The Vininese drove Dirrul to the city in a heavily armed surface car. Two of the infantrymen sat behind them, their rocket guns ready on their knees. It was testimony to the efficiency and organization of Vinin that such a finished reception could be prepared on such short notice. Dirrul's first intimation of the scope of the ceremony came when they stopped at a school to be cheered by the pupils.
Rank upon rank of boys and girls lined up smartly behind the high wire fence. They ranged in ages from tots, barely able to stand, to young people in late adolescence. Except for the round metal disks, which all of them wore, they were completely naked.
"Clothing breeds such false modesty and so many foolish frustrations," Dirrul's host explained. "On Vinin every child is reared in completely objective equality. As soon as we take them from their parents—about the time when they're first learning to walk—we give them identification disks. Before that, when they're in the instinct period, the disks aren't necessary.
"After their basic education we classify them. The leader-class is issued permanent disks and the others give theirs up. The adjustment is something very severe but on the whole the casualties are light." Suddenly the Vininese seized Dirrul's hand and looked into his eyes. "I trust you follow me, my friend?"
"Yes," Dirrul answered. Reason led him to a conclusion as he looked at the massed children, a conclusion he could not bring himself to face. He felt a new kind of fear, as cold as the depths of space and as devoid of emotion. Instead of trusting to his own logic Dirrul struggled to find a flaw in it—for a man cannot easily watch his dream turn to dust in his hands.
They drove on into the city. Rows of men and women in working clothes lined the streets, cheering wildly in unison. Crossed Vininese flags were draped between the buildings and brave-colored streamers danced in the wind.
"A reception is good for them," the Vininese said. "We need heroes occasionally. It's fortunate you came when you did. The vagabonds have had a disturbing effect on morale and it's impossible to suppress the news entirely."
The vehicle stopped before the towering government building. Dirrul was led up a flight of stone steps to a wide porch overlooking the mass of cheering upturned faces in the public square. He stood motionless while speeches were made and gay ribbon was draped around his neck. The air shook with bright explosions—a huge flag was unfurled over the porch—band music began to blare and a tidal wave of precision-trained Vininese infantry wheeled into the square.
An official touched Dirrul's arm. "You must take the salute of our work-leaders now."
Dirrul was pushed back against the stone railing as an orderly mob filed past, blank-faced and chattering with meaningless pleasure. Many of them pressed forward to touch his hand before the guards tactfully hurried them on. When the organized confusion was at its height a tiny square of paper was slipped into his hand.
Dirrul had no idea which of the mob had given it to him and he dared not glance at it. But he managed to hide the paper in the band of his tunic.
Hour by hour the throng filed past, endless and meaningless. It was an agony for Dirrul. For the first time he looked into the face of his dream and saw the reality of Vinin—order, discipline, efficiency—and utter blankness. Unhappily he recalled one of Dr. Kramer's lectures.
"... Defiance of convention, confusion, frustration, stubbornness—yes and a touch of the neurotic too—these goad the individual into solving problems. And problem solving is progress. An orderly society that asks no questions of itself, a society that has no doubts, is a dying society...."
Dirrul understood the professor at last. He looked squarely at the fact of what he was, a traitor to his own people, on the verge of betraying them. He had been wonderfully deluded by his own self-deception.
But the job wasn't quite finished. The Vininese would not have gone to take Glenna from the hospital if they had understood his teleray. Let them splurge on their reception! He was unimpressed. When the time came for questions to be answered he would conveniently forget why he had been sent to Vinin. Nothing they could do would drag it out of him.
The crowd thinned and Dirrul was taken inside the building, where his Vininese host awaited him. Sighing deeply the Vininese stood up. "These public displays do take so much of our time," he said, "but it's over now." This last seemed to amuse him and he repeated it softly before adding, "The Chief's ready to see you."
Remembering the note and the flimsy possibility that it might suggest a way out, Dirrul answered quickly, "But, sir, I really ought to clean up first."
"You Agronians have such weird notions of propriety!"
"I would feel more presentable to your Chief if—if I could have a bath. Perhaps I might even borrow a change of clothing."
The Vininese fingered his chin thoughtfully. "It might be more amusing. Yes, the Chief can wait a few minutes longer for you to satisfy your vanity."
He summoned a blank-faced liveried servant and asked for a clean worker's suit for Dirrul. Then he took Dirrul to the wall tube and they shot noiselessly to an upper floor. As he left Dirrul at the door of a luxurious suite, the Vininese said, "When you change your clothes, my friend, don't forget to take the disk out of your tunic. The Chief will want it when you see him."
When he was sure he was alone Dirrul spread open the note. It was a crude drawing of a hearing aid and beneath it a cryptic sentence written in Agronian,
I lost mine and so has Glenna now.
I lost mine and so has Glenna now.
The signature was unmistakably Hurd's but the note made no sense. Hurd's hearing was as sound as Dirrul's. He had never used a mechanical device—how could he have lost it then?So has Glenna—that must be the key. Hurd somehow knew about the vagabond raiding party that had rescued Glenna from the mental hospital. He must have escaped from the Vininese earlier himself. He was probably hiding somewhere in the capital.
Working on this hypothesis Dirrul made a guess that the thing Hurd had lost was his illusion about the Vininese system. The hearing aid symbolized what Hurd had been told about it, as opposed to the reality which he saw with his own eyes.
But such an interpretation didn't ring entirely true. It was too involved for an idea which could have been better expressed in four words—I know the truth. Tossing the note aside Dirrul turned on the water in the shower room and thoughtfully disrobed.
As he threw his tunic aside a violent paralyzing terror seized his mind, making his head sing with a screeching vibration. Blindly he snatched up the tunic in order to stuff the cloth into his mouth so he would not cry out. But as soon as he pressed it against his skin his terror vanished, like a siren suddenly stilled.
The pattern of the real truth fell into place then. Now he understood the power of Vinin. Experimentally he took Sorgel's disk out of his tunic and laid it on a table. As soon as he did so the blinding nameless horror flamed up. When he held the disk again the exhausting emotion vanished.
Looking back Dirrul saw an abundance of evidence that might have given him a clue, had he not spent so much mental effort bolstering his illusion of Vinin. There was the circumstance of his own unrelenting terror when he was without the disk in the ravine—the painful sight of his captors puncturing the prisoners' eardrums—the soundless talk of the vagabonds, like the lip-reading of the deaf—the bleak orderliness of the cheering mobs—and, most obvious of all, the strange transmitters atop the well-guarded stone block-buildings.
It was all there, even to the final cruelty to the children. What was it the Vininese had said? "The adjustment is sometimes very severe but on the whole the casualties are light." And the very young, before they were taken from their parents, didn't need disks because they were in what the Vininese had called "the instinct period."
Dirrul knew what Hurd's drawing meant. Somehow Hurd had lost his hearing, perhaps as a result of the beating the police had given him on Agron. In any case only the deaf could think rationally on Vinin. Hurd was telling Dirrul to shatter his own sense of hearing if he still had the will to think and act for himself. The nightmare Dirrul had witnessed in the ravine was not torture but the bravery of desperate men attempting to rescue rational minds.
The Rational Potential—the gift of the legendary Earthmen! Like the processes of thought itself it could never be wiped out by argument or reason once it was understood. The Earthmen had wasted centuries trying to undo their own evolved rationality before they realized it could not be done. Now, on a higher level in another plane, the Vininese were struggling to submerge the Earthmen's second achievement of the Rational Potential.
It was done by their transmitters. A wave of some sort—probably subsonic or supersonic—continuously filled the Vininese atmosphere. The Vininese who wore the disks were protected against it. The others succumbed if they retained their hearing. As Dirrul himself had discovered in the ravine, when he did not consciously think the terror diminished.
All Vininese children were given a basic education. It built up their automatic responses, established correct stimulus-response behavior patterns. Then, for the masses, the protective disks were eliminated and the screeching fear pounded at them until the processes of creative thinking were destroyed, leaving a backlog of malleable and obedient habit patterns. The problem solving was done for them by their masters.
The Vininese Confederacy—half the galaxy—was peopled by billions upon billions of robot races, ruled by a handful of men with absolute power. To that Dirrul would have betrayed his planet! To slavery and to the destruction of the Rational Potential, all for the slippery dream of orderliness and efficiency which masqueraded as progress.
He could save Agron today—but for how long? Sorgel would bewitch countless other discontented Agronian fools. The Movement would try again and one day the Vininese space fleet would penetrate the Agronian Nuclear Beams. Dirrul had to escape. He had to go home and tell the truth about Vinin.
And it was impossible. He was completely trapped with no visible way out for himself.
Dirrul stood in front of the metal-surfaced reflector, fingering the cap of his ear. To survive as a thinking being he must deafen himself. Yet he hesitated. Self-inflicted violence was the negation of the Rational Potential.
Then, slowly, he developed a new idea. He could use the power of Vinin, to save Agron if not himself!
There came a knock on his door. Dirrul drew on his tunic as a stranger entered the room.
"The Chief is impatient—you must come at once."
Durril was led through a metal-roofed tunnel into a wide sunny transparent-walled room at the top of the building. The door closed behind him. He was alone with a tall smooth-faced man, exotically costumed in a tight black suit crusted with white jewels and framed by a white cloak thrown loosely around his shoulders. He sat back of a tremendous desk—behind his chair was a tilted panel of dials, levers and tiny glowing lights, running the length of the room under the ceiling-high window.
"It is always a pleasure to welcome a hero of the Vininese Confederacy," the Chief said without getting up. His tone was slow, tired, emotionless. His eyes were without expression. "May I ask your name?"
"Dirrul—Edward Dirrul."
"And you come from Agron with a message from our agent," he said, speaking Agronian. "So much we got from your teleray. In fifty days—actually forty-nine from now, by your time—your local Movement will have use for a Vininese space-fleet. I have already dispatched Sub-units B and C. Now, if you will give me the details of your Plan I can code-wave them to my commander."
"There's been a mistake, sir. What I really meant when I sent the message was—"
"So you've discovered the truth." The Chief's hand darted toward a cubicle of his desk and he held a metal-barreled weapon aimed steadily at Dirrul. "These things are always so tedious. Give me your disk."
"Of course," Dirrul agreed readily but as he felt in his pocket the Chief gestured negatively with his weapon.
"No, keep it." After a pause he added, "You're certain that you know, Dirrul?"
"I've seen the transmitters."
"Then why aren't you afraid? Why do you consent so readily? The others are always terrified—they'll confess to anything if I promise to let them keep the disks. Have you ever heard the sound, Dirrul? Do you really know what it's like?"
"You want information from me. You have no chance of getting it if you deprive me of the ability to think."
"Granted. And otherwise?"
"You won't get it either."
The Chief sighed wearily. "You are simply trading one romantic illusion for another. You have somehow convinced yourself that one man—one lone Agronian—can hold out against us. Let me tell you a little about our system, Dirrul, so you'll understand how futile it is to waste your time and mine like this." Not a trace of feeling came into his voice. He sounded slightly bored, reciting a matter-of-fact chronology of statistics.
"As you have guessed we create our leader-class on each of our planets by protecting them from the sound waves with the disks. If scattered groups among the general public should ever gain immunity—as far as we know only idiots and the deaf can do that—they could never carry out a successful revolt. The only way would be for the transmitter stations to be silenced.
"However, every unit operates independently on its own power. We have thousands of them on every planet. All but one could be destroyed, and that one transmitter would still be enough to control the planet. You begin to see, I think, that any kind of resistance is foolish. In time you can be made to do as I ask. Unfortunately, we have no time to spare.
"Perhaps you're thinking that outsiders—tourists, let's say—could come here and overthrow us. All rational beings in the galaxy are subject to the same physical laws. They still must hear and if they do they're powerless.
"Besides, our secret is remarkably well-kept. The tourists and merchants come to our planet in droves. They notice nothing—because of the amusing idiosyncrasy of Vininese customs men, who are required to stamp the hand of each visitor with an identification mark. The coloring material is atomically constituted to act as a temporary disk while the tourist is among us. He notices nothing amiss. He sees what we want him to see—he goes home favorably impressed—and by that time the mark has worn away. You get the general picture, Dirrul? Nothing can ever defeat us."
"Nothing but yourselves."
"Romantic nonsense! Let me show you what I can do, Dirrul, even when you wear a disk. I think you'll bargain then." The Chief turned a little to face the panel behind his desk, feeling over the dials while he kept Dirrul framed in his gunsight.
"The young man you went to this morning for help is a sadist. The reception was his idea—so was your bath. He likes to have our traitors—and you are a traitor, of course, to your own people—he likes to have them discover the truth before we take their disks away. It's an exquisite torture but in your case annoying, since it puts you in a position to bargain. Now it occurs to me that your host should be disciplined for his bungling."
The Chief pointed to the surface of his desk. "Watch the screen, Dirrul." An opaque rectangle glowed with light, slowly came into focus, and revealed a large mirrored lounge, where a number of official Vininese stood talking and drinking. The Chief twisted a dial, pulled a lever and one of the Vininese collapsed, writhing on the glassy floor in violent agony.
The screen went blank.
"I have not only decontrolled your friend's disk," the Chief explained blandly, "but I have doubled his receptability to sound. I can continue the treatment until he goes mad—or I can snap it off and let it serve as a warning.
"From this panel here I control every disk-wearer on Vinin—including yourself, Dirrul. You understand, I think, that there can never be any disloyalty among our leaders—they're consciously aware of the consequences. And revolt in the ranks is physically impossible. We're safe, you see, even from ourselves."
Once again there was a slight trace of emotion in the weary voice. "No doubt you also gather, Dirrul, who is the real ruler of Vinin. There are a hundred thousand of us, more or less, scattered throughout the Confederacy. All right—tell me what I need to know. If your Plan succeeds I'll deputize you for Agron when we annex it."
Suddenly Dirrul saw the answer. His heart leaped with joy and it was difficult to keep the feeling out of his voice when he said, "You have been talking to me in my own tongue." Carefully he inched toward the desk. "And understanding me."
"Entirely beside the point."
"Not entirely. You hear what I say—which means that you must wear a disk too."
Dirrul sprang across the desk. At the same time the Chief raised his weapon and fired. Flame seared Dirrul's cheek. A red mist welled before him and he reeled back against the control panel as the Chief fired again. The second explosion was so close it seemed to be within his own mind.
The Chief's hand clawed at Dirrul's tunic, ripping the disk away from him. Recoiling in anticipation of the dread shock wave, Dirrul hurled himself at the Chief.
But instead of the screaming terror he felt nothing. An inexplicable force seemed to close in on him. His head spun dizzily but his mind still functioned. He smashed his fist into the face of the Chief and the body sagged to the floor.
Dirrul stood bewildered, looking at his hand. A mass of flesh-like material, torn from the Chief's face, clung to his knuckles. Dirrul bent over the man and touched his skin. It crumbled under pressure and the lifelike purple coloring ran. Dirrul peeled the putty away until he could make out the shape of the pale wrinkled very aged face beneath.
Sickened he moved away—for he had seen the ruler of Vinin.
Dirrul backed into the desk, knocking a fragile statuette to the floor. When it lay shattered at his feet he understood why he could still plan and reason, even though the disk was gone. The Chief's shot, fired so close to his head, had deafened him either temporarily or permanently.
Dirrul ran to the control panel and twisted dials frantically, pulling every lever he could find. He had no idea what he was doing and it didn't matter so long as something happened. If he could decontrol even half the disks on Vinin it would create enough confusion to cover his own escape.
Twenty-five days later the Space-dragon shot up from the space-field which was hidden among the stony Vininese mountain ravines. As it cut through the stratosphere Dirrul's bonds were released. He felt exhausted and empty. His last memory was of talking to Hurd on the mountain trail. Beyond that was a blank. He looked up at Glenna, as beautiful as ever but somehow more mature.
"You're all right now, Eddie?" she asked in a loud voice that betrayed her deafness.
"I think so. Where are you taking me?"
She touched her ears, still crudely bandaged. "You must say everything very slowly, Eddie. I haven't yet learned to read lips as well as Hurd does."
"Where are we going?"
"Back to Agron."
"We have no right, Glenna—we're traitors!"
"We have a duty to tell them the truth. What they do with us doesn't matter."
He shook his head weakly, still lost in his stupor. "Tell me what happened, Glenna—I can't remember anything."
"You got out of the government building and stole a Space-dragon. Then you came looking for us. Just after you met Hurd your hearing began to come back and of course you lost control of yourself. Hurd wanted to break your eardrums but I wouldn't let him.
"Since we had a space-ship at last we could get away from Vinin and I knew you'd be all right when we did. But it took us a month to steal enough fuel. Something you did in the government building paralyzed a lot of the leaders for a while but by the time we got around to looking for fuel the others had restored order again."
The door of the control room slid open and Hurd dropped down on the bunk beside Dirrul. "Feeling better?" he asked anxiously.
"I guess so. The whole picture's beginning to come back."
Hurd sighed with relief and his face relaxed.
Dirrul asked slowly, "How did you get away from them, Hurd?"
"I lost my hearing in the beating Sorgel gave me on Agron."
"Sorgel!" Dirrul repeated unbelievingly. It was the last illusion to go and for that reason the most painful. "Then it wasn't the Agronian police—"
"Of course it was Sorgel," Glenna said quietly. "He had to get rid of us because we wouldn't go along with him on the idea of a Vininese invasion. I tried so hard to tell you, Eddie, but I couldn't because of the drugs they gave us."
"The Vininese never knew I was deaf," Hurd went on. "It's easy enough to escape from a work camp when you can think for yourself. The Vininese resistance found me in the hills and I've been working with them ever since. A pitiful band of the deaf, fighting insurmountable odds to win back the human dignity of half the galaxy! But they won't turn tail and run and their numbers grow every time they raid a work camp."
"Were you with the men who kidnapped Glenna?"
"We were all out that night, trying to keep watch on the camps near the capital. We didn't know which one Glenna was in but I was sure the Vininese would try to reach her after they got your teleray message. We counted on the Vininese leading us to her and we knew we had to kidnap her first if we were to keep them from learning about the Plan on Agron.
"Unfortunately I wasn't with the group that picked you up, Eddie. They thought they had taken a Vininese leader and it seemed such a suitable punishment to take your disk away and let you hear the sound for a while. Later—after you'd escaped—when the others described your Air-Command uniform I took a chance and sent my note."
He helped Dirrul to his feet. "You'll have to take over from here on in, Eddie. You said you knew how to pilot this thing. I figured out a take-off but that's as far as I can go."
"Sorgel's pilot showed me once," he said. "What I don't remember I'll improvise. He said a Space-dragon could make the run in thirty days. This baby's got to do it in less than twenty-five if we're going to beat the Vininese fleet to Agron."
"You didn't tell them the Plan, did you, Eddie?"
"No."
"The Vininese won't land without instructions."
"Sorgel may get up enough courage to send a teleray code. We can't take any chances either."
Dirrul drove himself without rest. He cut every corner he knew, used every trick of navigational skill he had ever learned. Nonetheless it was twenty-eight days before the little ship hung in the air over the Agronian capital.
His heart sank. On the space-field, in neat ranks, the Vininese space-fleet was drawn up in proud review. The planet had fallen! Dirrul made his decision instinctively.
The Space-dragon wheeled and swept low over the field, its vicious guns blazing. The yellow clouds of destruction swept up toward the sky—the little ship was caught in the blazing flame. The interplanetary freight sheds loomed ahead. And the world exploded, falling apart into a soothing painless silence.
Dirrul opened his eyes and looked at the neutral blue of a hospital ceiling. Gradually he became conscious of Dr. Kramer, seated by the bed.
"Dr. Kramer!" Dirrul whispered. "Then everything's all right."
"If by everything you mean your companions, yes. There's even a chance we can restore the girl's hearing."
"And the Vininese?"
"Defeated."
"Dr. Kramer, we've got to destroy the Confederacy! I saw their transmitters—I know how their system works."
"Hush, Edward—I promised not to excite you. We know about it."
"Then how could you have been foolish enough to let them land?"
"It seemed a pity not to give a few of their people another chance. It's working out quite nicely too."
"I don't follow you, Dr. Kramer."
"Long ago we became interested when tourists told us about the curious block-buildings on Vinin. Our physics boys worked out an ingenious device for analyzing their atmosphere. It was a little machine concealed in the lining of an ordinary air-freight crate, as I recall.
"A machine is quite objective, Edward—and Customs men don't stamp freight crates with the negative adaptors. When we learned that a Vininese fleet was going to land here we simply issued insulating helmets to all our people and let them come. As soon as we destroyed their portable transmitters the Vininese army proved quite adaptable to a new environment."
"Then—I did nothing to help when I destroyed their fleet?"
"Unfortunately you wounded two of our mechanics."
"I'm a traitor, Dr. Kramer. Even when I try I can't redeem myself!"
"Only on Vinin can you betray an external absolute, Edward. To an Agronian all objective concepts are relative to the subjective interpretations made by each individual. You can only be a traitor to yourself."
"The words are pleasant to say to a sick man but the fact remains—I would have betrayed Agron."
"But you didn't. Why not?"
"When I saw what their efficiency really meant—"
"You changed your mind before you knew about the transmitters?"
"Yes."
"Then you're libeling yourself. Don't trap yourself in another self-delusion, Edward. All that's happened is that you've grown up."
Dirrul said slowly, feeling for words that would express the idea as he felt it, "When I was in the center of the galaxy, looking out on space, I almost grasped a new concept but I lost it when the Agronian patrol attacked me. It's coming back.
"Time and space seem to be one and the same. Neither exists as an objective reality. There is no past and no future—all of it occurs eternally in the instant of my own being. I am everything and nothing—infinity and a speck lost in space."
"Thus you discover the Rational Potential," Dr. Kramer smiled. "I think you're ready for the space-pilot promotional, Edward." After a pause Dr. Kramer inquired, "Did you see the Chief of Vinin, Edward?"
"Then you know about that too?"
"I've guessed—it seems likely."
"I scraped off the putty and the face color. Beneath it he was an Earthman. A hundred thousand of them rule the Confederacy."
"All time and space, forever occurring for each of us in the instant of now! Yes, he would be an Earthman, Edward—quite logically. Both good and evil begin with the same source. Both have the same Rational Potential. The act of being has always been the same struggle of constant forces, between the absolute and the relative. The time never changes nor the event but merely the passing illusion of place."
Shaking his head the chubby professor departed. Dirrul closed his eyes, at peace with himself.