The Long Way Home

6

Progress does get made: Langley’s refresher cabinet removed all trace of hangover from him the next morning, and the service robot slid breakfast from a chute onto a table and removed it when he was through. But after that there was a day of nothing to do but sit around and brood. Trying to shake off his depression, Langley dialed for books—a slave superintendent had shown him how to operate the gadgets in the apartment. The machine clicked to itself, hunted through the city library microfiles under the topics selected, and made copy spools which the spacemen put into the scanners.

Blaustein tried to read a novel, then some poetry, then some straight articles, and gave it up; with his scant knowledge of their background, they were almost meaningless. He did report that all writing today seemed highly stylized, the intricate form, full of allusions to the classic literature of two millennia ago, more important than the rather trivial content. “Pope and Dryden,” he muttered in disgust, “but they at least had something to say. What are you finding out, Bob?”

Matsumoto, who was trying to orient himself in modern science and technology, shrugged. “Nothing. It’s all written for specialists, takes for granted that the reader’s got a thorough background. I’d have to go to college all over again to follow it—what the blue hell is a Zagan matrix? No popularization at all; guess nobody but the specialists care what makes things tick. All I get is an impression that nothing really new has been found out for a couple of thousand years.”

“Petrified civilization,” said Langley. “They’ve struck a balance, everybody in his place, everything running smooth enough—there’s been nothing to kick them out of their rut. Maybe the Centaurians ought to take over, I dunno.”

He returned to his own spools, history, trying to catch up on all that had happened. It was surprisingly hard. Nearly everything he found was a scholarly monograph assuming an immense erudition in a narrow field. Nothing for the common man, if that much misunderstood animal still existed. And the closer he got to the present, the fewer references there were—understandable enough, especially in a civilization whose future seemed all to lie behind it.

The most important discovery since the superdrive was, he gathered, the paramathematical theory of man, both as individual and as society, which had made it possible to reorganize on a stable, predictable, logical basis. There had been no guesswork on the part of the Technate’s founders: they didn’t think that such and such arrangements for production and distribution would work, they knew. The science wasn’t perfect, it couldn’t be; such eventualities as the colonial revolts had arisen unforeseen; but the civilization was stable, with high negative feedback, it adjusted smoothly to new conditions.

Too smoothly. The means of sound social organization had not been used to liberate man, but to clamp the yoke more tightly—for a small cadre of scientists had necessarily laid out the plans and seen them through, and they or their descendants (with fine, humane rationalizations they may even have believed themselves) had simply stayed in power. It was, after all, logical that the strong and the intelligent should rule—the ordinary man was simply not capable of deciding issues in a day when whole planets could be wiped clean of life. It was also logical to organize the rules; selective breeding, controlled heredity, psychological training, could produce a slave class which was both efficient and contented, and that too was logical. The ordinary man had not objected to such arrangements, indeed he had accepted them eagerly, because the concentration and centralization of authority which had by and large been increasing ever since the Industrial Revolution had inculcated him with a tradition of subservience. He wouldn’t have known what to do with liberty if you gave it to him.

Langley wondered with a certain glumness whether any other outcome would have been possible in the long run.

Chanthavar called up to suggest a tour of the city, Lora, next day. “I know you’ve found it pretty dull so far,” he apologized, “but I have much to do right now. I’d enjoy showing you around tomorrow, though, and answering any questions you may have. That seems the best way for you to get yourselves oriented.”

When he had hung up, Matsumoto said: “He doesn’t seem a bad guy. But if the setup here’s as aristocratic as I think, why should he take so much trouble personally?”

“We’re something new, and he’s bored,” said Blaustein. “Anything for a novelty.”

“Also,” murmured Langley, “he needs us. I’m pretty sure he can’t get anything very coherent out of us under hypnosis or whatever they use nowadays, or we’d’ve been in the calaboose long ago.”

“You mean the Saris affair?” Blaustein hesitated. “Ed, have you any notion where that overgrown otter is and what he’s up to?”

“Not... yet,” said Langley. They were speaking English, but he was sure there must be a recording microphone somewhere in the room, and translations could be made. “It beats me.”

Inwardly, he wondered why he held back. He wasn’t cut out for this world of plotting and spying and swift deadly action. He never had been; a spaceman was necessarily a gentle, introverted sort, unable to cope with the backbitings and intrigues of office politics. In his own time, he had always been able to pull rank when something went wrong —and afterward lie awake wondering whether his judgment had been fair and what the men really thought of him. Now he was nothing.

It would be so easy to give in, cooperate with Chanthavar, and glide with the current. How did he know it wouldn’t be right? The Technate seemed to represent order, civilization, justice of sorts; he had no business setting himself up against twenty billion people and five thousand years of history. Had Peggy been along, he would have surrendered, her neck was not one to risk for a principle he wasn’t even sure of.

But Peggy was dead, and he had little except principle to live for. It was no fun playing God, even on this petty scale, but he had come from a society which laid on each man the obligation to decide things for himself.

Chanthavar called the following afternoon, still yawning. “What a time to get up!” he complained. “Life isn’t worth the effort before sundown. Well, shall we go?”

As he led them out, half a dozen of his guards closed in around the party. “What’re they for, anyhow?” asked Langley. “Protection against the Commons?”

“I’d like to see a Commoner even think about making trouble,” said Chanthavar. “If he can think, which I sometimes doubt. No, I need these fellows against my own rivals. Brannoch, for instance, would gladly knock me off just to get an incompetent successor. I’ve ferreted out a lot of his agents. And then I have my competitors within the Technate. Having discovered that bribery and cabals won’t unseat me, they may very well try the less subtle but direct approach.”

“What would they stand to gain by... assassinating you?” inquired Blaustein.

“Power, position, maybe some of my estates. Or they may be out and out enemies: I had to kick in a lot of teeth on my own way up, there aren’t many influential offices these days. My father was a very petty Minister on Venus, my mother a Commoner concubine. I only got rank by passing certain tests and... elbowing a couple of half brothers aside.” Chanthavar grinned. “Rather fun. And the competition does keep my class somewhat on its toes, which is why the Technon allows it.”

They emerged on a bridgeway and let its moving belt carry them along, dizzily high over the city. At this altitude, Langley could see that Lora was built as a single integrated unit: no building stood alone, they were all connected, and there was a solid roof underneath decking over the lower levels. Chanthavar pointed to the misty horizon, where a single great tower reared skeletal. “Weather-control station,” he said. “Most of what you see belongs to the city, Ministerial public park, but over that way is the boundary of an estate belonging to Tarahoë. He raises grain on it, being a back-to-nature crank.”

“Haven’t you any small farms?” asked Langley.

“Space, no!” Chanthavar looked surprised. “They do on the Centaurian planets, but I’d find it hard to imagine a more inefficient system. A lot of our food is synthesized, the rest is grown on Ministerial lands—in fact, the mines and factories, everything is owned by some Minister. That way, our class supports itself as well as the Commons, who on the extrasolar planets have to pay taxes. Here, a man can keep what he earns. Public works like the military forces are financed by industries owned in the name of the Technon.”

“But what do the Commoners do?”

“They have jobs—mostly in the cities, a few on the land. Some of them work for themselves, as artisans or meditechs or something similar. The Technon gives the orders on how to balance population and production, so that the economy runs a smooth course. Here, this ought to interest you.”

It was a museum. The general layout had not changed much, though there was a lot of unfamiliar gadgetry for better exhibition. Chanthavar led them to the historical-archeological section, the centuries around their own time. It was saddening how little had survived: a few coins, age-blurred in spite of electrolytic restoration; a chipped glass tumbler; a fragment of stone bearing the defaced name of some bank; the corroded remnant of a flintlock musket, found in the Sahara when it was being reclaimed; broken marble which had once been a statue. Chanthavar said that the Egyptian pyramids, part of the Sphinx, traces of buried cities, a couple of ruined dams in America and Russia, some hydrogen-bomb craters, were still around, otherwise nothing earlier than the Thirty-fifth Century. Time went on, relentlessly, and one by one the proud works of man were lost.

Langley found himself whistling, as if to keep up his courage. Chanthavar cocked an inquisitive head. “What’s that?”

“Conclusion to the Ninth Symphony—Freude, schöne Götterfunken—ever hear of it?”

“No.” There was a curious, wistful expression on the wide bony face. “It’s a shame. I rather like that.”

They had lunch at a terrace restaurant, where machines served a gaily dressed, stiff-mannered clientele of aristocrats. Chanthavar paid the bill with a shrug. “I hate to put money into the purse of Minister Agaz—he’s after my head—but you must admit he keeps a good chef.”

The guards did not eat; they were trained to a sparse diet and an untiring watchfulness.

“There’s a lot to see, here in the upper levels,” said Chanthavar. He nodded at the discreet glow-sign of an amusement house. “But it’s more of the same. Come on downside for a change.”

A gravity shaft dropped them two thousand feet, and they stepped into another world.

Here there was no sun, no sky; walls and ceiling were metal, floors were soft and springy, and a ruler-straight drab-ness filled Langley’s vision. The air was fresh enough, but it throbbed and rang with a noise that never ended—pumping, hammering, vibrating, the deep steady heartbeat of that great machine which was the city. The corridors—streets -were crowded, restless, alive with motion and shrill talking.

So these were the Commoners. Langley stood for a moment in the shaft entrance, watching them. He didn’t know what he had expected—gray-clad zombies, perhaps —but he was surprised. The disorderly mass reminded him of cities he had seen in Asia.

Dress was a cheap version of the Ministerial: tunics for men, long dresses for women; it seemed to fall into a number of uniforms, green and blue and red, but was sloppily worn. The men’s heads were shaven; the faces reflected that mixture of races which man on Earth had become; there were incredible numbers of naked children playing under the very feet of the mob; there was not that segregation of the sexes which the upper levels enforced.

A booth jutting out from one wall was filled with cheap pottery, and a woman carrying a baby in her arms haggled with the owner. A husky, near-naked porter sweated under a load of machine parts. Two young men squatted in the middle of traffic, shooting dice. An old fellow sat dreamily with a glass in his hand, just inside the door of a tavern. A clumsy fist fight, watched by a few idlers, went on between a man in red and one in green. An obvious streetwalker was making up to a moronic-looking laborer. A slim, keen-faced merchant—from Ganymede, Chanthavar said—was talking quietly with a fat local buyer. A wealthy man rode a tiny two-wheeler down the street, accompanied by two servants who cleared a way for him. A jeweler sat in his booth, hammering on a bracelet. A three-year-old stumbled, sat down hard, and broke into a wail which everybody ignored—it could barely be heard through all the racket. An apprentice followed his master, carrying a tool box. A drunk sprawled happily against the wall. A vendor pushed a cart full of steaming tidbits, crying his wares in a singsong older than civilization. So much Langley could see, then it faded into the general turbulence.

Chanthavar offered cigarettes, struck one for himself, and led the way behind a couple of guards. People fell aside, bowing respectfully and then resuming their affairs. “We’ll have to walk,” said the agent. “No slideways down here.”

“What are the uniforms?” asked Blaustein.

“Different trades—metalworker, food producer, and so on. They have a guild system, highly organized, several years” apprenticeship, and there’s a lot of rivalry between the guilds. As long as the Commons do their work and behave themselves, we leave them pretty much alone. The police—city-owned slaves—keep them in line if real trouble ever starts.” Chanthavar pointed to a burly-clad man in a steel helmet. “It doesn’t matter much what goes on here. They haven’t the weapons or the education to threaten anything; such schooling as they get emphasizes how they must fit themselves to the basic system.”

“Who’s that?” Matsumoto gestured to a man in form-fitting scarlet, his face masked, a knife in his belt, who slipped quietly between people indisposed to hinder him.

“Assassins” guild, though mostly they hire out to do burglaries and beatings. The Commoners aren’t robots—we encourage free enterprise. They’re not allowed firearms, so it’s safe enough and keeps the others amused.”

“Divided, you mean,” said Langley.

Chanthavar spread his hands. “What would you do? It isn’t possible to have equality. It’s been tried again and again in history, giving everybody a vote, and it’s always failed—always, in a few generations, the worse politicians drove out the better. Because by definition, half the people always have below-average intelligence; and the average is not high. Nor can you let these mobs go just anywhere -Earth’s too crowded.”

“It’s a cultural matter,” said Langley. “I know a lot of countries back around my own time started out with beautiful constitutions and soon fell into dictatorship: but that was because there was no background, no tradition. Some, like Great Britain made it work for centuries, because they did have that kind of society, that... common-sense attitude.”

“My friend, you can’t make over a civilization,” said Chanthavar, “and in reforming one, you have to use the materials available. The founders of the Technate knew that. It’s too late; it was always too late. Look around you -think these apes are fit to decide public policy?” He sighed. “Read your history and face it: war, poverty, and tyranny are the natural condition of man, the so-called golden ages are freak fluctuations which soon collapse because they don’t fit a creature only three hundred life-times out of the caves. Life is much too short to spend, trying to alter the laws of nature. Ruthless use of strength is the law of nature.”

Langley gave up, became a tourist. He was interested in the factories, where men were ants scurrying around the metal titans they had built; in the schools, where a few years including hypnotic indoctrination were enough to teach the needed rudiments; in the dark, smoky, raucous taverns; in the homes, small crowded apartments with a moderate comfort, even stereoscopic shows of appropriate imbecility, and a rather cheerful, indulgent family life in a temple, where a crowd swaying and chanting its hymns to Father reminded him of an old-time camp meeting; in the little shops which lined the streets, last survival of handicraft and a surprisingly good folk art; in the market, which filled a gigantic open circle with shrilling women- Yes, a lot to see.

After dinner, which was at a spot patronized by the wealthier Common merchants, Chanthavar smiled. “Near walked my legs off today,” he said. “Now how about some fun? A city is known by its vices.”

“Well... O. K.,” said Langley. He was a little drunk, the sharp pungent beer of the lower levels buzzed in his head. He didn’t want women, not with memory still a bright pain in him, but there ought to be games and- His purse was full of bills and coins. “Where to?”

“Dreamhouse, I think,” said Chanthavar, leading them out. “It’s a favorite resort for all levels.”

The entrance was a cloudy blueness opening into many small rooms. They took one, slipping life-masks over their faces: living synthetic flesh which stung briefly as it connected to nerve endings in the skin and then was part of you. “Everybody’s equal here, everybody anonymous,” said Chanthavar. “Refreshing.”

“What is your wish, sirs?” The voice came from nowhere, cool and somehow not human.

“General tour,” said Chanthavar. “The usual. Here... put a hundred solars in this slot, each of you. The place is expensive, but fun.”

They relaxed on what seemed a dry, fluffy cloud, and were carried aloft. The guards formed an impassive huddle some distance behind. Doors opened for them. They hung under a perfumed sky of surrealistic stars and moons, looking down on what appeared to be a deserted landscape not of Earth.

“Part illusion, part real,” said Chanthavar. “You can have any experience you can imagine here, for the right price. Look—”

The cloud drifted through a rain which was blue and red and golden fire, tingling as it licked over their bodies. Great triumphant chords of music welled around them. Through the whirling flames, Langley glimpsed girls of an impossible loveliness, dancing on the air.

Then they were underwater, or so it seemed, with tropical fish swimming through a green translucence, corals and waving fronds underneath. Then they were in a red-lit cavern, where the music was a hot pulse in the blood and they shot at darting containers which landed to offer a drink when hit. Then they were in a huge and jolly company of people, singing and laughing and dancing and guzzling. A pneumatic young female giggled and tugged at Langley’s arm—briefly, he wavered, there must be some drug in the air, then he said harshly: “Scram!”

Whirled over a roaring waterfall, sporting through air which was somehow thick enough to swim in, gliding past grottoes and glens full of strange lights, and on into a gray swirling mist where you could not see a yard ahead. Here, in a dripping damp quiet which seemed to mask enormousness, they paused.

Chanthavar’s shadowy form gestured, and there was a queer taut note in his muffled voice: “Would you like to play Creator? Let me show you—” A ball of raging flame was in his hands, and from it he molded stars and strewed them through sightless immensity. “Suns, planets, moons, people, civilization, and histories—you can make them here as you please.” Two stars crashed into each other. “You can will yourself to see a world grow, any detail no matter how tiny, a million years in a minute or a minute stretched through a million years; you can smite it with thunder, and watch them cower and worship you.” The sun in Chanthavar’s hands glowed dully through the fog. Tiny sparks which were planets flitted around it. “Let me clear the mist, let there be light. Let there be Life and a History!”

Something moved in the wet smoky air. Langley saw a shadow striding between new-born constellations, a thousand light-years tall. A hand gripped his arm, and dimly he saw the pseudo-face beyond.

He writhed free, yelling, as the other hand sought his neck. A wire loop snaked out, tangling his ankles. There were two men now, closing in on him. Wildly, he groped backward. His fist connected with a cheek which bled artificial blood.

“Chanthavar!”

A blaster crashed, startlingly loud and brilliant. Langley hurled a giant red sun into one of the faces wavering near him. Twisting free of an arm about his waist, he kneed the vague form and heard a grunt of pain.

“Light!” bellowed Chanthavar. “Get rid of this mist!”

The fog broke, slowly and raggedly. There was a deep clear blackness, the dark of outer vacuum, with stars swimming in it like fireflies. Then full illumination came on.

A man sprawled dead near Chanthavar, his stomach torn open by an energy bolt. The guards milled uneasily. Otherwise they were alone. The room was bare, coldly lit, Langley thought somewhere in his lurching mind that it was cruel to show the emptiness here where there had been dreams.

For a long moment, he and the agent stared at each other. Blaustein and Matsumoto were gone.

“Is... this... part of the fun?” asked Langley through his teeth.

“No.” A hunter’s light flickered in Chanthavar’s eyes. He laughed. “Beautiful job! I’d like to have those fellows on my staff. Your friends have been stunned and kidnapped under my own eyes. Come on!”