Material wealth could be evenly distributed, but it could not remain that way unless Society made sure that the man who was more clever than the rest could not increase his wealth at the expense of his less fortunate brethren.
Make it a social stigma to show more ability than the average. Be kind to your fellow man; don’t show him up as a stupid clod, no matter how cloddish he may be.
All men are created equal, and let’s make sure they stay that way!
* * * *
There could be no such thing as a classless society, of course. That was easily seen. No human being could do everything, learn everything, be everything. There had to be doctors and lawyers and policemen and bartenders and soldiers and machinists and laborers and actors and writers and criminals and bums.
But let’s make sure that the differentiation between classes is horizontal, not vertical. As long as a person does his job the best he can, he’s as good as anybody else. A doctor is as good as a lawyer, isn’t he? Then a garbage collector is just as good as a nuclear physicist, and an astronomer is no better than a street sweeper.
And what of the loafer, the bum, the man who’s too lazy or weak-willed to put out any more effort than is absolutely necessary to stay alive? Well, my goodness, the poor chap can’t help it, can he? It isn’t his fault, is it? He has to be helped. There is always something he is both capable of doing and willing to do. Does he like to sit around all day and do nothing but watch television? Then give him a sheet of paper with all the programs on it and two little boxes marked Yes and No, and he can put an X in one or the other to indicate whether he likes the program or not. Useful? Certainly. All these sheets can be tallied up in order to find out what sort of program the public likes to see. After all, his vote is just as good as anyone else’s, isn’t it?
And a Program Analyst is just as good, just as important, and just as well cared-for as anyone else.
And what about the criminal? Well, what is a criminal? A person who thinks he’s superior to others. A thief steals because he thinks he has more right to something than its real owner. A man kills because he has an idea that he has a better right to live than someone else. In short, a man breaks the law because he feels superior, because he thinks he can outsmart Society and The Law. Or, simply, because he thinks he can outsmart the policeman on the beat.
Obviously, that sort of antisocial behavior can’t be allowed. The poor fellow who thinks he’s better than anyone else has to be segregated from normal society and treated for his aberrations. But not punished! Heavens no! His erratic behavior isn’t his fault, is it?
It was axiomatic that there had to be some sort of vertical structure to society, naturally. A child can’t do the work of an adult, and a beginner can’t be as good as an old hand. Aside from the fact that it was actually impossible to force everyone into a common mold, it was recognized that there had to be some incentive for staying with a job. What to do?
The labor unions had solved that problem two hundred years before. Promotion by seniority. Stick with a job long enough, and you’ll automatically rise to the top. That way, everyone had as good a chance as everyone else.
Promotion tables for individual jobs were worked out on the basis of longevity tables, so that by the time a man reached the automatic retirement age he was automatically at the highest position he could hold. No fuss, no bother, no trouble. Just keep your nose clean and live as long as possible.
It eliminated struggle. It eliminated the petty jockeying for position that undermined efficiency in an organization. Everybody deserves an equal chance in life, so make sure everybody gets it.
Colonel Sebastian MacMaine had been born and reared in that society. He could see many of its faults, but he didn’t have the orientation to see all of them. As he’d grown older, he’d seen that, regardless of the position a man held according to seniority, a smart man could exercise more power than those above him if he did it carefully.
A man is a slave if he is held rigidly in a pattern and not permitted to step out of that pattern. In ancient times, a slave was born at the bottom of the social ladder, and he remained there all his life. Only rarely did a slave of exceptional merit manage to rise above his assigned position.
But a man who is forced to remain on the bottom step of a stationary stairway is no more a slave than a man who is forced to remain on a given step of an escalator, and no less so.
Slavery, however, has two advantages—one for the individual, and one which, in the long run, can be good for the race. For the individual, it offers security, and that is the goal which by far the greater majority of mankind seeks.
The second advantage is more difficult to see. It operates only in favor of the exceptional individual. There are always individuals who aspire to greater heights than the one they occupy at any given moment, but in a slave society, they are slapped back into place if they act hastily. Just as the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind can be king if he taps the ground with a cane, so the gifted individual can gain his ends in a slave society—provided he thinks out the consequences of any act in advance.
The Law of Gravity is a universal edict which enslaves, in a sense, every particle of matter in the cosmos. The man who attempts to defy the “injustice” of that law by ignoring the consequences of its enforcement will find himself punished rather severely. It may be unjust that a bird can fly under its own muscle power, but a man who tries to correct that injustice by leaping out of a skyscraper window and flapping his arms vigorously will find that overt defiance of the Law of Gravity brings very serious penalties indeed. The wise man seeks the loopholes in the law, and loopholes are caused by other laws which counteract—not defy!—the given law. A balloon full of hydrogen “falls up” in obedience to the Law of Gravity. A contradiction? A paradox? No. It is the Law of Gravity which causes the density and pressure of a planet’s atmosphere to decrease with altitude, and that decrease in pressure forces the balloon upwards until the balance point between atmospheric density and the internal density of the balloon is reached.
The illustration may seem obvious and elementary to the modern man, but it seems so only because he understands, at least to some extent, the laws involved. It was not obvious to even the most learned man of, say, the Thirteenth Century.
* * * *
Slavery, too, has its laws, and it is as dangerous to defy the laws of a society as it is to defy those of nature, and the only way to escape the punishment resulting from those laws is to find the loopholes. One of the most basic laws of any society is so basic that it is never, ever written down.
And that law, like all basic laws, is so simple in expression and so obvious in application that any man above the moron level has an intuitive grasp of it. It is the first law one learns as a child.
Thou shall not suffer thyself to be caught.
The unthinking man believes that this basic law can be applied by breaking the laws of his society in secret. What he fails to see is that such lawbreaking requires such a fantastic network of lies, subterfuges, evasions, and chicanery that the structure itself eventually breaks down and his guilt is obvious to all. The very steps he has taken to keep from getting caught eventually become signposts that point unerringly at the lawbreaker himself.
Like the loopholes in the law of gravity, the loopholes in the laws of society can not entail a defiance of the law. Only compliance with those laws will be ultimately successful.
The wise man works within the framework of the law—not only the written, but the unwritten law—of his society. In a slave society, any slave who openly rebels will find that he gets squashed pretty quickly. But many a slave-owner has danced willingly to the tune of a slave who was wiser and cleverer than he, without ever knowing that the tune played was not his own.
And that is the second advantage of slavery. It teaches the exceptional individual to think.
When a wise, intelligent individual openly and violently breaks the laws of his society, there are two things which are
almost certain: One: he knows that there is no other way to do the thing he feels must be done, and—
Two: he knows that he will pay the penalty for his crime in one way or another.
Sebastian MacMaine knew the operations of those laws. As a member of a self-enslaved society, he knew that to betray any sign of intelligence was dangerous. A slight slip could bring the scorn of the slaves around him; a major offense could mean death. The war with Keroth had thrown him slightly off balance, but after his one experience with General Matsukuo, he had quickly regained his equilibrium.
At the end of his work day, MacMaine closed his desk and left his office precisely on time, as usual. Working overtime, except in the gravest emergencies, was looked upon as antisocialism. The offender was suspected of having Ambition—obviously a Bad Thing.
* * * *
It was during his meal at the Officers’ Mess that Colonel Sebastian MacMaine heard the statement that triggered the decision in his mind.
There were three other officers seated with MacMaine around one of the four-place tables in the big room. MacMaine only paid enough attention to the table conversation to be able to make the appropriate noises at the proper times. He had long since learned to do his thinking under cover of general banalities.
Colonel VanDeusen was a man who would never have made Private First Class in an army that operated on a strict merit system. His thinking was muddy, and his conversation betrayed it. All he felt comfortable in talking about was just exactly what he had been taught. Slogans, banalities, and bromides. He knew his catechism, and he knew it was safe.
“What I mean is, we got nothing to worry about. We all stick together, and we can do anything. As long as we don’t rock the boat, we’ll come through O.K.”
“Sure,” said Major Brock, looking up from his plate in blank-faced surprise. “I mean, who says different?”
“Guy on my research team,” said VanDeusen, plying his fork industriously. “A wise-guy second looie. One of them.”
“Oh,” said the major knowingly. “One of them.” He went back to his meal.
“What’d he say?” MacMaine asked, just to keep his oar in.
“Ahhh, nothing serious, I guess,” said VanDeusen, around a mouthful of steak. “Said we were all clogged up with paper work, makin’ reports on tests, things like that. Said, why don’t we figure out something to pop those Carrot-skins outa the sky. So I said to him, ‘Look, Lootenant,’ I said, ‘you got your job to do, I got mine. If the paper work’s pilin’ up,’ I said, ‘it’s because somebody isn’t pulling his share. And it better not be you,’ I said.” He chuckled and speared another cube of steak with his fork. “That settled him down. He’s all right, though. Young yet, you know. Soon’s he gets the hang of how the Space Force operates, he’ll be O.K.”
Since VanDeusen was the senior officer at the table, the others listened respectfully as he talked, only inserting a word now and then to show that they were listening.
MacMaine was thinking deeply about something else entirely, but VanDeusen’s influence intruded a little. MacMaine was wondering what it was that bothered him about General Tallis, the Kerothi prisoner.
The alien was pleasant enough, in spite of his position. He seemed to accept his imprisonment as one of the fortunes of war. He didn’t threaten or bluster, although he tended to maintain an air of superiority that would have been unbearable in an Earthman.
Was that the reason for his uneasiness in the general’s presence? No. MacMaine could accept the reason for that attitude; the general’s background was different from that of an Earthman, and therefore he could not be judged by Terrestrial standards. Besides, MacMaine could acknowledge to himself that Tallis was superior to the norm—not only the norm of Keroth, but that of Earth. MacMaine wasn’t sure he could have acknowledged superiority in another Earthman, in spite of the fact that he knew that there must be men who were his superiors in one way or another.
Because of his social background, he knew that he would probably form an intense and instant dislike for any Earthman who talked the way Tallis did, but he found that he actually liked the alien officer.
It came as a slight shock when the realization hit MacMaine that his liking for the general was exactly why he was uncomfortable around him. Dammit, a man isn’t supposed to like his enemy—and most especially when that enemy does and says things that one would despise in a friend.
Come to think of it, though, did he, MacMaine, actually have any friends? He looked around him, suddenly clearly conscious of the other men in the room. He searched through his memory, thinking of all his acquaintances and relatives.
It was an even greater shock to realize that he would not be more than faintly touched emotionally if any or all of them were to die at that instant. Even his parents, both of whom were now dead, were only dim figures in his memory. He had mourned them when an aircraft accident had taken both of them when he was only eleven, but he found himself wondering if it had been the loss of loved ones that had caused his emotional upset or simply the abrupt vanishing of a kind of security he had taken for granted.
And yet, he felt that the death of General Polan Tallis would leave an empty place in his life.
Colonel VanDeusen was still holding forth.
“…So I told him. I said, ‘Look, Lootenant,’ I said, ‘don’t rock the boat. You’re a kid yet, you know,’ I said. ‘You got equal rights with everybody else,’ I said, ‘but if you rock the boat, you aren’t gonna get along so well.’
“‘You just behave yourself,’ I said, ‘and pull your share of the load and do your job right and keep your nose clean, and you’ll come out all right.
“‘Time I get to be on the General Staff,’ I told him, ‘why, you’ll be takin’ over my job, maybe. That’s the way it works,’ I said.
“He’s a good kid. I mean, he’s a fresh young punk, that’s all. He’ll learn, O.K. He’ll climb right up, once he’s got the right attitude. Why, when I was——”
But MacMaine was no longer listening. It was astonishing to realize that what VanDeusen had said was perfectly true. A blockhead like VanDeusen would simply be lifted to a position of higher authority, only to be replaced by another blockhead. There would be no essential change in the status quo.
The Kerothi were winning steadily, and the people of Earth and her colonies were making no changes whatever in their way of living. The majority of people were too blind to be able to see what was happening, and the rest were afraid to admit the danger, even to themselves. It required no great understanding of strategy to see what the inevitable outcome must be.
At some point in the last few centuries, human civilization had taken the wrong path—a path that led only to oblivion.
It was at that moment that Colonel Sebastian MacMaine made his decision.
THE ESCAPE
“Are you sure you understand, Tallis?” MacMaine asked in Kerothic.
The alien general nodded emphatically. “Perfectly. Your Kerothic is not so bad that I could misunderstand your instructions. I still don’t understand why you are doing this. Oh I know the reasons you’ve given me, but I don’t completely believe them. However, I’ll go along with you. The worst that could happen would be for me to be killed, and I would sooner face death in trying to escape than in waiting for your executioners. If this is some sort of trap, some sort of weird way your race’s twisted idea of kindness has evolved to dispose of me, then I’ll accept your sentence. It’s better than starving to death or facing a firing squad.”
“Not a firing squad,” MacMaine said. “That wouldn’t be kind. An odorless, but quite deadly gas would be pumped into this cell while you slept.”
“That’s worse. When death comes, I want to face it and fight it off as long as possible, not have it sneaking up on me in my sleep. I think I’d rather starve.”
“You would,” said MacMaine. “The food that was captured with you has nearly run out, and we haven’t been able to capture any more. But rather than let you s
uffer, they would have killed you painlessly.” He glanced at the watch on his instrument cuff. “Almost time.”
MacMaine looked the alien over once more. Tallis was dressed in the uniform of Earth’s Space Force, and the insignia of a full general gleamed on his collar. His face and hands had been sprayed with an opaque, pink-tan film, and his hairless head was covered with a black wig. He wouldn’t pass a close inspection, but MacMaine fervently hoped that he wouldn’t need to.
Think it out, be sure you’re right, then go ahead. Sebastian MacMaine had done just that. For three months, he had worked over the details of his plan, making sure that they were as perfect as he was capable of making them. Even so, there was a great deal of risk involved, and there were too many details that required luck for MacMaine to be perfectly happy about the plan.
But time was running out. As the general’s food supply dwindled, his execution date neared, and now it was only two days away. There was no point in waiting until the last minute; it was now or never.
There were no spying TV cameras in the general’s cell, no hidden microphones to report and record what went on. No one had ever escaped from the Space Force’s prison, therefore, no one ever would.
MacMaine glanced again at his watch. It was time. He reached inside his blouse and took out a fully loaded handgun.
For an instant, the alien officer’s eyes widened, and he stiffened as if he were ready to die in an attempt to disarm the Earthman. Then he saw that MacMaine wasn’t holding it by the butt; his hand was clasped around the middle of the weapon.
“This is a chance I have to take,” MacMaine said evenly. “With this gun, you can shoot me down right here and try to escape alone. I’ve told you every detail of our course of action, and, with luck, you might make it alone.” He held out his hand, with the weapon resting on his open palm.
General Tallis eyed the Earthman for a long second. Then, without haste, he took the gun and inspected it with a professional eye.
“Do you know how to operate it?” MacMaine asked, forcing calmness into his voice.
The Randall Garrett Megapack Page 47