He stopped, as if waiting; and very slowly Norin began to see that the man’s assurances had not been flatly false, even that he himself, the old fox Norin, had become too certain of events....
“But—”
Penn’s look had no rancor in it, and a bare trace of sympathy. “Yes, Councillor,” he said abruptly. “Do you begin to see?”
“If . . .” The picture was clear to him, but finding words for it was, somehow, difficult; so old an enemy as personal emotion would not be leashed, could not be controlled. An interference . . . Aaron . . .
“There are dangers,” Penn said, a practical man pressing an advantage. “Yes, of course there are.” He looked squarely at Norin—at Norin, who found he could barely speak; could barely even think except to picture again and again what he had not before fully dared to see, even in imagination: his son, his youngest, his affliction and particular love. Penn waited, and went on. “But I’m offering you a chance—you must see that. I believe it to be a fairly good chance. It may save the life of your son. It may do so at no— ah—immense cost to the government we serve, and must uphold.” A pause no longer than a single breath. “Do you accept it?”
And Norin, like some stammering first-year legislator, some page-boy tossed a favor from the fringe of the elect—Norin, the old fox, found he could do no more than begin, through the private haze he could neither dispel nor control. “It is hardly for me to—” Penn’s voice, all sense and plan, brought him back from that brink of helplessness without the waste of a half-second’s carelessness. “It’s for you, Councillor,” and Norin felt (and distrusted) gratitude. “Because,” the Emperor went on in that same crisp explanatory tone, “if you agree with me, and if you will take my word as to the form and plan of action—if so, Councillor, I want you to make a speech as well.”
So much was enough, but Penn spelled it all out, and Norin found that he was, once more, grateful— for the details that saved him the impossible task of thought. Aaron . . .
Well. “The Dichtung will do—what it will do,” Penn went on. “Clearly, Leverett’s the man for that, or ought to be. But the people, now—the people are going to know about your boy, Norin, and that tie-in is going to be important to them. You see how and why. The personal touch'’’ he said, giving the words a twist of flame-pure hate,, edging them with a sad contempt—and, in the same breath, the resignation of a professional. “It’s that I must face; and I need you at my side.”
Habit, or instinct, sounded in the center of Norin’s mind, dimly but without diffusion: watch yourself. Give nothing away. Take care. Yes. But—what else was there to do?
A long time passed—perhaps, by the clock, an entire minute. “Very well,” he said at last, and Penn nodded briskly. Norin (or that watcher who remained with him, the watcher who, he knew, however powerless, would always remain) felt a stab of fear: how had he committed himself? For it was too late: his word was good, and had been throughout life. It occurred to him with insane irrelevance that the constancy of that word was one more factor that would keep him from Penn’s throne: the incorruptible are seldom popular, though the great oddity called populace believes otherwise both of itself and them. (And even in his fear the fox knew himself uncorrupted; for his word was good, and he had—truly, finally, admitted even to himself—done his best. Of course he had; there had been nothing less to do.)
“This will take time to arrange,” Penn said, as briskly as his nod, and then, all in the same breath, went on. “Gentlemen, I give you leave to withdraw: we shall prepare at once.” He waited until Leverett had risen smartly, Norin clambering to his own feet more slowly, more confusedly, and showed no discernible impatience; what sort of sign was that? Good, or bad? As if matters ever became that simple . . . “Our only instant danger,” the Emperor was saying, “is that the Valor attack Thoth before we can get through to its crew. Tracking-stations give me no assurance that we are safe in that respect; Skywatch is neither optimistic nor sunk in gloom. We do not have a sufficiency of facts; and we must therefore depend, gentlemen, upon a residuum of good sense within the Valor—as well as—” He gave both men a shaip, insistent, somehow humorous look, his mouth twisted for a second in an irony Norin could not follow-—“a great deal of speed here, in the Capitol. I’m sure you understand.”
Thoth:
A city. Certainly a city. But in it lived—inhabitants? Workers? Patriots? Prisoners? Each one chose his own noun, and though there are many descriptions, variously detailed and variously accurate as well, we may make bold to choose none. For our need, an abstraction along certain rigidly defined lines is necessary, and that alone: an abstraction which includes (to begin with) Kenten Arnold, private entrepreneur, and Dorian Bohle, agent of the Comity as representative-in-residence of the Fair Practices Council; it will include, as required, others.
But these men lived, as all others live, within a society; more, they lived within a specialized community of that society. As:
The light-transparent dome bothered no one within it. Those enclosed by it (the particular dome marking the limits of the city, Thoth) were to the last degree, as they quite universally felt, civilized; that is, accustomed to the artificial life which defines any city, anywhere, at any time. They had been born within the Comity, since human life was not then known to exist outside it, and were met in no more than that; but of the Comity’s entire population, those only reached Thoth, and stayed, who had bent and structured themselves, early in life, toward a minimally definable, and quite narrow, pattern (as do all artists, and most of those engaged in the healing arts, or in government). The particular pattern common to those in Thoth involved a rigid liking for, and an adjustment*’' to, “city life”—that sub-society consisting, in the main, of the transfer of records and the prediction of future record-transfers of various sorts. A product (a stylus; a surface-jet; a bibelot; a personality) might be created, for all Thoth’s concern, anywhere at all—anywhere that provided requisite raw materials, requisite opportunities for manufacture or growth (as, factory space; computer space; certain values placed upon certain tendencies). The shadow of that product—the credits necessary to its creation and maintenance, purchase and display—existed upon Thoth, perhaps only upon Thoth: in the banks of computer records, the sheaves of detailed predictive calculation, the webs of lend-and-trade, attack-and-submit, establish-and-revise, that were Thoth’s existence.
As, more:
It was believed (perhaps truly) that Thoth served not only a convenient but a necessary function; for no one knew, and no one could in detail imagine, any complex system whatever—which is to say any society named civilized—without an accounting-system of some sort, and only the most innocent, the most unlearned, and the most careless could convince themselves that they had imagined such a system in such terms that it might be sustained entirely by the computing-monsters that were always at Thoth’s disposal. In the end, as learning displays and knowledge upholds, even “pure mathematics” is an art, since it requires the disposal of particular irrational decisions; after such an example, a concern of the type of trade or investment, a settlement such as Thoth, could not be seen (even at the most remote possibility) as an exemption from the general law; and computers, of whatever size and talent, are rational, and therefore cannot practice an art.
Thoth, then, was inhabited by those who, in their own definition, and in the definition of nearly all the Comity, were called civilized; but these people remained human beings (as indeed they would always be forced to do, in order to perform their work and to withstand the pains of their art). As human beings, they had formed a society which allowed the existence and even the encouragement of interests other than work and procreation. Among other such matters, they had discovered “hobbies”; and several of the human beings upon Thoth (under the transparent dome, standing on the tumbled flatnesses of Mars) had formed private, clublike Sky watch Societies.
And so the Valor was quite unofficially discovered.
And so Kenten Arnol
d, fat and bald at forty-six, was provided with the fact of discovery—and considered it a fact worth his attention. Mid-afternoon (under the dome, light-collecting, light-softening, and safe) in Arnold’s office was brighter than mid-afternoon throughout most of Thoth; the softly glowing window frames lit his large, loose figure as he reached across his cluttered and unusually small desk for the nearest of a row of white buttons. Pushed it, and his secretary answered—a rather flighty young man for whom Arnold was beginning to think he had no use at all. Requested, then, a connection with Dorian Bohle, halfway across the city; and, in seconds, received it.
Bohle’s voice filled the room like the soft light, but jarred with it: he sounded, as usual, harsh and trumpet-like, demanding. Boorish, Arnold thought. “Kent? What is it, in the middle of the afternoon?”
“A ship,” Arnold breathed. The 0.38 gravity of Mars was keeping him alive, and his voice—irregular, slow, breathy—was a demonstration of the fact. “The Comity’s sent ... a ship ... in orbit . . . over the city.”
Bohle, Arnold told himself, was not very helpful. All he said was, “What in the Seventy Hells for?”
Persevere, Arnold thought. “I thought . . . you’d know, Bohle.”
The bray of that boorish laugh irritated Arnold’s ears. “Just because I’m in a government job doesn’t mean I know anything at all about what somebody might be thinking, back there. Now, you know that, Kent.”
Or was it just stubbornness that kept him at the phone? “But as . . . representative ... for the Fair . . . Practices Council. . .”
Bohle laughed again: a terrible sound. Not, really, a human sound at all. “I’m as baffled as you are, Kent. Look: why don’t you get one of your young men to dig into things?”
“I don’t see . . . what good a systems-and-enter-tainment... analyst... would be—”
Impatiently, impolitely, Bohle broke in. “He could get on the pipe to Earth, Kent. Couldn’t he, now? He could ask some questions—right?”
It was an expensive way of satisfying curiosity. “Do you believe . . . it’s that serious?”
“Sure, and so do you,” Bohle said casually, “or you wouldn’t have called. Now, you save your breath, Kent; I know nothing about ships, but I know Kenten Arnold. And anyhow—a ship in orbit—a warship, by the way?”
“Yes.”
“A warship in orbit—in seventy Hells, have they gone nuts back there?”
It was a good question. “There must be . . . some explanation . . .”
“Not here,” Bohle said, instantly and crisply. “Maybe at the Capitol—back there. If I were you, for instance, I’d try to find somebody indiscreet in Forman Alpha’s office.”
“De . . .” Blinking, Arnold got the word out. “Defense?”
He could almost see Bohle’s violent, overpadded, gawky shrug. “He runs the ships,” the harsh voice said. “If anybody knows, he does.”
Which, when he thought of it, presented an entirely new and rather horrifying idea. “If anybody . . . knows . . .”
Bohle, Arnold noticed, switched to what he apparently thought was his calming-down voice; it wasn’t much of a change. “Just a way of speaking. You know. Certainly somebody must have the facts, Arnold; there’s no doubt of it. No doubt of that at all, not at all.”
Becoming less and less sure by the second, Arnold said what he had to say: “Certainly.” And Bohle, as Arnold could nearly have predicted he would, seized the opportunity for a bit of a chat about his own concerns.
“By the way, Kent. About that Stunner—”
The last thing he wanted to talk about. The very last. Of course. “There’s no . . . time just now . . . Bohle; I’m sorry.”
Well, the man wasn’t stupid. You couldn’t call him stupid. “Sure,” he said easily, and in the pause Arnold could hear disappointment, and new, tighter planning; but Bohle put none of that into his words or his expansive tone. “But the investment picture, that’s what it is: it isn’t very clear, Kent, as you know. And I want to straighten that out with you. Just to get matters in order, you understand.”
The damned government prying that went on...
“Suppose we . . . find out about the . . . ship first?”
But Bohle went on, crisp and tough as ever. “Look, Kent, I don’t want any delays. You know that, too.”
There was, of course, just one thing to say. True or not, there was just one thing to say. “Everything is . . . quite regular. Quite. . . all right.”
Bohle’s reply (in the society of Thoth, in the rules of the society of Thoth) was equally fixed. “We’ll see. I’m sure there won’t be any trouble.” Such easy lies became necessities, under the transparent dome. “But—listen, Kent. Let me know the minute you find out anything about that ship.”
Arnold would have laughed—if he’d had the breath to spare. It was a simple favor for him to confer on Bohle; later, he might be able to use it—one way or another. “Of course,” he said.
“Anything at all.”
“Of course,” Kenten Arnold said again.
* * *
Rachel Cannam had no more to do with her time, for an indefinite while, than to use it in burying herself inside the very latest nouvel and its pictures; which she had just discovered, and didn’t entirely like.
Her husband was, she had been given to understand, at a—rehearsal, or a discussion, or—some such entertainment matter, whatever one called it; she had learned, to her continuous and frightened surprise, if she had learned nothing else, just how seriously he took such things; but his seriousness was his, and not shareable.
The idea, the very idea, of a man fighting for— working for—nothing more than recognition, nothing more than fame . . .
Intellectually, it was understandable. But, Rachel Cannam had known all that since birth; and what was all the excitement about?
She flicked at the nouvel, which she could not find remotely interesting. Not interesting at all, that book; but then (as she found herself discovering, with an emotion she could not recognize), so very few things were.
11.
I flatter myself that I love a manly, moral, regulated liberty as well as any gentleman of that society, be he who he will; and perhaps I have given as good proofs of my attachment to that cause, in the whole course of my public conduct. I think I envy liberty as little as they do, to any other nation. But I cannot stand forward, and give praise and blame to anything which relates to human actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of meta-physical abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind. Abstractedly speaking, government, as well as liberty, is good; yet could I, in common sense, ten years ago, have felicitated France on her enjoyment of a government (for she then had a government) without inquiry what the nature of that government was, or how it was administered? Can I now congratulate the same nation upon , its freedom? Is it because liberty in the abstract may be classed amongst the blessings of man-kind, that I am seriously to felicitate a mad-mah, who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of life and liberty? Am I to congratulate a highwayman and murderer, who has broke prison, upon the recovery of his natural rights? This would be to act over again the scene of the criminals condemned to the galleys, and their heroic deliverer, the meta-physic knight of the sorrowful countenance.
When I see the spirit of liberty in action, I see a strong principle at work; and this, for a while, is all I can possibly know of it. The wild gas, the fixed air, is plainly broke loose: but we ought to suspend our judgment until the first effervescence is a little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and until we see something deeper than the agitation of a troubled and frothy surface. I must be tolerably sure, before I vent
ure publicly to congratulate men upon a blessing, that they have really received one. Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver; and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings. 1 should therefore suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of France, until I was informed how it had been combined with government; with public force; with the discipline and obedience of armies; with the collection of an effective and well-distributed revenue; with morality and religion; with the solidity of property; with peace and order; with civil and social manners. AH these (in their way) are good things too; and, without them, liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts, and is not likely to continue long. The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations, which may be soon turned into complaints. Prudence would dictate this in the case of separate, insulated, private men; but liberty, when men act in bodies, is power. Considerate people, before they declare themselves, will observe the use which is made of power; and particularly of so trying a thing as new power in new persons, of whose principles, tempers, and dispositions they have little or no experience, and in situations, where those who appear the most stirring in the scene may possibly not be the real movers.
—Edmund Burke,
Reflections on the Revolution in France, (1790)
12.
“Ladies,” he said, “and gentlemen,” staring into the backstage mirror, waiting out the last few usual seconds with, very nearly, his usual air of dependable calm. He gave to his hawker half an ear, no more: Pfeiffer was going through the spiel just as he always did, and he found himself listening, nodding involuntarily. But the broadcast, now—ah, the broadcast was going to be just a bit different. “Isn’t it, Tumbul?” he asked himself; the mirror-face grinned back at him. Pfeiffer was coming into the windup, and Tumbul came out into the camera area—as usual, but a trifle faster than normal. No one appeared to notice that.
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