Empery (17 page)

By that time, Sujata had followed Wyrena as far as the end of the entryway. “Let him in,” she said, and turned away.

Berberon bobbed his head in salute as the door opened.“You must be Wyrena Ten Ga’ar, the Director’s new aide,” he said politely. “I am Felithe Berberon, Terran Observer to the Committee.”

“In here, Felithe,” Sujata called from the other room.

Answering Berberon’s bow of the head with a welcoming smile, Wyrena let him past, then followed him into the greatroom. They found Sujata seated where Wyrena had left her a few moments earlier.

“Good evening, Director,” Berberon said. “I hope haven’t disturbed you—”

“No.”

“I thought you might grant me a few minutes to speak privately with you.”

“About what?” Berberon glanced sideways at Wyrena, raising an eyebrow questioningly. “If it’s the Chancellery, she knows,” Sujata said. “We’ve been talking about it.”

Nodding, Berberon edged toward a seat. “Then, of course, she should stay. I was given to understand you are having some difficulty deciding what to do. I thought I might be able to help.”

“How?”

“By providing you with information you are not likely to have received elsewhere.”

“She doesn’t want to take the post,” Wyrena said. His eyes betraying his alarm, Berberon looked to Wyrena questioningly, as though wondering whether she were ally or enemy. Then he turned back to Sujata. “Am I too late, then?“Berberon asked. “Have you already decided?”

“No,” Sujata said. “Not entirely. But Wyrena is right. I don’t
want
the post.”

“But you may take it nonetheless?”

“AH I can say is that I haven’t decided not to,” Sujata said.

“I will take that as a positive sign,” Berberon said with a hopeful smile.

Sujata did not answer the smile. “So what does the World Council have to say on the subject of Chancellor Erickson’s successor?”

“I am not here representing the Council,” Berberon admitted.

“Oh? Then who sent you here? Wells? Or Erickson?”

“Neither. Though I, too, want to see you take the post, I do so for separate and personal reasons.”

“Do you plan to offer as selective a version of the truth as they did?”

“No. I will be honest with you—perhaps uncomfortably so.”

“Then please sit down,” Sujata said. “I would welcome some honesty.”

Relieved, Wyrena waited until Berberon had selected a chair, then settled herself behind and to the right of him, out of the range of his peripheral vision. It was the traditional place for a Ba’ar woman at a talk circle, but more than habit dictated her choice. Had Wyrena made herself part of the circle, Berberon would have been obliged to divide his attention between Sujata and herself. This way he could focus his attention on Sujata exclusively.

“You can begin by explaining why Chancellor Erickson is resigning,” Sujata said, drawing her legs up and tucking her knees under her chin.

“It’s really quite simple. Blythe doesn’t think she can beat Wells on Triad.”

Sujata shook her head. “But why resign? Shouldn’t she go out fighting, making as much noise as possible? Shouldn’t she force him to use a recall vote and not just quietly absent herself?”

Berberon smiled. “Is there such a thing as gambling on Maranit?”

“No—but I’ve come across it enough times since leaving there. Why?”

“I once watched a gambler facing bankruptcy bet his last dozen chips on a weak hand. Later I asked him why he’d done that, when he could have held on for several more hands hoping for something better. He said that if you’re playing to win, and not just to postpone leaving the table, sometimes you have to take a chance before the chips are gone. That’s what Blythe is doing. Having you made Chancellor is the best she thinks she can get.”

“But she’s the Chancellor. She’s Director Wells’s superior. He has to take her orders.” Berberon shook his head. “Wells is different. He has leverage of his own.”

“Why?”

“Because Wells is a member of the Nines.”

Sujata frowned. “I have encountered the term several times since I arrived here, but I don’t really understand what it refers to—or why it matters.”

“How to describe them?” Berberon said with a sigh. “The Nines are part philosophical clique, part political party, part activist cadre. They are the champions of the individual in this generation. They believe that competition is the ideal way to allocate wealth and power in society.”

“I don’t remember hearing of them when I was here before, as a tutelate. Or, for that matter, at M-Center or Ba’ar Tell.”

“Perfectly understandable. They were founded here forty-odd years ago and have little or no presence elsewhere. They are uniquely Terran, though there are some parallels between their beliefs and the self-reliance code of the Rena-Kiri.”

“What does the name refer to?”

“To their conceit. To the rank they have given themselves. They consider themselves the elite, the intellectually gifted, the morally superior.”

“You disagree, it seems.”

“Yes. Before I offer further opinions of the Nines, you should know that my antipathy toward them is personal and long-standing. I was recruited by them thirty years ago. Though I take no pride in saying so, I qualified easily. But I was horrified by what they advocate.”

“Why? What do they want?”

Berberon sighed again. “Their complaint is that they are being held back from reaching their ultimate levels of achievement by a social order biased against excellence.”

“And is it?”

He shrugged. “Any society that tries to protect its weaker members must set some limits on the power of its stronger members. The Council has worked hard to still the competitive element in our nature and to blunt and channel it where it cannot be stilled. It’s not easily done. You may have difficulty understanding this, coming from Maranit.”

“What do you mean?”

Berberon pursed his lips. “What fraction of the membership of the Nines would you guess is male?”

“Why, I don’t know. Wouldn’t it reflect the sex ratio on Earth—fifty percent or something near it?”

Berberon shook his head. “Our best guess is that at least eighty percent of the Nines are male. The Nines aren’t overtly sexist, mind you—the numbers reflect the sexual bias in what they have to offer.”

“Explain.”

“I hope to,” he said, settling back in his chair. “You see, at least in
our
post-Founding culture, male competitiveness is linked to the programming for sexual selection. Achievement translates into opportunity for reproduction. Look at Wells and his little harem—he’s a perfect example of what I mean. If you look into what we know of our history, you’ll see that it’s always been that way. Wealth and power, achievement of virtually any variety, have been the green light to mating.”

“If that’s programmed into human males genetically, what explanation do you offer for Maranit? All positions of authority are held by high women, and the men accept this and always have.”

“Just so—because you have found different ways of satisfying the unique biological imperatives of the sexes.”

“I do not know what you mean by ‘unique biological imperatives.’ ”

A frown flickered across Berberon’s face. “Simply that in terms of their sexual strategies, men and women are very nearly two different species.”

“Curious. Is this your opinion, or do Terrans consider this a fact?”

“It’s a basic principle of sociobiology,” Berberon said with a hint of defensiveness. “May I speak personally?”

“Go ahead.”

“Since sperm are plentiful and represent a trivial investment, the fundamental male strategy is to mate as widely as possible—a strategy that puts every male in direct competition with every other male, since every female is a potential mate.”

Wyrena found Sujata’s expression cautionary. “And what are the women thought to be doing while the men are fighting over them?” Sujata asked.

“Following their own strategy. The female investment in reproduction is much greater than the male’s, which means that the female strategy must necessarily be different. First, to be selective. And second, to see that her issue is well provided for. There are many exceptions to this, of course—nurture has its say as well. But this is the underlying pattern laid down by nature.”

“According to Terran science.”

“According to Nature herself. You can see it in hundreds of species and thousands of human cultures.”

“Not on Maranit. Our pattern is completely different.”

“But do you understand why you are different?” Berberon demanded. “Because Maranit women have had control of their own fertility for thousands of years. Because you’ve never tried to make your males responsible for supporting the young you choose to bear. And because you let your men mate freely with the female underclass. Don’t you see? Maranit culture is as completely entangled with the sexes’ biological programs as ours. But your version escapes the destructive male competitiveness that has always marred ours.”

“Maranit is hardly without conflict and competition.”

“But you high women reserve that to yourselves. Your competition springs from a more benign instinct. You compete to find better ways to preserve and provide. It’s a struggle where even the losers win. Earth and Maranit represent opposite swings of the pendulum—one, ours, in which male, sex-based competitiveness and the behaviors that result from it are at their peak, and one, yours, in which they are mercifully almost nonexistent.”

Wyrena sensed growing resistance in Sujata. “Even if your speculations are correct, what has any of this to do with the question of my becoming Chancellor?”

“Everything, if you heed its import—nothing if you do not,” Berberon said somberly. “Perhaps you know that shortly before the reunion we were on the verge of doing to ourselves what we so hate the Mizari for doing—destroying human life on a global scale. It sounds like madness and it was. The madness is part of us.

“That time the fission blanket saved us from ourselves. But we’re back to shouting across the glade again, making the ape threat-display to the Mizari—except with our latest technology of death instead of upraised arms and snarls. The sorry truth is that the behaviors that come with the male sexual strategy translate poorly to a culture that can build fusion bombs and DE weapons.”

Sujata was shaking her head, arms crossed over her chest.“This is all very difficult for me to credit. And even if what you say is true, where is the mind? Surely we’ve learned something in all this time.”

“The biological program can be overridden, but it can never be banished or forgotten. It’s always running, always pushing, always testing,” Berberon said grimly. “And the wonderful human rationality that can check a primal impulse is just as good at constructing justifications for following it instead.”

Sujata held up her hands, palms out. “We’ve expended a lot of time on this, and I don’t see the relevance, even if I accepted the premises. I’d like to move on to other things.”

For the first time Berberon showed impatience. “You don’t have to accept what I say about ethnology. Look into it yourself when you have the opportunity and draw your own conclusions. But what matters to me is that, for whatever reason, you Maranit have learned how to live without war. I do not know whether the lessons you have learned are transferable or not. I only know that of all the worlds, yours is the only one of which it can be said, and you are the only member of the Committee that comes from such a heritage.”

“Surely that’s more of a liability than an asset? I’m the least prepared to evaluate what Wells says he must have or must do,” Sujata said. “These kinds of questions are completely alien to my experience. Why do you think I had so much difficulty making a decision on Triad? If I were Chancellor, I would be completely dependent on Wells. You might as well have him as Chancellor.”

“You feel inadequate to pass on questions of military strategy?”

“Yes—”

“Then you have embraced the fiction that military decisions require more than ordinary clear thinking and good judgment,” Berberon said, rising out of his chair and gesturing dramatically with one hand. “What does it matter if you can’t cite the Thirteen Principles of Sun Tzu or the elements of Delbruck’s Strategy of Exhaustion? Janell, our bloody history has given us many lessons in how to win. But a soldier knows no more than you do on the subject of when to fight.”

“Somehow I doubt that Wells would agree with you.”

Berberon settled back into his chair. “I think perhaps he would. Certainly Carl von Clausewitz would have. Clausewitz is one of those names you feel so crippled by not knowing—he is regarded as the father of modern strategic thought. ‘War has its own grammar,’ Clausewitz said, ‘but not its own logic.’ That’s from his classic treatise,
On War
. I believe you’d find Wells has a copy of the original German edition in his library.”

For the first time Wyrena felt as though Berberon had scored heavily with Sujata. Confirmation of sorts came with her response.

“So perhaps I’m not disadvantaged,” Sujata said slowly. “There’s still Wells and the Nines. How am I to be any more effective against them than Erickson was?”

Berberon sat forward. “Let’s consider why Erickson had trouble. You must begin with the understanding that the Nines are not a monolithic organization—they hardly could be, considering their basic beliefs. And they never could be a mass movement, filling the streets with their supporters. Nevertheless the World Council fears them.”

“Because they disagree on public policy?”

“No. Because one of their goals is to eliminate the Council, and it never pays to ignore or underestimate a self-declared enemy.”

“Why would they want to remove the Council? Wouldn’t a simpler goal be to control it?”

“Except that the Council itself can close off that avenue through the appointment process. There are also philosophical objections. They consider the Council to be false to its origin, which was the meritocratic Pangaean Consortium ruled by a single strong leader. The Nines despise government by committee and consensus. Given a chance, they would replace the Council with their version of Plato’s philosopher-king and reinstitute what they euphemistically call an ‘opportunity society.’ ”