He was the Lieutenant, but I had no idea what he was talking about. “Yes, sir.” We went to our separate cubicles, agreeing to meet afterward.
My head still hurt when I was through in the shower.
-2-
Plastic eight millimeter cartridges squeezed from the strangely permeable face of the autofabricator into the transparency-covered hopper.
“One molecule at a time,” observed Owen Rogers proprietarily, “If you could see inside, they start as a faint triangular—pardon me, trochoidal—streak in the matrix, building up in three-dimensions, maintaining a perfect cross-section until closure at the end of the cartridge.”
“But how,” I asked, not without ulterior motivation, “does it work?”
“There are a hundred and some-odd naturally-occurring elements,” said the part-time gunsmith. “I lost track somewhere of exactly how many. From the dawn of time, Mindkind has been limited to permutations and combinations of those few elements to create his entire material civilization.”
Some more of the physics, I thought to myself, that everybody said I needed. So be it. I would learn whatever I could, for the immediate project I had in mind, also in the interest of certain longer-range considerations.
“Just as protons, electrons, and neutrons are the building-blocks of atoms, quarks are the building-blocks of protons and neutrons, and therefore of the atomic nucleus. The electrons fill orbital positions around the nucleus, determining the chemical attributes of any given element.”
“I understand,” I lied. “But what has this to do with your fabricator?”
Sharpening my martial skills, I had mentioned to him a requirement for more ammunition earlier this morning, over a holo-circuit Lucille had shown me how to use. Instead of directing me to another retail outlet as I had expected, Rogers had invited me to his quarters, to see his Rockwell & Decker fabricator. Whole industrial establishments on Vespucci might have been established about this little hobbyist’s toy.
“Everything, Whitey. You see, we manipulate those electron shells by—”
“Excuse me, Rog, but I am curious. Is this device good for making ammunition only, or can it be used to manufacture other things, as well?”
He blinked at the subject-change, “Within limits. Like what?”
“Well ...” I had thought this through very carefully. I was my first step in getting out of Confederate jurisdiction, with something to show for the adventure. Now, however, when it came time to start it, it began to feel like a cowardly betrayal of the generous people who—
Stop!
You cannot take a hamlet without breaking heads.
“Drawing materials,” I told him, wondering how transparent I was being. “Paper or something like it to draw upon, something with which to draw on it. I have noticed that you have artists aboard
Tom Paine Maru.
Their sketches, drawings, paintings hang in meeting places, restaurants. I did some of that at home. I would like to take it up again.”
There were no photographs aboard Tom Paine Maru, no writing, but there were watercolors, lithographs, other handicrafted graphics. It made me wonder. But instead of simply wondering, or asking stupid questions, this time I had formed a plan on the basis of this peculiar knowledge.
I was following it now.
The fact was, I needed to make notes.
More, I needed to do it secretly. Each minute, I was being exposed to information of incalculable value to my poverty-stricken culture. Of course that was the reason they would not let us go. But that only gave me greater impetus to escape. Lucille was right. I was becoming an accomplished sociopath. From here on it would be a race: carrying out my self-imposed mission before the total disintegration of my character.
A long pause: “So that’s it, is it? Paper. Pencils. You know, I warned Couper about this, too. I’m extremely sorry, Whitey, I can’t do it.”
Shock: I had been anticipated. There were places on Vespucci one could not take a camera or recorder. Plus the fact all such devices were strictly licensed. Now I was even forbidden to write down what I was learning. It was to be expected. Nevertheless, the surprise was devastating.
Rogers went on cheerfully without me: “I’m just not set up to replicate obsolete organics. Shucks, any industrial-scale fabricator could turn out exactly what you need, with little purple flags on every seventeenth item, if you ordered it that way. Being from a mass production culture, I suppose you don’t realize the difference that makes. But there are limits. You’d want wood or rag paper, and, let’s see: graphite, clay, cedar, rubber—or were you planning to use ink?”
“What?” I guess I blinked.
“If you had samples—or I suppose I could order the appropriate software. But look, would plastic do, a nice matte that could hold an impression? A smart pen to alter its molecular structure, make it erasable, even manage color, all from this little machine. What do you say?”
What I did not say to him was that I could not possibly have been more confused. I simply thanked the nice man profusely, then agreed to stop by later to pick up whatever his wonderful machine created for me.
Who were these people, anyway?
-3-
This was more like a real classroom than anything I had seen so far.
Forty assorted beings of various species, at desks of appropriate design, sat in a well-lit room brightly decorated with paintings of what I assumed were scenes—cities, different kinds of wildernesses—on various planets that the great starship had visited. Up front, a lecturer spoke on a definite topic in a linear manner. If you could ignore the pair of glass-fronted walls at the back, behind which various marine-life witnessed the proceedings, it almost felt like home.
There was even something resembling a blackboard.
“We have many names and historical examples for each of the three political systems that are all that are possible,” the instructor stated. She was human, female, blonde, adult, showing a strong family resemblance to Lucille Olson-Bear. We had arrived at the beginning of the session. For once it actually sounded like the beginning of a session.
“Each has certain revealing characteristics of its own.” She turned to sketch with her finger on the blank surface behind her, an equilateral triangle, pointed end up, indicating the lower righthand corner.
“All known forms of authoritarianism are paternalistic in nature, usually oppressively religious, with an emphasis on law, order, and swift, sure punishment for every miscreant. Majoritarianism, by contrast—”
She swept to the lower left corner.
“—is typically maternalistic, concerned with social ‘justice’, meaning the survival, above all, of the productively unfit at the involuntary expense of everybody else. Each variation represents an essentially infantile ‘adjustment’ to cultural and economic reality that prevents further development, either of an individual or society. It’s a primary cause of the cyclic rise and fall we observe among the Kilroys.”
Now the instructor pointed toward the apex of the triangle: “Individualism is adult in character, representing self-imposed responsibility, steady growth, and both individual and cultural maturity.”
I watched the Lieutenant watching the attractive instructor, then caught Howell watching me. Having brought us here on the pretext of introducing us to Edwina Olson-Bear, Chief Praxeologist aboard
Tom Paine Maru,
I was certain that the coyote was much more interested in our reaction to her lecture than in any introductions he intended making.
My own thought was that a “paternalistic”, disciplined society, or a “maternalistic” one taking care of its helpless in a responsible manner (both of which were the customary practice back on Vespucci), represented a vastly greater maturity than the lawless hedonism advocated by Confederates, who often struck me as self-indulgently childish.
She continued: “Although there are variations, monarchism is the archetype for authoritarian societies. Modern civilization on Earth, in fact, began with a North American anti-monarchical revolution in 1776 C.E.—that’s Zero, Anno Liberatis for those unacquainted with the older calendar. For the first time in human history, government began growing smaller, poorer, and weaker. This was underlined shortly afterward in an unsuccessful counter-revolution by closet monarchists in 13 A.L., which canceled forever the government’s power to levy taxes.”
Striding across the room, she laid a hand upon a representation of a mountain whose rocky face bore the carved likenesses of men. “Within only two centuries, thanks to the ‘Rushmore Four’, Tom Paine, Albert Gallatin, Thomas Jefferson, and Lysander Spooner—the revolution had become worldwide. Peace, prosperity, and progress all grew from the concept of absolute individual rights, under a system of unanimous consent.”
The Chief Praxeologist stepped further away from the front, toward where we were sitting. “Given the essential tragedy of human evolution—that, as defense against the mortal agony of birth, the dangerous mechanism of repression arose, functioning powerfully both in mother and child, sabotaging while it soothed like any powerful analgesic—the North American Revolution looks more and more to us today like a miracle.”
I stirred uncomfortably in my comfortable seat. In spite of the lecture, this was supposedly neither a class on history nor biology. The Lieutenant was here to take advantage of an introduction he had wangled from Howell, I was here as protective coloration, but also for a reason of my own. Only peripherally aware of the Obsidian operation until it was practically over with, now I was determined to watch what happened on the next stop as closely as I could. On a planet rather unattractively called Hoand (pronounced with two syllables, “HO-and”), the warrior-praxeologists of
Tom Paine Maru
intended pursuing an altogether different method than they had employed on the previous world.
This session was supposed to explain it.
Edwina Olson-Bear went on to talk about the three main Hoandian nation-states. Uxos was a mass-society where everything was done by the collective, for the collective, in the name of the collective. In the praxeologist’s view, they were scarcely more than a human insect colony.
Obohalu, with a history somewhat like the old Vespuccian Republic, made a pretense of being a free country, was the most technologically progressive, likely the most powerful, but was currently on a steep decline.
Houtty fitted somewhere between, lacking the enormous regimented mindless masses of Uxos, yet possessing much the same potential for mass destruction as Obohalu. All were on the verge of interplanetary travel, each was at constant Cold War with the other two, slowing progress, draining productivity, destroying countless hundreds of millions of lives, not just in terms of mortal flesh or blood, but of human potential. According to the lecturer, in politics, unlike geometry or architecture, the triangle was the least stable of all forms. Something had to give, probably explosively, with lingering radiation.
I listened through detailed analyses of all three cultures. The teacher’s questions, directed at the students, regarded how things had gotten to be that way on Hoand, what could possibly be done to change them.
Time passed.
“That will do for today,” she said at last. “Be sure that you review F.P. Wilson’s
An Enemy of the State,
the listed works of J.N. Schulman, and L.G. Kropotkin’s
My Life With Pete.
You’ll be asked to make comparisons among Hoand, Earth, and Sodde Lydfe, and specifically Podfet, Nazi Germany, and Houtty, as opposed to Great Foddu, England, and Obohalu. Unlike Hoand, where a relative balance-of-terror has been achieved, Sodde Lydfens are about to use nuclear weapons, after a long conventional war. Using praxeological notation, I want you to tell me why.”
After a few more informal questions about the class assignment—where did Stalinist Russia fit in?—the room emptied itself into the corridors. Through glass walls, I could even see the porpoises swim away.
-4-
“It’s a break in my routine,” Edwina nodded over her coffee cup. “I started out as a lecturer. I like to stay in practice.” Politely disguised annoyance tinged her voice, replying to the Lieutenant about what a nice girl was doing in that classroom we had just left. I could not have said exactly why I was embarrassed. It had not been my stupid question.
The bizarre restaurant, not far from where we had begun, was filled with the usual colorful, bewildering mixture of species, many wearing costumes I now recognized as native to Hoand or appropriate to Sodde Lydfe. A volume as large as the gymnasium had been filled, from floor-to-ceiling, with man-high transparent plastic tubing, little bubble-shaped alcoves occurred every few meters for tables. The whole thing was darkly lit by candles twinkling in their hundreds, refracted by the plastic, reflected in its twisted, curving walls. Howell called the place “Mr. Meep’s In The Belly Of The Whale”, a new establishment replacing one that, in the coyote’s opinion, had been considerably stranger.
The proprietor, apparently an old friend of his from Earth, led us through the intestinal labyrinth. The chimpanzee entrepreneur wore a long false beard, also an ankle-length striped robe with a matching headdress. Howell said that the language he was addressing us in was Aramaic.
Seen up close, Edwina was pleasant as much as she was pretty, with bright, hazel-colored eyes, a broad, intelligent forehead, an upturned nose that, despite the description, was quite unlike her sister’s. Where her sister was almost inhumanly slender without being emaciated or even a bit fragile-looking, Edwina was amply-rounded, without being plump.