A REASONABLE WORLD

by Damon Knight

No one replied. When they went to the steam table, the chorus resumed. The unsmiling food handler gave them their dishes; one of them tipped and spilled gravy on Guest’s hand.

  Guest wiped his hand with a paper napkin. The two young men took their trays to a table against the wall where they could see the length of the room, but as soon as they sat down, from left and right came the chorus of “Oink.” They stood it for five minutes, then got up and walked out, pursued by a chorus of “Oink” that grew louder and louder.

  “Some of you,” Trilling’s voice said on the loudspeakers, “have been making insulting noises to our security people. You must realize—”

  In the mall and the corridors, oinking sounds were heard, almost drowning out his voice.

  “—as sensitive to this kind of abuse as you would be yourselves. All we’re asking is a little cooperation and courtesy. We have to work this out together. Ask yourselves—”

  “Oink. Oink. Oink.”

  “—this were happening to you. I know that when you think it over—”

  “Oink. Oink. Oink.”

  “Thank you.”

  Trilling called in the chairperson of the Detainee Council, the body that theoretically made and enforced those rules for detainees that were not made administratively from above. The chairperson was a ruddy man in his sixties named Davidson. “What do you want me to do, tell them not to say ‘Oink’? They want to say ‘Oink,’ they’ll say it.”

  “No, no, Mr. Davidson, I just want to consult with you and get your suggestions. What can we do to improve relations with the detainees?”

  “The prisoners, you mean.”

  “No, you’re not prisoners—I mean, you’re not here because of any crime.”

  “You think that makes it better?”

  “If that’s your attitude—”

  “Oink,” said Davidson.

  Keeping a low profile, Trilling withdrew his people from routine patrols and ordered them to take their meals in a cafeteria that had been made off-limits to detainees. The result was an increase in graffiti. Scurrilous poems began to appear on the walls. One of them went:

  A certain policeman named Trilling

  Would do anything for a shilling.

  When Owen said, “Mac,

  Kindly lie on your back,”

  He answered, “Why, madam, I’m willing.”

  Trilling sent out night crews to clean the walls, and bided his time. One afternoon there was a food fight in a cafeteria, and the manager phoned for assistance. Trilling refused to send anyone, and he persuaded the Maintenance director not to let his people clean up the room. After two days the detainees cleaned it up themselves. Then things went a little better, but morale among the Wackenhuts was not what it had been.

  9

  Christmas cards and packages for Dr. Owen had been piling up in her secretary’s office for a week—hundreds of them; at least a tenth of the detainee families on CV must have given her something, in addition to the staff. That was heartening, and it was evidence that the morale problems were being dealt with. On Christmas morning Corcoran said, “Dr. Owen, your presents have all been through X-ray. Would you like me to open them now?”

  “Yes, that would be fine. Keep a list, of course.”

  Half an hour later he called again. “Doctor, I think you should see this.” On his desk was an opened package and a strip of heavy plastic about the size of a ruler. Both were smeared with some green substance, and there were splatters on the desk, the keyboard, the wall, and Corcoran himself; there was even a faint green smear on the holo pickup, like a film of algae.

  “My goodness, Jim, are you hurt? What is that?”

  “My guess is green jello,” Corcoran said. “This”—he touched the strip of plastic—“was folded up inside like a flat spring. It didn’t show on the X-ray, of course.”

  “Let me see the wrapping.”

  Corcoran held it up. It was one of the standard Christmas wraps available in the stores—green, with little Santa Clauses and reindeer.

  “Of course I don’t want you to open any more,” Owen said. “I’m terribly sorry this has happened.”

  “It could have been something corrosive, or poisonous,” Corcoran said. His voice shook a little.

  “Well, just to make sure, I think you’d better wash thoroughly, and change your clothes, don’t you? And call security to pick up the rest of the presents. Take the day off, Jim, and try to have a merry Christmas.”

  The exploding present had been meant for her, of course; the donor had not known that Corcoran would open it instead. Probably there were others like it somewhere in the stack; possibly there was something worse.

  What a cowardly thing to do; how unfair and contemptible!

  “Mitzi,” she said to the computer, “someone on CV has been playing jokes of a kind calculated to disrupt our routines and make it difficult for us to carry on our work. Can you interpret personality profiles of the detainees in order to determine who would be most likely to do such a thing?”

  “Can you explain the jokes, Dr. Owen?”

  “He paints over the lenses of closed-circuit vision cameras, using green paint, and writes on the wall, ‘The Green Hornet Strikes Again.’ We believe other people have begun copying him, but there was one person who began it.”

  “Can you explain ‘The Green Hornet Strikes Again’?”

  “I believe it’s a reference to an old radio program dealing with a masked hero called the Green Hornet.”

  “What does a masked hero do, Dr. Owen?”

  “He conceals his identity and pops up in unexpected places to capture criminals and rescue innocent people.”

  “Does this imply that the person you are looking for regards the non-detainees as criminals, and the detainees as innocent people who should be rescued?”

  “Yes, I think so. The campaign is effective because people think it’s humorous. He’s making fun of us, in fact, and that diminishes our authority.”

  “I won’t ask you to explain humor, Dr. Owen, but can you say how this campaign differs from other kinds of humor?”

  “It’s a little offbeat, I’d say.”

  “Unusual, that is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you say that the person you are looking for shows an unusual degree of hostility toward the non-detainees?”

  “Yes, certainly.”

  “And that he would be likely to have expressed it before in an offbeat fashion?”

  “That seems likely.”

  “One moment. In the scores of Thematic Apperception Tests of current detainees I find the following comment or a similar one on seventeen cases: ‘Subject’s narratives show attempted humor masking hostility toward the experimenter.’”

  “Who are these detainees? Put them on the flatscreen.”

  The names appeared in alphabetical order: Abrams, Alfred R.; Denmore, Tina Marie; Geller, Randall…

  “Geller!” she said. At that moment she really knew, but she had to make sure. “What do you have on the TATs, Mitzi—transcripts, voice recordings?”

  “I have complete voice recordings.”

  “Let me hear Geller’s.”

  There was a scraping sound, then a voice. “Hello, Mr. Geller. Feeling all right today?”

  “Peachy.”

  “Fine. Just sit down there at the terminal, if you would. Now this morning I’m going to show you some pictures, and I want you to look at them and make up a story about each one. Here’s the first picture.”

  A long silence followed. “Just anything that comes to mind,” said the voice.

  “Okay. You want me to just say anything that comes to my mind, right?”

  “That’s right. Just make up a story.”

  “Well, this kid, his name is Ralph, he lives in Michigan with his father and his stepmother. The old man is okay, but he drinks a lot and when he drinks he likes to set fire to schoolhouses, so you can imagine the home life is not too great.”

  Owen watched her hands curl
into fists.

  “Now the stepmother, Imogene, is a frustrated ballet dancer who keeps leaping around the house all day in her tutu. The only thing the kid has going for him is his dog, Spot. They call him Spot because he loses his bladder control whenever he sits on the furniture. Well, one day in the early summer, a Wednesday, Ralph takes good old Spot out for a walk in the woods. Now Spot is blind in one eye, but he’s a hell of a hunter, and when he sees a rabbit in the bushes he takes off and he’s gone. The rabbit gets on his blind side and runs away, but Spot won’t give up, and the kid is running after him, yelling, ‘Pot! Pot!’ Kid can’t say his S’s, so he’s yelling, ‘Pot! Pot!’”

  Owen said, “That’s enough, Mitzi. Thank you.” She sat for a while holding her hands quite still on the desk, but her anger did not abate.

  She knew, of course, what Geller was up to. He was trying to make CV ungovernable, in the hope that the detainees would be discharged either at Manila or at some later port of call. Her impulse was to punish him, and she thought of incarceration, posting to the experimental section, public humiliation… but that was emotion, not logic. What was best to be done? Once she had asked the question, the answer was clear.

  Three weeks later CV docked at Manila after midnight. At four o’clock three security people entered Geller and Barlow’s bedroom and turned on the light.

  Geller sat up. “Now what?”

  “Get up and get dressed, please,” said the tallest of the three. “Dress the child, too, and pack anything you want to take with you. You’re leaving CV.”

  Dizzy with sleep, Geller looked at the bedside clock. “Good Christ, it’s four o’clock in the morning. Can’t it wait?”

  “Shut up, Randy,” said Yvonne. She was out of bed already, reaching for her robe.

  “We’ll wait in the living room,” said the security man. “Please don’t take more than twenty minutes, and don’t make any unnecessary noise.” The three of them left the room.

  Yvonne did the packing while Geller got Geoffrey up and dressed him. “All ready?” said the spokesman. “Are those all your bags?”

  “We had to leave some stuff behind.”

  “It will be packed and sent after you. Come on now, and please be very quiet.”

  “Can you explain why we’re being hustled out in the middle of the night?”

  “Orders.”

  “Oh. Why didn’t I think of that?”

  They passed through the perm checkpoint and walked all the way up G corridor to the forward lobby. The security people did not offer to help them with the luggage. Another security person checked them out. At the bottom of the gangway a limousine with closed curtains was waiting. “The driver will take you to the airport,” said the spokesman. “Tickets to San Francisco will be waiting at the Pan Am desk.” Then two security people held them while a third took Geoffrey out of Yvonne’s arms. Both parents struggled, and Barlow got in One good kick, but the Wacks wrestled them both to the ground and sprayed them with something. Then the Wacks loaded them into the limousine. They were already feeling drowsy when it pulled away toward the darkness.

  “And now—the President of the United States!”

  The jowly face of President Draffy appeared in the holos. “My fellow citizens,” he said, “as you know, for the past eighteen months we have been implementing a program for the monitoring of career criminals, utilizing a transponder device enclosed in an unbreakable bracelet or anklet, such that the location of each monitoree can be determined at all times. This procedure has resulted in a dramatic drop in crime rates on the streets of our cities, and there has been a corresponding decline in our prison populations.

  “If a burglar enters your home, for instance, we know where he is and we know he has no right to be there. If somebody snatches your purse and runs, we know who he is and we can follow him wherever he goes.

  “This system has been so successful that we have been urged to extend it to all citizens. I am glad to be able to tell you tonight that with bipartisan support, the joint Congressional committee has worked out a compromise version of the Citizen Monitoring and Identification Act, and it is likely to become law during this session.

  “This will mean enormous benefits in security and safety for all of us! If you are lost in the wilderness during a camping trip, or if you have an accident, you can be located swiftly and surely. If your child wanders away and is lost, or if she is lured into a vehicle by a sex offender, or into his house, we can find her.

  “It has been charged by a few dissidents that this system will be used for excessive governmental control, but I point out tonight to those so-called dissidents that the law protects everyone equally, and that a person who doesn’t break the law has nothing to fear. Law-abiding citizens will be safer than they ever have been; criminals will be swiftly apprehended and punished. When this law is implemented, we will all sleep sounder in our beds. Thank you and good night.”

  “Well, you’re definitely pregnant,” the doctor said. “How do you feel about that?”

  The patient blushed. “I think it’s wonderful.”

  “Okay, then there’s one more procedure we need to do.” He tapped a key, handed her the pink sheet that came out. “Take this down to Radiology Labs on the first floor.”

  “What is it?”

  “Just a routine procedure.”

  She found Radiology and handed the slip to the receptionist, who gave her a form to fill out. After a long wait, a nurse led her into a room with some kind of machine in it: two wooden uprights with a black metal disk that moved on tracks between them. The nurse said, “Stand up on the platform.” She pressed a control; the disk moved down an inch or two. “Put your tummy right up against it.”

  The disk was cold through her summer dress. The nurse pressed another button; a red light blinked. “Okay, that’s all.” She waited until the patient stepped off the platform, then pressed the controls again. The disk whined up its tracks and disappeared behind the shield at the top. Then there was a crackling sound and a funny smell. “What was that for?” the patient asked.

  “Just to make sure your baby wasn’t carrying a McNulty’s parasite. If there was one in there, it’s gone now.”

  10

  For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

  I Timothy, 6:10

  On days when it was possible to breathe without a mask, Stevens walked the streets of Rome, looking at people with a new curiosity. Here among the crowds of African and Asian mendicants were petty shopkeepers, a few artisans plying their trades, office workers going to their anonymous jobs: all of them, presumably, making some contribution in return for which they were fed and housed. But there were others who contributed nothing, and Stevens himself was one of these. What if he had grown up in a world where the use of violence had become impossible—the world which he saw taking shape around him at this moment? It could have happened, if he had been born only thirty years later. What would that man have been like? He could not answer the question, and he could not leave it alone. He had done what he had to do, yes, he still believed that, but if he had not had to do it, what would he have done instead? Suppose someone had said to him, you will be fed and housed in comfort, you don’t need to worry about that; now what will you do with your life?

  What if Palladino’s insane dream came true? The farmers would give away their crops, the manufacturers their machines, the workers their labor. And he himself, would he be merely a social parasite, taking everything and giving nothing? Impossible.

  He remembered his infatuation with poetry at seventeen. Years ago he had tried to translate Villon into English, God knows why. The lines came back to him now:

  In the thirtieth year of my age

  When I had drunk down all my shames

  Neither an utter fool nor quite a sage

  Notwithstanding all the pains

  Thibault d’Aussigny gave me for
my diet

  Bishop he may be, for all his gains

  Say he is mine and I’ll deny it

  He is neither my bishop nor my lord

  Nothing he gave me but the scraps and rind

  I owe him neither cross nor sword

  I am not his villein nor his hind

  On a small loaf all year I dined

  And had cold water for my wine

  Open or stingy, he remained unkind

  May God be to him as he was to me

  He had been attracted to Villon, no doubt, because of that settled resentment, the feeling of being an outcast, his hand against every man: but Villon had been nothing if not an unsuccessful thief.

  This Thibault d’Aussigny of whom Villon complained was the Bishop of Orléans who had put him in prison, perhaps for stealing a votive lamp from a church, a crime of small account except that it might have been treated as sacrilege.

  Say, then, was Villon’s misery his own fault or that of the world around him? In a better world, would he have had enough to eat without stealing—and would he then have written better or worse poetry?

  That night, after the child was asleep, he found Villon’s verses in the net and printed them out. One stanza caught his eye:

  Je congnois pourpoint au colet,

  Je congnois le moyne a la gonne,

  Je congnois le maistre au varlet,

  Je congnois au voille la nonne,

  Je congnois quant pipeur jargonne,

  Je congnois folz nourris de cresmes,

  Je congnois le vin a la tonne,

  Je Congnois tout, fors que moy mesmes.

  Literally, it was something like, “I know the doublet by its hem, I know the monk by his habit. I know the master by the man, I know the nun by her veil. I know when a conman talks jargon, I know fools fed on creams. I know wine by the barrel, I know everything except myself.”