The Shield of Time

XV

It was very late, approaching sunrise, when Koskinen and Trembecki returned to their suite. But neither felt able to sleep.

Koskinen put the generator down on the floor, seated himself, jumped up again, got a drink of water, stared out the window at the darkling city, ground a fist into his palm and swore. Trembecki lit a cigar. His broad face had gone altogether hard.

“What should we do, Jan?” Koskinen asked finally.

“Get out of here,” Trembecki said at once. “I’m not sure where to, though. By now MS probably has every one of Nat’s places staked out.”

Koskinen turned around to see him. “Do you mean that? About our leaving?”

“Uh-huh. If we stay here, we have to go along with the Equals. I see no way of talking them into a moderate course.”

“They…they could be right, you know.”

Trembecki grunted.

“I mean, well, they’re so obviously sincere,” Koskinen said.

“Most overrated virtue in the universe, sincerity.”

“I don’t know. I mean…look, when I signed on the Boas I took an oath to support the Constitution. It may sound schoolboyish, but I still take that oath pretty seriously. Now the Equals are asking me to violate it.”

“So they are.”

“But at the same tune—there have been justified revolutions in the past.”

“I doubt that.”

“How about our own?”

“That was a different breed of cat. Remember, it started as an attempt merely to get certain traditional rights the colonists were entitled to as Englishmen. It became a national breakaway because this really was a nation, at least in embryo. The colonists had already ceased to be Englishmen. A revolt against foreign oppression is easy to justify. But an internal revolution, no.”

“Even against domestic oppression? How about the French Revolution?”

“You should go back and re-read your history texts. The French Revolution proper did not deliberately employ violence. It didn’t even abolish the monarchy. It simply used political pressure to bring about a number of long overdue reforms. But then the extremists, of right and left, got the bit between their teeth, and that’s what led to the Reign of Terror and Napoleon. The original Russian Revolution was quite analogous. The Duma made the Czar abdicate, again by perfectly legal means. The Bolsheviks overthrew by force a functioning republic. I could give you a good many other examples.”

“There must be cases, though—”

“Yes, some. Various people have shot their way out from under a tyrant, now and then. But by definition, almost, they became the next despots, possibly benevolent, but still despots. And benevolent despotism is not the best form of government. It’s stultifying.

“Once in a very great while, such a dictator has worked to bring freedom, by patiently overhauling the social structure. Kemal Ataturk is the most famous of the few who did. Now that’s what you might call a righteous revolutionary. But you’ll note he did his job slowly and carefully, and without holding a gun at people’s heads.”

“Skip your ancient history,” Koskinen snapped. “We’re here and now. Why shouldn’t the Equals be like Ataturk? Is there any other way than theirs to get a world federation?”

“There might well be, assuming that it really is desirable, a matter which you haven’t taken the time to probe very deeply. Myself, I doubt that establishing it by orders from above, the way Gannoway proposes, would work. There’d be too few people used to thinking in such terms to man its organizations. Things like that can’t be built in a day, they have to grow.”

“When will the chance to grow be given? Honestly, Jan, I’m not fueled about a Glorious Vision of the Future or any such nonsense. I’m trying with everything I’ve got to decide what’s right. I don’t see how you can argue with what Quarles said, that the unavoidable necessities of Pax Americana really are eroding away the spirit of the Constitution, making a dead letter of it. Isn’t a radical breakthrough to different conditions the only chance of preserving what it stands for?”

Trembecki’s cigar end glowed and dulled, glowed and dulled. “That may be true,” he said. “Probably is, in fact. But there are many sorts of radicalism. The kind which would force itself on people, whether they want it or not, is the kind that I want no part of. Nor do you, if you’ll stop to think about it.

“Look, Pete, what they glossed over down in that room was the fact that we have not yet exhausted our peaceful resources. Our backs are not quite to the wall. Marcus is not the omnipresent demon they make him out to be, nor is the President the feeble bungler which is the best they’re willing to admit he might be. They talked about public support for MS and completely ignored the public opposition which also exists—as witness the above-board part of the Egalitarian movement, among many other things. They’re fanatics, and that type has always ignored—been congenitally unable to see—any facts that won’t fit their own preconceptions. That’s Marcus’s . trouble too, you know. He’s not so much hungry for personal power, though of course that element does operate in him, as he is saddled by a religious conviction that foreigners are evil and he alone knows how to save civilization. Do you want to trade one Marcus for another?”

“But Gannoway said,” Koskinen stumbled, “he said the junta would resign as soon as—”

“The world has heard that song before, my boy. If the Equals ever did seize the wheel, their dictatorship would be no more ‘transitional’ than that of any other revolutionary group. They’d have to stay on top for a while, simply to assure themselves their world arrangement was working out okay. And of course it wouldn’t—new institutions always go off on unforeseen tangents—so they’d shoot some people and tinker with the machinery and wait again. Meanwhile it’d be necessary to proceed against those of their fellow citizens who couldn’t stomach dictatorship. This implies a secret police a good deal stronger than MS is right now. And such an organization soon becomes a power in its own right; look at the history of every repressive government for proof. No, when you try to force the whole world, beginning with your own country, into the rigid framework of an ideology, you have to be an utterly ruthless tyrant. There’s no other way.”

“Quarles wouldn’t let them!”

“What’d he have to say about it? He’s only a well-meaning theorist. If he saw the truth and protested to Gannoway, they’d simply play the Grand Inquisitor scene over again.

“I don’t know why I’m talking so abstractly, though,” Trembecki finished. “You need only ask yourself how far anybody can be trusted who’s willing to achieve his ends by the means Gannoway spelled out to us.”

Stillness fell on the room. Koskinen sat down and stared at his generator. Why did I bring it back? he wondered. Why was I born?

A noise recalled him to awareness. Vivienne’s bedroom door had slid open. She came out in nightgown and robe. The light gleamed on her tousled hair.

“I thought I heard you talking,” she said.

“When’d you get in?” Trembecki asked.

“Around midnight. I couldn’t take any more. Besides, I’d learned as much as I probably would be able to.”

“Like what?”

She took a cigarette from a box on the table and lit it before saying tonelessly: “I played the part of a gang boss, or rather the female partner of a gang boss, come here for some gambling and so forth—and, on the side, to make discreet inquiries about possible business deals. A very natural thing; every place like this has underworld connections, and with Zigger gone, others will want to take over his territories. I got companionable with one or two of the girls who have been here long enough to know quite a bit. And frankly, I flirted with the night manager, with an implication that we might get still friendlier if he obliged me. What it boils down to is that I found out who really owns the Zodiac.”

“Well?”

“An unregistered corporation of which the major stockholder, under a different name, is one Carson Gannoway.”

“What?” Koskinen leaped to his feet.

Trembecki was not surprised. “I rather thought so,” he said. “This place is laid out and operated so very conveniently for the Equals. Obviously, they don’t want it so much for a headquarters as a source of funds. Financing is the big problem of every revolutionary organization.”

“Oh, no, no, no,” Koskinen shuddered.

Decision sprang up in him, tight and cold. “We’re leaving,” he said. “Get dressed, Vee.”

“Are you that shocked?” she asked.

“No, this only clinches the matter for him,” Trembecki said. “Go on, make yourself ready. I’ll explain meanwhile.”

He did so, curtly. Koskinen paced the floor, back and forth, his palms and armpits chill with sweat. Where to go? What to do? Was it possible to get back to Abrams’s home? Trembecki believed not, and he should know. Besides, to compromise Leah was unthinkable.

Wait…hadn’t Vee once mentioned an upstate hideaway of Zigger’s? Yes, he remembered now. It should serve for a while, at least, give a breathing spell in which they could think of something better. He told Trembecki about it, and the Pole agreed: “We can probably get a cab yet, even if the alarm is out. If we take a zigzag route, changing pretty often, I’d say we have a fair chance of making it. Are you ready, Vee?”

“Right now.” She emerged from her room in the dress she had worn here, purse clipped to the belt. “Think it’d help to wear masks?”

“Only till we’re out of the building. Then they’re too conspicuous. Where’d I put mine?”

The main door opened. Trembecki whirled, snatching for his gun. He wasn’t fast enough. “Stop where you are!” Gannoway barked. His own pistol covered them. The other councillors, likewise armed, crowded behind nun.

“You didn’t think we wouldn’t put a tap on this place and hear your opinions of us, did you?” Gannoway said.