Joe was saying, ‘That’s too much to lose; can I help you look?’
And if the new generation had been raised in the knowledge that they were the heirs not of the past but of the future … why, there would not be a generation gap, that familiar cleavage of all history, but a monstrous gulf between an old species and its created new …
No, not that … between the royal children and their wet-nurse adult servants.
‘What’s up, Commander?’
Adrift in thought he had lost sight of the object thought upon. ‘It just hit me for the twentieth time that everything that seems familiar isn’t.’ Lie. It had hit him for the first time that his days in the new world had been spent among its expendable builders; for understanding of who and what and where he would have to move among tomorrow’s world owners. Such as Joe; such as those polite and forbidding children. ‘Tell me where I can buy a newspaper.’
‘What’s that? Perhaps we call it something else.’
‘The printed news of the day.’
‘That! It’s called the daysheet.’
He seemed to have amused Joe, who for a moment looked happily cunning.
‘Over here, Commander.’ He tripped a lever and a folded paper dropped from a wall slot. ‘Fresh editions morning and evening.’ He presented it to Raft with exaggerated ceremony. ‘If that’s the sort of thing you want.’
‘How would I know? No charge? Government printed?’
‘Is that bad?’
‘Do you think so, Joe?’
‘Of course it is. In your day, with a free press—’
‘Balls. What would you know? Competitively produced news is not necessarily more accurate than censored news, only more detailed. And mostly slanted, with owners playing politics.’
He had upset the boy. ‘We’ve thought the commercial press to be one of the good things you had.’
‘Who’s “we”?’
Perhaps Joe really did not hear the question. He said carefully, ‘You’ll find what’s printed there completely truthful – but not complete.’
‘News is suppressed?’
‘I wouldn’t put it like that, but the administration has ideas about what matters and what doesn’t and some of us have other ideas.’
‘I care about ideas. Where do I get both sides?’
He had asked an absolutely right question; the boy’s reaction was fleeting but unmistakable. ‘From the letter sheets. Of course you have to pay for those.’
Raft laughed. ‘Samizdat!’
‘What?’
‘Secret press.’
But he had misunderstood; twentieth-century modes and associations had no precise counterparts here. ‘There’s nothing secret about it. People in a position to pick up more information than the daysheet gives, put out their own info-sheets. I suppose their version isn’t always right either but at least you get a broader picture.’
‘Can you get me some of those letter sheets?’
‘Of course.’
‘So, if I read this first – what did you call it?’
‘We call it the shit sheet.’
‘Who do?’ But Joe had stepped away saying, ‘I’ll get some for you; won’t be long,’ and joined the crowd while Raft stared after him. The meeting had not been fortuitous; his attention had been caught and directed to a specific aspect of daily life and he had, perhaps, been alerted. But to what?
At least he had made contact with the inheritors of the Earth. Or they with him? Or – stretching it further – was he now in touch with whatever Gangoil might have become now that the mysterious Lady’s day was done?
Meanwhile he could read the paper.
There were seats under trees, islands in grass, garden strips and spaces between buildings. The trees were young, planted with love for a long tomorrow; new Melbourne Town was designed to be green through generations. But so had the old. Good luck to your dreams, he thought without great confidence and chose a blazing jacaranda for shade while he discovered what constituted news in a quiet country town where drugged teenagers murdered and abducted and the forces of law and order discussed the ethical problems involved.
The daysheet reminded him of an army bulletin, though marginally more straightforward in style. As for the contents—
He sought mention of Gangoil, but there was no mention of Gangoil, or of The Lady or of the attempt on Columbus.
It took him some time to locate anything at all in the nature of news of actual physical happenings; the front page contained a verbatim account of caucus discussion of a request from the PM’s Ombudsman for reconsideration of certain provisions of the Universal Superannuation Bill. An editorial tailpiece argued vigorously that some system of evaluating and recompensing the more productive lives be sought. Perhaps the debate was hot news among the lizard-blooded survivors of plague and disaster.
The headlines featured nothing sensational in the terms of his own day but on an inside page he came on a column of brief references to ongoing events, and there found three items, widely separated, with no indication that they were related: eighteen more members of the Raft clone had been located and were being questioned regarding their origin. The Controller of Police had offered evidence (Raft imagined Parker’s stone-faced irony as he offered it) that the computer-census system was imperfectly programmed. Teenagers involved in the recent hypno-drug riots were still being treated and sources of drug supply were being tightly scrutinised.
That such a story could be played down into a few passing references told him more of the conditions – and conditioning – of this era than any amount of journalistic outburst. As for the morality of news suppression … well, they saw things differently, and he could scarcely grasp their point of view at all.
Curiously, he searched for reports of crime. He did not believe they had crime tied up to the point where human nature rested content. Did the Jacksons and Parkers imagine that new descriptive terms erased the facts?
They didn’t; not quite. Search located another short column of notices about individuals; he read, in order, of a minor theft, some evasion of duties whose significance eluded him, two suicides (both teenagers, he noted) and seven – he counted again – seven cases of violence involving serious bodily harm, all initiated by teenagers.
All that in one quite brief column, with the duty evasions receiving most attention. The suicides and assaults were dismissed in minimum wordage, little more than announcements that so-and-so was dead by his own hand and someone else had run amok. The lack of emphasis intrigued him, together with the absence of indication that seven cases of extreme violence in one day in so small a community was unusual.
His view of the new world shifted for the nth time as he considered violence among the people who looked forward to the Earthly paradise, and felt it might shift more drastically yet when he talked again with Joe—
—whose voice spoke cheerfully in his ear. ‘Wasn’t long, was I? There’s a spider on your neck. Hold still; I’ll get it.’
Fingers moved round his shoulder, fiddling with the shirt collar, and a second pair of hands plucked at the seams from the other side. He turned his head to see Joe’s face. The boy winked and brushed a finger lightly against the starman’s lips.
‘Got it, Peter?’
‘Yes; only a little one but quite a flycatcher in its way.’
Peter’s voice hinted at sub-text, second meaning. Joe wrote rapidly on a pad while he said, ‘This is Peter Shand. He wants to talk about Barnard’s Star, which ought to make you happy because nobody else does.’
Raft nodded perfunctorily, his eyes on the pad. Peter said that his field was electronics but he was developing an interest in astronomy as a sideline; there were questions regarding the orbits of the two major companions of the star …
Raft answered him genially while he read: ‘Peter is a miniaturisation expert. Did you know your new clothes are bugged?’
He shook his head, furious, but not halting his exposition of orbital peculiarities. The note co
ntinued, ‘Probably only a trace.’
He grabbed the pad and wrote, ‘No. I’m probably decoy.’ It had occurred to him immediately and he was disgusted by Colley’s deviousness; it had to be Colley.
But while Peter talked amiably, Joe wrote, ‘Campion wouldn’t do that to you.’
Raft said aloud, ‘Oh yes, he would.’ And let electronic ears make what they could of that. He was thinking that no matter how the daysheet separated cause and effect, Joe knew his facts and implications. But Joe possibly had special opportunities.
And Joe was scribbling, ‘But he’s your family.’
So there were those who knew what the word meant. Just the same – He snatched the pad and wrote, ‘Where did you hear that?’ He grabbed the boy by the wrist and closed the grip until the boy panted with pain, unable to find words which would pass the filter of the microphone.
And Peter talked with strident clarity. ‘Then there’s the matter of interface. Is there a true definition between solid surface and atmosphere?’ He bent close, projecting meaning. ‘There would seem to be a sphere of indecision, where you might say matter hadn’t made up its mind what it should be.’
Raft evaluated honesty. The youngsters wanted from him something that was less than loyalty to Security’s status quo. And Peter – or somebody behind Peter – had read him with formidable insight. He nodded and released Joe who massaged his wrist, sore but not otherwise upset.
Raft said, ‘A state of flux, perhaps, like a man unsure what attitude he should adopt.’ It seemed obvious, but spur of the moment double-talk was not easy; he covered, clumsily it seemed to him: ‘But let’s not anthropomorphise too much; there’s no place for man on a gas giant. It’s like this new age of yours – I see interfaces everywhere but I’m damned if I understand them.’
Peter was quick. ‘Social interfaces?’
‘Between Security and police, between services and civilians, between the generations. Even, I think, between childhood and youth.’
Joe stopped rubbing his wrist. ‘Natural divisions; they always were, weren’t they?’
‘Here they’re more like rifts.’
Peter said with heavy irony, ‘This is the era of organised rifts. Each man has his place, his assured progress and a more or less ordained end. Society runs on sets of parallel tracks, exchanging signals but not visiting crosstrack. The rifts are ethical; one just does not impress himself on what another does.’
‘If the other does wrong?’
‘Who decides right and wrong?’
‘So, if another country were determined on your destruction you could not ethically do a thing about it?’
‘Oh, we keep a service staff to look after that sort of nonsense. You know – Security.’
He hoped somewhere a listening ear burned. If open ridicule was passable, what would secure action? ‘What if people don’t agree with Security’s handling of a problem?’
‘They make a fuss and sometimes Security gets told by World Council to go stuff itself.’
‘Often?’
Peter said regretfully, ‘No. The truth is that Security, within its charter, is pretty good.’
Joe broke in on him. ‘That bloody charter! We can’t learn by mistakes because we aren’t allowed to have the problems. International affairs are governed by an international ethic enforced by an armed Security. It works, and that’s what’s wrong. It makes life good for anybody who doesn’t give a damn so long as he is left alone. We’re guided; we don’t evolve.’
Raft felt Peter’s hand at his nape, pressing the shirt collar firmly against his flesh while the boy spoke quickly. ‘I have the mike muffled. Some of us want to talk to you privately, to tell you things nobody else will. And we need help. If you agree nod your head, and Joe will arrange a meeting later.’
His hand dropped away; he stood back, smiling; a watcher might have thought he had told a joke.
It was sudden but not altogether unexpected. Raft remembered that young enthusiasms could spill over into violent and dangerous nonsense; there could be risk. But he was being offered knowledge, the unrefusable bait. With brain and muscle and the backing of Security, he thought, he could disengage at any time.
He nodded.
Peter, without visible reaction, led talk back to Barnard’s Star while Raft wrote: ‘Who said we were family?’
They bent over it, making public play of discussion, and Joe scratched quickly, ‘Ears everywhere even in barrack.’
It was evasion, but if his suspicions were facts the whole answer would be complicated and they couldn’t play for ever at exchanging technical diagrams in public.
Joe’s mode of delivering a private message proved mildly breathtaking. During dinner at the barrack he made opportunity to stop by Raft’s table and said, ‘That old place on Princes Highway is still there so the bus drivers say. You want to have a look at it in the morning?’
Impudent, naïve, or just a matter of knowing what he could get away with? ‘Yes, I’d like to see what’s left of it.’
‘All of it; that area hasn’t been axed yet. I’ll pick you up after breakfast.’
‘OK.’ Joe moved off. The two Techs eating at the table looked politely interested. One asked, ‘Nostalgia trip?’
‘A place where I lived as a child.’
It was enough answer.
But there were not yet answers enough for Raft. He fancied Gangoil behind the two boys, using them in its fashion of remote control to ease him gently out of Security’s clasp. It was not wholly fantasy or wilful stretching of coincidence; John would be reaching for him now that the power of The Lady was broken away from the clone.
2
Colley put together a hasty report on the reasons why the crew of Columbus could not be reached. Some of these experimental societies, he thought, showed barely civilised aspects; one could only hope they would fail.
Campion could show only facial expression still. What he felt as he read the barbaric account demanded the nervous capability of his whole body – confined, he felt that he loosened, sundered, collapsed inwardly. The staggering run downhill which had begun when Jackson asked, ‘Do you think your world is so different?’ was completed in a repellent vision of the societies he lived to perpetuate. His stirring consciousness of a life of programmed naïvety perceived with dread what Raft would demand – and which imprinted honesty insisted – he should do.
Colley, expecting bursting anger, did not understand the signs of despair; he took back the report from the eye-level reading rack, asking, ‘What now?’
Campion’s eyes followed the disgusting paper. ‘I’ll tell him. Somebody must. That report makes the thing worldwide; World Security Council will have to move.’
He knew it would not as certainly as he was convinced that it should. If it did so, he could believe again.
Colley cut down the faint hope. ‘No. I queried it with the Gen Sec; no country has lodged complaint, so the ethic stands.’
‘That!’
His tone set Colley’s training and dedication reacting visibly to internal alarms, and he unleashed the angry grin that identified him so closely with Raft. Colley would be tested much farther before he reached the end of this insight and tumult. ‘What will you say if I suggest that the ethic is outmoded, narrow and unpliable and may yet be the destruction of us all?’
Colley’s hesitation stretched interminably but it was at last the trained, unshockable operator who answered: ‘That such a doubt should be referred to the Ombudsman.’
‘Who is dead and will not be replaced, even for the preservation of training-manual psychology. And to jolt your wonderment, it was Jackson who implanted the thought I offered you. Now what?’
Colley sweated; Campion had not thought the man would be so easily reduced. The answer when it came was predictable: ‘That you are a sick man and should not have insisted on retaining control. You should rest.’ His eyes were hunted. ‘Rest completely.’
There would be little rest, and fate could be tem
pted now as well as later. ‘Why then, you should report me to Psychlinic.’
Colley dropped his eyes, spread his hands, made a naïve and monstrous business of his acute discomfort and said a thing Campion could never have dreamed of hearing from him. ‘No. I have always had a special loyalty to you – a private loyalty as well as duty.’ He shook his head as if incomprehensions might fly off in drops. ‘You must rest. Get over this.’
He left abruptly. Campion repressed an impulse to call him back, to talk endlessly about the explosion in his mind. Colley’s declaration amounted to upheaval and outburst. Security men rarely made friends of Security men; they existed together in a wholeness of comprehension which contained much of dependence, even admiration, but little of love; they were brought up together, taught together, guided together to share the ideal that could make them as merciless to each other as to an enemy when the ethic demanded. Yet there must be other Colleys whose efficient exteriors disguised the fact that they were men as well as—
As what?
Robots?
Yes – robots. A good word for all of us.
A disorganised Colley had forgotten to retrieve his report. It lay on the side table, shredding and eroding the ethic which had dictated it, its content forcing Campion at last beyond simple acceptance of his orderly world.
While he felt, through the frustration and anger, that his mind had been liberated he knew that technically, as Psychlinic would see it, his indoctrination had broken. He floated at a stress point of conflicting emotions, facts and duties.
So he was momentarily stampeded by the entrance of a Raft all smiling evil over cold rage – an enemy. But he was not a frightenable man and the reflections of the past hours had called upon powerful moral courage, and when Raft towered over him, a big man enlarged by anger, he had a swift thought: Is this me also, terrifying people with fury? Another part of his conception of the man Campion was cracked and dislodged.
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