'Java Joe explained to me that he had thought much about this wonderful place, Crome, while passing his motions. He saw it all as a metaphor - although he did not know that particular word. From this vision of the good house his suggestion had evolved. Here he paused, searching my face with that good-natured gaze of his. I prompted him to go on.
'"Us shits," he said, "should be kept separate as far as possible from the sewers of your prisons. We've never been far from their stink in all our lives. We should be placed in a good place with a view of heaven. Then we might be able to stop being shits."'
Crispin looked about him to see what effect his story was having before he went on. 'Was there anything in what Java Joe said? Maybe there was more sense than in all the rhetoric of my speech in the town square. I decided to act.
'We had an empty island or two in the Seychelles group. To the north was Booby Island, a pleasant place with a small stream on it. What was to be lost? I had it renamed Crome Island and shipped a hundred of my criminals there, to live in daylight rather than darkness.
'What a howl went up from the respectable middle classes! That men should enjoy themselves in pleasant conditions was no punishment for crime. This experiment would kill the tourist trade. It would cost too much. And so on...'
'Let's get to the end of the tale, Crispin,' said Tom, with some impatience. 'Obviously the experiment wasn't a failure, or you would not be telling us about it.'
Crispin nodded cordially, saying merely, 'We can learn from failure as well as success.'
'Come on then, Crispin,' said Sharon. 'Tell us what happened to your criminals. I bet they all swam away to freedom!'
'They were marooned on an island round which fierce currents ran, and could not escape, my dear. They dug themselves latrines, they built a communal cookhouse, they built houses. All using just local materials. They fished and grew maize. They sat about and smoked and talked. They were prisoners - but they were also men. They regained their self-respect. A supply ship protected by armed guards called once a week at Crome Island, but no one escaped.
'And after their sentence was served, very very few reoffended. They had done what I could not manage to do, and reformed themselves.'
'What about Java Joe?' I asked.
Crispin chuckled. 'He went to live voluntarily on the island; the convicts christened him King Crome.'
At this juncture Paula Gallin came and sat down at a nearby table, escorted by Ben Borrow. They were deep in conversation but, after they had ordered two sunglows, began taking an interest in our discussion, which certainly was not private.
'We hope,' said Belle, 'to follow that example Crispin has offered. Earth is a planet full of prisons. It must never happen here. At one time, in a brief period of enlightenment, the British government permitted me to teach reading and writing to prisoners. The majority of people in prison, I found, were young bewildered men. They were ignorant and brutalised, two elements the penal system encouraged. Many had been brought up without a family. They had mostly been "in care". They were truants from school, fly boys. Most of them hid deep misery under a hard shell.
'In a word, the prisons - not only the one in which I worked - were filled by the products of poverty, unemployment, underprivilege and depression. The politicians were locking up the victims of sociopolitical crimes.'
'Excuse me, you surely go too far there,' said Hal Kissorian. 'We are mistaken in expecting politicians to remedy matters that are beyond political scope. That there are the rich and successful and the poor and unsuccessful, and every shade in between, is surely a natural and ineradicable phenomenon.'
I saw he glanced at Sharon for approval of his little speech. She gave him an encouraging wink.
Belle became so stern that her beads shook. 'There is the case of nurture as well as genetic inheritance. Prison and punishment do not reconcile these unfortunate and malevolent youths with society. Quite the reverse. They leave prison only to reoffend more expertly. Of course I am speaking only of the reformable majority. A different case can perhaps be made for the mad and the really dangerous.
'It is when we come to consider the state of affairs beyond the prison walls that we see how unenlightened we have become. Judges are now constrained by their governments to deliver fixed sentences of a number of years for various crimes. Mandatory sentencing deprives the judges of administering justice according to the facts of the case. Thus both sides of the law become machine-like. Quantputers might as well take over, as no doubt they shortly will.
'How did mandatory sentencing become the rule? Firstly, because it speeded up the legal process, much as the banishing of juries has done. Then, later, it simplified the introduction of computerisation, to cut costs.
'All this because of the rise in crime. More and more people become imprisoned, and in consequence more violent and skilled in violence. Of course, the real crimemongers escape the law, as seems to be the case with the swindlers within EUPACUS. Our isolation here lasts so long because, to my mind, the law cannot indict the culprits.
'Most governments attempt to solve the increasing crime rate by building more prisons. They can't adopt Crispin's scheme of marooning them on a desert island to create their own society—'
'As we are marooned here—' Kissorian interjected.
'—so they continue to build prisons whose one objective is to maintain security, not to re-educate or train the inmates in various trades. So I'll come to my point at last.
'All that is being done is worse than useless. Criminals are the activists of unjust societies. Our Dayo's relatively innocent scam with his musical composition was a case in point; he strove merely to become equal, no more than that, in what he feels is a society unjustly prejudiced against his kind. Behind every young thug there are several depressed people, usually women, living out their short lives, battered and afraid and probably slow-witted. Undernourished certainly. And certainly harmless, within the meaning of the word. Hopeless, too. The cure for crime is not punishment but its reverse, love, caritas...
'We need a revolution that no politician would countenance - fundamental changes in society, with really good education for our children from the earliest age onwards. With a rebuilding of family life and the arts and pleasures of citizenship. Community work was a good start towards a caring society, but it did not go far enough.
'The civilised countries must increase taxes and invest extra revenues in rebuilding slums and lives, and listening to those who have had no say. In a very few years, I guarantee, the exorbitant cost of crime prevention would be diminished. A better and happier and more equable culture would result. And it would be found to be self-sustaining.'
Sharon clapped her pretty hands. 'It's wonderful. I can see it already.'
But Kissorian asked, 'What happens to the abortion issue in this happier world of yours?'
It was Crispin who answered. 'An unwanted child tends to retain his unwanted feeling all his life. Of course, that may turn him into a philosopher. It's more likely he will turn to rape or arson or become the driving force of a security company, wielding a big stick.'
'So you're pro-abortion?'
Belle said quietly, 'For reasons I hope we've made clear, we're pro-life. Which means at this stage of existence that we reserve the right of women to control their own bodies and to abort if they are driven to take such a grave step.'
'Then say it,' interposed Grenz Kanli. 'You're pro-abortion.'
'We're pro-abortion. Yes,' said Belle, adding, 'until both men and women learn to control their sexual urges.'
I saw Sharon returning Kissorian's glance. She gave a sly smile. There, I thought, was another kind of happiness that could not be legislated for. I could not help liking her a little - and envying her at the same time.
Turning from her companion, Ben, Paula at the next table entered the discussion. Belle's remark about people curbing their sexual urges had made her restless.
'Haven't you people forgotten about mothers?' she asked. 'You know,
the people who actually bring forth babies from their goddamn wombs into the world? Since it's a result of sexual activity, I suppose you've forgotten about mothers.'
'We've not—' Belle began, but Paula overrode her.
'You don't need all this bureaucracy if you honour mothers as they should be honoured, treat them properly, favour them in society. Start thinking about actual people rather than legislation.'
'We are thinking about people. We're thinking about children,' said Belle, sharply. 'If you have nothing better to contribute to the discussion, I'd advise you to keep silent.'
'Yes, yes, yes ... If anyone doesn't think your way, they'd better shut up. That's your way of thinking, isn't it?'
'I was thinking,' said Belle, coldly, 'more of your recent abortion. That is a pretty clear indication of your precious regard for motherhood.'
Paula looked absolutely astounded. Belle turned her back on her and asked me, 'How's Alpha getting on, my dear?'
I could not answer. Paula rose and marched out of the cafe. As she went she clicked her fingers. Ben Borrow stood up, gave us an apologetic glance, and followed Paula.
Only afterwards, when I talked to Kissorian and Sharon about this spat, did I understand the emotions that provoked it. The reason was simple. Belle stepped out of her normal rather magisterial role because she was jealous. Ben Borrow had been her protege. She was furious to see that he had taken up with Paula. He had said nothing. His mere presence was enough to irritate Belle.
I reflected on my ineptness at reading motives.
After more discussion, and more coffdrink, Belle calmed down enough to return to the conversation.
She said, 'For some centuries, the civilised nations, so-called, have had health-care services. Time and again, those services failed, in the main through underfunding. The essence of our scheme involves continuity - that an underprivileged child should have a helper to whom he can always turn, who indeed meets up with him over a cup of something once a week.'
'We call this the C&S system, and it can run throughout life if necessary,' said Crispin. 'C&S - Care and Share. Always someone there to share problems and talk to.'
Kissorian laughed. 'Isn't that what husbands and wives do, for heaven's sake? Your C&S is a kind of sexless marriage, isn't it?'
'No, it's sexless parenting,' Crispin said sharply.
'I had as difficult a childhood as you can imagine, and I could never have tolerated any stranger's shoulder to cry on.'
'Just stop and think about that, Kissorian,' Belle said. 'Suppose there had been not strangers but a steady friend, always there to turn to...'
'I'd have stolen his wallet!'
'But with our C&S system in operation, your childhood would not have been so difficult, and so you would not have felt that compensatory need to steal a wallet. You can't be glad you had such a difficult childhood?'
He smiled, directing half of that gleam towards Sharon. 'Oh yes, I can. Now that it's over. Because it is an integral part of my life, it formed my character, and I learned from it.'
Silence fell while we digested what had been said.
At length Tom spoke. 'You have some concrete proposals, Belle and Crispin. They're certainly sane and benevolent in intention, although how any terrestrial politicians can be strong enough, enlightened enough—'
Belle interrupted. 'We have a singular advantage here, Tom. No politicians!'
'At least, not in the accepted sense,' added Crispin, with a smile.
'We enter this plan into our constitution here, and enact it as far as is possible - in the hope that Earth may take it up later. Example sometimes wins converts.' Belle turned her regard suddenly on me. 'And what does our silent and watchful Miss Cang Hai make of all this?'
I saw in her expression ambition and hostility, which were quickly wiped away by a mask of patience; the confusion of human senses is such I remained unsure whether I had read her correctly, or was projecting my own misgivings.
'It's benevolent but cumbersome to operate,' I told her. 'Who would you find willing to take on these burdens of assisting the young, perhaps often in opposition to the natural parents?'
'People are surprisingly willing to assist when they see a worthwhile enterprise. Their lives would also be enriched.' She added firmly, 'For a civilised society, there is no other way.'
I paused, wondering if I cared to contradict this forceful woman. 'There is another way. The way of medicine. Simple supervision of a child's hormone levels - oestrogen, testosterone, serotonin - is better than many a sermon.'
As if the thought had just occurred to her, Sharon said, leaping in, 'And what if all this well-meaning stuff did not work? What if the kids still offended?'
Without hesitation, Belle Rivers said, 'They would be beaten before witnesses. Where kindness fails, punishment must be available.'
Sharon screamed with laughter, displaying the inside of her mouth like a tulip suddenly opening.
'Would that do them good?'
Crispin said, 'At least it relieves the frustrated feelings of the teachers...'
'So be it,' Tom said. 'Let's take it to the forum of the people and try to gain support for your plan. We'll see what our friend Feneloni has to say to it.'
All this while, the days and weeks and months of our lives were eroding away. As we entered on the third year of our isolation on Mars, I had to speak to Tom about the news of Olympus's accelerated progress towards the science unit.
'I know,' said Tom. 'Dreiser told me.' He sat there with his head in his hands and said not another word.
Testimony of Tom Jefferies
16
Life is Like This and This...
My head was extremely bad. I did not attend the discussion when Belle Rivers stood beneath the blazing Hindenburg and argued her case for continuous education. As expected, it was opposed by Feneloni. Cang Hai and Guenz and the others reported the essence of the meeting.
After Belle and Crispin had outlined their plan, there was general applause. Several people rose and affirmed that the upbringing and care of children held the secret of a better society. One of the scientists quoted Socrates as saying that only the considered life was really worth living, and that consideration had to be nurtured in the young to sustain them throughout life.
Feneloni thought differently. The whole Rivers scheme was unworkable, in his opinion, and deserved to be unworkable. It was against human experience. It was wet nursing of the worst order. He became vehement. All living things had to find their own way in life. They succeeded or they failed. Rivers's plan, in trying to guarantee there were no failures, guaranteed there would be no successes.
Was she not aware, he asked, of the tragic sense of life? All of the world's great dramas hinged upon error or failure in an otherwise noble or noble-minded person. He cited Sophocles ('already mentioned'), Shakespeare and Ibsen as masters of this art form, which purged us with pity. Tragedy was an integral part of human society, tragedy was necessary, tragedy increased our understanding.
And at this point, someone laughed. It was the murderer, Peters, under mentatropy, who to many remained an outcast.
Others idly joined in the laughter. Feneloni looked confused and sat down, muttering that people who took him for a fool would soon find they were wrong.
It was agreed that the 'Rivers plan' should be implemented, and allowed to run for a test period. The universe was too young for an emphasis to be laid on tragedy.
Volunteers were called for. They would be vetted and asked for their qualifications.
As usual, the proceedings were recorded, and the decisions arrived at entered on our computers.
My state of mind was low. Although we seemed to be making progress, I feared some malignant force from within might burst like a cancer into the open and render our plans and hopes useless. Outside, beyond our spicules, beyond our community of 6,000 biological entities, was the great indifferent matrix, a confusion of particles inimical to humanity.
And there was Olym
pus, monstrous and enigmatic. It was never far from our thoughts. Like life itself, it seemed imponderable, its laboured progress somehow a paradigm of the approach of illness.
It was in this glum mood I looked in on the C of E, the Committee of Evil, holding its weekly meeting. The rather comical title had been dreamed up by Suung Saybin, but the purpose was serious enough: to try and determine the nature and cause of evil, with a view to its regulation. 'Perhaps the humour lies in the fact that they haven't a hope,' I thought to myself. Maybe the committee was just another way in which people kept themselves amused.
Suung Saybin remained as chair and Elsa Lamont, she of the orthogonal figures and an Adminex official, as secretary. Otherwise, members of the panel changed from month to month. As I entered, John Homer Bateson rose to his feet.
'The previous speaker wastes our time,' he declared. 'We cannot eradicate evil by religion, or even control it, as history shows. All history is a demonstration of the workings of evil. Like Thomas Hardy's Immanent Will, "it weaves unconsciously as heretofore, eternal artistries of circumstance". Nor will reason work. Reason is frequently the ally of wrong-doing.
'Here we are, stuck on this little dried-up orange of a planet, and we plan to banish this monster? Why, we're in its clutches! What are the component parts, the limbs, the testicles, of evil? Greed, ambition, aggression, fear, power ... All these elements were integral to the very nature of EUPACUS, the conglomerate that dumped us here.
'What impossibly naive view do you have of the nations that stranded us? The United States is by no means the worst of them. But it seeks to extend its empire into space - apologies, matrix. All the grand designs we may have about exploring this matrix mean nothing to the absconding financiers who backed matrix exploration. All this talk of Utopia - it means nothing, absolutely nothing, to the greedy men in power. Power, money, greed - if you kicked out the present set of slimebags, why, more slimebags would fill the breach.
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