The Creatures of Man (49 page)

"Well!" exclaimed Domler. "If all this works out as you expect, Morimet, woe to the Lontastans!"

Morimet smiled and pulled a sheaf of paper from his belt pouch. "That's why I mentioned retiring from the Board. I've got my licks in, and you shouldn't need me any more."

"Radge," asked Grayme softly, "why did you hide behind that vengeance pattern all these years? Did you think we would refuse to go along with you if we knew all the details of your scheme?"

"Partly that. But mostly," Morimet hesitated, his pattern showing a flick of resolved self-distaste. "Mostly, though, it was because I needed a touch of unsanity to go through with it. Combrit was a friend of mine."

He straightened and tossed his papers on the table. "Here are my recommendations concerning the new Executive, and my resignation. My wife's at home rearranging the whole flower garden. I'd better get back there and either stop her if I can, or help her if I can't."

"But look here," broke in Domler, "your scheme is no lasting answer, even if it works for a time. At the best, it can't outlast Combrit!"

Morimet shrugged. "I know, but it gives us war in our time, and that's the best any generation can expect to do. What happens later will be another generation's problem."

He turned and walked jauntily out of the chamber.

Rof Tosen entered the outer office of the Bureau of Strategic Information and gazed about with dismay.

There were half a dozen Bureau staffers in the room, and his emo-monitor picked up high enthusiasm from each of them. But it was obvious at a glance that the enthusiasm was not for their work.

Three were huddled in conversation that seemed to concern, from the snatches Tosen overheard, the doings of their various children. Two others were seated at their desks using their communicators. One of these, a man, was close enough for Tosen to gather that he was discussing plans for a hunting trip on the planet Glarsek.

Only one was going through the motions of handling some paperwork, and her main attention was focused on the conversing group.

Tosen sighed. Just like back home in the offices of his Arbemel Systems Corporation on Haverly, he reflected glumly. Anyone would think the econo-war was over—or had never existed—from the actions of these people. And in the Bureau of Strategic Information, of all places! Regardless of the indifference of Commonality citizenry at large, he had expected somehow to find competitive morale still running strong here.

The woman doing paperwork looked at him. "May I help you?" she asked.

"I'm Rof Tosen," he said. "I have an appointment with Stol Jonmun."

"The Bureau chief won't be in this week," she replied. "Dave Mergly will see you instead. This way, please."

She rose, ignoring the flash of annoyance from Tosen, and led the way up a jumpshaft and along a corridor. Dave Mergly was the one man in the Bureau Tosen had hoped to avoid. He was Stol Jonmun's top assistant in charge of saying "no." But if Jonmun was out gold-bricking like everyone else . . . well, it would have to be Mergly.

The woman guided him into Mergly's office and departed. The two men studied each other for a moment. Dave Mergly was middle-aged, several years Tosen's senior, and was one of those men who remained slender with minimal exercise. He could burn up energy simply sitting at a desk. A high-tension type, Tosen reflected—and clearly that way as a matter of genetics, because psych-releasers made doubly sure, when treating government officials, that every possible source of unsanity was fully lifted.

Tosen's emo-monitor read the bureaucrat's attitude as one of detached curiosity, which gradually shifted into reserved approval, as they studied each other.

Mergly's thin lips bent in a slight smile. "Still competing, Tosen?" he asked.

"Trying to. You, too, I would judge."

"Yes. Not many of us around anymore. Welcome into the shrinking minority. Have a seat."

Tosen lowered into a chair, asking, "You holding the fort alone, here in the Bureau?"

"Not quite. How about your company . . . Arbemel Systems, isn't it?"

Tosen nodded. "I've got two good men. Mike Stebetz in Management and Clarn Rogers in Research. Makes two out of a payroll of sixty-seven hundred."

"Three, counting yourself," observed Mergly. "A little better than average, I would say." He studied Tosen for a moment, then asked, "How do you explain the situation, Rof?"

With a shrug Tosen replied, "I don't have any original thoughts on the subject. The obvious answer is that the public at large considers the econo-war to be over, so they're no longer participating in it. The Lontastan Federation, with its telepath Monte, has an overpowering advantage over us. So the average citizen considers it all over but the official surrender and seizure."

Mergly frowned. "The Commonality has been in tight squeezes before, and managed to squirm out, and morale didn't go to pot while we were doing it. Remember old Radge Morimet?"

"No, he predated me by ten years. But, of course, I'm familiar with what he accomplished—and what he didn't accomplish. His motto was 'war in our time,' and let the next generation worry about war in its time. Well, we're the next generation, and the compromises he made to keep the econo-war going have made our position even more difficult. He managed to squirm, but in doing so he left no squirming room for us.

"I think the public realizes that," Tosen continued thoughtfully. "The time is past when we can find a short-term answer by compromising the philosophical foundation of the econo-war. Morimet didn't leave us any compromises to make. Except for a handful of diehards, which includes the two of us, nobody sees any possibility of bringing the war back to life."

"And the public doesn't seem to care," grunted Mergly.

"Oh, the people care, all right," Tosen disagreed. "I have talked to a lot of the people in my company about it. They regret the ending of the war, but without panic or grief. That's the sane way to face a loss, no matter how tremendous it is. We're inclined to misjudge their reaction—and this is something to think about—because this is the first major social crisis humanity has faced since we attained racial sanity, nearly a thousand years ago. We listen for screams of anguish and look for people wringing their hands, or lashing out angrily at everybody and everything, or sinking into the apathy of defeat. But such responses from the Earth-Only days are no longer in character."

Mergly nodded slowly. "A good point. The people write off their loss and fall back on what they have left—their purely personal interests, their love for their families, and what not. Meanwhile, our social structure collapses about us."

"Yes," Tosen agreed. "That's what the econo-war was for, essentially . . . to stimulate the individual's motivation as a functioning member of a racial social structure."

"Then why," demanded Mergly, "are we few diehards still hanging on?"

"Maybe because we're more informed than most on how damaging a social collapse could be. At the best, we would have a stasis civilization. At worst, we could slide back into unsanity. Unless . . . and this is a trillion-to-one shot . . . some sublime genius of a philosopher discovered some presently unsuspected Higher Purpose for humanity to pursue."

Mergly gave a dry chuckle. "Another explanation for us diehard types," he said, "could be that we still see, or imagine, some thin hope to cling to."

"Yes," nodded Tosen, "there's that."

"Which gets us around to the real reason for your visit, doesn't it?"

Tosen hesitated. "I'd rather not have my scheme termed a 'thin hope' before you've even heard it," he said with a grin.

Mergly nodded, and his emo reading was a cold nothing. He was, Tosen guessed, all set to listen analytically—and thoroughly critically—to the proposal. "Go ahead," he said.

"What I have in mind," Tosen began, "would get us away from damaging compromises, and hit at the basic imbalance in the econo-war. That is, at the fact that the Lontastan Federation has Monte, and the Commonality of Primgran doesn't. Essentially, Monte was the first compromise. The Lontastans should never have allowed a nonhuman to participate in what was a purely human conflict. Do you agree with that?"

"Yes."

"Unless, of course, Monte isn't a nonhuman life form at all," Tosen added, eying the Information man closely.

Mergly blinked. "Oh? You think there's room for doubt about that?"

"That's what I'm here to find out. Let's consider what we think we know about Monte, and why we think we know it.

"First, he's a huge globe in form, perhaps a hundred meters in diameter, with a stonelike shell of sufficient thickness and strength to support that tremendous weight on a planet of approximately Earth-gravity. Second, he's a one-member species that does not produce offspring, and presumably had his genesis in the earliest stages of the life-formation processes on his planet, perhaps a billion years ago. Third, a Lontastan exploration team entered his star's planetary system and discovered him, and he volunteered his services in the econo-war very soon thereafter.

"Now, we aren't dealing with impossibilities in any of those three areas—that is, Monte's present form, his history, or his discovery by man. But I suggest each of the three holds substantial improbabilities, and when all of them are combined the likelihood of truth is statistically slight.

"For example, such giant size and mass would create problems of inadequate muscular strength for mobility, of finding sufficient nourishment, and of dissipating body heat. A Monte creature ought to be immobile, and stewing in its own weak juices.

"And yet, this creature reportedly has survived and grown through most of the geologic ages of his planet. Earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions, ice incrustations . . . he got through them all.

"And then this creature, after a billion years of total intellectual solitude, becomes a 'joiner' as soon as he encounters humanity!"

Tosen paused, then added, "I don't say all this is impossible. Merely improbable."

Frowning, Mergly countered, "Perhaps; perhaps not. Every difficulty you cite can be explained. The matter of nourishment, for instance, seems to be handled in large part by a process similar to photosynthesis, called radiosynthesis. Radioactive ores would have been plentiful and rich in Monte's youth—and incidentally there may have been many small Montes back then, making the survival of one far more probable. The nourishment problem would have built up with the passage of time, I agree. And according to some reports I've seen, that could explain Monte's eagerness for human associates. People can mine and refine radioactives for him to bed down in.

"I won't bother to cover all your 'improbables'," Mergly concluded with a shrug. "Presumably you've studied the matter sufficiently to know the explanations yourself. My question is why do you even bother to bring the subject up?"

"Because despite the explanations, the improbables are still just that," retorted Tosen. "And if there is any reason to believe the account of Monte we have is based on misinformation, we might be well-advised to assume a more believable account of what he is, and how he got that way."

Mergly's eyebrows raised and he flickered annoyance. "Misinformation?" he said.

"That's what I want you to tell me," said Tosen quickly. "What are the sources of our data concerning Monte? How close has one of our own agents ever got to him? Have we ever captured and questioned a Lontastan who had
direct
knowledge of Monte's physical nature?"

There was a moment of silence. "You're suggesting the Lontastans have sold us a comet tail," Mergly said slowly.

"Could be. I want to know if any of our data on Monte is unimpeachable enough to prove me wrong."

"Well . . . as you know, Lontastan security around Orrbaune is extremely tight," said Mergly. "As soon as one of our agents breaks warp anywhere in the planetary system he's detected telepathically. And he can't stay long . . . everybody's jumpy about intruders these days, partly because of the crisis condition of the econo-war, and partly because Radge Morimet brought unsane motivation into play. The Lontastan Guardsmen blast away at an agent immediately, on the chance that he might be some kind of nut with a superweapon in his pocket.

"As for picking up direct data on Monte from a captured Lontastan, I'd have to check on that, but I believe all information from such sources is third-hand at best. For the moment, I'll go along with your notion that the Monte story has been falsified. The question remains, what good would this falsification do the Lontastans? And what can we gain by penetrating it?"

"Easy," smiled Tosen. "If Monte's not a living being, the most probable alternative is that he's a machine built by the Lontastans. If we are led to
think
the Monte machine is a being, we won't try to build one of our own. After all, anything the Lontastans can build, so can we. But a telepathic life form isn't one of those things . . . biotechnics just isn't up to it. Thus, the Lontastans develop a telepathic device, make us believe it's a natural life form, and keep a monopoly on their gadget."

"But why on such an out-of-the-way planet as Orrbaune?" protested Mergly. "Would they actually go to the trouble of shifting their capital way out there, if Monte were indeed a machine that could be built presumably anywhere?"

"Sure, for verisimilitude!" exclaimed Tosen. "And for security reasons, too. Keep in mind that, back before they had Monte, we had the upper hand in the war. They hadn't broken our monopoly on implanted emo-monitors then, and our undercover agents and saboteurs were having a field day on their central worlds. When they hit on the telepathy gimmick, they had to spirit their development team off somewhere, to such an undeveloped world as Orrbaune, to keep the project secret from us.

"But if they had started building Monte machines on all their major planets, we would have caught on quickly. So they built just the one . . . and on a planet where a startling life form might possibly have been discovered, and started spreading their tall story."