Doug worked silently. His eyes stung, and he wasted a moment to rub them again, because he must see, must see so precisely, so exactly. The work table was almost bare of the equipment he had ordered. The new Contraption had devoured it into its fantastic vitals as fast as his taut hands and flagging memory were able to feed. Yet it was useless work—the gleaming thing he had built would never so much as fry an egg.
Yet he worked as though the power-pack were resting on the table among the scraps of wire, bits and pieces that were left, as though somehow it would be there when he needed it, and then they could go, could escape, and then forget... The two shiny terminals glared at him dully like two tiny eyes, each telling him that he was such a fool to hope that they could ever be anything else than bare. They glared at him, told him that he was finished now, finished, but with the end impossibly far away.
He let the tools drop amid the bits and pieces The Contraption was a cold, dead thing, a mockery without its great surging electric heart. A mockery, a precisely assembled heap of shiny junk.
He was near exhaustion as he looked at the two empty terminals. The anger in him had burned out and became a cold leaden thing. He no longer cared about the ridiculous beliefs, the regulations, the laws that prohibited him from obtaining the thing he needed to free himself—no longer cursed himself, for it was not he who was to blame.
He went upstairs to where Dot slept, and wondered if this was how it felt to be a thousand years old. Finally tired, finally fed-up, finally weary of being a fool.
He watched her as she slept, watched the gentle rise and fall of her breasts, let his eyes wander over the soft symmetry of her body, and asked himself why men were so dutiful in creating their clanking idiocies about life and about death when all that such diligence accomplished was eternal blasphemy of the pure and simple. The beautiful they defiled, then disguised the ruin they left with a cloak labeled Duty, and went forth armed with the rotten wood of what they called Law to build a dingy world more to their liking than the garden that had been given them for nothing....
It was not fair, no it was not fair, but he was tired at last. Too tired to look now for another time-track, to throw the Contraption wildly out of focus and careen through a thousand tracks, a million, and look for a place where a man and a woman could be simply that and nothing either more nor less. For in all infinity there was no such place, and the running would be worth less than the wasted breath it took.
With Dot, one last time, then.
She stirred. Her eyes opened, and she smiled.
"Doug? Did you finish it, Doug?"
"Yes. Yes, I finished it, as far as it ever will be finished."
She dropped her eyes. "We can keep trying." They met his. "We will keep trying, Doug. We've got to—for Terry and Mike...."
He said nothing. He sat heavily on the bed, his features grim.
He took off his shirt and dropped, exhausted, beside her.
He awoke with the idea. "Dot! Dot I think I've found it!" He was instantly on his feet, trying to jam the sleep back from the center of his brain, trying to make sure it was no left-over figment from a nightmare, a wild dream. He heard her foot-steps coming almost at a run.
"What is it? You sound as if you've found a pre-Truman dollar under the bed—"
"I don't know—it may be as half-baked as the kind that came later—worth even less, perhaps, but it's worth a try. They say desperate situations call for desperate action...."
"Take it easy, now. You aren't the blood and thunder type, exactly!" There was a note of cautious anticipation in her voice, but there was hope in it, and it was enough.
"Tomorrow—or more exactly, some sixteen hours from now, we are scheduled to take-off for Venus headquarters to begin the games...."
"Yes, I know," she said quietly.
"Well that's it, don't you see? I'll go of course—I'll go but not all the way!"
"Doug I won't let you—anymore than you'd let me try to seduce the Prelate General into giving us the thing!"
"And I'll bet you could, too!" He laughed, and it was a real laugh for the first time in what seemed all his life. "But I'm afraid the Prelate General is going to be denied that dainty bit of intrigue, my darling. Don't you see? Space-ships—they've got to have a method of communication! High-frequency radio—high-voltage stuff! Ten to one I'd find a power-pack aboard!"
"No, Doug, no...."
"It's a chance, Dot, and it's a good one. I'll be the ranking officer aboard of course—I shouldn't have too much trouble in pirating the thing—I'll make them rip the pack out for me, then I'll order them to bring me back. Then it'll just be a race against time."
He stood there, staring at the delicate tracery of a lattice-work wall, not seeing it. But he heard the fear in Dot's voice.
"A space-ship, Doug.... Why you'd—you'd die."
He laughed. "I'm sure the other Quadrates don't plan on dying, not for awhile yet, anyway. And I know it'll work, if I'm careful. And I've been careful so far." He looked at her, and the fear had not left her eyes. "You mustn't be afraid, Dot," he said then. "There's less to fear this way, because this way there's at least a chance. Don't you see the beauty of it—right up to the last moment, everything will appear to be as it should—and then before there's even any suspicion I'll take over—probably be almost back to Earth before they even know anything's gone hay-wire."
"Won't they be able to radio back from the other ships, I mean, when they realize things aren't as they should be—that the ship you are in isn't tagging along in the formation? They'll just be waiting for you when you land, Doug."
"They'll want to be waiting, sure—but they won't know where, not until I'm down, and safely out, headed here."
Dot didn't say anything then. It was such a story-book plan, such a crazy thing that it would never work; she knew it would never work.
"Doug, Doug...."
He held her close to him.
"Dot," he said, "we have two choices I think. We can be mature, we can be logical, we can make a tragedy out of a desperate situation and die martyrs to conservative thinking. Or we can keep grabbing at straws until we are sunk or end up ingloriously alive. Which way?"
She looked up at him, tears in her eyes. "I guess a knock-down drag-out thriller, mister.... But Doug—I'm scared."
He stood still, apart from the other three as they talked in low, casual tones, waiting for the space-tower signal to board their ships. An early morning breeze tugged gently at his blue cloak, and he had to shield his eyes with his gauntlets as he looked at the four slender columns of glittering metal that tapered to needle points high above him. A quarter their diameter and height they might have been simple V-2 rockets on some strange desert proving-ground. At the same time they were the fantastic silver darts that he remembered from the pages of colored Sunday supplements which had foretold the coming of flight through Space. Yet the feeling of everyday security that they tore away was replaced with a vigorous thing inside him that was of firmer stuff than awe, more challenging than fear, more exciting than adventure. And suddenly, sailing ships were the toys of children, and oceans were spilled tea in a saucer.
They were a strange people, Doug thought. A horrible people, perhaps, a people whom he wanted desperately to escape. Yet a people who had learned that the sky and the Earth were not enough, nor were ever meant to be.
A green light flashed. The three Quadrates ended their conversation, boarded waiting surface-vehicles and started toward their ships.
A car with a pennant bearing the insignia of a Senior Quadrate flying from atop its sleek passenger enclosure drove up beside Doug.
"Your transportation, sir."
He returned the salute. "Thank you, no. I shall walk," he said.
It was a short walk—less than two hundred yards, but he did not want it all to happen too quickly.
His steps were measured in slow, deliberate cadence as he crossed the smooth plaza toward the great craft on which his insignia was emblazoned.
At length he was swallowed up inside it, and at a flashing blue signal, the four great ships thundered for the stars, and left Earth a little thing behind them.
Acceleration had left Doug at the brink of unconsciousness despite the hammock in which they'd secured him, but gradually the roar in his ears subsided and the words took shape, as though they were being spoken from the bottom of an empty well.
"... SQ check one ... speed five-three thousand one two oh, acceleration two point one, steady ... trajectory minus two point oh five seconds at eight thousand two hundred, three hundred, four, five, compensate please ... plus point oh three seconds at nine thousand, seven, eight, nine, compensate please ... SQ at stand-by, over."
"Three-dimensional plot-check, sir. Reconciled, and steady as she blasts...."
"SQ to control, SQ check one, trajectory secure. Out."
He fumbled with the wide straps across his chest and hips, and his arms were awkward as though he had lost at least half of his co-ordination. He could taste blood at the corners of his mouth, but it was already caking to his flesh.
"Old Man had a tough time this trip, sir...."
"Yes. When they're desk passengers for six months running and then try to get aboard a space-deck they find it isn't as easy as when they wore an ack harness every day. The price of being eager, sergeant."
"Yes, sir. He ought to be coming out of it soon."
"We'll be locked tight on the curve when he does. Off a half-second and he'll holler like a Conservative—especially after final compensation. How close did we come to the C-limit this time, anyway?"
"Had almost a minute to spare, sir."
"Nicely done, sergea—I think I hear him trying to get the deck under him. Better get over to the trackers."
The words Doug heard still weren't making sense, but he was on his feet and had his balance. He had slid oddly down to the metal deck from the bulkhead on which the hammock was built, and he had the peculiar feeling that up was no longer up, nor down exactly where it was supposed to be. His body did not feel as though it were all of lead as he'd half-expected, although it didn't feel its usual hundred and sixty pounds, either.
He was still focusing his eyes when they saw the weird blur of color on the bulkhead above the crewman's head. Teleview screen of course—and the middle blur—Earth.
In moments he was able to see it plainly as it receded—a tan and blue mass dotted with white, shadowed to the shape of a football, hanging in what seemed direct contradiction to all the laws of physics in a great, black void.
For minutes he stood without moving, oblivious to the immaculately polished masterpiece of engineering which surrounded him.
As a video-image, what he saw could have been nothing more than a cleverly-done stage prop, an ingenious painting by some futuristic artist. But the realization that it was real held him fascinated. Of all the human emotions, here was one that could only flounder helplessly for expression, for it had no precedent for comparison. The awe and the strangely-placid fear were intermingled with a sense of brute power; the sudden loneliness and strange humility were woven inextricably with an irrepressible consciousness of godliness, of unbounded omnipotence. And Doug knew that the first airmen had but touched a tiny edge of the sky, for here was the sky in her entirety—the infinite woman, at once belonging to man, yet an unending mystery to him, and granting of her uncountable secrets but slowly, enticingly, stubbornly.
As he watched, the tan-and-blue shape shrank gradually as though Space were tauntingly erasing it from existence.
The interior of the compartment in which he stood had been designed with the same simplicity of line as had the ship itself, and with so smooth a compactness that it seemed to occupy more of the ship's long interior than a bare third. The two crewmen had evidently not seen him as yet; they stood with their backs to him, their eyes intent on the long, curving banks of dials which ran the gamut of geometrical shapes. Oddly, their hands hung idle at their sides. Doug wondered if they constituted the entire crew, and if they did not, how many more of them there were.
He would let them speak first. He walked over to a panel of dials, gave them a studied scrutiny. The officer turned immediately.
"Ablast thirteen minutes, sir, at fourteen thousand miles. I believe you'll find our track with zero variation. C-limit was passed four minutes ago. Glad to have you aboard again, sir."
Doug returned the salute, nodded his head in acknowledgement of information he had no way of understanding.
"Communications effective?"
"Why—yes sir. Sergeant, prepare space-radio for message—"
"No, no." Doug waved the sergeant back to his post. "Just—checking, captain. How long since the last overhaul of your unit?"
"Why, at the prescribed overhaul date for the entire ship, sir. I believe about four months ago, sir."
"Don't you know, captain?"
"Four months ago, sir."
"I see. If I may inspect the unit, captain."
"Sergeant! Prepare communications for inspection!"
He had no way of knowing how unorthodox his procedure was, only that while aboard the ship, at least, his rank was the final law, and that they would never land on Venus. Yet, these were intelligent men, of the same high caliber as those Earth-bound in the headquarters units. He must be cautious.
Within minutes, the complex communications assembly had been bared, and its circuits were half-mystery to him. Yet the fundamentals would be the same, as they had been with the equipment he had ordered to build the second Contraption. Only the shapes, the sizes, the juxtapositions different.
"Your transmission power supply, captain—"
"The power-pack, sir?" Inadvertantly, the officer glanced at the unit and Doug followed the glance. Smaller, more compact than the best he'd seen in his own time, yet obviously evolved on identical principles. But now he had to carry the farce out, had to wring some of the freshman stuff from his memory.
"Sergeant—" He gestured toward the unit as he removed his gauntlets. "What is the v—Kempage on the plates of the final amplifier?"
"Eleven hundred Kemps at 300 milliamperes, sir."
"Very well. Suppose you give me the final power supply nomenclature!"
"Yes, sir. Genemotor, type A-26-F modified. Two hundred fifty Kemp input, eleven hundred Kemp output, at three hundred milliamperes. Two filter condensers, type L-73 new departure, one filter choke, L-12, one bleeder resistor—"
"That's enough, sergeant. Captain, upon perfunctory inspection at least, your communications unit seems to be in excellent condition. However, I suggest that after this you commit each successive overhaul date to memory."
"Yes, sir."
So far, so good, Doug thought. Yet it was a thing of mocking irony. He was actually perfecting the act so well that one day the risk of impersonation would vanish entirely—yet now, now he must use it to its utmost to carry through a desperate plan to escape, rather than to stay. Worse, it was even a double irony, for had he sought escape at first rather than a lifetime of imposture in this next-door world, they would have helped him. Of course there were the games—he might never have learned enough in so short a time to have gone undetected through them. It was a strangely reassuring thought; it eliminated choice. But at the same time it heightened his desperation. There was only one mark at which to aim, but it was a bull's-eye with no margin for error.
The captain was speaking to him.
"... care to check the flight-pattern coordinates? Sergeant Zukar here is quite justifiably proud, I think, of his ability to delay terminal compensation until the last fraction of a minute before C-limit is reached...."
"No—no thank you, captain. I am quite satisfied. I would like, however, a routine check of the remaining crew."
"Remaining crew, sir?" The captain's face was suddenly a mask of perplexity, and his features were again taut. "I'm afraid I fail to understand, sir. Unless there were last-minute orders which I failed to receive assigning two additional—"
He had discovered what he wanted, but he had been awkward....
"Yes, yes of course, captain. The orders for Tayne's ship. For some reason I—"
"Of course, sir."
Not a natural, but he'd made the point. But he couldn't let the dice get cold now. Only the two of them aboard; that made it simpler. And the sergeant had said the power-pack used a 250 Kemp input, the same as the wall current at the house. Usable, then, and he had to get it back....
He walked slowly over to a bulkhead seat, sat down.
He groped uncertainly for the brief-tube he'd brought, let it fall with a clatter to the deck.
The captain was scooping it up in a trice, and Doug twisted the muscles of his face into a grimace of discomfort.
"Sir,—sir, is there something wrong?"
"I—no I don't think so, captain. Nervous strain, I'm afraid. I—" Another grimace.
"Sergeant! Three neuro-tablets at once—"
"No, no—" Doug said. "Like poison to me." He doubled over. "Captain...."
"Yes sir, what can I get—"
"Nothing, I'm afraid.... Back to Earth as quickly as possible—"
"Back to Earth, sir? But that's impossible! We're at least thirty minutes past C-limit, sir ... the trajectory's locked. We must continue, of course."
"Must—mustcontinue?"
"Why, yes of course, sir."
Doug straightened his body, but kept his arms locked around his middle, kept the grimace on his face and feigned shortness of breath.
"Of coursewhat, captain?"
A look of comprehension came suddenly to the captain's face. He straightened, stood again at attention. "According to Constitutional Commandments Four, Part 3, Sub-section 12 as amended July 9, 1949, part A: 'All space craft shall be robot-controlled and shall fly predetermined trajectories, save (1) when bearing members of the Science Council and/or their certified representatives, to whom manual operation and navigation at will is singularly permissible, or (2) when insurmountable emergency shall occur. All other craft shall be launched on the predetermined trajectory as hereinbefore stipulated, and shall be compensated to their true course by remote control from Earth for so long as radio impulses between ship and Earth shall be for all practical purposes instantaneous. Beyond this limit, to be hereinafter described as Compensation Limit, whereafter distance shall create a time-lag of communications and corresponding control impulses so as to make further remote control an impracticability the ship shall continue on the trajectory as last corrected under control of its own self-directing, or autorobot, units. These units will be constructed so as to be inaccessible to all passengers, including instrument and communications technicians."
For a moment Doug said nothing, let the captain remain at attention, struggling to regain his breath and composure. The man had thought the feigned sickness was simply a device to get him off guard so that his alertness might be tried with some disguised test of his knowledge of regulations. Of course that was it ... unthinkable that any officer, any rank, should give such an order as he had given for actual execution.
Funny, how the twists saved you when there was no longer any point in being saved. He was trapped here—trapped, and on Venus the trap would tighten and finally close when Tayne found some opening in his guard and plunged through it.
"Well done, captain. As you were. Your qualifications seem quite adequate. See to it that they are continually maintained."
"Yes, sir."
With what nonchalance he could muster, Doug dropped the sickness act as though it had been a trick the captain might have expected, and opened the brief-tube. He would have to memorize every word of its contents, every direction on the plastic sheets it contained. If he wanted to see his own home again—for that matter, if he ever wanted to see Dot again, he would have to run a bluff that would, he mused, even amaze the United States Bureau of Internal Revenue.
And that, he knew, would be damn near impossible.
After Doug had gone, Dot tried to make herself forget why he had gone, where he was going. She wanted the old conviction to come back; she wanted to be smugly sure again that it was impossible for him to fly to another planet, and that what he had said was just a great joke.
She twisted a dial on the luxurious radio console, sat for a moment beside it and wished that she could as easily twist fact away from belief, so that the awful fear would go. Yet blindness to fact was no answer to fear of it.
It seemed long ago that space flight had been something for light dinner-table conversation, something for fanciful conjecture in an idle moment, something to discuss politely when the overimaginative person became serious with his day-after-tomorrow talk.
But now suddenly it was none of those things. Now suddenly it was a thing of life or death to her; it was real, and she was afraid. The science-fiction stories she had leafed through in an idle moment—what had their writers said? What had they, in their irrepressible way, so logically theorized about the balance of life in the impossibly deep reaches of Space—about the precocious ships that men would some day build when they were at last free of their age-old fear of infinity?
The soft music from the radio had stopped, and the newscaster's voice disturbed her reverie.
"... this afternoon, the Prelatinate announced eight new amendments to the Constitutional Commandments, making the total for the day so far a slightly-under-average twelve. This afternoon's amendments deal specifically with Commandment Ninety-three, Section 189, Chapter 914, paragraph 382, sub-division 2103-K. The first stipulates...."
She tried to find another program of music, but the daily amendment announcements were everywhere. With a fleeting smile she remembered what Doug had said—that at last the commercial had met its match as an instrument for ruining radio listening. Yet logical enough, for here the dollar was secondary, and Government was God.
She turned the console off, and again the house was quiet, and the chill mantle of worry drew closer about her brain, grew steadily into a stifling strait-jacket of helpless fear. Lord, there was nothing she coulddo....
Then of a sudden her pulse was racing as the large helicopter landed at the side of the house. She looked out the window.
But it was not Doug. The word ELECTROSUPPLY was stenciled in large letters above the craft's opening freight-door, and she watched as a dolly was lowered from it. There were four men, and they were unloading a large crate. It went on the dolly, and then the dolly with its load was being pushed by the four to the side of the house.
The door-signal sounded.
"Yes?"
"Madame Blair, would you please sign for the shipment?"
"Yes, of course. But what is it that I—"
"Sorry, Madame. Only the Order Division knows the nature of the consignment—policy, you know. There, that'll do it. Thank you."
He left with her permission to leave the crate in the cellar, and after a few minutes the 'copter and its efficient crew was gone.
She knew intuitively that it was the equipment he needed so desperately—ironically enough it must be that. She had to fight back the impulse to rush to the cellar and rip the crate open. For if in some way she should slip, do something wrong, damage what was inside....
Quite suddenly her thoughts were marshaled from their uninhibited adventuring and became sharp hard-edged instruments. Even the tiniest error now could mean the difference between winning and losing, and it was still not too late to win.
A message to him through his office, but it must be contrived somehow so that they could not suspect that she was telling him he must return immediately. She could simply say something like "as per your instructions, am informing you of arrival of the last item for which you phoned. Am sure it is exactly what you wanted. Good luck, Lisa." That should work—
But the telecall signal sounded before she could pick the slender unit from its cradle.
"Yes?"
"Madame Blair?" It was a woman's voice.
"Why yes, speaking."
"This is Madame—Doe. We missed you at the culture lecture yesterday afternoon my dear, and just wanted to make sure that everything was—all right, you know."
"The lecture—oh, yes of course. Why I'm sorry—"
"But everything is—all right? You're not ill?"
"Oh, no. It just must have been one of my usual oversights," Dot bluffed. And she knew there was something missing. In the woman's voice. Something....
"Oversights?"
"Why, yes—I'm afraid so. Dreadfully sorry. But of course I'll try not to forget next time."
"But Madame Blair—" and then suddenly the tone changed. "Yes, I know how it is—we all have those days, don't we? Well, there's something you really should know, so don't forget our next little get-together, will you?" An enchanting little giggle was attached, but there had been no giggle in the first three words.
"No, I won't forget," Dot said.
"'Til next time, then. Good-bye."
Dot hung up, and the room seemed suddenly to have become cold. Intuition was one thing—she wouldn't be a woman if she didn't trust that. But imagination was of course quite another. It had been simply an unexpected half-minute phone-call. Short, almost too short, if she were any judge of the ladies' society type. Nonsense....
She sat down. And the chair was cold.
Nerves, girl, that's all. Like the night you saw the man in the shadows outside the house and Doug wasn't home from the banquet yet, and it turned out to be the neighborhood cop waiting for his beat relief....
She had to forget it, get the message to Doug. What would she say, now? "As per your instructions—"
But Madame Blair—!
Damn! This was ridiculous—pure imagination—since when was a culture society a thing to get goose-pimples over? That was all it was of course. Just the knowledge of the crate downstairs.... God the house was quiet.
She reached for the phone.
And again, the door-signal chimed.
She half-walked, half-ran to answer it; tripped, caught herself. It chimed again.
Then somehow she had the door open, and there were four men in white uniforms standing before it.
"Madame Blair, if you will please come with us."
"No, I'm sorry,—I can't. Why, what are you here for?"
"You received a telecall several minutes ago, did you not, Madame?" He phrased it as a question, but she knew that it was a statement.
"Why, yes I did. A social call—"
"We know that it was not, Madame Blair. If you will accompany us please." They stood there, unmoving.
"I—I don't understand. My culture society, if it is important for some reason that you know...."
"Precisely. We've known for some time about the society, madame. We are sorry that we have at length linked you with it. Now if you will accompany us please."
There was no choice. She did not want to think of what might happen if she ran.
"Inside Venus compensation limit, sir. They've taken over. Inversion in three minutes; jet-down at NMHQ in twelve. Secondary check please, sergeant."
Space had been monotonous. After the first thrill of watching Earth grow smaller and smaller until it was nothing more than another planet in the heavens, after the realization that the studded blackness to each side was real, and not some gigantic planetarium show, the trip had been a seemingly motionless thing, like high flight in a light plane at less than cruising speed. They had licked the problem of weightlessness by an artificial gravity set-up which functioned, as far as he was able to find out from the captain, on a complex system of gyroscopes—but not even they furnished so much as a tremor to the deck plates, and he might as well have been planted firmly on Earth for all the sensation there was of movement. Even when inversion began, the gyro system automatically compensated for its inertia effects, and he would have been unaware of it had it not been for the series of oral checks between sergeant and captain, captain and the base on Venus.
Then suddenly, the second planet loomed large and white—it blotted out the blackness, and then there was no more blackness, and the telescreen seemed to be swimming in pea-soup fog.
"Six minutes, sir."
The syrupy whiteness seemed limitless and for a moment Doug felt little pangs of panic, of fear that they must be falling into a great pit to which there was no bottom, only the eternity of the falling itself. Then suddenly it was above them like a diffuse, infinite ceiling, receding quickly at first, then more slowly, more slowly....
There was a gentle pressure beneath his feet. The gyros had compensated to their limit and had automatically cut out, and true gravity and inertia once more were settling their grip about the sleek ship.
"Switch the screen aft, captain."
"As she blasts, sir."
Blue. Great, incredible expanses of blue in every shade of color, every intensity of pastel, forced to the bending curve of a horizon that seemed like some great arching bulwark against the heavy, stifling whiteness that was the sky. For moments he was not able to distinguish land from ocean, but then he discerned it as the midnight blue, near-black mass that undulated slowly, in long, even swells—and it was the vari-shaded, lighter area, smaller in size than the state of Connecticut—that was the northern land mass. And it was toward that which they descended. Their formation had already split and far to starboard, he saw two long darts of silver pair off to land on the planet's southwestern mass.
He drew the cloak about his shoulders, secured the decorative dress sword at his waist.
Down. As silently as had been the long drift through Space, save for the nearly inaudible rumble of the great engine as it had checked in for deceleration. The descent was so perfectly controlled that if there was the heavy whine of atmosphere about their hull from too-great downward speed, he could not hear it. Down.
He drew on the gauntlets.
There was a gentle jar.
Their escort formed at once midway between his ship and Tayne's. They marched abreast, flanked by echelons of cadre officers and Quadrature Academy cadets. They marched silently toward a great, shining building that commanded the entire edge of the landing plaza. Its size alone made Doug catch his breath, yet it was dwarfed by a frozen human sea of tan-bodied pygmies, amassed before it in wave after spreading wave of superbly formed divisions. To realize at once that they were not formations of some stunted denizens of the planet, but children of Earth not yet eleven years old, was almost impossible for him although he had known, had seen the terrifying figures.... But here were the statistics, immobile, at rigid attention, not in black and white, but in the hue of living flesh, with red blood still coursing through them. Here were what tomorrow would be the numbers—small still things, cold, impersonal, and dead. Here was the stability factor of a people which had forged a device for peace. Here was the monument to their stupidity, the warrant for their ultimate place in infamy.
They faced the building in a long arc at the far edge of the plaza, an arc that Doug judged over a mile in length, easily 300 yards in depth. In it were the children of two full quadrants, his and Tayne's—perhaps a half-million—and the number would be matched on the southwestern mass, where Klauss and Vladkow had landed later, the survivors of their commands would be shipped here, and there would be the last battle. It had been planned that way for key psychological reasons.
After the first taste of battle, then the indeterminate time of waiting.... And suddenly the waiting would cease, the sea-going troops at last would land, and swarm from their swift ships, clanging in droves to the attack. And the small, still dead things would mount again. Until margin was reached. Then they would stop.
Midway the length of the arc, where it was cleft by a distance of about a quarter-mile, the escort halted. It faced left. Doug and Tayne followed suit. The escort fell back to each side, once again forming the impressive flying wedge with the two Quadrates at its point. Then, facing the fantastically pretentious edifice looming silently before them, the great assemblage waited, the mute silence broken only by the rustling sound of a half-million sword-sheaths as they swung gently in the warm gentle breeze.
Gradually, then, the sound grew. A rumble like far-off thunder was above them, and it mounted slowly to a vibrant roar. The milk-white sky suddenly swirled as if in indecision, then was ripped asunder, and torn tendrils of it groped to fill the gaping rent in it as a great, silver shape plunged through, descended on a seething pillar of flame.
It landed atop the building itself. It was like a towering, silver spire there, as though to become an integral fixture to transform the sprawling Colossus from administrative nerve-center to the temple of empire. Doug's own ship beside it would have been as a sloop to a battleship. He knew that in a moment the main port of the flagship would open, and through it would be escorted the Prelate General himself.
A half-million pairs of ears were tuned sharply to hear the voice of their God. And when it had thrown them into conflict here, the mighty ship would rise and vanish as it had come, to bear its high priest to the southwest, where the lesson would be read for the second and final time.
Doug tensed, knowing as he did from sleepless study what was to come. Suddenly, from well-concealed amplifiers through which the Prelate General's voice would soon sound, there were the first thunderous strains of The Battle Hymn To Peace. Doug whirled, faced Tayne.
"Quadrants to salute!"
Tayne pivoted.
"Division leaders, give your divisions present arms!"
A hundred cadets about-faced in turn, bawled in unison "Regimental sachens, give your regiments present arms!"
And the command was passed in swelling unison from regiment to battalion, battalion to company, and the timing had been perfect. As the surging hymn of hysteria struck its climaxing strain, a cacophony of two thousand young voices swelled hysterically above it—"... PRE-SENT—ARMS!"
There was a piercing shriek of sound as 500,000 broadswords whipped from their scabbards, glittered like the teeth of some Hell-spawned, pulsating monster as they flashed in salute.
And Doug sickened. For he had seen it before, and only the sound had been different. There had been the resounding slap of taut rifle-slings against the wood of polished stocks....
The terrible music ended on a measure of rolling drums, and the command was relayed for order arms. There was the crash of a half-million blades slammed home in their scabbards as one, and then the silence fell as though some great impenetrable curtain had fallen.
The Prelatinate General, borne in a highly-polished sedan chair of lightweight metal on the shoulders of the colorfully-uniformed members of the Inner Prelatinate, appeared in the pocket-like balcony which was dwarfed only by the immensity of the building itself. Visible only as a jewel-encrusted shadow behind the transparent metal enclosure in which he was ensconced, he began his speech. The two quadrants stood again as statues.
"Once again, for the glory of the highest order of life and with the blessing of the Prelatinate Saints, we unite to do battle for the salvation of Man. May our mission be one of success."
A great rolling murmur of sound swelled from the throats of the half-million, subsided.... The word was undistinguishable, but Doug knew what it was. They had said "Amen."
"Our sacred duty to the One World, to the Universal State is before us, and handed down to us by the will of the people as they worship in their countless community senates, we shall discharge it without fear, and for the love of our way of life. Sobeit.
"It behooves us all, as children of a mighty government, to believe without contest in the inviolate concepts upon which our all-powerful way of living and thought is built. There have been those who were unbelievers; there have been those who would profess to debase government and political philosophy to the level of mere intellectual function and enterprise of policy, yet even those were heard to admit before paying the terrible price for their heresies that, because their beliefs were different, they must have of course been wrong.
"For those of us who aspire and pray that we may one day hold a seat in the great Quorum of the Perfectly Governed, let there be no doubt, let there be no threat to the mightiness of the glorious order which we foster....
"As it is to be found in the immortal words of the Constitutional Commandments, and I read from Four Chapter 18, Book of Sections,Section 932: 'There shall be great honor to those who give of their blood that the One World shall live, and great reverence for the glorious memories of those who give of their lives that the One World shall not perish.'Sobeit."
Once again the rolling murmur of a half-million voices. "Amen...."
"It is then to you that I command, go forth, and perform the duties of your great faith; go forth, for the dead shall inherit the living!"
And as at a signal, the air was rent with a deafening surge of voices strained to their topmost in a savage cheer.
Slowly then, it subsided, and the Prelatinate General raised his left hand as though in half-salute, half-benediction. And again, there was silence, and the living things that were statues had lost their shape and form, and had become row upon row of symmetrically-hewn markers dotting a large graveyard on Sunday afternoon in July.
"And now, let us join minds as we listen to the ancient tongue voicing the Prelatinate's Creed which has taught us to believe...."
And the sounds were strange, their meaning neither having been taught nor studied for the century and a half that English had been decreed by law as the universal tongue. Doug knew that only he, of all the half-million, understood the sounds. With difficulty at first, then with increasing facility, he translated the Latin. The Latin which the others heard and obeyed. And which they had never, nor ever would understand.
"... believe in the purchase of everlasting peace with the blood of the young; in eternal adherence to the regime of the Prelatinate because it is the sole existing concept in which to adhere; in sacrifice of thought upon the omnipotent altar of Belief to Government Almighty, and in the everlasting spirit of the Founders, to whom we daily pray for the strength to forever remain unchanged, unchangeable, despite the temptations of knowledge, progress, and human feeling: Sobeit. I believe in the infinite divinity of the two parties, and in the concept of truth as they shall dictate, rather than as it may seem to exist through exercise of mere reason; in the...."
The sing-song tones droned with heavy monotony through the hidden speakers, as though weaving some hypnotic spell to insure the captivity of the young myrmidons upon whose ears they fell, unintelligible, but Law.
The sea of young heads was bowed and a million eyes were focused unmoving on the ground, for to view the heavens and to think upon their unbounded freedom, with which they sought to lure the mind away from the patterns which had been decreed for it, would be tantamount to heresy.
And then suddenly the drone had ceased. There was movement in the balcony. Two of the Inner Prelatinate, cloaks swaying heavily with the weight of the precious metals with which they were gaudily embroidered, took posts as though sentinels at each side of the Prelate General's shoulder-borne sedan. The naked broadswords in their hands swung upward slowly until their lips touched directly above it. And the Latin came again, in low, swift cadences.
"...You who are about to die, go forth..."
And as the words were intoned, the broadswords were brought level, were swung slowly, in wide, horizontal half-arcs above the high-held heads of the regimented multitude.
"God..." Doug thought, "God! A blessing!"
Then the ceremony was over, and the strains of the hymn again burst forth, and Doug caught himself almost too late. He whirled.
"Troops pass in review!"
Tayne returned the salute, relayed the order until within seconds it was a surging, shrieking thing, the more frightening for its perfect unison.Hysteria, Doug thought,by the numbers!
He knew the plan. The ranks that formed the long arc of formations would face right, and then, at simultaneous commands, would step off to the beat of the terrible hymn, preserving the curvature of the arc so that the actual line of march would be a perfect circle nearly a mile and a half at its inner diameter, with the great building as its precise center. And the ranks would be kept in perfect dress as they fanned out in 300 yard-lengths, and the cover of each endless column would be of such precision that at a command, the inner columns of each quadrate would march to the rear, and the spectacle would be one of four immense, counter-marching arcs. As they met at the opposite pole of the great diameter, the perfection of their circle would be proven.
He took his station near the edge of the inner circumference. Tayne took his, nearly a half-mile to Doug's rear. The cadre officers and Quadrature Academy cadets took posts of command at equally spaced intervals for the entire length of the arc, marching to them along invisible radii as the thousands of young section and squad leaders shrilled their commands.
Doug drew his sword then, held it high over his head, then swept it in flashing salute to the ground. And together, he and Tayne gave the first order.
"Troops march forward!"
The cadremen and cadets repeated it.
"For-ward—"
And like an echo bounding its way into infinity, the word magnified into an undistinguishable roar.
"MARCH!"
The throbbing hymn was again at its climax, and the volume of sound was so great about him that the tiny shrill note which his ear had singled out for the briefest instant could only have been in his subconscious. Yet for a split-second, it had been by itself, for it had been out of timing with the rest. And it had been near him.
He would listen again, when the counter-march command was given. Impossible, of course. Unthinkable, unthinkable....
It seemed suddenly that the two-hour long march about the 5-mile mean circumference would take two days. The display was ridiculous and time-consuming, but he was thankful for it even as he cursed it. For he must hear the sound again. Yet if he heard it, then the spectacle must never end.
Slowly, slowly, at a measured, tireless step the Prelate General's Review marched in indefatigable tribute.
And at length, at the half-way mark, Doug raised his sword for the command, whipped it downward.
"Inner columns march to the rear!"
The relay began.
"Inner columns as assigned, to the rear—"
And the last words were magnified to the proportion of thunder, but his ears heard it only as a faraway thing. And again he heard the near-by command, again a split-second off.
"MARCH!"
This time it was unmistakable. A recently designed section or squad-leader, of course, who had not yet mastered the timing of commands to perfection. Nearby. He looked desperately into the files of marching boys at his side, now muddled as the centermost columns marched to the rear. The command would not have been relayed to the outside columns, since they were continuing their march forward. Then he must quickly search the reverse column as it shuttled its obscured way to the rear.
But of course not! He would not recognize a face, even as—as his had gone unrecognized! But the voice he had heard it three times, three split-seconds! And somehow it was, it was Terry's voice! In there somewhere—Terry, Terry and Mike! Swords and maces swinging rhythmically at their sides....
Carl Grayson lit a cigarette. Senior Quadrate Blair watched him closely as he went over the last of his notes. The man was obviously disturbed, but only about the interview itself. There had not been an instant's suspicion; Blair was certain of it. The greatest danger was over. It had been a danger ever-present with first meetings but with each, it had become progressively easier with which to cope, yet with the man Grayson, there had been unexpected pitfalls. These strange people indulged in a peculiar relationship called friendship, he had discovered—in essence it was a psychological thing, a thing from which to derive a satisfying personal pleasure. In actuality, it had become a rather distorted relationship, forged as it had been into a many-ratcheted tool. Between the Congressman and Grayson, however, the relationship was genuine and—the subtle thing which he had missed until it had been almost too late—of a partial nature. The thing called friendship was a thing of varying degree. And Grayson was a "best" friend. He had almost missed that. It was so different to stabilize things here....
"Doug, I want to get this straight for sure, and then I think I'll have the works. What do you mean by 'new sources of military manpower yet waiting to be tapped'? You mean simply the next UMT draft in July don't you—all the new 17-year-olds?"
"For broadcast—immediate broadcast, Carl, I shall explain the phrase by simply saying, uh—a new program of draft-age analysis and evaluation is soon expected to be under study by the Blair Defense Preparedness Committee...."
"Yes, but—Doug that's just a mess of words. It doesn't tell beans about.... Oh. I get it—OK." He pushed the hat further back on his head, made a marginal clarification. It was comfortable in the small office, but there was perspiration on Grayson's wide forehead.
"You don't sound too satisfied, Carl."
"Who, me? Hell, I'm satisfied. I keep getting the exclusives, so I can't holler. I just thought somehow you'd never get around to using that method, that's all, Doug. If you want to tell 'em, you can—and I guess you always have. But I supposes if you don't want to, but want 'em to think you have, it's as legitimate as ever to just confuse 'em. Get me. Philosopher." He completed the marginal note. "Now let's see.... OK, OK, OK."
"Carl, how busy are you this afternoon?"
"Not, especially. Got to get this ready for my seven o'clock stint tonight and knock out the rest of next Monday's column, and then there's some of the routine junk but that can wait. Why?"
"I think I need your personal reaction to—well, to be frank about it, to a new angle the committee's got in its sights on this UMT business. I want to know what you think the radio—and the press, of course—will do with it."
"I guess I better put the pencil away?"
"Afraid so. But you'll get it first when the time comes. And perhaps you can help me decide when that should be, too."
"Shoot. All ears and no memory." He folded the uneven sheets of newsprint, crammed them in an inner pocket.
"The story I've just given you, Carl, is a lot more important than it looks. At first glance it's just Sunday feature stuff—that's the way you'll play it in your column, and you'll probably just give it a tag-end spot on your program. And that's the way I want it played. But—it is important. I think you could call it a sort of—of a corner-stone story."
"Thinking of a series, you mean? Hell, Doug, you've got the next elec—"
"Not as a series, that's the point. Not so direct. More like a good propag—public relations campaign I mean. The development will be gradual, and not too regular—that part of it I'm going to leave up to you to some extent, I think—until it automatically becomes the top news."
"Don't get it, Doug. I've told you before what's page one and what isn't. This thing you've just given me hasn't any big names in it, anything about money, taxes, or things to make anybody good and sick at heart. This is just—well, just opinion. Thoughtful analysis. The thoughtful stuff never makes the front pages, you know that."
The Quadrate smiled. "Precisely. I feel it should be pretty casually introduced. But don't worry—I won't ruin its news value. I think you'll agree with me when I'm ready for the top spot on your broadcast and for the front pages, I'll have something that will—how do you put it?—make people suddenly sick. Point is, I want them to be unconsciously thinking along the right lines first, so that when they get through being sick and stop to think about it, it will make sense."
He was careful. It was difficult to maintain the curious bantering way of speech these people continually employed. An end-product, of course, of their emotional degeneration, and therefore as difficult to perfectly imitate as a provincial misuse of the language. But it was not as difficult as at first....
"Sure Doug—what you're talking about is done all the time, every day of the week. That part's easy enough—too damn easy. But—you keep saying 'it.' 'It' will make sense. What are you gunning at?"
"Suppose I give you an example. The final development of that statement you weren't clear on. 'New sources of military manpower yet waiting to be tapped.' What it will mean, when the time comes, is the UMT drafting of children ten years old. Thirteen at first."
"The what?" The man Grayson looked almost ludicrous. His mouth hung foolishly open, and there was no sound coming from it.
"I'm afraid you not only heard correctly, Carl, but that I had better tell you that if you're thinking of sending for the booby-wagon for me, you'll have to send for about thirty others for the rest of the committee. Next week, the Blair Defense Preparedness Committee will introduce a bill for unlimited lowering of the draft age, for either war or peacetime use. Within a month after its passage—and I can guarantee you that it will be passed—the committee will give you what you'll need for your first big story on it. It will urge, and then it will demand that all male youths from the present draft age of 17 down to the age of thirteen be immediately registered for selective service."
"Good Lord, Doug—"
"The committee is strong, Carl. It is strong because I knew how to pick it. I did not pick it, I assure you, on the basis of intelligence or learning or capability. I picked it in terms of personal political and financial influence, and in terms of my capability in persuading its members to my way of thinking. That was not too difficult—they're all band-wagon men.
"But to the point. On the heels of the new Blair Law's invocation, the committee will again make a demand—registration of all youngsters down to and including the age of ten years."
"Doug for God's sake—"
"Sit down, Carl!"
"Sure...."
"I'm quite sane. Worried?"
"Hell yes I'm worried."
"Take it easy. They thought a man called Litvinov was deranged once—around 1913 I think it was, when he predicted World War One, and the fall of the House of Czars."
"But you can't be serious about this—this kid business. Why my God if I think you've been—overworking, let's say, what d'you think the reaction of the man in the street'll be?"
"That, Carl, hasn't mattered for quite some time. You know it, and I know it. He's already swallowed UMT itself, don't forget."
"But—hell, the Blair Committee isn't the only bunch of politicians around here. And they—"
"I told you, Carl, my committee is strong. I picked it that way. Others can yell all they want. But no amount of yelling—even by the most widely-heard commentators and widely-published columnists—has ever really accomplished much when a particularly strong political faction has decided how things are going to be. It's the things that make you sick that have always made the front pages, remember?"
"I—you're crazy, Doug. Crazy as a 1951 tax program. You've gotten bitter about things in the past, sometimes a little cynical. Hell, who doesn't. But you've always been the one man the people knew they could count on—and your fellow-workers, I can even add. If you try to come out with a thing like this—"
"A moment. Just a minute, Carl. I want to ask an easy one. It is really easy. How long before the next world war breaks out?"
"Easy, what d'you mean, easy? Tomorrow, next month, next year maybe. Maybe not until 1960. Nobody knows that—"
"I still say, easy. There's certainty it will be at least by 1960, and probably sooner. That's terrifyingly close enough, isn't it, when you're speaking in terms of the inevitable?"
"I see."
"The world is a pretty desperate place right now, wouldn't you say? Worse even than five or six years ago."
"Desperate, desperate—yes of course it's desperate. And you—you're going to make something of it, is that it? Doug, you're not being very original. I never thought—I never honestly thought the day would come when I'd hear you—"
"Give me a chance, Carl."
"If I do I don't think I'll ever broadcast another word of what you have to say."
"I'll take that chance. But first I'd better clear some things up. First of all, I'll tell you how much I've explained to the committee. I've pointed out to them that there is but one way open—and one way only—of offsetting the Soviets' superiority in arms production, and that's to shock the living daylights out of them. Shock them so that they'll be convinced we're—we're a nation gone mad, perhaps. As you think I've gone mad, this moment. But—what stomach would any foreign enemy have for fighting a madman, armed to the teeth with atomic weapons? They say a lunatic with a gun is a great deal more deadly than a sane man similarly armed.
"So—we shall shock them, Carl. We shall, perhaps before the year is out, not only double our own production regardless of cost, but register every kid in the country down to the ten-year age level. And have a gun ready for each one, too. As I explained to the committee, it won't be even their tremendous numbers that will be frightening. It will be the seemingly crazed desperation of the country that would consider calling them to arms that would throw the scare. And then, of course, we'll take advantage of the scare. We'll produce A-weapons as we never have before. Hell, every parent in the nation will be breaking his back at a defense plant—not just for the ridiculously high wages that a riveter gets, but to insure the safety of their kids' skins."
"Doug, you're either really nuts or—or—"
"So much the committee knows, as of now. And, I've sold it to them. I sold it to them by simply asking them which was less desirable, my plan, or the end of civilization in a few short years. And, by asking them what other solution they had."
"Any straw—any straw at all." The reporter was not speaking to be heard, but Blair heard him.
"You've hit it precisely, Carl. It's come finally to that. Any straw at all."
For a few moments there was silence in the small office, and Carl Grayson just sat, staring at the floor. At length he put a fresh cigarette between his lips, lit it, and smoked automatically. It was half consumed before Doug said, "Now, I want to discuss the rest of the plan with you. The part I've not broached to the committee as yet."
"The—rest? Doug, what are you talking about?"
"The rest of it. You see, sooner or later the initial shock is going to wear off, Carl. Then, perhaps if we're lucky, we'll be evenly matched in armament and personnel under arms, but that will be all. A balance of peace is no good. You convince no one that peace is desired. You simply convince them that for awhile, there's no way they dare break it. But again, sooner or later, the dare is taken and then—"
"I want to go, Doug."
"Not yet. I want you to hear me out. And, I'm going to ask a rather special favor, Carl. Judge the plans on the merits of its logic alone. For the moment, imagine you have no emotion."
"I can, but it won't do any good. Afraid I have emotion, Douglas."
"I see. Tell me, if it is so valuable a thing as to be allowed to cloud your reasoning, why would you instantly throw it away if something called patriotic duty were suddenly thrust upon you?"
"It would shake me up a little of course—"
"Yes, but you'd chuck it. You'd perform the duty."
"All right. I don't know the tricks of debate, you do. Go ahead, I'm listening."
"I'll begin this way. If, we'll say, an infantry captain realized that by sacrificing the lives of three of his men and possibly his own, he could save the lives of his entire company, what would he do, if he were what is termed a 'good' officer?"
"Why, if that were his only alternative—"
"I assure you, it would be, for the purposes of my analogy."
"He'd—he'd save the company. That's happened."
"Even to men with emotions."
"Why—yes of course. Damn you Doug—"
"Even when one of the three to be sacrificed might be a kid who was still in high school when he enlisted—"
"Yes. Yes I guess so."
"Now remember what you've just told me, and switch to this.... What, actually, is the basis for armed conflict between nations? Generally speaking, with the long view of history?"
"I—I suppose covetousness. Materially translated that would mean just plain wanting the grain fields, the ore mines, the sea ports, the wealth someone else has and that you no longer have, doesn't it? Land, then. Hitler called itLebensraum. One outfit thinks another is stepping on its toes over this chunk of real estate or that. Etcetera, ad nauseum, ad politics."
"Good. And what's the real root of this material covetousness do you think?"
"Grass is always greener, I guess."
"That is motive enough for the small-scale wars, yes. But I'm speaking of the kind nations fight in desperation, not merely for the sake of warring."
"Then, well—they run out of what they've got. Want more. Is that the answer you want?"
"Almost. What makes them run out, Carl?"
"Not enough stuff to take care of their population, not enough work to supply the money to buy what little there is to buy. Too many people, not enough resources to keep 'em happy."
"Now, essentially, you have it. Now, if you'll remember those two things—the captain's sacrifice and Mr. Hitler's fight forLebensraum—we'll switch again. If I owed you a dollar, Carl, and gave you a bill, you'd accept it. What would it be worth?"
"Why, about—let's see—"
"No, I mean in terms of the metal backing it."
"Well—actually, it could be worthless. But as long as I don't think it is—"
"Correct. As long as you, and everybody else of course, has faith in it, it is of value, and is working currency. Now one more thing. Did you ever have anything really bad happen to you when you were a youngster—say about ten years old, Carl?"
"I don't get this, Doug. You're way over me—"
"No, answer me. Think of something unpleasant that happened—"
"Don't have to think. I still get goose-pimples when I hear a near-by train whistle. Almost got killed once when my father's car got stalled on a railroad crossing. Sort of a—I guess they call it conditioning. Pretty strong with me, I guess."
"Yes. Now—we'll put the four things together, Carl. First of all, according to my plan, the world must somehow be given implicit faith in a method for the elimination of warfare. A method in which they will so strongly believe that, although the supposed reason for such belief may be scientifically quite fallacious, they will practice it nonetheless. To do this, they must be shown a method which, by one means or another, actually works. And, that is possible. There is such a method, based on the sacrifice of the few for the ultimate preservation of the many...."
"Go on. So far you've brought in the dollar-bill idea; the business about conditioning, the captain and his company.... What method?"
"Taking the drafted ten-year-olds—first of just this nation, then of the entire world—placing them once each year in four divisions in the Sahara desert, and setting them at one another with manual weapons."
Carl turned white. He sat, unmoving, silent.
"The accepted theory will be that the horror of death by arms will create so deep a mental scar on the young plastic minds that in adulthood they will never again be able to kill. In actuality, the theory is in many respects fallacious, granted. But it will be accepted, because the practice—the desert fighting—will reduce the basic cause of warfare to flat zero, and there will eventually be no war. How? Through such a plan, many male children of course will die yearly. The number killed will be subject to strict control of course, in exact proportion to annual world birth-rate, and potential multiplication. Such, Carl, that the population of the world will, in terms of future generations as well as those almost immediate, be always stabilized. Of course, since a period of from twenty to fifty years may be needed for practice of the method before the first tangible stabilization results are shown, the 'conditioning' angle must be heavily stressed, before as well as during the actual desert fighting. Backing by the press will greatly help toward this end—you yourself know how terribly potent it can be—and I'm certain, once the method is explained to them in terms of survival, we will also be able to count on the 'corroboration' of the world's most popular scientists.
"However, as absolutely necessary insurance, an influence infinitely more powerful than those combined will be employed to positively insure unquestioning belief in the validity of the plan, not only before and during the first few years, but for all time!
"I have, therefore, already taken steps to bring it into play. I have already issued invitations to one hundred of the world's highest ranking ecclesiastical leaders for a conference here next week. By then, the committee should be rolling with quite a bit of momentum. As we said, these are desperate times...."
Carl remained silent. His question was in his eyes, but he would not give it speech. But Blair saw it.
"The clergy? Their assistance will be essential. I just told you why, didn't I? You see, once they realize that they can materially contribute to lasting peace, I am sure they will cooperate. If necessary, they—all of them—would consent to a merger of church and state. History bears me out."
"The mer—"
"Naturally. How else can I makesurethe people are made to believe implicitly in the plan until they can at least see its tangible results? And how better to maintain that belief? Government and politics and all they imply are already worshipped more than God, Carl! So let's put it on a paying basis!"
"And you think—you actually think you'll get the support of the world's clergy in this revolting scheme—"
"I told you that history bears me out, Carl. For instance—from the fourth to the fourteenth centuries, one of the world's most powerful sects was heavily involved in temporal government—because, it said, of necessity to preserve itself. And surely you must remember the cooperation of the church with Constantine and Charlemagne when their empires were in danger of disintegrating, when unity was so sorely needed, and they knew there was but one that could help them? Often the church—the sect to which I referred before—actually took over the powers of government during Charlemagne's rule—not, perhaps, because it wanted involvement in those things which were Caesar's—but because it realized the grave perils which would face it if whole empires were to break apart, and their peoples reduced to pagan savagery as a result.
"I think you see my point. And—I imagine the simile about the captain and his platoon will also be appealing, don't you? The idea of sacrifice that others might live...?"
"You—you son of a bitch!"
"I'm sorry you said that, Carl. Because the plan will work, you know. From telling it to you, I see that its shock-value is valid. From seeing your final reaction, I realize that you are inwardly as sure as I that it will succeed. It is actually all I wanted, to get your immediate reaction."
"Doug, I'm going. But there's just one thing I want to ask you before I smear you from here to damnation. Just what, Congressman, isyourcut in this?"
"None. I have not once mentioned money."
"You're a madman, Blair."
"When you've convinced yourself of that, Carl, you may try to smear me if you wish. But first—first, convince yourself!"