“What in Zen are you driving at?” Ronny asked impatiently.
“One of my theories is that these Dawnmen are the end product of having an abundance for all for a megayear or so. They don’t need intelligence.”
Ronny took a breath. “All right, and what are some more of your theories?” Through this, the Baron was sitting, staring into emptiness again.
Fitzjames said, “If I am correct, in the Dawnworld culture, the form of their early industrial revolution differed from ours on Earth. Remember my using the example of the caste system in India? Well, on the first Dawnworld, wherever it was, automation didn’t finally take over, conformity did. What it became was a very high industrial level, beehive-type culture. The individual workers are genetically predisposed to particular kinds of endeavor, and very readily and rapidly learn that specialty… but can’t learn anything else.
“They’re a contented people, a happy people. Everybody is happy—or he’s a genetic defective, and disposed of. Because he is a genetic defective, or he’d be happy.”
Ronny was staring at him. The scholar cleared his throat and went on. “They are evidently not aggressive or warlike. But they’re insect-like in the all-out-and-no-counting-the-casualties defense of their territories and their ways of doing things. They probably can’t be aggressive, because they’re one hundred percent ritualistic, and they have no ritual for aggression, nor for exploiting a new planet. Their expanding to new planets probably ended megayears ago.
“We were at first amazed, when we landed, that they ignored our presence. But they couldn’t do anything else, because they don’t have any rituals that acknowledge our existence. They haven’t any rituals that take strangers, whatever their business, into account at all.”
The Baron looked up. He sighed deeply and said, “Tell him, Fitzjames. I grow weary of your pedantic talk.”
The count hurried on. “They do have rituals that concern treatment of criminals. Steal something from them, and you come under those rituals and your classification as stranger —to be ignored—is superceded by the new classification criminal, and that, they do react to.”
“Tell him,” the Baron said petulantly.
“Their defectives are killed in a human sacrifice ceremony, which must have religious aspects going back to the very dawn of their culture.”
Ronny looked from one of them to the other. “You sent out your men to grab any of their devices not nailed down.”
“Yes,” the Baron said.
The count continued. “My theory is that the little aliens, whose planets were destroyed by changing their atmospheres, did much the same. They took a longer time. They charted a considerable number of the star systems the Dawnmen occupy. They photographed. They operated very slowly, evidently fascinated. But then they took their steps and tried to appropriate some of the devices these Dawnmen use. Perhaps they tried to trade for them, buy them, loan them, or whatever, but there was no possible way to do so. The Dawnmen are simply not interested in any contact whatsoever with any alien race. So the little aliens finally resorted to theft— and that was their end.”
Richardson came back into the lounge. He said to Ronny, “There’s nobody else aboard.”
The Baron said, “We watched it all, the Count and I. The men were taken one by one to the top of the pyramid. It was an elaborate ceremony. It must go back to a period when they were on the level of the Aztecs. They cut open the chest cavity and pulled the still throbbing heart out. The Count and I watched from an altitude of about one hundred feet. There was nothing we could do. It was obvious to us that if we attempted to use weapons, they would have destroyed us in split seconds.”
“Had we interfered,” the count said, “we, too, would have become criminals. As it was, we were the only ones who had not attempted theft, and hence were left alone.”
The Baron ended the story. “I can operate this craft well enough to take off and land, but I am no navigator. I request that one or two of your officers be sent to help us.”
Ronny opened his mouth to answer, but, at that moment, a new element entered into the lounge of the spacecraft.
From nowhere a voice came into the consciousness of each of them.
You are at last correct, Maximilian Wyler. You must return to the planet which our researching of your mind tells us you think of as Mother Earth. There is naught for you here.
Ronald Bronston, we detect that your motives for landing upon this… Dawnworld… were not criminal in intent, nor have you committed depredation upon us. It is our custom to send warning to stranger worlds—who are potential depredators—by the way of strangers who have landed among us, but have committed no criminal act. You are such. However, our researching your health indicated that your life span has been so altered that perhaps it would not encompass the period required to spread the warning. Hence, we have made certain rectifications so that your span of years will equal that of a normal lifetime as we know it to be—some two and a half of what you call centuries. Ronny Bronston sucked in air.
“Who are you?” Count Fitzjames blurted.
Researching your own mind, Felix Fitzjames, brings to our attention that in attempting to analyze our culture, you compared our society to the cast system of your India. Indeed, you had elements of correctness. By why did you forget about the Brahmins among us? Why did you assume that the equivalents of the sudras with whom you have come in contact, were the sum total of our race ? The voice addressed them as a group again. Go back to your Mother Earth. Do not be afraid of the Dawnworlds. Felix Fitzjames was correct to this extent: We are not aggressive. We have no designs against you. So long as you have none against us, our cultures need never conflict. Farewell. . . .
“Wait!” Baron Wyler cried out. “Why should I go back to Mother Earth? Why not to my own planet, Phrygia?”
You would find it difficult to breath, Maximilian Wyler. When our people are interfered with, they trace back to the planet from which the criminal element came so as to preserve themselves from additional predators in the future. The atmosphere of Phrygia is now composed of methane, ammonia and hydrogen. To the extent that Ronald Bronston succeeds in his mission of warning, a like fate will be saved your other worlds. And now we will communicate with you no longer. Farewell…
And suddenly there was an emptiness in the space yacht’s lounge.
At long last, Ronny Bronston looked at the aging Count Fitzjames. “Are you still so sure they aren’t intelligent?” he asked wryly. “At least on the highest level, we can expect cooperation. Where there’s logical intelligence, you can communicate.”
But Felix Fitzjames, his lips pale, was shaking his head. “Is a Brahmin less castebound than the lower castes? Does a queen bee have any more freedom of will than a worker?”
Ronny, and, to a lesser degree, Baron Wyler, were scowling at him.
The aged scholar was still shaking his head. “Perhaps the voice we just heard came from those who think of themselves as intelligent; but if it’s gone through two mega-years of this culture, it must live by pure ritual, too. Because its rituals are somewhat different and more complex than the lower castes’, it possibly believes it isn’t a pre-programmed mechanism.”
“I’m not sure I get what you’re driving at,” Ronny muttered.
Fitzjames was feeling it out, even as he talked. “One of the early problems of the cybernetic researchers was the fact that—to be intelligent, an entity must be capable of inconsistent behavior. But that means not to be logically predictable. This brings the frustration that an intelligent-inconsistent machine—which would be capable of exercising judgment—cannot be reliable in the sense of predictable. That is, the closer they come to a truly intelligent cybernetic device, the more it approaches the unreliable performance of a living organism.”
The Baron shifted in his chair, as though not following. He had remained silent, in shock, since the revelation of the end of his ambition, his dream… his very world.
Fitzjames turned his full
attention to Ronny. “Ants are very reliable living organisms, an entymologist can predict exactly what a particular ant of a particular type will do. It’s genetically pre-programmed. The voice we just heard is a part also of a genetically pre-programmed system; it must be just as reliable and, therefore, invariable as the lower castes. An anthill, termitarium, or beehive is a true totalitarian state—and in a true totalitarian state, the Führer, Dictator, Caesar, or whatever, is just as much controlled by the rituals and taboos as every other member of the state. This Dawnworld culture would not have been stable for such a period, if its Brahmins had not been just as rigidly unintelligent as every other entity in the system.”
He shook his head once again, an element of despair in the movement. “I am afraid we can look for no hope of eventual understanding between our cultures to these supposed intelligent elements in the Dawnworlds.”
The two Section G agents, Rita Daniels, and Lieutenant Takashi moved from the Pisa to the Baron Wyler’s space yacht for the trip in return to United Planets.
For the first few days there was little communication between them. No desire for words. There was a pervading atmosphere of mental lassitude, ennui.
It was toward the end of this period that Ronny Bronston found himself alone in the lounge with Rita Daniels. They had not been avoiding each other, it was just that they had failed to contact.
He brought her a drink from the bar and one for himself.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
She looked at him thoughtfully. “I suppose I’ll stick with Uncle Max. He… he needs someone now.”
“The last member of the team, eh?”
She looked to see if there was bitterness in his face, but it was neutral.
“I suppose so,” she said. “I believe Count Fitzjames plans to offer his services to the Octagon. After all, he is the nearest thing to an authority we have on the Dawnworlds.”
Ronny said, “Don’t worry about your uncle. The Wylers in life make out all right. Through his power hunger, in one fell swoop, he was the cause of the deaths of more people than Ghengis Kahn, Tamerlane, Stalin and Hitler all rolled into an unhappy one. But he’ll make out.”
She said lowly, “You hate my uncle, don’t you?”
He shook his head at her. “I don’t hate anyone. I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that the more you learn about the workings of individuals, cultures and even the ultimate destiny of the species, the less possible is it to hate anybody. As I recall, you were particularly interested in the ultimate destiny of the race.”
“I was” she said wryly. “Now, I’m not so sure about it.”
AFTERMATH
After all reports were through, Ronny Bronston came to his feet and reached in his pocket for his wallet. He tossed it to the desk of Ross Metaxa.
“My badge,” he said.
Metaxa and Sid Jakes looked at him.
The Commissioner of Section G said, “What are you going to do?”
“First, I’m going to ask a girl I’ve met recently to marry me. Then I’m going to migrate to Shangri-La. You can turn over to United Planets the job of spreading the warning against bothering the Dawnworlds.”
Sid Jakes chuckled. “Shangri-La? What’s there, my disillusioned friend?”
“The hedonistic ethic.”
“Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die, eh?”
“Something like that.”
“Great,” Metaxa growled. “But it’s hardly a teaching to be followed by a whole species.”
“Oh,” Ronny said. “Why not? But what I do know is that the purpose of Section G is gone. The pressing need to hurry man toward his final destiny no longer appeals to me. I have seen his final destiny, and it has little appeal.”
Ross Metaxa, moist of eye as always as though from too little sleep or too much alcohol, looked at him wearily. “You haven’t thought this Dawnworld threat through to its conclusion, Ronny.”
His resigning agent grunted amusement. “There is no threat. We leave them alone, they leave us alone.”
The Section G head grunted contempt of that opinion.
“Do you know the legal doctrine of the attractive nuisance ? Swimming pools are classified as ‘attractive nuisances,’ for instance. It’s a legal doctrine based on the proposition that something like a swimming pool is a natural, inevitable attraction to small children—children, who simply aren’t old enough to be competent to take care of themselves; and who aren’t old enough, either, to be wise enough to realize they can’t. Children simply can’t be fenced in at all times, so they can’t wander into neighborhood swimming pools and drown. So the ‘attractive nuisance’ laws make the owner of the swimming pool liable, which forces the pool owner to put a fence around the pool, instead of saying—all the children in the neighborhood should have fences built around them.
“As I recall, the classic case that started that legislation rolling was a company, in the old days, that had a beautiful 75 x 125 foot concrete-lined pool on company property. One weekend, when operations were shut down, some kids sneaked onto the company land and dove in. The first two were in before they discovered that it was the company’s sulfuric acid storage vat.”
Ronny was getting the point.
Metaxa said, “More than one of the member planets of United Planets are in the ‘children’ category. Some of them will have populations with hysterical reactions to the existence of our passive-but-appallingly-deadly-threat Dawn-worlds. They’ll want to provoke war. Then there’ll be, inevitably, the crooks who want to steal some of those magnificent gadgets, that magnificent science. Baron Wyler was an example. There’ll probably even be religious cranks, who’ll want to send missionaries.”
Ronny said, “So we still need a Section G, to act as a fence around this ‘attractive nuisance.’ Is that your point?”
Ross Metaxa growled, “You once asked me if you’d been conned into joining Section G. The answer was, ‘yes.’ It also would have been ‘yes,’ if you’d asked the question about Sid, here—or, about myself, for that matter. The job’s to be done, we have to take what measures we must to do it. The question is asked, ‘am I my brother’s keeper?’ ” He looked deeply into the other’s eyes. “The answer, Ronny, is ‘yes.’
Sid Jakes chuckled. “Meaning, of course, that a keeper is one who cares for and controls the actions of one who is incompetent, irresponsible or insane.”
Ronny looked at Sid Jakes. “I know of a girl you ought to get busy on, recruiting into Section G. She’ll make a top agent.” He slowly reached down to take up the wallet, which contained his badge.
But Metaxa anticipated him, picked it up and dropped it into a desk drawer.
Ronny looked at him.
Metaxa brought forth another wallet and tossed it over. The badge inside gleamed gold at Ronny’s touch.
Ross Metaxa growled, “Recruit this girl yourself, Bronston. If necessary, using whatever dirty tricks are required to rope her into our service. That’s one of the prime duties of operatives of supervisor rank.”
The End
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Dawnman Planet up-2 Page 13