The acknowledgment was slow in coming. Renson was beginning to frown uneasily before the response rang in his right ear:
"Linler of Stemmons, this is Nexal Arrivals. Maintain inertia. You will be escorted down."
"Escorted?" Renson demanded, surprised. "I really don't see the necessity of—"
"Maintain inertia!" the voice interrupted. "Nexal Arrivals out!"
"But . . ."
He did not complete his protest. This business of an escort had to mean that, for some reason, the Lontastans were suspicious. Had he given himself away with a false move?
He was—technically speaking—an enemy here, even though he had no intention of causing, or seeking, trouble. However, if trouble waited, his best bet was to warp out while he had the opportunity.
He went semi-inert, preparatory to setting a warp vector, then was stopped by a thought.
Why had Arrivals Control told him he would be escorted? Why hadn't the escort simply arrived and surrounded him? Was he being baited into a guilt-revealing action? What should . . .
The hesitation probably save his life. Zerburst terminals flared suddenly in scorching brilliance on every side, bottling him at a distance of only hundreds of miles in an almost unbroken shell of death. As it was, his skin-field went total reflect to block out the fierce radiation. If he had tried to vector in any direction, one of those terminals would almost certainly have caught him.
A harsh voice barked in his ear: "Fait Linler! Go inert and STAY inert!"
Renson obeyed.
Within seconds the escort of Nexali Guardsmen closed in on him. He watched expressionlessly as they spiraled around. They were a tough-looking squad—doubtless barbarian types of the sort usually found performing such duties. With their zerburst guns held in readiness, their black shorts and their overpolished boots, they looked very military and very murderous.
In short, a goon squad—one of the uglier features of the endless Primgranese-Lontastan war. As long as human society had a use for such barbs as these, Renson mused grimly, their genetic strain would remain intact.
"Take off your belt and throw it!" ordered the harsh-voiced Guard officer who had spoken before.
Renson did so, not bothering to protest that his belt contained no weapons. A Guardsman snagged the belt as it drifted away and examined it cautiously.
Then Renson's sight was cut off. The escort had thrown a blindfield around him. He would see nothing during the rest of his journey to Nexal.
Time passed. When they entered the lower atmosphere he knew of it only from the relaxation of his pressor field and from the change of his breathing mode. The sensors of his life-support system, having detected suitable air around him, automatically deactivated the gas-conversion macromolecules in the linings of his throat and nasal passages, and he went on external respiration. What sounds filtered through the blindfield were muffled and uninformative.
When the field lifted Renson saw he was in a small windowless room. He had been left carrying sufficient momentum to slam him backwards into a chair, in which he was immediately confined by a restrainer belt across his stomach.
After a dazed instant he saw the escort was gone. Only one other man was in the room, facing him across a desk.
"I'm Arkay Delton of Anti-Espionage," the man informed him mildly. "Who are you?"
"I'm Fait Linler, from Stemmons," replied Renson. "Look, what's all this about?"
Delton's eyes had lowered to something Renson could not see on the desktop. Now he looked up and repeated, "Who are you?"
Renson blinked. Obviously Delton had an emo-monitor focused on him, and his use of a false name had registered; else Delton would not have repeated the question. Renson had lived with his assumed name, Fait Linler, for five years, and had hoped that, if he were ever emo-monitored, it would register clean. Plainly, it had not.
I AM Fait Linler, he assured himself. That's my real identity. Grap Renson is no longer real. I accept that as true without reservation.
But in reply to Delton's question he said, "Nobody you need concern yourself about. I'm not a spy, nor an enemy."
Delton glanced up and said, "Thank you," which probably meant the answer registered clean. "Who are you?"
Annoyed, Renson replied, "Fait Linler."
"Who are you?"
"Fait Linler, of Stemmons."
"Who are you?"
Renson consciously relaxed himself. This interrogation setup—a mild, friendly-faced man repeating a question at him from across a desk—had a strong and intentional resemblance to a psych-release therapy session. Psych-release was a major landmark in the life of every child, opening the way to a sane adulthood.
Thus, the temptation was to regard Delton as a therapist and cooperate fully.
Renson wriggled under the restrainer belt into a more erect position. "Fait Linler," he said.
"Who are you?"
"Look, I told you I'm nobody of concern to you! I'm not a participant in the econo-war at all! In fact, my sole purpose for coming to Nexal is to try to discover why this nonsensical war exists in the first place!"
Delton considered this outburst a moment before saying, "Thank you. Who are you?"
"Fait Linler!"
"Who are you?"
"Fait Linler."
"Who are you?"
The repetition of question and answer went on for half an hour . . . and Renson was beginning to think it could continue forever. Delton would tire, and be replaced by another interrogator, who would tire and be replaced by—
It was futile to go on.
"Who are you?"
Renson sighed. "I've been Fait Linler for five years. Who I was before that isn't important."
Delton smiled. "Thank you. Who were you six years ago?"
"It doesn't matter."
"Who were you six years ago?"
After a pause Renson shrugged. "I was Grap Renson, an engineer with Sol-Veg Systems Corporation in the Commonality of Primgran."
"Thank you, Mr. Renson. What grade engineer?"
"Junior first."
Delton looked impressed. "And you're not here as a spy or a saboteur, or otherwise as an agent of the Commonality or of a Commonality enterprise?"
"No."
"But you are not here as a defector, either?"
"That's correct," Renson said stiffly.
"Thank you." Delton shifted slightly in his seat for the first time. "After your long trip from Stemmons you're probably ready for some bulk food."
Renson nodded.
A tray slid out of the wall to pose a breakfast over his lap. He dug in with good appetite. During warpflight it was necessary to subsist on food-concentrate pills, with a stomach-balloon countering the empty sensation the pills left. This prevented severe pangs, but the human body had other means of recognizing hunger. And that, Renson realized as he grew more comfortable, was one reason why he had found the idea of a prolonged interrogation so hard to face.
He looked up between mouthfuls. "What alerted your security to me?" he asked.
Delton shrugged and grinned. "Several things. It seemed likely, when I first read the query on you from Arrivals Control, that you were either a rank amateur at infiltration, or that some Primgranese spy-boss was taking a shot in the dark with an utterly naive approach." He chuckled, "It was foolish of you to expect that a mere five-year record of residence on a low-security planet like Stemmons—where nothing of economic significance is going on—would lead to your unquestioned acceptance as a first-class Lontastan citizen. Notification of arrivals on Nexal are always checked out, and yours was obviously fishy."
Annoyed, Renson snapped, "O.K., so infiltration isn't my line!"
"That's for sure," laughed Delton, studying the captive thoughtfully. "So you came here trying to discover the cause of the econo-war, huh?"
"Yes."
"Which means you don't accept the reasons everybody else does."
"I definitely do not."
"Why?"
"Beca
use I find them absurd! Look, Delton, are all the adults of the Primgran Commonality and the Lontastan Federation sane?"
Delton grinned. "Those of the Federation are. I can't vouch for the citizens on your side."
"Please be serious," Renson snapped. "Humanity is sane, to the last adult on the most out-of-the-way frontier world. We've been sane for nearly a thousand years now. Nobody is driven by some neurotic compulsion to accumulate more wealth than he has any imaginable use for, while leaving someone else in economic distress in the process. Only insanity, on the pandemic scale of the Earth-Only ages, can justify that dog-eat-dog method of wealth distribution.
"Yet, we still go at it tooth and claw, without the tiniest neurosis for an excuse! And the big war between the Commonality and the Federation is just another level of the billions of little wars going on constantly within our ranks. Sol-Veg Systems Corporation versus Philips Interstel, as well as versus Nexxtauri General. And me, while I worked for Sol-Veg, versus several dozen other hard-climbing first-junior engineers. On every level, the organization of both our nations seems to have no other purpose than to provide a battleground!
"Is that what society is for, Delton?" he went on angrily. "Is that the highest purpose we can grasp after all these centuries of sanity?"
Renson ran down suddenly and sat in glum silence, annoyed with himself for expressing his feelings so openly to a man he could hardly expect to understand or appreciate them.
"It could be worse," Delton remarked lightly. "It could be a shooting war, in the old Earth-Only style, instead of economic combat. So you must admit we've gained something from our sanity, Renson."
"We've gained precious little!" Renson flared. "There's nothing pretty about industrial espionage and sabotage, or economic oppression of the weak by the strong, or trigger-happy goon squads such as that escort that brought me here! Just because our war involves no wholesale slaughter everyone seems to think it isn't really damaging, or deadly. The obvious truth is that it is deadly indeed to the human spirit! It pits man against man! It makes us enemies when we could—and should—be friends."
Delton smiled. "You and I, for instance?"
"Certainly! Under more favorable circumstances—" Renson's voice trailed off uncertainly.
"Ah, yes, more favorable circumstances," Delton chuckled. "If we were friends instead of enemies, we could enjoy each other's company, discuss our innermost feelings and beliefs, perhaps have an argument as close friends do about some belief on which we didn't agree. Just as we're doing right now, Renson."
"O.K.," Renson nodded, "I'll grant that point. You and I, technically enemies brought face to face, are conversing like friends. But that's precisely what I'm getting at—sane men are friends when face to face, when their proximity crowds out the artificial barriers our social structure normally raises between them. Friendship is natural, enmity is not."
"Friendship wouldn't be natural if both of us were hungry and only one of us had a little food," Delton dissented.
"But there's no shortage of food in our society," Renson retorted, "except for artificial shortages created by the artificialities of the econo-war! We produce a constantly increasing plenty of everything for everybody! That's another reason why the war is inexcusable. We have too much wealth for it to be worth fighting over."
Delton considered that in silence for a moment. Then he said, "Man has always been a player of games, Renson. If you're a student of history, you probably know that one of the key steps in our progress toward sanity was the recognition that life itself is best understood as a game. We need the same things for a good life as we do for a good game—that is, we need freedoms, barriers, and goals. And, of course, a playing field for these things and ourselves.
"But for a really top-notch game, Renson, we need something else—teams. The better balanced the teams are, the more absorbing the game.
"That's what the econo-war gives us, Renson, a superb and unifying game, with well-balanced teams. The play gets rough sometimes, especially for the goon squads, infiltrators, and others who choose to play in exposed positions. But there has to be hard play if the game is taken seriously as the basic game of our society.
"So there's nothing artificial or phony about the war, Renson. It isn't something dreamed up and kept going by a handful of government and industrial officials. If you convinced the top brass of the Commonality and the Federation that the war should be ended, and they signed a treaty tomorrow, within a month I bet the war would be starting again! Man needs his games, Renson, the same as he needs food, shelter, sex, and life-support. And this econo-war is a great game—otherwise it wouldn't still be going strong after more than three centuries."
Renson said sourly, "I doubt if the economically deprived consider it such a great game."
Delton shrugged, "There has to be losers as well as winners. To quote a bit of ancient wisdom, 'the poor we will always have with us.' " He frowned thoughtfully and asked, "Could that be your trouble, Renson? Are you soured on the econo-war game because you're a loser?"
Renson shook his head. "I was doing very well with Sol-Veg. It was my own decision to quit."
"Are you a married—or formerly married—man with a family somewhere in the Commonality?"
"No . . . I never got around to that. Never found a girl with whom I hit it off just right."
Delton nodded slowly, and Renson wondered why Delton had asked about his marital status. But he said nothing, because he could see no point in continuing the discussion. Evidently Delton felt the same.
"That's all the questions for now, Renson," he said. "Behind you is a door into an apartment where you'll be comfortable while you wait for the disposition of your case."
The restrainer belt dropped from Renson's lap and he stood. He wanted to ask what the Federation officials were likely to do with him, but he knew Delton could not answer that. "Thank you," he said, and left the interrogation room.
* * *
During the next two weeks Renson had plenty of solitude in which to consider his situation. And he reached the conclusion that entering Federation territory had been pure folly—a waste of five years.
It was not that his capture was preventing him from gathering data on the cause of the econo-war. The truth was that Nexal, or any other Federation planet, had no data to offer that was not available on any Commonality world. In all essences, the Federation and the Commonality were the same. They were twin societies, operating on the same principles and with the same motives.
And, of course, the Federation's ideas about the war had to duplicate those he had been hearing all his life at home . . . the same glib answers, such as Delton's life-game analogy, which made a certain amount of sense but failed to explain why man, with all his abilities of creative imagination, had not come up with a far more desirable game for himself than econo-war.
For the first centuries of interstellar travel, a game of conquer-the-universe had been plenty, for instance. And that game was still going on, but it had lost its early excitement. It was too easy, Renson mused. The galaxy offered more room for expansion than man could use for several millennia—and so far man had found no competitor for that room, no alien species to fight.
So he fought himself. That was the explanation for the econo-war, perhaps, but it was no explanation at all. Not for a sane humanity, in Renson's opinion.
He was uncomfortably aware that his opinion was not widely shared. Hardly anybody bothered to question the assumptions that he found so flimsy. In fact, most people with whom he had argued about the war had responded much as Delton had . . . as if they could see and understand some vital point to which he was blind. Was he a prime example of stubborn stupidity, insisting on his rightness and the wrongness of everybody else?
Well, not quite everybody else. After all, there was the Halstayne Independency—a nation far smaller than either the Commonality or the Federation, admittedly—that took no part in the econo-war and seemed to get along quite comfortably nevertheless. The one
Halstaynian he had met had shared fully his distaste for and puzzlement over the Primgranese-Lontastan conflict.
His meditations along such lines were interrupted a few times for additional interrogation by his captors, but most of the questioning was perfunctory. Having been away from Sol-Veg for five years, his knowledge of the corporation's activities was thoroughly dated. Also, despite his junior-first ranking, he never had been let in on any of the company's high-security projects. (An indication, he wondered, that the company had considered him a questionable risk?) In any event, he could tell the Lontastans little of value.
The Creatures of Man Page 35