The Creatures of Man (42 page)

Annoyed, Renson snapped, "O.K., so infiltration isn't my line!"

"That's for sure," laughed Delton, studying the captive thoughtfully. "So you came here trying to discover the cause of the econo-war, huh?"

"Yes."

"Which means you don't accept the reasons everybody else does."

"I definitely do not."

"Why?"

"Because I find them absurd! Look, Delton, are all the adults of the Primgran Commonality and the Lontastan Federation sane?"

Delton grinned. "Those of the Federation are. I can't vouch for the citizens on your side."

"Please be serious," Renson snapped. "Humanity
is
sane, to the last adult on the most out-of-the-way frontier world. We've been sane for nearly a thousand years now. Nobody is driven by some neurotic compulsion to accumulate more wealth than he has any imaginable use for, while leaving someone else in economic distress in the process. Only insanity, on the pandemic scale of the Earth-Only ages, can justify that dog-eat-dog method of wealth distribution.

"Yet, we still go at it tooth and claw, without the tiniest neurosis for an excuse! And the big war between the Commonality and the Federation is just another level of the billions of little wars going on constantly within our ranks. Sol-Veg Systems Corporation versus Philips Interstel, as well as versus Nexxtauri General. And me, while I worked for Sol-Veg, versus several dozen other hard-climbing first-junior engineers. On every level, the organization of both our nations seems to have no other purpose than to provide a battleground!

"Is that what society is for, Delton?" he went on angrily. "Is that the highest purpose we can grasp after all these centuries of sanity?"

Renson ran down suddenly and sat in glum silence, annoyed with himself for expressing his feelings so openly to a man he could hardly expect to understand or appreciate them.

"It could be worse," Delton remarked lightly. "It could be a shooting war, in the old Earth-Only style, instead of economic combat. So you must admit we've gained
something
from our sanity, Renson."

"We've gained precious little!" Renson flared. "There's nothing pretty about industrial espionage and sabotage, or economic oppression of the weak by the strong, or trigger-happy goon squads such as that escort that brought me here! Just because our war involves no wholesale slaughter everyone seems to think it isn't really damaging, or deadly. The obvious truth is that it is deadly indeed to the human spirit! It pits man against man! It makes us enemies when we could—and should—be friends."

Delton smiled. "You and I, for instance?"

"Certainly! Under more favorable circumstances—" Renson's voice trailed off uncertainly.

"Ah, yes, more favorable circumstances," Delton chuckled. "If we were friends instead of enemies, we could enjoy each other's company, discuss our innermost feelings and beliefs, perhaps have an argument as close friends do about some belief on which we didn't agree. Just as
we're doing right
now, Renson."

"O.K.,"
Renson nodded, "I'll grant that point. You and I, technically enemies brought face to face, are conversing like friends. But that's precisely what I'm getting at—sane men are friends when face to face, when their proximity crowds out the artificial barriers our social structure normally raises between them. Friendship is natural, enmity is not."

"Friendship wouldn't be natural if both of us were hungry and only one of us had a little food," Delton dissented.

"But there's no shortage of food in our society," Renson retorted, "except for artificial shortages created by the artificialities of the econo-war! We produce a constantly increasing plenty of everything for everybody! That's another reason why the war is inexcusable. We have too much wealth for it to be worth fighting over."

Delton considered that in silence for a moment. Then he said, "Man has always been a player of games, Renson. If you're a student of history, you probably know that one of the key steps in our progress toward sanity was the recognition that life itself is best understood as a game. We need the same things for a good life as we do for a good game—that is, we need freedoms, barriers, and goals. And, of course, a playing field for these things and ourselves.

"But for a really top-notch game, Renson, we need something else—
teams
. The better balanced the teams are, the more absorbing the game.

"That's what the econo-war gives us, Renson, a superb and unifying game, with well-balanced teams. The play gets rough sometimes, especially for the goon squads, infiltrators, and others who choose to play in exposed positions. But there has to be hard play if the game is taken seriously as the basic game of our society.

"So there's nothing artificial or phony about the war, Renson. It isn't something dreamed up and kept going by a handful of government and industrial officials. If you convinced the top brass of the Commonality and the Federation that the war should be ended, and they signed a treaty tomorrow, within a month I bet the war would be starting again! Man
needs
his games, Renson, the same as he needs food, shelter, sex, and life-support. And this econo-war is a great game—otherwise it wouldn't still be going strong after more than three centuries."

Renson said sourly, "I doubt if the economically deprived consider it such a great game."

Delton shrugged, "There has to be losers as well as winners. To quote a bit of ancient wisdom, 'the poor we will always have with us.' " He frowned thoughtfully and asked, "Could that be your trouble, Renson? Are you soured on the econo-war game because you're a loser?"

Renson shook his head. "I was doing very well with Sol-Veg. It was my own decision to quit."

"Are you a married—or formerly married—man with a family somewhere in the Commonality?"

"No . . . I never got around to that. Never found a girl with whom I hit it off just right."

Delton nodded slowly, and Renson wondered why Delton had asked about his marital status. But he said nothing, because he could see no point in continuing the discussion. Evidently Delton felt the same.

"That's all the questions for now, Renson," he said. "Behind you is a door into an apartment where you'll be comfortable while you wait for the disposition of your case."

The restrainer belt dropped from Renson's lap and he stood. He wanted to ask what the Federation officials were likely to do with him, but he knew Delton could not answer that. "Thank you," he said, and left the interrogation room.

During the next two weeks Renson had plenty of solitude in which to consider his situation. And he reached the conclusion that entering Federation territory had been pure folly—a waste of five years.

It was not that his capture was preventing him from gathering data on the cause of the econo-war. The truth was that Nexal, or any other Federation planet, had no data to offer that was not available on any Commonality world. In all essences, the Federation and the Commonality were the same. They were twin societies, operating on the same principles and with the same motives.

And, of course, the Federation's ideas about the war had to duplicate those he had been hearing all his life at home . . . the same glib answers, such as Delton's life-game analogy, which made a certain amount of sense but failed to explain why man, with all his abilities of creative imagination, had not come up with a far more desirable game for himself than econo-war.

For the first centuries of interstellar travel, a game of conquer-the-universe had been plenty, for instance. And that game was still going on, but it had lost its early excitement. It was too easy, Renson mused. The galaxy offered more room for expansion than man could use for several millennia—and so far man had found no competitor for that room, no alien species to fight.

So he fought himself. That was the explanation for the econo-war, perhaps, but it was no explanation at all. Not for a sane humanity, in Renson's opinion.

He was uncomfortably aware that his opinion was not widely shared. Hardly anybody bothered to question the assumptions that he found so flimsy. In fact, most people with whom he had argued about the war had responded much as Delton had . . . as if they could see and understand some vital point to which he was blind. Was he a prime example of stubborn stupidity, insisting on his rightness and the wrongness of everybody else?

Well, not quite everybody else. After all, there was the Halstayne Independency—a nation far smaller than either the Commonality or the Federation, admittedly—that took no part in the econo-war and seemed to get along quite comfortably nevertheless. The one Halstaynian he had met had shared fully his distaste for and puzzlement over the Primgranese-Lontastan conflict.

His meditations along such lines were interrupted a few times for additional interrogation by his captors, but most of the questioning was perfunctory. Having been away from Sol-Veg for five years, his knowledge of the corporation's activities was thoroughly dated. Also, despite his junior-first ranking, he never had been let in on any of the company's high-security projects. (An indication, he wondered, that the company had considered him a questionable risk?) In any event, he could tell the Lontastans little of value.

Finally he recognized Arkay Delton's voice speaking from the call box. "Renson?"

"Yes?"

"You're to be released, with the understanding that you will not remain within Federation territory. Accepted?"

"Yes," he replied, wondering.
Released? Just like that?
"Is this an exchange of captured personnel?" he asked.

"No, the next scheduled exchange is six months away. And there could be complications if we tried to include you in an exchange. Shall we send out an arrival notification for you?"

Renson grimaced slightly at the insulting truth of Delton's words. The Commonality would not care in the least if he were never released, with his war-critical attitude, and would not be interested in accepting him for a captive Lontastan.

He answered Delton's question: "Notify Bernswa in the Halstayne Independency."

"Sounds like a wise choice for you, Renson," Delton approved. "There you'll be out of the war entirely. Check your life-support and we'll send you on your way."

"Right."

Renson went in the bathroom, stripped, got the life-support meter out of the cabinet, and began testing. He pressed the sensor platelet into the hollow under his ribs on his right side, and saw that the powerpack implant in that location still had a .7 energy capacity, which was quite sufficient. Moving the sensor above his right hip he assured himself that the multifield packet imbedded there was in total working order. A similar check above his left hip verified the functionality of his transport packet.

Then he pressed the platelet against his closed lips, tongued his toothmike, hummed softly, and watched the needle respond. Finally he placed the sensor behind each ear in turn, tapped the soundkey, and heard the clear blips.

This checked out all the major implants. And the macromolecule-sized segments of his life-support, such as those used for gas conversion in the space-respiration system, and the purely mechanical units such as the stomach balloon—these things had to be working right, or he would be feeling sick.

He dressed, stepped out of the bathroom, and blinked when he found three Guardsmen waiting for him. One handed him his belt which he put on automatically.

Then he was blindfielded, escorted out of spying range of Nexal, and sent on his way.

Out of the dozen developed planets in the Halstayne Independency, Renson had picked Bernswa because that was the home world of the only Halstaynian he knew.

The Independency was in a dusty area of the galactic arm, which accounted in part for its autonomy. Warping through dust was not an impossibility, but the prime-field turbulence that resulted was mind-wracking and dangerous. Clear lanes through the dust were eventually found, but their circuitousness kept the Halstayne region from having much appeal for either of the two superpowers. As a result, the Independency was formed and settled in large part by persons who had opted out of the developing Primgranese-Lontastan conflict. It was a pocket of peace, bordered by both of its larger, more contentious neighbors.

Renson made a careful zigzag of warps along one of the clear lanes. Finally through the worst of the dust, he paused in normal space and looked around. The teeming suns of the galaxy were totally obscured. Only fifty-some points of light were scattered sparsely across the blackness—the suns of the Independency—and several of these wore fuzzy halos of dust and gas.

But the sun of Bernswa sparkled un-obscured, and he warped for it. After breaking warp near the planet and clearing his arrival, he messaged Estine Cauval, not knowing what to expect.

It turned out that she was not only at home but in a position—and with the inclination—to be hospitable.

"Sure, come on down, Grap!" she exclaimed eagerly. "I'll switch on my beacon for you!"

"I won't be intruding?"

"Not at all. Oh, I was married for a while after I last saw you, but now everything is casual and simple. Don't forget, Grap, it's been over eight years!"

"Yes. Still a newsgirl?"

"Oh, yes, but not so pushy about it now. I haven't been outside covering the econo-war for years and years!"

"I'll be down in forty minutes," he told her.

Bernswa had several hundred semicities, but Estine did not live in one of these. Her house stood isolated in a richly forested piedmont. This puzzled Renson after a few minutes with her, because he could tell she was still the lover of crowds and swirling activity he had remembered.

"I'm writing a drama," she explained, "and need the isolation of a place like this."

"A drama?"

"Didn't I ever tell you? Dramaturgy has always been my dream. I still do occasional news features but I give most of my working time to my play. I've been at it for over a year."

Renson nodded slowly. Estine was bright, clever, charming . . . but a playwright? That hardly seemed likely. She was too much a reporter, too intrigued by the event to pay much heed to the meanings behind the event. He doubted if she could create a play worth watching.