The Creatures of Man (47 page)

The chamber was silent for a moment after he finished. Farsit fidgeted and said, "The concept of delegation of authority is an old one—"

"I don't claim originality in this," said Morimet. "It
is
an old idea, and a workable one."

"For the sake of discussion," said Farsit, "how would this Executive be selected?"

"From our own membership," replied Morimet. "It would be a simple matter to ask the secretary to review the deliberations of this Board over the past five years and identify the member whose stands have proven correct more often than any other member's. That would be our man, or our woman as the case may be."

Another silence followed.

Suddenly Grayme snapped, "We're getting way off base here! The whole idea is unacceptable in principle! What good can be served by going into its details?"

Morimet looked at her. "I'm inclined to agree, concerning the principle," he said, "but more than a principle is at stake here. The war itself is threatened! That's a matter of urgent practical concern. We have to act!"

"Very well, on a
practical
level," retorted Grayme, "the conduct of the war requires continuity. It has lasted for over four centuries, and may be needed at least that long in the future. But your suggestion would produce a break in continuity at the end of an Executive's life. That's another weakness of the 'personality cult'. When the personality is gone, collapse tends to follow. At best, this would be sporadic, cyclical leadership . . .

"I grant that," Morimet replied testily. "Maintaining continuity will be a problem for future Boards. But the immediate need is to maintain the war
in our time
. Without it each citizen would, as you remarked yourself, make a cult out of his own personality. The deadly somnolence we've witnessed in the warless Halstayne Independency would overtake us all. What do you want for your grandchildren, Grayme, a slightly compromised econo-war, as I propose, or no war at all?"

She blinked, registering shock. Farsit spoke up. "Chairman, I ask that the secretary be queried as Morimet suggested, with the understanding that this request won't commit me to his proposal."

Domler nodded and pressed a button to put the computer secretary in the Board table into action. A moment later slips of paper were fed out of slots in front of each member's seat.

Grayme read hers and laughed dryly. "Were you counting on this, Radge?"

Morimet wadded his slip angrily and threw it on the table. "I decline to accept the position," he said flatly.

Domler remarked, "Maybe we
should
drag you to a psych-releaser! This was your proposal, yet when you are chosen by criteria you yourself specified—"

"It's my age, damn it!" Morimet bawled in annoyance that for an instant broke through his vengeance pattern. "When I said maintain the war in our time, I meant more than the next ten or fifteen years! We need a younger person for the Executive!"

Farsit nodded slowly. He glanced at his slip of paper again. "The numerical scores of the rest of us are closely clustered, well below your own, Morimet. I'm in second place, but by too slight a margin to mean much. If your age rules you out, and I agree that it should, then our choice of a candidate is not obvious to me."

"Well, I don't insist that the Executive be one of us," said Morimet. "I'm willing to go along with whatever modifications of my proposal you consider realistic." He hesitated, then added, "In fact, I know of a young man, a recent infiltration casualty, who might make an excellent candidate, although his motivation is rather shot at this moment."

"Who's that?"

"His name is Glan Combrit."

"Oh, yes," nodded Farsit, "Combrit. A brilliant record. He was one of your junior execs when you were an active corporate raider, wasn't he?"

"He was more than that," said Morimet. "He wound up running the whole Exchange end of my operation. Since then he's had a varied and highly successful career, most recently as an industrial espionage agent on several Lontastan planets. And it wasn't a slip on his part that has him out of action now. Even after the Lontastans got wise to him, it's to his credit that he managed to elude their goon squads and get home with a reasonably whole skin. He
knows
the econo-war, and he's a gifted strategist who can play it by the book or come up with creative solutions of his own. He's in recuperation on Earth right now. I visited him there a couple of weeks ago."

"I protest this discussion, Chairman!" Grayme complained loudly. "It is premature! Nothing has been decided!"

"Sustained," said Domler. "The discussion unjustifiably presumes a favorable decision on Morimet's proposal."

Morimet rose from his chair, his vengeance pattern slam-slamming harder than usual. "You have my proposal," he snorted, "and my arguments in its favor. I'm going home, and let you haggle over it as long-windedly as you like. Maybe you can do that better without my emo present to distract you!"

He whirled and stalked from the chamber. Once alone, he permitted himself a small grin.

Outside the building, Morimet glanced up with an old man's caution for obstacles in his path. The sky was blue and empty. He activated his transport implants and soared upward, on semi-inert mode and propelled by repulsor field.

His home, on the other side of the planet, could have been reached most quickly by lifting totally out of the atmosphere, making three right-angle minimal warps, and then descending. But he was in no hurry. He had nothing to do at home but await word of the Board's decision, and he suspected the decision was hours away.

Besides, he was skittish about warping in the vicinity of a planet. There was too much gas, even ten thousand miles above the atmosphere proper, for warping to be totally safe. That was how he had got stuck in his vengeance fixation. Warp did not take a man out of prime-field space, only out of matter-energy-time space. And every particle of gas carried its share of prime-field—and a man's mind was itself a patterned, durable prime-field matrix. A man who warped through a too dense wisp of gas could have his mind knocked right out of his body . . . knocked out at a velocity several times the speed of light.

The trauma of such an experience wasn't mild. The disassociation of mind and body was not bad in itself; in fact, that was a rather useless trick most any sane adult could do at will for amusement. And whether knocked out in warp or wittingly sent wandering, the mind matrix snapped back into place, as if from the end of a taut rubber band, as soon as it was permitted to do so.

The damaging factor about warp knock-out was the sheer speed with which it happened, the sudden recognition by both mind and body of the presence of relative motion of a magnitude both found innately "abnormal". And worse, this superlight motion was
separating
them.

In more respects than one, the experience was more traumatic than death itself. It was, in fact, one of the few types of trauma that a sane adult could not break without the help of a psych-releaser.

Thus it had happened several years ago that Radge Morimet, indulging himself in a moment of vengeful anger after a minor econo-war setback, had warped toward his headquarters planet . . . and had cut it too close. He had come out of warp in the stratosphere—that is, his body had—while his mind matrix had been knocked away by the outermost fringes of the ionosphere. The ionosphere was no mere wisp of gas; its prime-field was
solid
. It had stopped his mind matrix cold.

Reassociation took place in far less than a second, but not before the mind matrix was fixed by shock in the vengeance pattern it was holding at the instant of knock-out.

But, as Morimet had quickly realized, a touch of unsanity had its usefulness, to a man in a position to get away with it. It wasn't pleasant or comfortable, either to himself or to others, but for purposes of fighting a war his particular fixation had advantages over sweet reasonableness. It kept his mind on his job, for one thing. Probably it accounted in large part for his "rightness" score being higher than those of the other Board members.

He took his time going home, riding his repulsor field through the upper stratosphere. It was nearly an hour later before he dropped down on his estate. The local time was about 4:00 a.m., and his house, lawns, gardens and forest were dark and dewy damp.

Still, he lingered outside. There was no one in the house, his wife having "gone visiting" more or less permanently after he acquired his fixation—which was understandable. After all, what kind of companionship could a woman have with a man whose emo-pattern blocked communication?

Morimet blinked on his infrared vision and puttered about in his wife's flower garden until the call came from the Board.

"Morimet?" Domler's voice sounded in his right ear.

"Yes?"

"We've decided in favor of your proposal. It was unanimous except for one abstention."

Morimet grinned. "Grayme?" he asked.

"That's correct," the woman replied for herself.

Domler continued, "We've also studied the profiles of the young man you mentioned, Glan Combrit. He appears to be a suitable candidate, except for the motivation factor you mentioned. Possibly that lack can be remedied by an indoctrination course, which Grayme could conduct . . ."

Morimet straightened up from the flower he had been admiring and walked toward the house. He chortled. "Glan's been around too much to be more than mildly affected by a pep talk. Don't his profiles show that?"

"They suggest it," Domler replied. "However, we've agreed that a mild improvement in his motivation will be sufficient. An Executive who was too hard-driving would tend to aggravate the 'personality cult' problem and—"

"I disagree," Morimet interrupted. "High motivation is essential in that job. Consider my own example. I'm no brighter than many of the Board members, so why did I have the highest rightness score?" Nobody replied, so he hammered his point: "Why have you tolerated my eccentricity? Didn't you do so out of tacit recognition that it was making me exceptionally useful to the Commonality?"

Another silence. Then Grayme snapped angrily, "Radge Morimet, if you are suggesting what I think you are . . . !"

"I'm suggesting that now's the time to do things that just aren't done!" he retorted sharply. "We have a war to keep going, damn it! But if it will make you feel better, Grayme, I'm not suggesting that a fixation be installed in Glan Combrit without his knowledge and willing consent."

"To
intentionally
render a man
unsane!"
she yelped.

"Oh, don't get so appalled," he chided. "You happily supervise the indoctrination programs that direct the thinking, to a degree, of billions of individuals. I'm proposing to direct the thinking, to a somewhat greater degree, of just one man."

Farsit's voice sounded in his ear: "What would be the content of the fixation?"

"Oh, something to the effect that Combrit desired most urgently to be on the winning side in the war."

"The
winning
side?" protested Domler. "But we don't want to win the war! That would be almost as bad as losing it!"

"Of course," Morimet agreed. "But the Executive should be
trying
to win. We can safely trust the Lontastans and their Monte creature to see that he doesn't succeed. And bear in mind that this wouldn't be a hate-the-enemy fixation, such as mine, that would put Combrit out of emo-communication. It would simply focus his drives along channels which are desirable in his job."

After a pause, Domler said lamely, "This will require some discussion."

"Call me back," said Morimet shortly, flexing his ear to break the connection. He went into the house and prepared himself a supper.

Five days later he was sitting on a patio on top of a forested Asian hill, gazing out over the Sol-brightened Pacific while sipping a drink and chatting with Glan Combrit.

"I imagine that the decisive point for the Board," he told the younger man, "was that score the secretary came up with. If my stand had been correct so often in the past, they're betting it is this time."

Combrit said slowly, "I accept the position, of course—and the condition attached."

"Good!" approved Morimet, seizing Combrit's hand for a firm shake. "I assured the Board you would. But there's one thing, Glan, I want you to face with your eyes open."

"What's that?"

"You're not going to be a happy man. I'm speaking as one who knows. A fixation is no fun to live with in the best of circumstances. And yours will, of necessity, cause you many frustrations, since it will demand winning. Even if you're effective beyond my wildest dreams, the most we can hope for is to bring the war back to even terms."

Combrit nodded. "O.K. I'll know to expect that. It is something I won't like, but I can live with it. After all, back in the days when this planet we're on was all man had, the entire race was loaded with neuroses beyond count, and they managed to survive it."

"Yeah, but they didn't know anything better," grumped Morimet. "Well, if your life-support is all in order, let's get off our duffs and warp for the capital. The sooner you're on the job, the sooner we'll stop losing this war!"

Combrit stood up. "Right. But don't expect too much. That creature Monte is more than a communications network. If we succeed in putting real pressure on the Lontastans, they might well respond by assigning duties to Monte similar to those you're giving me. And let's face it . . . my brain must compare to Monte's the same way an implant computer compares to that desk job in the Board chamber."

"Well, we'll see," replied Morimet, pleased that Combrit had recognized that key point in the situation without prompting.

Within weeks after assuming the duties of Executive, Combrit began stemming the tide of Lontastan victory. This was most immediately evident in Trade Credit Flow statistics, which had been running in high negative figures for the Primgran Commonality for two decades. Before the end of a standard year, Combrit's fast and effective trade moves had brought the TCF down to within a trillion dollars of parity.