“He is asking you to mate with him,” said Takeido, and sniggered.
“Maybe he had a daughter like you once,” suggested Burek.
“He is commenting on facial similarities between our species and his,” said Kordan.
“He is asking you to see that our kind and his are much alike,” said Dulcifer, “and that you are much prettier than he is.”
“He is going to cut your eyes out,” said Constanza.
The question was not resolved. As if vexed, the leader made a signal with his left hand. The six were led up the steps and into the roofless building. As they passed, they saw men in robes making candles. They went closely by the two masses of metal, all veined with pipes and taps, and stepped under the great wooden framework which reached up to the open sky. Some way back, almost against the stone walls of the cavern, was a range of stalls. To these stalls they were led.
Each booth contained a seat, long fetters attached two to each opposite wall, and little else. Despite protests, they were chained hand and foot.
“This is just a filthy prison!” groaned Takeido. “I can’t take much more of this.”
“There are worse prisons than this all over Earth,” said Burek.
“For that remark you will be reported,” said Sygiek, with something of her old fire. “Our places of confinement are part of an elaborate judicial system, and are designed for re-education.”
“More to the point,” said Kordan, “observe that we have been promoted. We are no longer caged like animals but like human beings. They must keep us captive, inevitably, but they have installed us in a sacred place. What is more, I believe the president is apologizing.”
“Apologizing!” said Takeido. He buried his face in his hands and began to laugh softly.
To judge by the leader’s soothing tone, he was attempting something like an apology. He clapped his hands. An object was brought and handed to Kordan. He examined it.
“It is a foil-page book,” he said. “It has some diagrams, so perhaps it is a textbook. Inevitably the language is some antique capitalist tongue. I’ve never seen the hieroglyphs before. It’s not the Cyrillic or the Germanic, both of which I can decipher. It could be American.”
As he handed it carelessly back, he said, “Thanks. Impossible to read.”
“I doubt if he can read it either,” said Dulcifer. “It’s just a relic.”
“That does not matter,” said Burek. “He tries to show you that he reveres something which comes from off this world. You don’t imagine they turn out foil-page books in this damned cave, do you?”
The book was taken away, the leader made another brief speech, bowed and withdrew, his retinue following.
X
They were left alone for the rest of the day, except when the aged crone brought them separate bowls of a watery soup, tasting of mint. The hours passed slowly and the benches were hard. Although they were able to look about over the doors of the cell and over the low walls which divided them one from another, the hours crawled by with awful sloth. They speculated about rescue, knowing that they would be missed at Unity and Peace City by now. Maintaining official optimism became particularly difficult during the long stretches of the afternoon.
The order in which they sat in their cells was: Burek, Kordan, Constanza, Takeido, Dulcifer, Sygiek.
“I will tell you all what I feel and think,” Takeido burst out, when silence had ruled them for a long while. “I know that to do so is frowned upon, is either in bad taste or often punishable, but after all we shall never get back to the System, that’s clear. First of all, I wish that I was lying by the river, with Rubyna Constanza in my arms, making love to her with her naked body against mine. Excuse me, Rubyna, but that’s my devout wish.”
Constanza said nothing. She bit her little finger and looked down.
“‘When one wolf howls, he howls for the whole pack,’” Burek quoted. He laughed.
After more silence, Takeido said, “So much for my desires. Now for my intellect. This may be even more distasteful to you. I have little scientific knowledge beyond my own discipline of exobotany, but I have speculated more than I have ever revealed. What I say, though based on new experience, is founded on old meditation.
“All right. Our lofty comrade, Academician Jerezy Kordan, is an official historian, but I daresay we have all acquired a little history, despite the many prohibitions. After all the élite knows how to bend its own rules, none better, eh? So. As I understand it, the old homo sapiens from which we sprang was haunted by many ghosts, all concerned with the inherited imperfections of their governance systems—I mean that becoming human entailed, in evolutionary terms, adding new control systems to old. So there was some built-in conflict, This, homo sapiens tried to explain in many ways throughout its history. A series of meddlers was invented, most of them external to man—projections, you might say, from inside to outside, for the greater comfort of the uncomfortable sapiens. Gods, ghosts, fates, devils, elves, fairies, spirits, golems. All were meddlers. Great religious and philosophical systems were built in order to account for physiological discomforts, many of them holding sway over men’s minds for hundreds of years. The projections showed more durability than did brief homo sapiens individuals.
“As time went on, sapiens gained more control over nature but no more over himself. He could enslave the elements but remained himself a slave.
“During this period, the more advanced sections of sapiens changed their projections. New models were made to conform with a more sophisticated world-outlook. They embodied their discomforts in new metaphysical monsters—even in whole populated planets full of them. As we now know, such things cannot exist, but their imaginations were wild with discomfort. They also dreamed of perfect machines, things of metal which would not suffer from their internal disabilities. Robots, which we call radniks. Robots had only electronic circuits and no dreams, no internal confusions. Dreams, I should explain, were discharges of short-circuited nervous energy, generated by the uncomfortable conflict of the internal systems, which disturbed sapiens’ sleep and were almost as important as sleep.
“Their entire science, though few of them realized it, was, in fact, incantatory, like the rituals we watched last night, designed to cast out the devils within. Eventually, they did design a perfect system. Of course, the prototype of a perfect political system had to come first, otherwise such experiments would have been forbidden by power-crazed governments.
“Sapiens did eventually see a way—through genetic engineering, and what we now term technoeugenics—to breed men and women without their own discomforts, their physiological handicaps. This is what we were saying yesterday.
“They bred us.
“That way, they also generated their own downfall. Uniformis had to take over their chaotic world.
“Well, comrades, you know what has happened since. Or what has not happened since. We have forged slowly on ever since we were invented. We have gone on and on, generation after generation. The old world has slowly died under our touch. We still keep a few animals, and, I believe, even a few homo sapiens in zoos. We are logical, and we understand the logic of controlling everything, from ourselves to the whole Solar System. Yet, apart from abolishing many sapiens features of life, like womb-birth and family and art and religion, what have we done? Nothing. Nothing. In a million years, we have in fact achieved less than sapiens achieved in a century or so.”
“This is all rubbish,” said Sygiek. “You are suffering from food-poisoning.”
“You would naturally think it so, but you can spout later if you wish, Utopianist Millia Sygiek,” said Takeido smoothly. “I have listened to your sort, you damned radniks, spouting all my life. Now I’m going to have my turn. I just want to say that there is another point of view to be put, and in the System it can never be put. There’s no way of putting it. Know what I mean, comrades? If you speak out, you are an enemy of the system. Is our way of life then so insecure? Can one question make a whole statemen
t collapse?
“Maybe so—when you look at the little we have accomplished. True, there’s our method of gulf travel which sapiens could never have developed, since cratocalcs is a form of math beyond their mentalities—and beyond mine, I must add. Yet for all that, sapiens would by now have ventured farther than we. A million years of Biocom, and all we’ve done is entrench ourselves in the System like woodlice in an old log!”
In a coldly controlled voice, Kordan said, “Utopianist, your mind is dark indeed—and you shall have thorough treatment if we leave here alive—if that pitiable ritual we witnessed last night can provoke such subversive ferment!”
“No! No! Yes, yes, my mind is dark, you stinking intellectual pig, because the system forces us all to be separate from one another in the cursed name of Unity!” Takeido was kneeling up on his bench now as far as the shackles would allow him, and shouting across Constanza’s cell at Kordan, who faced him whitely. Constanza cowered and covered her ears. “We can’t trust each other because of the constant fear of betrayal—what the state calls conscience is just a vile pattern of betrayal. We can’t trust each other—I dare to speak now merely because trust and betrayal are irrelevant in these circumstances. But you’re right, yes, that ritual last night did make a ferment in my breast.”
He was choking with emotion as he struck himself on his chest, rattling his chains. “I thought of the endurance of these people, of how they still care for their young, for instance, instead of rearing them like laboratory animals as we do. They survive in impossible conditions. I’ll tell you—I’ll tell you all, you numb utopians. I’ll tell you, if a few hundred of us were set down on a deserted strip of Lysenka now, we should sit on our bottoms and talk and argue and bullshit until we perished. That would be our logic. We’re just robots, radniks.”
“Our talk is superior to their ritual,” commented Burek. “Sit down, Takeido, sit down and shut up. Yours is an immature argument. You do no good to anyone.”
Takeido broke out anew.
“Ha, you wouldn’t support me, would you, Utopianist Burek? You are just an isolated individual posing as an individualist to retain some shred of self-respect. Yet you can neither give nor receive help—just the sort of puppet the system wants!” He twisted round the other way and shouted to Dulcifer. “And what about you, Vul Dulcifer? Do you support me? Every now and again you say little daring things! In our hearts we know why—yes, we know why! You’re an agent provocateur, a member of the stinking rotten USRP! Don’t bother to deny it. I’m not afraid to say what everyone has guessed.”
“They’ve guessed wrong if so,” said Dulcifer. “Sit down, comrade—we’ve got enough troubles without your adding to them.”
“Yes, please sit down, Ian,” said Constanza.
“I’ll sit down,” said Takeido. “I’ll sit down because Rubyna asks me, and she’s the only decent person here. I’ll sit down, but first I’ll tell you my great idea. It’s a way we might break the impossible stranglehold that Biocom has on everyone in the System. I’ll say it whether you support me or not.
“We should forget our carefully taught prejudices and see that these savages here are to be admired. Yes, admired! They should not be obliterated. We should see that they are preserved. More than that, they should be taken back, every last man, woman and child, and established in a large settlement on Earth or Mars. Not all the degenerate animal-forms; simply those tribes—this one and any others like it—who have managed to retain their humanity over more than a million years in the face of impossible odds. I believe we need them. After a million stultifying years of World Unity, I believe we need sapiens as they once thought they needed us. That’s all.”
“That’s quite enough,” said Constanza, sharply. “You speak heresy. Sit down.”
The tone of her voice deflated Takeido. He slumped back on his bench and said no more.
“There’s much one could say,” said Kordan. His voice died; he did not say it.
Nobody else spoke for a long while. Most of them drifted off to sleep. Only Sygiek sat upright, scarcely moving, looking ahead into the gloom of the cavern.
She it was who saw the beginning of the end of the day. The clouds parted overhead, the sky faded to pearl, and the cave-dwellers began to return to their warrens. More dead animals were brought in. Children began to run about. Priests moved again in the temple, candles were lit. Men marched in with torches, there were the sounds of voices, shouts. The fires were stoked and an aroma of cooking filled the air.
She turned and roused Dulcifer. One by one, the others stirred and sat up, groaning with discomfort.
Dulcifer looked over the cell wall at Takeido.
“Utopianist Takeido, despite your insults and exaggerations, I was interested in what you had to say about inadequacies of the system and our needing homo sapiens.”
“Forget it. I know what your interest is worth.” Takeido would not look up.
“Your youthfulness makes you believe that because the system’s only slowly forging ahead something is wrong. When you grow a good deal older, your beliefs will perform the same mirror-reversal that mine did; you will come to understand that it was sapiens’ mad unchecked development which was the symptom of something wrong. I daresay that, as you claim, sapiens would have overrun half the galaxy by now. But remember what a mess they made of Earth! Don’t get sentimental about them. Think what a mess they would have made of the galaxy. No, our cautious way is better.
“But I cannot hope to persuade you to my view any more than you can persuade me to yours; it is not argument which changes our minds on such matters, but time.”
Takeido shook his head and looked at his manacled hands. In a low voice he said, “I suppose you are equally incapable of accepting the argument that we are in danger of becoming exactly the sort of robots that sapiens envisioned?”
When some seconds had passed, and Dulcifer did not reply, Kordan said, “Whether or not we leave this cave alive, there is no reason why we should tolerate seditious discussion. The robots are living here, going through their mumbo-jumbo every day and night.
“You find a hunting life exciting, no doubt, Takeido, because you are young. But there is more challenge in the way of life our system has set itself. Our challenge is existential. It cannot be cured temporarily by a full belly or a wench. We suppress our self, we surrender our identity, for the greater benefit of society and the state. We are aware of the cost of doing so, we are also aware that the condition of life is tragic. But that is the way we have chosen and we must pursue it throughout life—without pity for our own weaknesses, or for the weaknesses of others.”
“Such as mine,” said Takeido.
“Such as yours,” agreed Kordan. “If we do return to the System, we shall meet again when you are on trial. I shall be in the witness box.”
Sneering, Takeido raised a finger at him.
Again silence fell, and they watched as more figures entered the cavern. The patch of clouded sky overhead was growing dark. Cave-dwellers were entering the foreparts of the temple, parading solemnly round with candles, saluting the priests.
“The monotony of life!” exclaimed Sygiek. “We seem to have been imprisoned here for years. The region outside must be surveyed by satellites if the strike is over, and by flycraft from Peace City … If only one of us could get out …”
“Let’s see what happens during this evening’s ceremonies,” said Dulcifer. “I have a feeling that they are going to make use of us. We may be able to snatch a chance then. Never despair, Millia, never despair.”
As on the previous evening, family groups were entering; there were women among them with babies at the breast, and small children who kept silent. The complicated charades followed, meaningless to the observers. Then the people joined together into a unified group, ascended the steps, and entered the temple.
They bowed, low and began to rub the palms of their hands on the two solid masses of machinery which stood below the central wooden scaffolding.
“After all this while, the original engines would have rusted away,” said Burek. “These could be replicas. I had the thought that this is a kind of dumb-show about repairing the machines. Do you think so, Dulcifer? You’re an engineer as well as a part-time philosopher.”
“I’m an engineer but I don’t know what goes on in those savages’ scruffy heads. I can see what goes on in their bodies. They are a poor undernourished lot.”
They had plenty of time to observe thin shanks, protruding bones, and sore-infected legs before the ceremony played itself out and the company retired. Now the family groups assembled round the central fires. Again the white-haired woman in flowing robes came forth and proceeded to relate a long story. “Can it be the same story?” asked Sygiek. “Surely they can’t bear it every night. It must be different.”
“Indoctrination,” said Takeido, succinctly. It was the first word he had spoken for some while.
Eventually the food came on. It was served as before by the women in aprons. The man with the bag across his stomach came and collected tokens from everyone.
“Yes, you see—capitalism!” exclaimed Constanza. “They have to—to make a money payment for everything. That is their god!”
Food was brought to the prisoners. They were exempt from payment. This evening, there was a bowl for each. They ate without comment, avoiding each other’s gaze. Even Constanza ate.
The evening wore on. After the food came another circus act, featuring two creatures with long necks, who cried as they ran about before being killed. When it was time for the next part of the ceremony, the leader appeared with his retinue. Everyone stood. A gong sounded. The leader raised an imperious hand in greeting.
He walked grandly through the temple and halted before the stalls housing the six prisoners. Striking a posture, he addressed them loudly, so that everyone present could hear. Then he motioned to his men to release them, and their shackles were struck from them.
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