these things in the way I am repeating them to you. That’s important. It’s important that you believe me. It’s important that you trust me. It’s also most important that you have no doubt that I am quoting you correctly and fully.”
“I trust your memory, Mr. Lark,” Burden said, confused now and watching Lark carefully.
“Professor Burden,” Lark said in a softer, more kindly tone, “I’m not here to torment you, or to frighten you, or to accuse you. Heresy is serious but it does not throw us into a panic. It must not do so to you. You are what we call an unconscious heretic. Very simply, that means you want to believe in the State, you want to conform, you want to be a good citizen, but in spite of your intentions you hold certain beliefs, certain prejudices, certain emotions which make you a heretic.”
“As if I were possessed of an evil spirit?”
“Yes,” Lark said solemnly, “in earlier centuries that’s what would have been said of you. We’re more enlightened now and we know that a man is the sum of many things over which he has little control. A heretic is a person who has been badly formed, a person who is sick. Heresy and the grippe are the same except that the grippe is simple and heresy is not. In your case, the heresy is most complex and most serious. That means we want your co-operation; we need it if we’re going to help you.”
“You really mean that, don’t you?” Burden said thoughtfully, looking at Lark. Lark nodded silently and waited for a moment. Burden leaned back against his pillow, his brows knit, the tumult in his mind easing somewhat. It was a strange feeling to discover that the Department was not wrong, had, in fact, never been wrong—that he was carrying about in him an illness he never knew possessed him. He had never gone into the subject of heresy very fully. In his own mind heretics had always been cranks, embittered obstructionists, men and women who resented order, peace, the normal routine of life. The idea that a man who was in complete agreement with himself and at peace with the world could be in complete disagreement with the world without knowing it struck him as faintly frightening, vaguely mystifying. He understood now why the Department referred to it as an illness—as if heresy were a strain of virulent bacteria hidden in his bloodstream. “Go on, Mr. Lark,” Burden finally said.
“The word naive occurred in your statement to Mr. Conger. Now, what does the word naive in that context suggest to you, Professor?”
“You mean in the statement I made to Conger about the award? Well, I guess I rather romantically supposed that I had done a splendid job of being a correspondent and that I deserved an award.”
“Now, let me tell you what our interpretation of the word naive is. When you say naive you are referring to yourself as an innocent person, a person without guile. And yet you don’t mean that at all. You think of yourself as a person with a great deal of sophistication, a person with a great deal of savoir-faire, a cultured and learned man. When you used the word naive you were doing two things, you were first of all deprecating yourself, hiding your true opinion of yourself—that you are a man of great talents who should be officially appreciated and decorated—and secondly, you were implying that our awards are naive ceremonies which you are quite above being impressed by. However, you are quite willing to let us decorate you with the rather condescending understanding of how much importance bureaucrats attach to such things as decoration ceremonies.” Lark spoke very sharply and quickly now. “Please don’t try to be evasive, Professor Burden. It’s vitally important that you be honest. No matter how bad a light it seems to throw either us or you into—admit it if it is true. We have to know the exact nature of the illness with which we are dealing. Now, is the analysis substantially correct?”
Burden paused, admiring this thin, intense young man. As he listened he was able to evoke the thoughts and the feelings that had come over him during the interview with Frank Conger. “Yes,” Burden said, “it is quite correct. Not very polite of me, but hardly heretical. At least, I see no heresy in it.”
“Let me go on with the first interview with Mr. Frank Conger. Mr. Conger, if you remember, seized on the word naive. He pursued it
because it was a sort of danger signal to him.”
“Yes, I remember,” Burden said, wondering now if Conger was, after all, as clumsy and stupid as he had thought. Evidently not.
“He tried to make you explain what you had meant by it but you kept retreating, modifying what you had said, deprecating yourself further and further until finally you wound up lying.”
“Lying?”
“When Conger finally pressed you to the point of admitting whether your work deserved an award or not and suggested that a realistic appraisal of your work indicated that you didn’t feel you deserved an award—what did you say?”
“Well, I think I said something like—I guessed my work didn’t deserve an award.”
“That was the lie,” Lark said, extending a skinny forefinger.
“Yes,” Burden admitted honestly, seeing it now. “I guess it was a lie. But you see, Conger kept at me so aggressively—trying to twist my words. Well, not twist, exactly. But to derive meanings from what I said—meanings I had no intention of—” Burden stopped abruptly, oddly blocked.
“Yes, Professor Burden?” Lark asked with a soft smile.
“Well, what I meant to say was that Conger suggested meanings that were false.”
“You’re evading again. Finish the sentence you started a minute ago. The sentence that began, “but to derive meanings from what I said—meanings I had no intention of—.” Lark paused, waiting, a slight smile on the heavy, sensual lips.
“Well, false meanings,” Burden offered weakly, knowing now how the sentence should have ended.
“No,” Lark shook his head, “ ‘—meanings I had no intention of revealing,’ ” Lark ended the sentence. “That was the word. Revealing. It was a word you were going to use next but didn’t because it implied that Conger was correct in his suspicions. You were concealing something. You are still trying to conceal things from me.”
“Yes,” Burden said thoughtfully, “that was the word. I realize it only now that you point it out.”
“Don’t feel badly,” Lark said with a smile, “I am not offended by all of this. This concealment of yours is partially involuntary. I expect it. I shall keep on pointing it out to you. Just continue to be as honest with me as you have been and we’ll do a lot for you, Professor.”
“But the heresy. Where’s the heresy?”
“The heresy is implicit, Professor. If you will think about it for a moment you’ll find it for yourself. Let me help you. Who is it that you feel is really naive, Professor? Surely it’s not yourself. It’s the Department—Conger probably, or his superior, or perhaps the person to whom you have been writing your reports. We are the naive ones, the unsophisticated ones. To believe yourself more knowing than an official organ of the government is a heresy, Professor.”
“But surely not a serious one, Mr. Lark?”
“Quite serious. Let’s examine the nature of its danger to the State. Let’s presume that you are a platoon commander in the Army. That would make you a lieutenant. Let us presume that your nation is at war and that in some tiny corner of that war you hold a certain responsibility—a small bridge, the stream that runs under it, the banks on both sides for a few hundred yards, and a small clump of trees across the stream on your right. You know that the enemy has a machine-gun emplacement in the trees, that their line of fire covers the approaches to the bridge and covers the stream as well. Let us also presume that somewhere, outside of your command area, there is a mortar emplacement which has your area taped for fire. You receive an order from the company commander who, of course, has received it from the battalion commander and he, in turn, from the regimental commander. You are ordered to enter the area, attempt to cross the bridge or ford the stream, according to your own appraisal of the likelihood of either—but, in any case, to get across, past the machine-gun emplacement, and destroy the mortar platoon which is hidden somewhere out of sight in the woods. Now, to attempt that without some artillery fire is well-nigh suicidal. So you request fire on the opposite bank of the stream and on the clump of trees that hides the machine-gun nest. But you are refused artillery support. What can you do?”
“Try another way.”
“Well, you’re not a student of military tactics so I won’t go into it further. But briefly, there is no other way. A platoon is too small a force to attempt to overrun a machine-gun position—especially when a bridge must be crossed or a stream forded. In short, the entire attempt is suicidal without artillery support. But you are denied that support. What would you do then, Professor Burden?”
“I would do the best I could. Perhaps wait for night or something.”
“But you would obey your orders?”
“If I were a soldier, yes.”
“Yes, of course. You would obey those orders even though you knew they were unrealistic. That because you are under the tension of war. Orders given in combat have a certain crucial urgency, the situation is surcharged with compelling drama. You are a soldier, with all that means. You are a commander—your soul, your actions, your judgment, your bravery or cowardice nakedly exposed for your men to see. All these special conditions compel obedience to orders from a higher authority. You cross, and you are killed in the attempt.”
“Poor theoretical lieutenant,” Burden said with a smile.
“That is war. Those were soldiers. They were battle conditions. Even the dullest of men understands how important orders—even wrong orders—are under such conditions. But let us suppose that it is peacetime. Let us suppose that you are a clerk in a governmental agency, or an inspector in government service. In other words, you occupy a small position of responsibility—roughly comparable to our poor, dead lieutenant who was placed in an untenable position. You receive an order from a superior. Roughly speaking, an order as manifestly foolish as the order our dead soldier received. What do you do?”
“Protest it. Try to reason with my superior.”
“Let us suppose you do as much in that direction as our dead soldier did. But to no avail. You must obey.”
“I suppose I would obey.”
“Yes, you might. In war, your failure to obey would be flagrant. You would probably be shot on the spot. But in peace, in the dull routine of a government department—you would not be shot, you might not even be fired. And you are a person who feels that he is more knowing than the people above him. Perhaps not in everything, but in this small thing, this tiny province of yours, you know more than the others above you. What would you do?”
Burden nodded, understanding now. “I would probably not obey the order—or find some way to get around obeying it.”
“Exactly. That lack of obedience, that evasion, that deception arises when someone feels better qualified to judge than the people appointed above him. Multiply such an attitude—on small matters, mind you—by ten thousand government employees and you have anarchy, chaos in the administration of this nation’s affairs. Multiply that attitude millions of times by the citizens of this State and you will find lawlessness rampant.”
“But surely you’re very much exaggerating the importance of one man’s feeling. Even if I tried, I couldn’t throw the country into a turmoil.”
“Professor Burden, heresy is an illness in many ways. We feel heresy is contagious. One man is bound to communicate it to another and that other to two others and so on.”
Burden felt uncomfortable. There was some justice in what Lark said and yet it was such an innocent vanity, hardly worth all this effort. “I suppose strictly speaking you’re right. But what can I do about it?”
“Cease thinking that the government is less sophisticated than you are. After all, the government is an accumulation of many brains and personalities. Surely among them there are some at least as sophisticated, as well-educated as yourself.”
“Yes,” Burden said with a smile, looking directly at Lark, “I see that now.”
“I am not an exception, if that is what you’re thinking, Professor Burden,” Lark said solemnly. Burden smiled
, almost laughed. “I read your mind then,” Lark said seriously. “It wasn’t difficult to do. I’m not psychic at all. I merely understand you.”
“Well, let’s say that’s one heresy that’s laid to rest, Mr. Lark,” Burden said, rather liking this young man, appreciating the keenness of his mind.
Lark regarded the professor for a moment. The heresy had not been laid to rest at all. It was a far more complex process than Burden imagined it would be. It was a far more painful process than Burden dreamed it could be. But it was best to make it seem easy at the start. Lark had very little time in which to accomplish a great deal and it would be best to keep Burden’s co-operation as long as possible, to tell him as much of the truth as could be told to him. The painful part of the reclamation would come soon enough, and soon enough Burden’s resistance would tighten. Now the honeymoon was still in progress and now was the time to secure Burden’s help as far as possible. “Yes,” Lark finally said, “we have done some good with you already, Professor. I must warn you, however, that there is still a great deal ahead of us. That’s why I want you to stay here in the Department.”
“Oh?” Burden lifted his eyebrows, puzzled.
“I know you want to go home to your wife and sons, but this is most important. If you could spare a week?”
“Oh, no, it’s out of the question,” Burden said, shaking his head.
“We’ve just barely touched on the heresies, Professor Burden. I’m sure you’d want to co-operate with us.”
“Well, of course I’m willing to co-operate—but I have classes to teach, my wife, my home, my work.”
“Couldn’t you spare a week to rid yourself of heresies?”
“Well, of course, but—”
“Believe me, Professor Burden, it’s a profound experience. You’ll be a happier, more useful person when we’re done. I’ve spent a great deal of time and effort in preparation for working with you—I’d hardly know how to explain it to my superiors if you proved unwilling to go through with it.”
