The second one said that he had tried to reach me on my mobile, he had left messages, was I still in Germany, and would I kindly contact him please.
No, I wouldn't. It was between them and Jeremy now, at least until they located me. And I couldn't think why they should want to take the time and trouble to do that, nor could I imagine them being able to construct any legitimate justification to support a continued intervention in my private affairs. And even if they were to do so, it would be legally unsustainable; I would sue them for the illicit harassment of a citizen and his rights, you bet.
No, I wasn't worried. I was more worried about whether I could find a way to save Naviera Pujol and that was what I was thinking about in the taxi all the way to the office. And when I arrived, I still had no worthwhile ideas, no theories, no concepts.
Pedro congratulated me on my appointment in the corridor outside my new office—Alfonso's ex-office. Pedro seemed genuinely pleased about the appointment; perhaps he hadn't been enjoying his working relationship with Alfonso very much, who knows? He told me that Sr. Pujol had announced Alfonso's departure—and my nomination as his replacement—to all of the company's employees including our dock manager in Barcelona and the ships' captains, who had already informed their respective crews. I also received polite congratulations from the other members of the office staff with the exception of María. She didn't say a word, just deposited the day's invoices on my desk. Well, it was up to her; if she wanted to create a problem, that was fine by me. Because it would be her problem, not mine.
I went down onto the dock and up onto the ship—the Gerona Sol this morning—and introduced myself to the captain. He was short and stocky and he had sandy, tousled hair and his name was Antonio. He was an animated, jolly kind of fellow and he too congratulated me on my appointment as his new boss; but he had nothing much else to say to me, other than to mention the ridiculously high number of dockworkers in Barcelona. Half of them just stand around doing nothing, he said. He struck me as being a mariner's mariner, interested only in his ship and his crew and in ensuring that he fulfilled his responsibilities towards both as skillfully as possible, and not too concerned about very much else going on in the world. That was my impression anyway, and it suited me fine. That kind of employee tends to be one of the kind you can rely on completely.
It is an iron-cast rule of mine to learn something about the products or services your client is selling, no matter what they are. So I told Antonio I would like to experience a voyage to Barcelona; would Friday night be convenient? No problem, he said, we will be sailing as usual at 7 p.m.
I went back to the office and started sifting through the small pile of invoices. I paused when I came across one I didn't understand. It was for the monthly rental of thousands of pallets. What did we need pallets for? And why would we rent them for goodness' sake? I went into the outer office area and asked Pedro.
"Well," he said, "they used to be needed for delivering split-load container cargo."
"What is that exactly?" I asked.
"It's when small volume shipments for different customers are all loaded into a single container. They need to be split on arrival for individual delivery."
"You said 'used to be'?" I asked.
"There may be one or two exceptions still," Pedro replied, "but we usually don't handle small volume freight anymore."
"So where are all the pallets, Pedro?"
"Well, Alfonso used to control that personally for some reason. They are spread all over the island, I think. I know of one large customer in Binissalem who should have a few hundred of them in or around his warehouse."
"Let us go and take a look Pedro. Now."
And so we did. It was only about half an hour away. And the customer’s supervisor showed us about forty old pallets lying around and half of them were broken. He was extremely assertive with regard to the fact that they had no more pallets.
"Pedro," I said when we were back in the office, "we are not going to pay any more rent for these things. We shouldn't have rented them in the first place. It's stupid. If you want pallets, you buy them. Could you please contact the company we're paying the rent to, and find out what needs to be done?"
He got back to me about ten minutes later. There was a rental contract and the only way out of it was an option at each year-end to return some or all of the pallets in pristine condition, or else to buy them. But we clearly couldn't return the pallets. Nobody knew where they were or even where they were supposed to be. Most had presumably disappeared over the years and of the few that we might possibly find, their condition would no doubt be similar to the ones in Binissalem. I asked Pedro to arrange a meeting for me with the hiring company in Barcelona. Next Monday, I said, in the afternoon.
The crap you find in some companies when you start to scratch the surface has long since ceased to be a source of amazement to me. I mean, this pallet business is both asinine and downright pathetic, there is nothing else to say about it. But it is a minor item, it won't be saving the company, it is just an unnecessary cost which needs to be surgically removed.
In the afternoon, I met with our chief communist and asked him what issues he and his dockworkers had, if any. They had one. The wharf crane was dangerous. It needed a complete overhaul and the 'corona', whatever that was, needed replacing. Very expensive, he said, he didn't know how much, but it would be well into six figures. A few months ago, the top part of the crane, including the operator's cabin, had started rocking back and forth when lifting containers and Alfonso had therefore decided to restrict container weights to a maximum of thirty tons instead of forty. "Instead of repairing the crane?" I asked. "Yes,” came the reply, “he said we had no money for that."
So we were losing some business to our competition because we couldn't repair our crane. And the crane wouldn't remain as it was, it would get worse. In fact, I was surprised the dockworkers were continuing to work under these conditions. I didn't say so, but a bad accident, maybe even a fatal one, seemed a distinct possibility to me. And I was now the guy responsible, wide open to an ocean hurricane of annihilating legal consequences. And the more I learned about this and the more I learned about that, the more I started to think that this company was too far gone for me to be able to save it anyway. But in spite of that, I should really go and visit the company's bank tomorrow. Courtesy on the one hand, and also the need to check out the bank's mood with regard to our mountain of debt and the possibility of a bit more to at least fix the crane, if not the ship's deck. I asked María to fix the meeting for me.
* * * * *
When I got back to the hotel, a swim in the sea did nothing to improve on my pessimism. I had some dinner and some more Barolo with it, and that improved nothing either.
Jeremy's phone rang.
"Hi, Peter," he said, "Geneva is a great city. Not that I have been able to see much. There are a few thousand police and soldiers guarding everything, armed patrol boats are on the lake, fighter jets patrol the air, helicopters monitor the ground, and it is all a perfect, but perfect, example of how and what your human race is. Similar to your World Economic Forums in Davos and any other meetings of importance around your planet. Humans wanting to murder other humans, and other humans ready to kill in order to stop them. Crazy, crazy, crazy, but never mind. I escaped from the conference center located on the road to Nyon and made it into town. I have just had a meal of onion soup and raclette in the old town."
He sounded cheerful enough. Presumably he had suffered no major ridicule during today's summit meeting, nor had anyone made the mistake of trying to arrest him.
"Hi, Jeremy. And how did the meeting go?"
"Ah well, it went well I suppose. And for all I know, they are still at it. I was only in the meeting myself for about two hours."
"So what happened?"
"Well, more or less as you might expect, Peter. I was subjected to a lot of questioning about the Mars event and that produced the two main foreseeable reactions. Most of them—but ev
en so, not all of them—are convinced of what they refer to as my 'telepathic weapon potential' and are significantly frightened by it. I think they are also frightened of each other. They know that every single one of them in that room would be working out ways to try and get hold of me and to harness me, for their own selfish, unilateral purposes, and that whoever managed to achieve that would, assuming I ‘functioned’ properly, rule the world. And that all the rest of them—the other countries—would be toeing the line and singing to the tune of the dominant power for, probably, ever and ever. Power seems to be the only thing your species is hungry for, power over the other members of its species. As I say, a totally foreseeable reaction."
"And the other foreseeable reaction?"
"Understandably the same as yours, Peter. They think I am mad. They didn't say so of course, they are too scared. But they don't believe a word about aliens. And I don't think they would even if they were to be confronted with some aliens in physical form—impossible of course, as I have already explained—or even if they were able to 'capture' some of these creatures and subject them to scientific tests, probe them, analyze them, dissect them mentally or physically, or whatever."
"O.K.," I said, "so they reacted as you knew they would. And what then?"
"A lot of things, Peter. Firstly, and although my 'telepathic weapon potential' is more or less a proven fact, they want still more proof. And if I supply that, they want to arrange another urgent summit meeting for next Wednesday, also in Geneva, and I have to be present at that one also. So at least they accept the urgency and the possible enormity of what they are dealing with here. Fear, Peter, as we have said, is the one driving force to which every single member of any species will react. And the few doubters, the few who aren't yet scared enough, they want some additional proof of a kind that will scare them. Properly. Either that, or they are not going to be interested in any more summit meetings or in anything else, I shouldn't think. They will just carry on either causing or administrating your planet’s self-inflicted disasters as before.
"And so what additional proof are they asking for?"
"They are leaving that up to me. But it has to be something that will occur on Earth. Closer to home. It seems that, for most people—at least for those who are not scientists—something which happens close to home is more realistic than something which happens a short way away, on Mars for example. Don't ask me why. As you yourself might say, Peter, it's just the way they are."
"Indeed it is. And are you going to do it, whatever it is?"
"Yes. I will think about it and let them—and you, Peter—know tomorrow. What they do not know, however, is that I shall not be attending their next summit meeting, nor any other meetings after that. After this next event, your species is on its own. It has to prove that it has the will, the desire and the ability to change itself. All by itself. And then, that it is capable of implementing that change. I explained all of this to them in detail and I explained what would probably happen to them if they didn't. The disbelief and skepticism filling that room could not have been greater if I had said that either Jesus Christ or Mohammed would be returning in order to speak to them next week. But one thing they were interested in was my little biology lesson."
"Ah, yes. I wanted to hear about that."
I could hear him walking up and down, presumably in his hotel room, and the occasional gaps were no doubt him pausing to look out of the room's window.
"I told them," he went on, " that I could understand their disbelief, but that what I now wanted to explain should be of interest to them and their scientists irrespective of the existence of aliens or otherwise. And irrespective of the existence of a fifth dimension or otherwise, and irrespective of the reality of the infinity concept or otherwise, and irrespective of the many other realities external to their solar system and of which they were unaware. And what I am about to explain, I said, is an inevitable and essential component of the transformational process required to mutate a species, in this case to mutate a non-benevolent species into a benevolent one. And I expounded briefly, and without any complex scientific details, on the subject…and they listened."
"And the essential component you referred to was a biological component."
"Exactly. And I tried to explain to them why. I told them that one could reasonably enough assert that they, the meeting's attendees, constituted the representatives of the human race. And that they were therefore in the position if they so wished, right now in this meeting, to create a new law, a global law, to abolish the manufacture, sale and possession of all weapons on this planet, either by individuals or by states—except initially for a single small central arsenal, under their joint control, which might be necessary to enforce the implementation of the new law."
"I bet that provoked a lot of comments."
"Actually, it did not. There was a bit of murmuring and some wise and cynical shaking of heads, but nobody said anything. And then I told them why they wouldn't do it."
"You did?"
"Yes. You won't do it, I said, even though you can, because you are human beings. And human beings are animals which do not have it in their nature to be peaceable, I said. And that is the crux of the matter; it is not in your nature. You are too aggressive and you are too distrustful of others. By which I mean of yourselves, since you are all members of the same species. It is a biological problem."
"And did they have anything to say to that?"
"Indeed they did. The president of the United States in particular. He took the stand and started referring to the vast amounts of research performed by his country in the fields of biology, physiology, behavioral sciences and so on and so forth, and he said that many of their experts argue against a biological cause for aggressiveness in humans. He continued by saying that those experts cite many causes for aggression including ethnic ones, religious ones, territorial ones, economic ones, social ones involving either family or external influences, and miscellaneous other ones including the effects of certain chemicals; he gave alcohol as an example. He also mentioned the drive for social dominance as a frequent reason for gang warfare and other group conflicts. And he continued in that vein for a considerable length of time and concluded that it was more or less a proven fact that biological origins did not enter into the equation."
"Interesting."
"Interesting enough for me to point out to him the major error in these findings, while at the same time asking him why he didn't refer to those experts of his who do support biology as the cause. I told him that the ones who reject a biological explanation are guilty, extremely guilty, of confusing confrontational and other abnormal situations—and the resulting manifestations of aggressiveness—with the very cause of it all. If for example, I explained, you have a problem of religious differences, then your reaction can be either to tackle it with aggressiveness or, alternatively, to tackle it in a peaceful manner. So why choose aggression? What is the reason for reacting with aggression instead of in some other way? The reason, I told him, is biological. It is in your nature."
"Did he accept that?"
"I don't know. But he didn't say anything more, and nor did anybody else, and so I continued. The human species, I said, has been capable throughout its history of perpetrating the most horrifying acts of violence on its fellow humans. These acts of violence occur not only between different states and different societies, but also within them. There have been wars since before your recorded history, I said, and you, Mr. President, have just made a reference to group violence, a phenomenon which includes, among other things, gang wars and wars between states. Now, in the course of the evolution of your species, belonging to a group or a community was certainly a method of enhancing the ability of an individual to survive or to reproduce. There is no doubt about that. But the group or the community did not have to decide to achieve those aims through aggressiveness. You have in fact had several peaceful societies in your planet's history, societies such as the Arapesh of New Guinea, the Xing
o of Brazil or the Simai of Malaysia, among others. But, regrettably, the 'survival of the fittest' hypothesis applied. These communities were overrun by the more numerous aggressive societies of their time. Which brings us back to the question of why aggressiveness is the dominating factor of your species. Where does it come from and what is the cause of it?"
"And they were listening to all of this?"
"Oh yes, they were finding it interesting. There were mumbles, there were shufflings and there were coughs, but they were listening. Let me take a step back, I continued, and remind you again of what exactly aggression is. It is correctly defined by your behavioral sciences as 'an intent to cause harm'. And your sciences describe the various ways in which this intent to cause harm can be applied: physically, verbally, psychologically and so on. But these sciences also make it clear that needful predatory or defensive behavior is not aggression, or at least not in the same sense. On the contrary, these behaviors are nothing other than forced necessities, and as such are also to be found among all those non-aggressive species which find themselves obliged to kill in order to eat, or to defend themselves against aggressive species to ensure their own survival."
"Against aggressive species such as the human race," I said.
"Yes. I told them that they were of course aware of the fact that the human race does not kill merely in order to eat or in order to defend itself. And that the reason for this was a biological one. And I said that, because nobody present—as far as I was aware—was a scientist, I intended to provide them with only a few non-technical words on the area to which their biologists should direct their attention, and for which they would hopefully decide to provide some fairly massive funding—easily financeable for example by reducing their absurd and preposterous expenditures on their various ongoing arms races and their continuing drive for increasingly lethal destructive power."
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