Imperial Stars 3-The Crash of Empire

by Jerry Pournelle

  When the door closed behind the last straggler, she said, "Is this room safe?"

  "Quite safe, Victoria."

  The old woman inspected Rook analytically. "Well, is it to be 'wroth in death, and envy after'? Or will you bargain?"

  "Pardon me?"

  "Come, come, Rook; bluffing was never your forte. If for some reason I should choose to step down," she said, speaking slowly, distinctly, "will you allow my granddaughter to bear her child in peace?"

  "Why, certainly, Victoria. As I once told you, I'm not a hypocrite."

  "No," she said, "merely a . . . !" She choked off the gutter term that came to her lips. "May I ask what I have done to you to deserve this?"

  "Personalities aren't involved," he said. "It's the job—the job you are failing to accomplish. You left me no choice."

  The old woman swayed, leaning heavily on her cane. Rook moved as if to help her, but she fended him off, saying sharply, "Please keep your hands to yourself."

  Settling herself in a chair, Victoria Duiño looked up at the man, her eyes bright. With measured intonation, she enumerated certain facts concerning an assistant pharmacy manager, a Cleveland chemist, a Philadelphia dealer in pharmaceuticals, a drug wholesaler, and a Congressman's stooge.

  Rook was nonplused. "Thorough," he said smoothly. "You've been very thorough, as I anticipated. You realize, of course, that such 'evidence' would never hold up in court."

  "No district attorney, judge, or jury will ever hear it."

  "Then, how—?"

  "Tomorrow morning," directed the old woman sternly, "you will personally arrange official parenthood sanction for my granddaughter and her husband. Spare me the seamy details of how the deed is to be accomplished."

  "And . . . if I refuse?"

  Victoria's smile was thin, totally lacking in humor—the smile of a canary who has successfully evaded the cat. "I visited with the other seven members of our committee yesterday, Rook. They all seemed quite eager to see things my way. Persist in your endeavor, and you will find yourself out on the street, looking in. Discovering another meal ticket might become a serious problem."

  Bennett Rook took a moment to digest this information. "Then I suppose you have won," he said at last.

  "Yes, I suppose so. As such things are reckoned."

  "Do you blame me?" Rook sounded the injured party. "I'm not really an orge, Victoria. You've lived long, worked hard; you've seen the world change into something ill and decrepit. Was it so despicable to try and force you to lay down your burden and rest?"

  "It was," she said, "though I don't expect you to understand why. You are not a flesh and blood creature, Rook; no juices of life flow within you. You are cold and rational—both a superb asset, and a potentially terrible liability to triage activities."

  "I'll make the necessary arrangements tomorrow," he said.

  Victoria Duiño nodded. "Good. Now that we understand one another, I have a bombshell for you; the Matriarch of Death has at last decided to abdicate. Not, however, because of your foolish blackmail scheme.

  "You were correct, Rook: I am indeed old, feeble, and used up. And tired—very tired. You strike at me through my grandchild; His Holiness attacks me through my faith; my name is anathema from Antarctica to Greenland, and all around the world."

  "You've managed to amaze me, Victoria."

  "Furthermore," she went on, disregarding his incredulous stare, "had you refrained from this silly coup, you might well have been elected Chairperson of the Triage Committee next week. As it is, while eminently qualified, you have proved yourself utterly unworthy."

  "Bitter gall." Rook grimaced. "That does sting, Victoria. But don't count me out just yet. I—"

  "Hear me, Bennett!" She twisted the cane savagely in her hands. "This will be our final encounter, and I intend to have the last word. I want to clarify something, now and forever; something you must comprehend.

  "You have repeatedly condemned my triage philosophy as being too lenient, too soft. It is not. Triage is, and has always been, a concession to the inevitable, not premeditated mass-murder. Twenty-five years ago, in the white heat of a new crusade, we set a rather idealistic goal: semi-immediate reversal of runaway overpopulation. We were dismayed to find it not that simple. How can an illiterate Third Worlder, whose single recreation in an otherwise drab existence is sex, be persuaded to remain chaste during his wife's fertile period?

  "But now, whether you care to acknowledge it or not, a dim glow brightens the far end of the tunnel. We faced cold facts, long ago, asking ourselves whether it would be wiser to disrupt every socioeconomic system on Earth by seeking a quick solution, or to wage a strategically paced, long-range war. The latter policy is saner, more practical, and far more humanitarian; the ultimate solution may lay farther in the future, but victory is also much more assured.

  "I will not live to see even a partial victory; nor, in all likelihood will you, Rook. But my great-grandchild-to-be, whose strange godfather you are, might do so—if you and the others make the best possible use of the varied technological weapons we will someday have at our disposal: new bio-compatible pesticides, new hybridized grains, reclamation of desertlands, perhaps interplanetary migration.

  "As in any war, we will face mini-triumphs and small setbacks, major victories and hideous defeats; we must bear up equally under good fortune and adversity alike. We must take what we have to take, and give what we have to give to re-create a world where my greatgrandchild-to-be can enjoy a noble, cheerful life, a world where a gallon of potable water is not a unit of international exchange, where reusable containers are not an article of law, where food is abundant and air is fit to . . ."

  Victoria broke off, shaking her head sadly. "I can see that I am wasting breath. Very well; if you choose to have your lesson the hard way, so be it. I wish you luck; you will need all you can get."

  The old woman labored to rise. Though he dared not help her, Bennett Rook came forward half a step despite himself. She did not deign to look at him again, making her way slowly to the door, dignity pulled tightly about her like a cloak.

  Her mind at peace, Victoria went to her quarters and phoned St. Patrick's Cathedral. She spent two minutes persuading the young priest who buffered all incoming calls that she was indeed who she said she was. Finally, he allowed her to speak to Cardinal Freneaux.

  "Oh, Louis, I'm so glad; I was afraid you had already left the city. I called to invite you to have dinner with me."

  "Delighted, my dear Victoria." He sounded pleased and surprised. "I had made other plans, but they can be changed."

  "This is an occasion," she said. "A UNDEP news bulletin of some importance will be released tomorrow morning. I want you to be the first to know. May I come by for you in an hour, Louis?"

  "Fine! That will be fine. I'll look forward to seeing you.

  She dressed without haste—the black gown reserved for formal affairs—and slipped on a diamond bracelet Enrique had given her many years before. She had difficulty fastening the clasp of an emerald brooch at her neck.

  When she was ready, she took up a large satin handbag, the fancy black cane with the ivory tip, and called down to the garage. The electric limousine and its driver, accompanied by omnipresent UN Security Agents, were waiting for her outside the tower's staff entrance.

  They rode in silence, with the windows rolled up despite the muggy summer evening. With keen interest, Victoria watched the defeated multitudes overspilling the sidewalks; four hours, and more, remained until the midnight curfew. They crawled west through dense traffic on East 48th Street, turning right at Fifth Avenue.

  When the limousine nosed its way into an enormous queue of hungry supplicants gathered outside St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dr. Victoria Maria-Luisa Ortega de Duiño crossed herself.

  Editor's Introduction To:

  Hyperdemocracy

  John W. Campbell, Jr.

  "Theodore White (among many others) describes the shift in national attitude toward welfare from 'equa
lity of opportunity' to 'equality of result' as a fundamental change. The sponsors of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, with Hubert Humphrey in the lead, had come down adamantly on the side of equality of opportunity—the nation was made color-blind. The wording of the legislation itself expressly dissociated its provisions from preferential treatment. Yet only a year later, speaking at Howard University commencement exercises, Lyndon Johnson was proclaiming the 'next and most profound stage of the battle for civil rights,' namely, the battle 'not just for equality as a right and theory but equality as a result.' A few months later Executive Order 11246 required 'affirmative action.' By 1967, people who opposed preferential measures for minorities to overcome the legacy of discrimination were commonly seen as foot-draggers on civil rights if not closet racists.

  "A number of writers have pointed to a combination of two events: the ascendancy of legal stipulation as the only guarantor of fair treatment and the contemporaneous Balkanization of the American population into discrete 'minorities.'"

  Charles Murray,

  Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980

  Cicero tells us that the trouble with oligarchy is that the government has too much power; but in a democracy, the brilliant and able have no way to better themselves without destroying the nation.

  The United States was founded on a different principle, of liberty rather than democracy or equality.

  We forget that at our peril.

  John Campbell wrote this editorial in 1958. It could have been written today.

  Hyperdemocracy

  John W. Campbell, Jr.

  So far as I can make out, there is such a thing as an excess of anything you can name. There's the old gag that you can get drunk on water . . . just as you can on land. But it's also true that you can become intoxicated by too much water. Hard to do, of course, but it's a medical fact. Too much oxygen can produce quite a tizzy, too.

  Too much truth, unmodified by good sense and understanding, can be destructive, also. The "catty" woman frequently uses truth as her weapon to hurt.

  I rather imagine the following comments are going to call forth howls of wrath from a good many sources. Nevertheless, I feel that they constitute painful truths that need to be examined.

  I propose for debate the proposition: "The United States is suffering from an acute attack of excessive democracy."

  First, it needs to be determined whether or not there can be such a thing as an excess of democracy—too much equality.

  The original purpose of the democratic concept was to establish the value of the individual—the right of the Freeman individual to think for himself, and to work for himself, as against the older concept of the individual as an entity owned by the state. The original intent of democracy was to allow the individual to achieve the full development of his individual potentials, unlimited by such arbitraries as aristocracy-of-birth, or other arbitrarily imposed restrictions. That all men were to have equal opportunity to develop their own valuable potentials. In hyperdemocracy, however, the democratic concept is subtly, and malignantly, shifted to hold that all men should be equal—that individually achieved developments should be equal.

  This is not the same thing as equality of opportunity, since it actually imposes an arbitrary limitation on the right of the individual to achieve his maximum potentials. Equality of opportunity, however, is exceedingly hard to demonstrate!

  Suppose two individuals, Tom and Dick, are given equal opportunity to develop their individual abilities. Tom winds up a millionaire, and Dick winds up on a skimpy retirement pay. The objective evidence clearly shows that Tom and Dick did not have equal opportunity, doesn't it?

  Yes, it does. Tom had superior opportunities; he had the gift of learning very rapidly, so that, exposed to the same information sources, and the same situations Dick was, Tom learned fifteen times as much. Tom, going to the same school Dick did, learned that Columbus discovered America . . . and that Leif Ericson probably landed in Labrador five or six centuries earlier. That various French and Spanish pioneers explored the area of the western United States, but that the Lewis and Clark expedition was more important.

  And Dick, having answered the school examinations properly, knew that he had learned what the proper citizen was supposed to learn.

  But Tom, having answered the school examinations the same way Dick did, learned something quite different. "It doesn't do much good to open a pathway if people don't want to go there. There's no point in discovering a continent until people need a new continent. There's no use exploring a new territory until people are present to move in, and want a new territory to move into." That was a great help to Tom in later life, when he was organizing the companies and enterprises that made his millions.

  Dick had the same opportunities to learn . . . but Tom had an unfair, arbitrary opportunity not given Dick. Something not education, but inherent, gave Tom a greater ability to learn from the data offered him.

  In hyperdemocracy, inequality of results is considered proof of inequality of opportunity. Inequality of what level of opportunity? Is innate, God-given ability undemocratic? Something to be suppressed, punished, ground out, so that we can have absolute equality?

  But this isn't democracy! Democracy implies giving each free individual the right to develop his own talents as best he may—so long as those talents are not destructive to others. (Talented assassins will be suppressed, of course.)

  To hold that results must be equal is to violate the central intent of true democracy—that each individual shall have equal opportunity to develop his abilities.

  A hyperdemocracy, if such existed, would have the characteristic of seeking to force individuals to conform to an arbitrary norm—neither rising above the "proper" level, nor allowing them to lag below. It would seek to punish individuals who advanced beyond the norm—who showed "undemocratic" superiority of actual ability. It would confuse superior ability with superior opportunity. It would insist that no individual had any right to marked superiority of achievement—that the true proof of democratic equality of opportunity was equality of results. That innate difference did not, and of a right should not, exist. That anyone who claimed innate differences did exist was undemocratic—and that anyone who demonstrated that such differences existed was criminally undemocratic, and should be punished for his anti-democratic actions.

  Lopsided superiority, with compensating hopeless deficiencies, would be tolerable, of course. A Steinmetz, a brilliant cripple, wouldn't be anti-democratic, because, of course, his physical deformity makes him average out not-superior. The genius must be crippled, one way or another, either physically, or mentally, or he is unacceptable in a hyperdemocratic concept. The brilliant scientist must be an oddball of some sort, or he's unacceptable. To suggest that individuals exist who are genuinely, innately superior is, in the hyperdemocratic concept, intolerable.

  And I'm defying every rule of our present hyperdemocracy by bringing these propositions into the open. I'm suggesting that there are human beings who have innate, unmatchable-by-education talents of genuine superiority that you haven't got a prayer of achieving—things that neither training, practice, education, or anything else can ever give you or me.

  First: A hemophiliac bleeds by reason of a genetic anomaly. It's not due to training, education, or lack of opportunity to learn something. You don't have that defect. Then, with respect to the hemophiliac you have an innate superiority, due to genetic difference—and it is unarguably a survival superiority.

  You didn't earn that superiority; it was given you by your ancestors. (They, one might say, earned it.)

  In the same way, a Peruvian Indio can play football at 15,000-foot elevation. You can't. Even if you trained for five years, you still wouldn't have the fundamental biochemical adaptations that generations of selective breeding have given the Peruvian. He can use a lower oxygen-tension, and get successful displacement of the CO2 from his blood. You can't; you never will be able to. It's not learnable. I can't, and don'
t kid myself that I can.

  I saw an article on the biochemical adaptations of the Peruvian Indios in the Scientific American a couple of years ago; it was a fine piece of objective reporting . . . down to the last paragraph. In that, the researcher felt forced to specifically state that it was not proper to conclude that it was a genetic superiority—that, in fact, any human baby born and raised at 15,000-foot altitudes would undoubtedly display the same type of adaptation.

  That last statement is no doubt true. Their tests showed that an American engineer who'd been living at 14,000 feet for many years was able to perform on their treadmill for only eight minutes; their Indio subjects had worked on it for as long as ninety minutes. If a man in excellent health, after years of adaptation, could manage only eight minutes of work on the treadmill—could a woman survive the period of labor in childbirth? Conclusion: undoubtedly a child born and raised at that altitude would show the Peruvian Indio adaptations. He'd be a Peruvian Indio; no woman of other racial stock without those adaptations could bear a child there. What made the scientist who did that report add that gratuitous—and invalid!—statement that the data did not indicate an innate superiority of altitude adaptation?