There had been nothing whatever to eat on the train and no vendors at mournful Isestno siding, but Eduard did not feel hungry as he walked under the bright cavernous dome of Sumeny, carrying the briefcase which was all he had brought. Now that he was off the train at last, he felt shaken. He had planned to arrive at half past six, find a hotel near the station, have dinner, but now he did not want to stay up and eat out among strangers, he wanted to go home. Other men hurried past him through the high doors into the rainy night
“Taxi?”
“All right,” he said.
“Where to, sir?”
“Fourteen Kamenny Street.”
“That’ll be up Underhill,” the taxi driver said, confirming Eduard’s memory of the name of the district and of the dark-blue crags hunched over a singing man, a man under a hill, and took off, doors and smeared windows rattling. It was dark in the cab and the smell was comfortable. Eduard roused himself, confused, almost from sleep, and sank back into it, almost.
“Fourteen, was it?”
“Right.”
“This one, looks like. There’s Twelve.”
He could see no street number. There was a house; there was rain, trees, darkness. He paid the driver, who said good night to him in the dry, civil, Northern voice.
Three stone steps, flanked by shrubs and some kind of iron fence or ¿file; “14” over the rather ornate wooden doorframe. A strange city, a strange street, whose house? The first of the twin keys fit the lock. He opened the door, looked in, took a couple of steps in, but left the door ajar behind him, to be certain of escape.
Pitch dark; dry; cool. Sound of rain above on high roofs. No other sound.
The light switch came under his hand to the right of the door. He felt that he should say, “I’m here.” To whom? He turned on the light.
The hall was much smaller than it had seemed in darkness. He had, he now realised, felt himself to be in an almost limitless space, but it was only the quiet shabby front hall of an old house on a rainy night. The strip of carpet on the handsome black and grey tiles was worn and not very clean. Somebody’s hat, his great-uncle’s hat, an old felt, lay forlorn on a small sideboard. The light fixture was of yellowish cloudy glass.
The door was still ajar behind him. He returned and closed it, and automatically put the key ring into his trousers pocket.
Stairs went up to the left. The hall went on past them: a door to the right and an end door, both shut. The sitting room would be that one to the right, the end one would lead back to the kitchen. There was a dining room, maybe on the way to the kitchen; it was in a dark dining room that he had heard the loud old voices. He should look into the rooms, but he was tired. He had been sleeping very badly for several nights, and the train trip with its shock and unfelt death and long delay had left him shaky. The hall was all right, the old hat was all right, but he could not take much more. The yellowish light illuminated the stairs as well as the hall. He went up the stairs, his right hand on the narrow heavily varnished railing. At the top he turned and went down the hall to the end door, opened it, and turned on the light He did not know why he chose that door, or whether he had been upstairs in the house as a child. This was the front bedroom, probably the largest. It might be the room his great-uncle had slept in, perhaps died in, unless he had died in hospital, or it might have been the grandfather’s room, or have stood unused for thirty years. It was clean and sparse, bed, table, chair, two windows, fireplace. The bed was made, tight and neat, an old blue coverlet pulled tight. The overhead light in its glass shade was dim, and there was no lamp.
Eduard put down his briefcase by the bed.
The washroom was at the other end of the hall. He thought at first the water had been cut off, for the pipe groaned when he turned the faucet, but then it spat rust, belched red, and ran clear. He was thirsty. He drank from the faucet. The water was rusty and cold and tasted of the north.
There was an old bookcase with glassed shelves in the hall, and he stopped before it for a minute, but the light was faint and the titles of the books meant nothing. He could not read. He went into the front bedroom and turned back the blue coverlet. The bed was made up with heavy linen sheets and a dark blanket. He took off his clothes, hung his coat and trousers in the empty closet, turned off the light, got into the cold bed in the dark room made tremulous by a distant street lamp shining through rain or the shadows of leaves; he stretched out and laid his head back on the hard pillow, and slept.
He woke in sunlit morning, lying on his side, looking at the swords, cavalry sabres, hung crossed on the chimneypiece.
They were tools, he thought, expressing purpose as simply as a needle or a hammer, their purpose, their reason or meaning, being death; they were made to kill men with; the slightly curved and still unpolished blades were death, were in fact his own death, which he saw with clarity and relaxation; for as his eyes were occupied with looking at that his mind was wandering to the other rooms, which he had not seen last night, the rooms whose doors, for which he had the keys, would lead to his life, his request for a transfer to the Bureau here in Brailava, the wild cherry flowering in the mountains in March, his second marriage, all that, but for the moment enough, this room, the swords, the sunlight; he had arrived.
SQ
I think what Dr. Speakie has done is wonderful. He is a wonderful man. I believe that. I believe that people need beliefs. If I didn’t have my belief I really don’t know what would happen.
And if Dr. Speakie hadn’t truly believed in his work he couldn’t possibly have done what he did. Where would he have found the courage? What he did proves his genuine sincerity.
There was a time when a lot of people tried to cast doubts on him. They said he was seeking power. That was never true. From the very beginning all he wanted was to help people and make a better world. The people who called him a power-seeker and a dictator were just the same ones who used to say that Hitler was insane and Nixon was insane and all the world leaders were insane and the arms race was insane and our misuse of natural resources was insane and the whole world civilisation was insane and suicidal. They were always saying that. And they said it about Dr. Speakie. But he stopped all that insanity, didn’t he? So he was right all along, and he was right to believe in his beliefs.
I came to work for him when he was named the Chief of the Psychometric Bureau. I used to work at the U.N., and when the World Government took over the New York U.N. Building they transferred me up to the thirty-fifth floor to be the head secretary in Dr. Speakie’s office. I knew already that it was a position of great responsibility, and I was quite excited the whole week before my new job began. I was so curious to meet Dr. Speakie, because of course he was already famous. I was there right at the dot of nine on Monday morning, and when he came in it was so wonderful. He looked so kind. You could tell that the weight of his responsibilities was always on his mind, but he looked so healthy and positive, and there was a bounce in his step—I used to think it was as if he had rubber balls in the toes of his shoes. He smiled and shook my hand and said in such a friendly, confident voice, “And you must be Mrs. Smith! I’ve heard wonderful things about you. We’re going to have a wonderful team here, Mrs. Smith!”
Later on he called me by my first name, of course.
That first year we were mostly busy with Information. The World Government Presidium and all the Member States had to be fully informed about the nature and purpose of the SQ Test, before the actual implementation of its application could be eventualised. That was good for me too, because in preparing all that information I learned all about it myself. Often, taking dictation, I learned about it from Dr. Speakie’s very lips. By May I was enough of an “expert” that I was able to prepare the Basic SQ Information Pamphlet for publication just from Dr. Speakie’s notes. It was such fascinating work. As soon as I began to understand the SQ Test Plan I began to believe in it. That was true of everybody in the office and in the Bureau. Dr. Speakie’s sincerity and scientific enthusiasm
were infectious. Right from the beginning we had to take the Test every quarter, of course, and some of the secretaries used to be nervous before they took it, but I never was. It was so obvious that the Test was right. If you scored under 50 it was nice to know that you were sane, but even if you scored over 50 that was fine too, because then you could be helped. And anyway it is always best to know the truth about yourself.
As soon as the Information service was functioning smoothly Dr. Speakie transferred the main thrust of his attention to the implementation of Evaluator training, and planning for the structurisation of the Cure Centers, only he changed the name to SQ Achievement Centers. It seemed a very big job even then. We certainly had no idea how big the job would finally turn out to be!
As he said at the beginning, we were a very good team. We all worked hard, but there were always rewards.
I remember one wonderful day. I had accompanied Dr. Speakie to the Meeting of the Board of the Psychometric Bureau. The emissary from the State of Brazil announced that his State had adopted the Bureau Recommendations for Universal Testing—we had known that that was going to be announced. But then the delegate from Libya and the delegate from China announced that their State had adopted the Test too! Oh, Dr. Speakie’s face was just like the sun for a minute, just shining. I wish I could remember exactly what he said, especially to the Chinese delegate, because of course China was a very big State and its decision was very influential. Unfortunately I do not have his exact words because I was changing the tape in the recorder. He said something like, “Gentlemen, this is a historic day for humanity.” Then he began to talk at once about the effective implementation of the Application Centers, where people would take the Test, and the Achievement Centers, where they would go if they scored over 50, and how to establish the Test Administrations and Evaluations infrastructure on such a large scale, and so on. He was always modest and practical. He would rather talk about doing the job than talk about what an important job it was. He used to say, “Once you know what you’re doing, the only thing you need to think about is how to do it.” I believe that that is deeply true.
From then on, we could hand over the Information program to a subdepartment and concentrate on How to Do It. Those were exciting times! So many States joined the Plan, one after another. When I think of all we had to do I wonder that we didn’t all go crazy! Some of the office staff did fail their quarterly Test, in fact. But most of us working in the Executive Office with Dr. Speakie remained quite stable, even when we were on the job all day and half the night. I think his presence was an inspiration. He was always calm and positive, even when we had to arrange things like training 113,000 Chinese Evaluators in three months. “You can always find out ‘how’ if you just know the *why’!” he would say. And we always did.
When you think back over it it really is quite amazing what a big job it was—so much bigger than anybody, even Dr. Speakie, had realised it would be. It just changed everything. You only realise that when you think back to what things used to be like. Can you imagine, when we began planning Universal Testing for the State of China, we only allowed for 1,100 Achievement Centers, with 6,800 Staff? It really seems like a joke! But it is not. I was going through some of the old files yesterday, making sure everything is in order, and I found the first China Implementation Plan, with those figures written down in black and white.
I believe the reason why even Dr. Speakie was slow to realise the magnitude of the operation was that even though he was a great scientist he was also an optimist. He just kept hoping against hope that the average scores would begin to go down, and this prevented him from seeing that universal application of the SQ Test was eventually going to involve everybody either as Inmates or as Staff.
When most of the Russias and all the African States had adopted the Recommendations and were busy implementing them, the debates in the General Assembly of the World Government got very excited. That was the period when so many bad things were said about the Test and about Dr. Speakie. I used to get quite angry, reading the World Times reports of debates. When I went as his secretary with Dr. Speakie to General Assembly meetings I had to sit and listen in person to people insulting him personally, casting aspersion on his motives and questioning his scientific integrity and even his sincerity. Many of those people were very disagreeable and obviously unbalanced. But he never lost his temper. He would just stand up and prove to them, again, that the SQ Test did actually literally scientifically show whether the testee was sane or insane, and the results could be proved, and all psychometrists accepted them. So the Test Ban people couldn’t do anything but shout about freedom and accuse Dr. Speakie and the Psychometric Bureau of trying to “turn the world into a huge insane asylum.” He would always answer quietly and firmly, asking them how they thought a person could be “free” if they lacked mental health. What they called freedom might well be a delusional system with no contact with reality. In order to find out, all they had to do was to become testees. “Mental Health is freedom,” he said. “ ‘Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,’ they say, and now we have an eternally vigilant watchdog: the SQ Test. Only the testees can be truly free!”
There really was no answer they could make to that. Sooner or later the delegates even from Member States where the Test Ban movement was strong would volunteer to take the SQ Test to prove that their mental health was adequate to their responsibilities. Then the ones that passed the test and remained in office would begin working for Universal Application in their home State. The riots and demonstrations, and things like the burning of the Houses of Parliament in London in the State of England (where the Nor-Eurp SQ Center was housed), and the Vatican Rebellion, and the Chilean H-Bomb, were the work of insane fanatics appealing to the most unstable elements of the populace. Such fanatics, as Dr. Speakie and Dr. Waltraute pointed out in their Memorandum to the Presidium, deliberately aroused and used the proven instability of the crowd, “mob psychosis.” The only response to mass delusion of that kind was immediate implementation of the Testing Program in the disturbed States, and immediate amplification of the Asylum Program.
That was Dr. Speakie’s own decision, by the way, to rename the SQ Achievement Centers “Asylums.” He took the word right out of his enemies’ mouths. He said: “An asylum means a place of shelter, a place of cure. Let there be no stigma attached to the word ‘insane,’ to the word ‘asylum, to the words ‘insane asylum’! No! For the asylum is the haven of mental health—the place of cure, where the anxious gain peace, where the weak gain strength, where the prisoners of inadequate reality assessment win their way to freedom! Proudly let us use the word ‘asylum.’ Proudly let us go to the asylum, to work to regain our own God-given mental health, or to work with others less fortunate to help them win back their own inalienable right to mental health. And let one word be written large over the door of every asylum in the world—‘welcome!’ ”
Those words are from his great speech at the General Assembly on the day World Universal Application was decreed by the Presidium. Once or twice a year I listen to my tape of that speech. Although I am too busy ever to get really depressed, now and then I feel the need of a tiny “pick-me-up,” and so I play that tape. It never fails to send me back to my duties inspired and refreshed.
Considering all the work there was to do, as the Test scores continued to come in always a little higher than the Psychometric Bureau analysts estimated, the World Government Presidium did a wonderful job for the two years that it administered Universal Testing. There was a long period, six months, when the scores seemed to have stabilised, with just about half of the testees scoring over 50 and half under 50. At that time it was thought that if forty percent of the mentally healthy were assigned to Asylum Staff work, the other sixty percent could keep up routine basic world functions such as farming, power supply, transportation, etc. This proportion had to be reversed when they found that over sixty percent of the mentally healthy were volunteering for Staff work, in order to be with their l
oved ones in the Asylums. There was some trouble then with the routine basic world functions functioning. However, even then contingency plans were being made for the inclusion of farmlands, factories, power plants, etc., in the Asylum Territories, and the assignment of routine basic world functions work as Rehabilitation Therapy, so that the Asylums could become totally self-supporting if it became advisable. This was President Kim’s special care, and he worked for it all through his term of office. Events proved the wisdom of his planning. He seemed such a nice wise little man. I still remember the day when Dr. Speakie came into the office and I knew at once that something was wrong. Not that he ever got really depressed or reacted with inopportune emotion, but it was as if the rubber balls in his shoes had gone just a little bit flat. There was the slightest tremor of true sorrow in his voice when he said, “Mary Ann, we’ve had a bit of bad news I’m afraid.” Then he smiled to reassure me, because he knew what a strain we were all working under, and certainly didn’t want to give anybody a shock that might push their score up higher on the next quarterly Test! “It’s President Kim,” he said, and I knew at once—I knew he didn’t mean the President was ill or dead.
“Over 50?” I asked, and he just said quietly and sadly, “55.”
Poor little President Kim, working so efficiently all that three months while mental ill health was growing in him! It was very sad and also a useful warning. High-level consultations were begun at once, as soon as President Kim was committed; and the decision was made to administer the Test monthly, instead of quarterly, to anyone in an executive position.
Even before this decision, the Universal scores had begun rising again. Dr. Speakie was not distressed. He had already predicted that this rise was highly probable during the transition period to World Sanity. As the number of the mentally healthy living outside the Asylums grew fewer, the strain on them kept growing greater, and they became more liable to break down under it—just as poor President Kim had done. Later, he predicted, when the Rehabs began coming out of the Asylums in ever increasing numbers, this stress would decrease. Also the crowding in the Asylums would decrease, so that the Staff would have more time to work on individually orientated therapy, and this would lead to a still more dramatic increase in the number of Rehabs released. Finally, when the therapy process was completely perfected, there would be no Asylums left in the world at all. Everybody would be either mentally healthy or a Rehab, or “neonormal,” as Dr. Speakie liked to call it.
The Compass Rose Page 7
