Garomma’s face immediately lost its bleakness. “In that case, by all means. But get back before the ceremony is over. I want us to leave together.”
The tall man nodded and rose. He turned to face his leader. “Serve us, Garomma,” he said with outstretched arms. “Serve us, serve us, serve us.” He backed out of the room, always facing the Servant of All.
Out in the corridor, he strode rapidly through the saluting Center of Education guards and into his private elevator. He pressed the third-floor button. And then, as the door swept shut and the car began to rise, he permitted himself a single, gentle, mouth-curling smile.
The trouble he had taken to pound that one concept into Garomma’s thick head: the basic principle in modern scientific government is to keep the government so unobtrusive as to appear nonexistent, to use the illusion of freedom as a kind of lubricant for slipping on invisible shackles—above all, to rule in the name of anything but rulership!
Garomma himself had phrased it in his own laborious fashion one day when, shortly after their great coup, they stood together—both still uncomfortable in the rags of greatness—and watched the construction of the new Hovel of Service in the charred place where the old one had stood for almost half a century. A huge, colorful, revolving sign on top of the unfinished building told the populace that FROM HERE WILL YOUR EVERY WANT AND NEED BE ATTENDED TO, FROM HERE WILL YOU BE SERVED MORE EFFICIENTLY AND PLEASANTLY THAN EVER BEFORE. Garomma had stared at the sign which was being flashed on the video receivers of the world—in the homes as well as in factories, offices, schools and compulsory communal gatherings—every hour on the hour.
“It’s like my father used to say,” he told Moddo at last with the peculiar heavy chuckle he used to identify a thought he felt was entirely original; “the right kind of salesman, if he talks long enough and hard enough, can convince a man that the thickest thorns feel as soft as roses. All he has to do is keep calling them roses, hey, Moddo?”
Moddo had nodded slowly, pretending to be overcome by the brilliance of the analysis and savoring its complexities for a few moments. Then, as always, merely appearing to be conducting an examination of the various latent possibilities in Garomma’s ideas, he had proceeded to give the new Servant of All a further lesson.
He had underlined the necessity of avoiding all outward show of pomp and luxury, something the so-recently dead officials of the previous administration had tended to forget in the years before their fall. He had pointed out that Servants of Mankind must constantly appear to be just that—the humble instruments of the larger mass will. Then anyone who acted contrary to Garomma’s whim would be punished, not for disobeying his ruler, but for acting against the overwhelming majority of the human race.
And he had suggested an innovation that had been in his mind for a long time; the occasional creation of disasters in regions that had been uninterruptedly loyal and obedient. This would accentuate the fact that the Servant of All was very human indeed, that his tasks were overwhelming and that he occasionally grew tired.
This would intensify the impression that the job of coordinating the world’s goods and services had almost grown too complex to be handled successfully. It would spur the various Districts on to uncalled-for prodigies of frantic loyalty and self-regimentation, so that they at least would have the Servant of All’s maximum attention.
“Of course,” Garomma had agreed. “That’s what I said. The whole point is not to let them know that you’re running their lives and that they’re helping you do it. You’re getting the idea.”
He was getting the idea! He, Moddo, who ever since his adolescence had been studying a concept that had originated centuries ago when mankind had begun to emerge from the primitive chaos of self-rule and personal decision into the organized social universe of modern times… he was getting the idea!
He had smirked gratefully. But he had continued applying to Garomma himself the techniques that he was teaching Garomma to apply to the mass of men as a whole. Year in, year out, seemingly absorbed in the immensities of the project he had undertaken on behalf of the Service of Education, he had actually left its planning in the hands of subordinates while he concentrated on Garomma.
And today, while superficially acquiring complete control over the minds of an entire generation of human beings, he had tasted for the first time complete control over Garomma. For the past five years, he had been attempting to crystallize his ascendancy in a form that was simpler to use than complicated need-mechanisms and statement-patterns.
Today, for the first time, the weary hours of delicate, stealthy conditioning had begun to work out perfectly. The hand-signal, the touch-stimulus that he had organized Garomma’s mind to respond to, had resulted in the desired responses every single time!
As he walked down the third-floor corridor to Loob’s modest office, he searched for an adequate expression. It was like, he decided, being able to turn a whole vast liner by one touch on the wheel. The wheel activated the steering engine, the steering engine pushed against the enormous weight of rudder, and the rudder’s movements eventually forced the great ship to swing about and change its course.
No, he reflected, let Garomma have his glorious moments and open adulation, his secret palaces and multitudes of concubines. He, Moddo, would settle for the single, occasional touch… and complete control.
The anteroom to Loob’s office was empty. He stood there impatiently for a moment, then called out: “Loob! Isn’t anyone taking care of this place? I’m in a hurry!”
A plump little man with a tiny pointed beard on his chin came scurrying out of the other room. “My secretary—everyone had to go downstairs when the Servant of All entered—things are so disrupted—she hasn’t returned yet. But I was careful,” he went on, catching up to his own breath, “to cancel all my appointments with other patients while you were in the building. Please come in.”
Moddo stretched himself out on the couch in the Healer’s office. “I can only spare about—about fifteen minutes. I have a very important decision to make, and I have a headache that’s gouging out my—my brains.”
Loob’s fingers circled Moddo’s neck and began massaging the back of his head with a serene purposefulness. “I’ll do what I can. Now try to relax. Relax. That’s right. Relax. Doesn’t this help?”
“A lot,” Moddo sighed. He must find some way of working Loob into his personal entourage, to be with him whenever he had to travel with Garomma. The man was invaluable. It would be wonderful to have him always available in person. Just a matter of conditioning Garomma to the thought. And now that could be handled with the same suggestion. “Do you mind if I just talk?” he inquired.”I don’t feel very much—very much like free association.”
Loob sat down in the heavily upholstered chair behind the desk. “Do whatever you want. If you care to, go into what’s troubling you at the moment. All we can hope to do in fifteen minutes is help you relax.”
Moddo began to talk.
This was the day of complete control…
Loob, the Healer of Minds, the Assistant to the Third Assistant Servant of Education, threaded his fingers through the small, triangular beard that was his professional badge and allowed himself to luxuriate in the sensation of ultimate power, absolute power, power such as no human being had even dared to dream of before this day.
Complete control. Complete…
It would have been extremely satisfying to have handled the Servant of Security matter directly, but such pleasures would come in time. His technicians in the Bureau of Healing Research had almost solved the problem he had set them. Meanwhile he still had revenge and the enjoyment of unlimited dominion.
He listened to Moddo talking of his difficulties in a carefully guarded, nonspecific fashion and held up a round fat hand to cover his grin. The man actually believed that after seven years of close therapeutic relationship, he could conceal such details from Loob!
But of course. He had to believe it. Loob had spent the first two y
ears restructuring his entire psyche upon that belief, and then—and only then—had begun to effect transference on a total basis. While the emotions Moddo felt toward his parents in childhood were being duplicated relative to the Healer, Loob had begun to probe in the now unsuspicious mind. At first he hadn’t believed what the evidence suggested. Then, as he got to know the patient much better he became completely convinced and almost breathless at the scope of his windfall.
For more than twenty-five years, Garomma, as the Servant of All, had ruled the human race, and for longer than that, Moddo, as a sort of glorified personal secretary, had controlled Garomma in every important respect.
So, for the past five years, he, Loob, as psychotherapist and indispensable crutch to an uncertain, broken ego, had guided Moddo and thus reigned over the world, undisputed, unchallenged—and thoroughly unsuspected.
The man behind the man behind the throne. What could be safer than that?
Of course, it would be more efficient to fasten his therapeutic grip directly on Garomma. But that would bring him out in the open far too much. Being the Servant of All’s personal mental physician would make him the object of jealous scrutiny by every scheming high-echelon cabal.
No, it was better to be the one who had custody of the custodian, especially when the custodian appeared to be the most insignificant man in all the Hovel of Service officialdom.
And then, some day, when his technicians had come up with the answer he required, he might dispose of the Servant of Education and control Garomna at firsthand, with the new method.
He listened with amusement to Moddo discussing the Servant of Security matter in terms of a hypothetical individual in his own department who was about to be replaced. The question was: which one of two extremely able subordinates should be given his job?
Loob wondered if the patient had any idea how transparent his subterfuges were. No, they rarely did. This was a man whose upset mind had been so manipulated that its continued sanity depended on two factors: the overpowering need to consult Loob whenever anything even mildly delicate came up, and the belief that he could be consulted without revealing the actual data of the situation.
When the voice on the couch had come to the end of its ragged, wandering summation, Loob took over. Smoothly, quietly, almost tonelessly, he reviewed what Moddo had said. On the surface he was merely restating the concepts of his patient in a more coherent way. Actually, he was reformulating them so that, considering his personal problems and basic attitudes, the Servant of Education would have no alternative. He would have to select the younger of the two candidates, the one whose background had included the least opposition to the Healers Guild.
Not that it made very much difference. The important thing was the proof of complete control. That was implicit in having made Moddo convince Garomma of the necessity of getting rid of a Servant of Security at a time when the Servant of All faced no particular mental crisis. When, in fact, his euphoria was at its height.
But there was, admittedly, the additional pleasure in finally destroying the man who, years ago as Chief of the Forty-seventh District’s Security, had been responsible for the execution of Loob’s only brother. The double achievement was as delicious as one of those two-flavor tarts for which the Healer’s birthplace was famous. He sighed reminiscently.
Moddo sat up on the couch. He pressed his large, spreading hands into the fabric on either side and stretched. “You’d be amazed how much help this one short session has been, Loob. The—the headache’s gone, the—the confusion’s gone. Just talking about it seems to clarify everything. I know exactly what I have to do now.”
“Good,” drawled Loob the Healer in a gentle, carefully detached voice.
“I’ll try to get back tomorrow for a full hour. And I’ve been thinking of having you transferred to my personal staff, so that you can straighten out—straighten out the kinks at the time they occur. I haven’t reached a decision on it yet, though.”
Loob shrugged and escorted his patient to the door. “That’s entirely up to you. However you feel I can help you most.”
He watched the tall, husky man walking down the corridor to the elevator. “I haven’t reached a decision on it yet, though.” Well, he wouldn’t—not until Loob did. Loob had put the idea into his mind six months ago, but had deferred having him take action on it. He wasn’t sure that it would be a good idea to get even that close to the Servant of All as yet. And there was that wonderful little project in the Bureau of Healing Research which he still wanted to give maximum daily attention.
His secretary came in and went right to work at her typewriter. Loob decided to go downstairs and check on what had been done today. With all the fanfare attendant upon the Servant of All’s arrival to celebrate complete control, the researchers’ routine had no doubt been seriously interrupted. Still, the solution might come at any time. And he liked to examine their lines of investigation for potential fruitfulness: these technicians were blunderingly unimaginative!
As he walked down to the main floor, he wondered if Moddo, anywhere in the secret depths of his psyche, had any idea of how much he had come to depend on the Healer, how thoroughly he needed him. The fellow was such a tangle of anxiety and uncertainty—losing his parents as a child, the way he had, of course had not helped too much, but his many repressions had been in existence even then. He had never even remotely suspected that the reason he wanted Garomma to be the ostensible leader was because he was afraid of taking personal responsibility for anything. That the fake personality he was proud of presenting to the world was his real personality, the difference being that he had learned to use his fears and timidity in a positive fashion. But only up to a point. Seven years ago, when he had looked up Loob (“a fast bit of psychotherapy for some minor problems I’ve been having”), he’d been on the point of complete collapse. Loob had repaired the vast flapping structure on a temporary basis and given it slightly different functions. Functions for Loob.
He couldn’t help wondering further if the ancients would have been able to do anything basic for Moddo. The ancients, according to the Oral Tradition at least, had developed, just before the beginning of the modern era, a psychotherapy that accomplished wonders of change and personal reorganization for the individual.
But to what end? No serious attempt to use the method for its obvious purpose, for the only purpose of any method… power. Loob shook his head. Those ancients had been so incredibly naive! And so much of their useful knowledge had been lost. Concepts like superego merely existed in the Oral Tradition of the Healers Guild as words; there was no clue as to their original meaning. They might be very useful today, properly applied.
On the other hand, were most of the members of his own modern Healers Guild, across the wide sea, any less naive, including his father and the uncle who was now its reigning head? From the day when he had passed the Guild’s final examinations and begun to grow the triangular beard of master status, Loob had seen that the ambitions of his fellow-members were ridiculously limited. Here, in this very city, where, according to legend, the Guild of the Healers of Minds had originated, each member asked no more of life than to use his laboriously learned skill at transference to acquire power over the lives often or fifteen wealthy patients.
Loob had laughed at these sparse objectives. He had seen the obvious goal which his colleagues had been overlooking for years. The more powerful the individual whom you subjected to transference and in whom you created a complete dependence, the more power you, as his healer, enjoyed. The world’s power center was on Capital Island across the great ocean to the west. And it was there that Loob determined to go.
It hadn’t been easy. The strict rules of custom against changing your residence except on official business had stood in his way for a decade. But once the wife of the Forty-seventh District’s Communications Commissioner had become his patient, it got easier. When the commissioner had been called to Capital Island for promotion to the Second Assistant Servantship of Co
mmunication, Loob had gone with the family; he was now indispensable. Though them he had secured a minor job in the Service of Education. Through that job, practicing his profession on the side, he had achieved enough notice to come to the august attention of the Servant of Education himself.
He hadn’t really expected to go this far. But a little luck, a great deal of skill and constant, unwinking alertness had made an irresistible combination. Forty-five minutes after Moddo had first stretched out on his couch, Loob had realized that he, with all of his smallness and plumpness and lack of distinction, was destined to rule the world.
Now the only question was what to do with that rule. With wealth and power unlimited.
Well, for one thing there was his little research project. That was very interesting, and it would serve, once it came to fruition, chiefly to consolidate and insure his power. There were dozens of little pleasures and properties that were now his, but their enjoyment tended to wear off with their acquisition. And finally there was knowledge.
Knowledge. Especially forbidden knowledge. He could now enjoy it with impunity. He could collate the various Oral Traditions into one intelligible whole and be the only man in the world who knew what had really happened in the past. He had already discovered, through the several teams of workers he had set at the task, such tidbits as the original name of his birthplace, lost years ago in a numbering system that had been created to destroy patriotic associations inimical to the world state. Long before it had been the Fifth City of the Forty-seventh District, he had learned, it had been Austria, the glorious capital of the proud Viennese Empire. And this island on which he stood had been Havanacuba, no doubt once a great empire in its own right which had established hegemony over all other empires somewhere in the dim war-filled beginnings of modern times.
Seven Come Infinity Page 23