Oath of Fealty

by Larry Niven

  "Yeah. I see him. Doesn't seem to be carrying anything. Might have been, though. We'll have to search the roof. Detectors would have picked up anything metal, and there's not a lot worth bombing up there, but we'll have to look anyway."

  The figure moved rapidly along the twelve-foot fence between him and the edge. He was hunched over, a caricature of a man sneaking. He found a gap in the fence, hesitated, and moved into it.

  Blake grinned. "Hah! Maybe we won't have to send anyone up after all. He's found the diving board."

  "That's not the pool area."

  "I know. Sometimes I wonder about Rand. You know about Tony Rand? He's the chief architect for this place. Rand's high board isn't in the pool area."

  "Huh?"

  "Watch. If he's really a leaper, we won't have to call anyone." Blake touched another button. "Captain, I have the bandit on the roof area. Looks like he's going to dive." Blake fiddled with the knobs. The picture sharpened.

  He had been following the fence for thirty minutes, looking for a way to reach the edge. The fence seemed endless, and he wondered if he could climb it, and if there were alarms. Todos Santos was said to be very Big Brother.

  Then he saw the opening. There was a cement mixer nearby and he pushed the visitor badge into it. The badge wasn't his, and told nothing about him, but it was the last possible clue. Maybe they'd find it and maybe not. He moved on, to the gap in the fence.

  There was a big sign: WATCH YOUR STEP. He did not smile. His long, unhandsome face was dead calm, as if he had never smiled and never would. He turned into the channel of fencing. It was just wider than his shoulders.

  The channel ended in a steel ladder. Through the steps he could see the orange groves and parks far below, then beyond them the tiny shapes of city houses, some with the blue splash of a swimming pool, all looking like miniatures. He pressed his forehead against the cold metal and looked down ... a fifth of a mile down to the green landscape around Todos Santos. A thousand feet to oblivion.

  He climbed the steps. The situation was strange. The steps ended in a long, narrow rectangle. He tested it with his foot. Wood padded with burlap ... and it shook slightly.

  A high-diving board.

  He walked out on the board and looked down.

  The balconies receded in perspective until they merged with blank wall. The parkland below was a green blur. A view more mathematical than real, parallel lines meeting at infinity. So here was the end of a dull and thwarted life. He was carrying no identification. After a fall like that they would never know who he was. Let them wonder.

  The board bounced as he shifted his weight.

  "But-but suppose he jumps?" Joe Dunhill asked.

  "Well, we don't advertise it, but there's a net that comes out when he passes the spy-eyes. Then we just collect him and eject him. Let him give his bad publicity to someone else," Blake told him.

  "Does this happen all the time? You don't look particularly interested."

  "Oh, I'm interested. I've got five bucks in the pool. See that chart?" Blake waved at the far wall, where chalk marks said:

  LAUGHING 3

  BACKED OUT JUMPED 8

  TERRIFIED 7

  "That's this quarter's tally. Work it out," said Blake. "The roof of this place is eight miles of sheer cliff. We get every would-be suicide west of the Rockies and some from New England and Japan. But the high-diving board is the only access to the edge, and it does have a funny effect on people." Blake frowned and scratched his neck. "He sure looks like a jumper. If he backs out I stand a fair chance to win."

  The man stood straddle-legged at the end of the board, brooding above a thousand-foot drop. The picture of melancholy, until a gust of wind slapped across him, and suddenly he was dancing on one leg and waving his arms.

  "Maybe not," Blake said. The jumper was reflexively fighting for his life. The gust died suddenly, and he almost went off the other side of the board. He wound up on hands and knees. He stayed there, gripping the board. Presently he began backing toward the ladder. When he reached the steps he stayed stooped and backed down, placing his feet very carefully.

  "Leaper's off, Captain," Blake called.

  "Right. Got a detail going after him."

  Joe asked, "Some of them laugh?"

  "Yeah. It's a funny picture, isn't it? You're going to kill yourself. It's the most powerful statement you can make about the way the world has treated you. That's what Rand says, anyway. And when you finally get there, there's a high-diving board to add ten feet to the drop!"

  Joe shook his head, grinning.

  "They don't all back out. Once I watched a woman stand up there, take off her overcoat-she wasn't wearing anything under it - bounce once, and take off in a really gorgeous swan dive." He smiled, then shook himself. "But the board turns off a lot of them. Rand isn't any dummy. He built Todos Santos, and he's still building it, if you know what I mean. He's always tinkering around."

  "I'd like to meet him."

  "You will."

  Fat chance, Joe thought. "What happens to the leaper?"

  "One of the bosses will talk to him. Standing orders. Rand wants to know what makes them tick. Maybe ~think of ways to discourage them." Blake looked at his watch. "This one may have a wait. There's a bigwig from Canada coming in for a visit and all the brass will be busy."

  "Can we hold him?" Joe asked. "I mean, civil rights and all-"

  "Sure. Some of us are real live cops," Blake said. "It's a legal thing. Todos Santos is legally a city. Sort of. But the insurance is cheaper if most of us are security officers rather than peace officers. But we are a city. We even have a jail. Judges, too, but they don't get much work. Corporation people take care of civil matters, and felonies go to the LA County District Attorney."

  "It sure is different here-" Joe blinked and leaned closer to the screen. "Hey-"

  "What?"

  "I saw a light flash. That one."

  "Um. Tunnel area. We better check, that's critical territory-" He did things to the console, and a row of lights flashed green. "Nobody there who doesn't belong there. You sure you saw something?"

  "Almost sure."

  "Probably some maintenance troop had his badge inside a tool box." Blake yawned. "Get me another coffee?"

  "Sure."

  Preston Sanders ranked high in the Todos Santos hierarchy; high enough to rate the enormous office furnished as he liked it, with abstract paintings and maps of ski slopes. A teak-bordered TV screen nearly covering one wall showed motion pictures of ski events. The flickering motions, shifting from third-person to over-the-shoulder views of an expert taking the world's steepest slopes and jumps, generally drove his visitors to ask for something else, but Preston loved them.

  The furniture was mahogany and teak; even the panels of the desk console were covered with teak, and there were dark wood borders on the TV screens on the desk and on the walls. When Sanders had explained the decor he wanted, Tony Rand had characteristically remarked, "Matched set, eh?"

  Sanders thought of that sometimes. It was true enough. Sanders was the color of oiled teak. And Tony Rand had meant the remark exactly as it sounded. Sanders looked up at Rand, who was doing his best to ignore the gut-wrenching view of the Olympic jump. "I used to wonder about you," Preston said. "You don't have any racial prejudice."

  Raised that suddenly by a black man, the subject would have jarred some whites. Rand said, "Should I?" and still not looking at the TV screen with its instant vertigo finished pouring coffee from the silver samovar. He tipped a dollop of Sanders' brandy - Carlos Primero, and far too good to be put into coffee-into the coffee.

  "Certainly. It's normal. So I wondered, and I finally got the answer. You still think of Todos Santos as practice for building a starship, don't you?"

  "Sure, Pres. I built Todos Santos. Who should know better than me? We could start building the ships right now. The design is straightforward. What we can't do is build a technological society that's self-sufficient with only a few thousand membe
rs."

  "Did the Directors know you thought that way? I'm surprised they even let you work on this place. They could have picked someone who thought it was an end in itself."

  "It isn't. I don't think the Directors think so. They think it's practice for better arcologies. It is, too. We're too dependent on Los Angeles, but we'll learn what we didn't put in the design and the next one will have it. Brandy?"

  "Not just now. I've got to see Art before he gets tied up with a visiting fireman-surprised you don't know about him." Sanders reached to the teak panel and turned a dial. The Olympic scene vanished, to be replaced with a view of Los Angeles as seen from the top of Todos Santos.

  "I know about him. I convinced Bonner I'd be busy all day. What was your great contribution to race relations?"

  "Well, one day I said to myself, here I am, one of a couple of hundred black people in a building the size of a city, and I'm Art Bonner's deputy. And here's Tony Rand, flying a starship in his head, with a single black man in the bridge crew. Then it came to me. I'm the token alien, and you're studying me."

  Rand grinned slowly. "Token alien. On the bridge. Interesting … listen, if you'll tell me your token skin color, I'll tell you the shape of your token ears."

  "Green."

  "Pointed."

  They grinned at each other. 'Rand said, "Tell you something. There are aliens on the bridge, and you aren't either of them. And yes, I'm studying them. Will you grant me that Art Bonner is a genius?"

  "Sure," Preston said without hesitation. "I know what the top job in this place involves. Nobody else could do it."

  "Think you'd catch me trying? All right, is Barbara Churchward a genius?"

  Sanders frowned for a moment. "I don't work the Economics department much. Art thinks so." He frowned again. "Aha. I think I see what you're driving at."

  "Right," Tony Rand said. "Now, they've both got those implants." Rand's face took on a strange look; almost, Sanders thought, one of intense longing, like an exile looking across the sea toward home. "Wonder what it's like to know anything you want to, just by asking? Anyway. We can think of both of them as man-computer interfaces. What I have to decide is, just how important is the computer link? They were both geniuses before the implant link went in."

  The TV screen showed the phallic shape of the Los Angeles City Hall jutting up through the smog. Sanders tuned the picture more sharply. "And the implants are hideously expensive," Preston said. "I see. You have to decide if the officers of your starship need them anyway."

  "Or of my next arcology. So you tell me: are those two just geniuses, or are they now something more?"

  "How the devil would I know?"

  "Just on the odds, I thought you might be a genius yourself. I mean, the only black man in the command staff of Todos Santos must have had something more than the usual going for him."

  "Oh, you idiot."

  "Query?"

  "It doesn't take that. It takes a certain amount of intelligence, plus being willing to take the responsibilities for the orders you give, and-" He stopped, flinching at the word he had been about to use; and he looked to see if Rand had guessed.

  But his problem was just the opposite. Rand, without the faintest idea of what he was talking about, was waiting for him to.

  "All right," Preston said. "We play the politics game here. It means a lot of interpersonal friction, a lot of compromises, between one guy who thinks he's got the right answer and another guy who thinks he does. I get caught in the middle a lot, maybe more than anyone, because I'm more noticeable." Sanders shrugged. "So I put up with it. I give in a lot, even when I know I'm right. There are people who would call that tomming."

  "Tomming? Uncle Tom? But you give more orders than you take."

  Rand would never understand. It was the trait that kept him out of Todos Santos's micropolitics: you tried to manipulate him, and suddenly he was somewhere else, redesigning your closet space while you were trying to get someone fired.

  Which was why Sanders generally felt comfortable with Rand. Tony Rand was no threat. Like Art Bonner, he was someone you could trust all the way.

  But if he ever does get involved, Sanders thought. If he ever does, he's going to be a dangerous man. True, Maintenance was part of Operations-but the Maintenance supervisors would probably side with the Chief Engineer if it came to a choice. Maybe not openly, but-. Sanders had a mental image of someone trying to lever Rand and ending up with his sink connected to his toilet while his air conditioning poured out eau d' skunk. His face split into a wide grin.

  Rand said, "Something?"

  "Does the name Sir George Reedy mean anything to you?"

  "He's the chap you ducked out of meeting, the Canadian who's come to study Todos Santos. I've been watching for his helicopter."

  "I thought you'd changed the scene to be polite."

  "And, Tony-Sir George has an implant."

  "Uh. I guess he's worth talking to, then." Rand looked thoughtful.

  "More than you know. He got the implant as a favor someone owed his family. I doubt that he was a genius before the implant went in."

  "Oh ho." Rand glanced at his new toy, a Bulova Dali watch, as thin and flexible as the sleeve of his shirt. "Uh-I think I ought to see about some details," he said. "Maybe I can get free for the afternoon. Pres? Thanks." Rand left hurrying, followed by that white grin.

  The grin slipped away as Sanders followed private thoughts.

  His family had never been enslaved. Undoubtedly someone had been, somewhere; but from as early as 1806, the furthest back anyone could trace, the Sanderses had been free Negroes working for the United States government in Washington. His father had been a Public Health Service physician. Sanders himself had gone to the best private schools, where they were so liberal they wouldn't even think the word nigger. And how I hated those snotty bastards, Sanders remembered. He looked down at his dark hands and wondered at himself. So why don't I hate Mead and Letterman and the others, the ones who get nervous talking to me?

  He straightened, remembering, and used the console controls to change the view on the TV from eastward toward LA to westward toward the ocean. A joystick control moved the camera until he saw a brightly colored shape in the afternoon sky, and he zoomed in on it. Frank Mead, shouting happily as he hung from the double-winged hang glider. Mead wasn't overweight, he was just big, and it took a specially designed glider to carry him. Mead was one of them; one who made no secret that he thought Preston Sanders was going to blow it one day. Why don't I hate him? Preston wondered. He makes me nervous, but I don't hate him. Why? Because I don't share the black experience? That's what my roommate at Howard would have said. Or because we're all doing something we believe in? We're running a civilization, something new in this world, and don't bother to tell me how small it is. It's a civilization. The first one in a long time where people can feel safe.

  If only they believed in me.

  He got up from his desk. It was time for his interview with Art Bonner.

  II. THE MANAGERS

  Management has been the success story of a century which has not been one of the most successful centuries in human history.

  In the society which our history books describe, everybody worried constantly about rank and precedence. Nobody today worries about precedence. What all these managers worry about is talking to each other.

  -Peter F. Drucker, "Management's New Role" in The Future of the Corporation, Herman Kahn (Ed.)

  Preston Sanders walked briskly along the corridor called Executive Row, not really noticing the thick carpets and the paneled walls dotted with paintings. He considered what he had to cover, rank ordering priorities for Bonner-who had a million demands to fill, and couldn't possibly give Sanders everything he wanted.

  The anteroom to Bonner's office was a study in comfort, designed by psychologists to make waiting to see Bonner, if not pleasant, at least as minimally unpleasant as possible. Delores Martine certainly contributed to that feeling. Sanders knew she was
at least as busy as Bonner - possibly even more so - but she always had time to chat with anyone waiting.

  "Get your work done, Dee," Preston said. "I've got a couple of things to sort out anyway."

  "All right. Mr. Bonner will be free in just a moment. He got a satellite call from Zurich-"

  From the big bosses, the money people who owned Todos Santos. "It's all right," Pres assured her. "Really."

  She nodded and began shuffling through papers, leaving Sanders to his reverie. He wanted to think about the labor problem in Air Shaft 4, but his thoughts strayed to Delores-and Art Bonner. Wonder what happened to those two? They were obviously having an affair the year after Art's wife left him. Who'd want a casual visitor for a husband and father of her children? But Dee sees him all day. They were at it hot and heavy for a while, and then nothing. Wonder why?