by William Tenn
The experiment had worked perfectly. He’d pushed a little domino named Loob three days ago, and a whole series of other little dominoes had begun to fall one right after the other. Today, when the Servant of Security was strangled at his desk, the last one would have fallen.
Yes, control was absolutely complete.
Of course, there had been another, minor reason why he had elected to conduct this experiment in terms of the Servant of Security’s life. He didn’t like the man. He’d seen him drink a liqueur in public four years ago. Sidothi didn’t believe the Servants of Mankind should do such things. They should lead clean, simple, abstemious lives; they should be an example to the rest of the human race.
He’d never seen the Assistant Servant of Security whom he had ordered Loob to have promoted, but he had heard that the fellow lived very narrowly, without luxury even in private. Sidothi liked that. That was the way it should be.
Loob came to the end of his report and stood waiting. Sidothi wondered whether he should order him to give up this bad, boastful idea of controlling Garomma directly. No, that wouldn’t do: that attitude led into the mechanism of coming down to the Bureau of Healing Research every day to check on progress. While a simple order to come in daily would suffice, still Sidothi felt that until he had examined all aspects of his power and become thoroughly familiar with its use, it was wise to leave original personality mechanisms in place, so long as they didn’t get in the way of anything important.
And that reminded him. There was an interest of Loob’s which was sheer time-wasting. Now, when he was certain of absolute control, was a good time to get rid of it.
“You will drop this research into historical facts,” he ordered. “You will use the time thus freed for further detailed examination of Moddo’s psychic weaknesses. And you will find that more interesting than studying the past. That is all.”
He snapped his fingers in Loob’s face, waited a moment, then snapped them again. The Healer of Minds took a deep breath, straightened and smiled.
“Well, keep at it,” he said, encouragingly.
“Thank you, sir. I will,” Sidothi assured him.
Loob opened the door of the cubicle and walked out, pompously, serenely. Sidothi stared after him. The idiotic assurance of the man—that once the process of complete control by hypnotic technique was discovered, it would be given to Loob!
Sidothi had begun to reach the answer three years ago. He had immediately covered up, letting his work take a superficially different line. Then, when he had the technique perfected, he’d used it on Loob himself. Naturally.
At first he’d been shocked, almost sickened, when he found out how Loob controlled Moddo, how Moddo controlled Garomma, the Servant of All. But after a while, he’d adjusted to the situation well enough. After all, ever since the primary grades, the only reality he and his contemporaries had accepted completely was the reality of power. Power in each class, in each club, in each and every gathering of human beings, was the only thing worth fighting for. And you chose an occupation not only because you were most fitted for it, but because it gave the greatest promise of power to a person of your particular interests and aptitudes.
But he’d never dreamed of, never imagined, this much power! Well, he had it. That was reality, and reality was to be respected above all else. Now the problem was what to do with his power.
And that was a very hard question to answer. But the answer would come in time. Meanwhile, there was the wonderful chance to make certain that everyone did his job right, that bad people were punished. He intended to stay in his menial job until the proper time came for promotion. There was no need at the moment to have a big title. If Garomma could rule as the Servant of All, he could rule Garomma at third or fourth hand as a simple Psychological Technician Fifth Class.
But in what way exactly did he want to rule Garomma? What important things did he want to make Garomma do?
A bell rang. A voice called out of a loudspeaker set high in the wall. “Attention! attention, all personnel! The Servant of All will be leaving the Center in a few minutes. Everyone to the main corridor to beg for his continued service to mankind. Everyone—”
Sidothi joined the mob of technicians pouring out of the huge laboratory room. People were coming out of offices on both sides of them. He was swept up with a crowd constantly enlarging from the elevators and stairways to the main corridor where the Service of Education guards prodded them and jammed them against the walls.
He smiled. If they only knew whom they were pushing! Their ruler, who could have any one of them executed. The only man in the world who could do anything he wanted to do. Anything.
There was sudden swirling movement and a cheer at the far distant end of the corridor. Everyone began to shuffle about nervously, everyone tried to stand on tip-toe in order to see better. Even the guards began to breathe faster.
The Servant of All was coming.
The cries grew more numerous, more loud. People in front of them were heaving about madly. And suddenly Sidothi saw him!
His arms went up and out in a flashing paroxysm of muscles. Something tremendous and delighted seemed to press on his chest and his voice screamed, “Serve us, Garomma! Serve us! Serve us! Serve us!” He was suffused with heaving waves of love, love such as he never knew anywhere else, love for Garomma, love for Garomma’s parents, love for Garomma’s children, love for anything and everything connected with Garomma. His body writhed, almost without coordination, delicious flames licked up his thighs and out from his armpits, he twisted and turned, danced and hopped, his very stomach seeming to strain against his diaphragm in an attempt to express its devotion. None of which was very strange, considering that these phenomena had been conditioned in him since early childhood.
“Serve us, Garomma!” he shrieked, bubbles of saliva growing out of one corner of his mouth. “Serve us! Serve us! Serve us!”
He fell forward, between two guards, and his out-stretched fingertips touched a rustling flapping rag just as the Servant of All strode by. His mind abruptly roared off into the furthest, most hidden places of ecstasy. He fainted, still babbling. “Serve us, O Garomma.”
When it was all over, his fellow-technicians helped him back to the Bureau of Healing Research. They looked at him with awe. It wasn’t every day you managed to touch one of Garomma’s rags. What it must do to a person!
It took Sidothi almost half an hour to recover.
THIS WAS THE DAY OF COMPLETE CONTROL.
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