A Million Open Doors

by John Barnes

  I winced. "Is it that obvious?"

  "I suppose so." He sighed. "I do keep feeling guilty about how you ended up here. Seems to me that if Bieris and I had just argued a little harder you'd have ended up back in Noupeitau, causing trouble in your accustomed way."

  I shrugged. "Well, it's not so bad. A stanyear or even two of this isn't so much, and then I can go back and do all that joventry if I still want to. I suppose I probably will want to, at least at first, just to have something familiar to do on my return. But what place needs us more than this stolid, cold, stuck-in-the-mud world? I think of myself as a missionary on behalf of fun, grace, style, wit, beauty—passion! I assume that's how you feel—"

  "I spent my youth trying to persuade Caledons to have fun. In, of course, a very Caledon, which is to say militant, serious, hard-headed, way. If they're going to get any of that from me this time, they will have to get it by example." His voice sounded tired and distant; he must be about ready for bed himself. Mentally I braced for the dash over to my place. "Besides, I need to get along a little more than you do. Part of my function is communicating with the old stiffnecks."

  He was looking out the window toward the brightly moonlit orchards. With the light on the side of his face, I could see that his skin was getting coarser as he got older, and that his beard was beginning to show just the faintest touch of silver. By the time he got back, he'd have no place among the joventry.

  "Bieris seems to be taking to it all right," I said, hoping to change the subject.

  "Well, she's less lonely than either of us are, because she's already found such a good friend in Bruce."

  "They do seem to be fond of each other," I said, judiciously. "Part of it is that they're both such visual people and they seem to share tastes on what things ought to look like."

  "Part of it," he agreed.

  Some part of me had been afraid from the beginning of the conversation that this would be about Bieris and Bruce.

  "You can relax, Giraut," Aimeric said. "I'm not having an attack of jealousy. I'm just lonely myself." He poured another glass for each of us. "Besides, once you find out what we Caledon men do in such situations, you're going to be shocked and appalled."

  "Really?" I said, sensing that this was some setup for a joke.

  "You'll probably think it's disgusting and perverted," he added solemnly.

  I nodded, a little bit drunk, and sort of sad, and waiting for the joke to come.

  "We shake hands and do our best to stay friends."

  I didn't see why that was funny, but I was tired. I turned down his offer of his spare bedroom, preferring the short dash across to my place. I thought that waking up in a fully furnished, red-lit Occitan room, then realizing where I was, might be just too much.

  SIX

  Two days later, less than an hour before the first classes were to start, I was sitting up in the solar making some notes to myself when my terminal signaled that there was a message for me. When I answered it, I was directed to com a Reverend Saltini at the Pastorate of Public Projects.

  According to the information I could access in the next minute or two before not comming would have required an explanation, Saltini was about three layers down from Cabinet level—he certainly ranked me, anyway. I'd heard passing references to the PPP, and they sounded like people you wanted to stay clear of, and I half-suspected (correctly it turned out) that they were the "peeps" people referred to in whispers.

  I called him at once, and had the usual brief exchange with the call screener, a living human being again. (In Caledony, no one ever made small talk or established a relationship with minor functionaries—you were just supposed to tell them what you wanted and have them get it for you. Aside from being rude, it seemed grossly inefficient to me ... how could you ever build up the special relationships that make it possible to obtain favors and get things done?)

  The screener agreed that I ought, indeed, to talk to the Reverend Saltini, and a moment later the image on the screen was of a small, bald man with what seemed a puckish smile. "There's something very peculiar in the list of people who have requested credit transfers to the tuition accounts at your Center for Occitan Arts. I think you may want to reconsider whatever it is you're planning to do."

  "What I'm planning to do is public," I said. "It's right there in all those syllabi that I've made generally accessible on the planetary sharecom."

  "Just so. Just so. You see, the problem is that it seems to be attracting—well, the sort of people it's drawing are overwhelmingly one sort. They are mostly intelligent young people who have failed the examinations for higher education several times, and overwhelmingly they are people who failed the examination in mathematical theology. There are a significant number who failed in natural sciences and in mathematics as well, but one suspects that their resistance to learning mathematics is at the core of the problem and that they don't learn math—to put it bluntly—because many of the problems they would have to solve in mathematics classes are in theology."

  Before fleeing or fighting, always see if you can just step aside. "Nou Occitan doesn't take its religion very seriously, mostly it's all ceremonial, and so I really had not planned on touching on religious questions as such."

  "We know that and we appreciate it. If it weren't true we'd never have approved the Center. No, I'm afraid this is in the nature of a very—let me stress very—very preliminary inquiry into the rationality of what you propose to do. Not at all a formal inquiry, you must understand; right now what I'm doing is accumulating a few facts for the files so that in the event of questions arising, those of us who would be answerable for them would have a reasonable basis for answering them."

  He sounded exactly like the qestora did when they caught my father cheating on his taxes. This was just what I was afraid of; somehow I had fallen afoul of the local secret police, and I still understood so little that I had no idea what response, if any, could get him off my back, or even of what I might be accused or what he could do to me. Wherever you go, a friendly off-the-record inquiry is exactly the kind at which you have no formal rights and no idea of the accusations or evidence. That's why every cop in the Thousand Cultures would rather have a little chat than actually arrest you.

  While I had been waiting, and getting more nervous, and figuring out that this was more trouble than it first looked like, Reverent Saltini had been sitting there watching me. Finally he seemed to decide that he might be able to get somewhere by continuing the conversation. "Well," he said quietly, "you do remember that one of your goals in setting up the Center was to facilitate communication and improve mutual understanding between Caledony and Nou Occitan. Now, at this point, it would appear that the course syllabi, as you've written them, are not attracting anyone who is suitable for such purposes. Clearly people who are out of the major route of promotion, however versed they may become in Occitan culture, are not going to be in any position where they can make use of their knowledge. Of course they can work as translators, or personal assistants, or perhaps as business agents—none of those positions require any special licensing or degrees—but then, as the people on the scene who actually do know what they are doing, they are very likely to come into conflict with their better-qualified superiors, and that can only result in unhappiness all around, don't you see?"

  "Nop," I said, using one of my two words of Reason. It was true—I had lost him some time before—and besides, stalling might be as good a strategy as any. "And should the trade begin to expand until my students-to-be are all employed in trade with Nou Occitan, I'd suppose that the increased trade would give people an incentive to take the courses."

  "But not before people who have no grasp of ethics or of man's place in the universe have already succeeded. You must see how that looks, to see the market rewarding vice and thus by implication punishing virtue. You can't really expect us to allow the will of the market—which we hold to be synonymous with the Will of God—to be seen doing something so ridiculous.

&nb
sp; "And more to the point, by extending the initial loan, the Council of Rationalizers and the Pastorate of Public Projects have jointly committed themselves to your project as a good thing for Caledony and for all its citizens. You yourself did an admirable job of persuading us that it is. Now, to have the most discreditable—there are people who outrightly say 'useless,' though I think that is a bit harsh—to have these extremely, as I say, discreditable people so overrepresented in your first classes ... well, again, can you expect us to sit by idly while such an important project, to which we have committed so much money and prestige, becomes associated with a group of people who are at the least looked on as inept or misfits, and despised outrightly by many? You must see our position on this."

  There was no getting away from it. "What do you want me to do?"

  That odd little puck-smile never left his face; it did not deepen or become more forced; it was apparently just there all the time. "We think that some delay, perhaps just a few weeks, in beginning the courses, accompanied with your getting some help from a couple of qualified people—say one in theology and one in market research, for example—would allow you to phrase things so as to draw an appropriate group of students. You do see what I mean?"

  "I would suppose," I said, visions of spending the next year and half filling out forms and shoveling shit, as if there would be a difference, bouncing through my brain, "that if I change the syllabi, I will also have to change what I teach. And I don't really want to do that. These are immersion courses; if people are going to be offended by Occitan culture, or baffled—or if they're just not going to be willing to make any kind of personal peace with it—then it's better that they find out right away. And for that purpose"—inspiration!—"it might even be better to offend people who are deviant from your culture. First of all, if I fail with them it's no great loss to you, and since they are members of the Caledon culture all the same, they're still a good test population—in fact, an exceptionally good one, because I'm sure they'll react but they won't necessarily be as outraged as your more mainstream citizens might be, and even if they should react in such a way as to give the Center bad word of mouth, all the same no one is going to believe them because of who they are. And of course if their talents do turn out useful, you could see it as a matter of your policy having redeemed some otherwise useless people."

  I really could not believe the way I was talking. Maybe Saltini was contagious or something?

  He said nothing, but his fingers flew over keys in front of him as I watched him on the screen. The smile never left as he looked at what I assumed were rows of figures, or perhaps dossiers of my students-to-be.

  Why had I been talking like him? I was just desperately trying to speak his language, I realized ... it seemed to be Terstad, but the more I heard of it the less I understood. Perhaps, like Aimeric's father, he had grown up speaking Reason? But old Carruthers was blunt to the point of rudeness, so surely Saltini's greasy vagueness wasn't intrinsic to the system.

  He looked up and this time his smile did deepen. It made me nervous and I was sure it was meant to. "Well, now that you've put it in that light, it seems we have a happy accident here. I think you probably should exploit it, just as you say. And I'm sure you'll be happy to know that all seven hundred aintellects polled for theological correctness agreed with me on that. If I may say so, I think you've found a home here— you reason very well off the top of your head."

  "I'm planning to start studying Reason soon," I said. It was true—I was curious, and Aimeric said that it wasn't particularly difficult to learn—and it certainly would not hurt me with Saltini to mention it.

  "I'm not at all surprised. And now I've got to let you go; I have a lot to do, and you'll see when you check your files that the additional students who've been allowed to enroll may pose a bit of a problem." He bunked off, and I was alone again with my nerves.

  I hadn't even looked at the number of students enrolled, or the number trying to, just assuming that things would start slowly and planning on classes of a dozen or so at most.

  When I called up the file, I discovered that until one minute ago, when Saltini had cleared the rest of the applicants into the Center, I had actually had no more than five students in any one class, and a total of twenty-one students for the whole Center.

  Saltini's held-back file had contained 264 students.

  The numbers were incredible; if I'd known that the day before, I could have set up sections and rotations to accommodate everyone. As it was, I spent the whole day trying to get everyone onto some workable schedule, and for at least my first few months I would be putting in very long days and paying legally required bonuses to Bieris and Aimeric for the extra sections they would be teaching.

  If I had known twenty-eight hours ago...

  I could not get the notion out of my head that this was what Saltini had intended. "Of course it was," Thorwald said, later that day, when I took a ten-minute break to show him what the routine maintenance would be in the Dueling Arts Gymnasium. "I'm surprised you got as far as you did, and spent as long here as you have, without crossing with Saltini a couple of times at least. That's his job, you know."

  "Creating chaos?"

  Thorwald eyed me as if trying to decide something; then he said, quietly, "Everyone knows Reverend Saltini. Sooner or later everyone has to do some routine business with him. A lot of people think he's actually an aintellect hooked to a realtime visual simulator, but my guess is he's real." Thorwald wasn't looking at me and might as well have been continuing our conversation about cleaning the floor and about its different elasticity settings for ki hara do, katajutsu, fencing, and freestyle. "If you want to talk about him, try not to sound excited; the monitors pick up on vocal stress and if you sound excited it's much more likely that we'll be audited."

  I realized he was telling me the room was bugged. It was like some grotesque acting class exercise, playing a scene from the centuries before the Thousand Cultures, perhaps during one of the four World Wars or the three Cold Wars that had preceded getting humanity reasonably organized. I could not have been more surprised if he had warned me about witches.

  But clearly he was serious. I swallowed hard, consciously relaxed my throat, and said, "Tell me."

  "Well," he said, "he believes what he says. Or if he's actually an aintellect, somebody believes what he says, anyway. It's part of doctrine—the market, as the one true instrument of God, will reveal who's a good person and who is not. Saltini's job is to make sure it does. And he's empowered to do practically anything to get his job done. All right? I don't much care to talk about this for any length of time."

  He didn't say anything more. After a moment we got back to talking about the gym, and then about the floor polishing that would need to be done regularly for the Dance Room.

  When I went back upstairs, I found 150 people there to start Basic Occitan; I ended up splitting them into three sections, all still too large, and giving up a couple of lunches a week, to accommodate all of them.

  So far Thorwald was right—the only class that was staying at one section was dueling arts. I couldn't imagine people who didn't want to learn to fight, who found no confidence in being good with weapons, but that was just the way they were.

  By the time I had gotten the administrivia taken care of, it was already quite late, and I was very glad to have the apartment in the Center instead of having to drive back to my house on Bruce's farm, especially since I had early-morning duties working for Aimeric the next day.

  If I had known that I would not get back to the house for another six days, I might have given up right then and just sat down for a good cry. As it was, I just ordered some new clothes to be delivered to the Center, so I'd have something clean and decent to wear, and turned in for the night.

  After a few days of teaching, I had made some notes about all these rebels and misfits who had so concerned the Reverend Saltini.

  First of all, they were all docile. They appeared to like the boring repe
at-after-me drills and memorized conversations in Occitan class ("Bo die, donz." "Bo die, amico, patz a te." A hundred repetitions of that in a day made me wonder if maybe there wasn't a positive side to shoveling shit that I had missed). None of them liked any kind of improvised conversation, not even the many of them who could already read Occitan.

  In poetry class, no one wanted to keep talking once they had settled on the "right" interpretation; prosody was gibberish to them, except as a set of rules like those of a crossword puzzle. In painting, there were some good draftsmen but only Thorwald seemed to really paint, according to Bieris.

  Music was either the best or the worst. After a brief exposure to Occitan music, about two thirds of the students had decided to take some other course or get their refund. As for the remainder, the problem was that there was a tradition of music in Caledony.

  At Caledon music festivals, which were heavily publicized, there were no live audiences. Instead, musicians sat in soundproof booths and tried to duplicate, in live performance, the "perfect" performance generated from the score by an aintellect. Three other aintellects would compare them to the generated version and score them on it, deducting points for any deviations.

  I had shocked the majority the first day by talking about improvisation, but my surviving students didn't seem to be especially bothered by it. They at least had the intuitive notion that there could be more there than the written score, even with all the complicated diacritical marks that Caledon music always had.

  What did baffle them—and thus was taking up all my time in teaching the lute class—was the idea that you could "feel what it ought to sound like," as I urged them to do a dozen times per class. I could see the repetition wasn't helping but I really could not think of anything else to say. "Now, listen this time." I began to play. "This way is sad, a trace of melancholy, a twist of sweet sadness, comprentz, companho? Now I liven it up by picking up the tempo and perhaps even by syncopating."