“Let’s not get into the hedonistic fallacy,” said Svoboda with a weary sort of annoyance. “I want my kids to become the right sort of human adults.”

  “In other words, not only individuals, but cultures have an instinct to survive,” said Wolfe. “Very good. I agree with you. Our particular culture emphasizes the conscious mind, perhaps too much for perfect health but there you are. It’s being swallowed up in a new culture which exalts a set of as-yet-undefined subconscious functions. We’re like the Jewish Zealots, English Puritans, Russian Old Believers, all trying to restore certain basics they felt had been corrupted. (And actually, like them, creating something altogether new, but let’s not dim that fine fresh purposefulness of yours with too much analysis.) Also like them, we’re more and more at odds with the surrounding society. At the same time, our beliefs are becoming popular with a certain class of people, all over Earth. This in turn alarms the custodians of things-as-they-are.”

  “Well?” said Svoboda.

  “Well,” said Wolfe, “I don’t see how conflict is to be avoided, and physical force is still the ultima ratio. But I don’t advise putting well-meaning little teachers in the hospital.”

  Svoboda sat up straight. “You don’t mean another rebellion?” he exclaimed.

  “Not like the last fiasco,” said Wolfe. “Let’s not end up like the Old Believers. The Puritan Commonwealth is the analogy we desire. It’ll take patience…yes, and prudence, my friend. What we must do is organize. Not too formally, but we must be able to act as a group. It won’t be hard to achieve that much; you aren’t the only man who resents what’s being done to his children. Once organized, we can start making our weight felt. Boycotts, for instance; bribes to the right officials; and please don’t look shocked when I point out that Lowlevel is full of skilled assassins with very reasonable fees.”

  “I see.” Svoboda was calmer now. “Pressure. Yes. We may be able to get our schools restored, if nothing else.”

  “Don’t forget,” said Wolfe, “pressure provokes counterpressure. If we act, the government will react, and then we must react to that. The possible, even probable end result is war.”

  “What? No!”

  “Or a coup d’état. Most likely civil war, though. Since a few military and police personnel already subscribe to Constitutionalism, and we can hope to recruit more, we’ve a chance to win. If we proceed with care. This can’t be hurried. But…we might start quietly caching weapons.”

  Again Svoboda was jarred. He had seen dead men in the streets, when he was a child. Next time there might even be the ultimate violence of the nuclear bomb or the artificial plague. And how much rebuilding would be possible afterward, on this impoverished globe?

  “We’ve got to find another way,” he whispered. “We can’t let it go that far.”

  “We may have to,” said Wolfe. “We will most certainly have to threaten to. Or else go under.” He glanced at the profile beside him. It stood sharp against a few stars, already stiffening with resolution which, nourished, could become fanaticism. Wolfe nearly declared what was really in his mind, but stopped himself.

  Commissioner Svoboda looked at the clock. “Get out,” he said. “All of you.”

  The guards obeyed in surprise. Only Iyeyasu remained; that went without saying. For a moment the big office was quiet.

  “Your son comes now, yes?” asked the Okinawan.

  “In five minutes,” said Svoboda. “He’ll be prompt, if I know him. To be sure, men change, and we haven’t spoken for a good many years.”

  He felt a nervous tic in the corner of his mouth. It wouldn’t stop. The dwarfish man scrambled from his chair and limped across to the full-wall transparency. The towers and ways shimmered below him, heated, but winter lay in pale sky and far-looking frosty sun. A late winter this year. Svoboda wondered if it would ever end.

  Not that the season mattered when your life ran out in offices. But he would like to see the cherry orchard crowning this building bloom once more. He had never allowed the roof to be greenhoused. Let’s keep a little unscientific nature in the world!

  “I wonder if that’s why technological civilization is dying,” he mused. “It may not be the loss of resources, or the uncontrolled obsession to reproduce, or the decline of literacy, or the rise of mysticism, or any such thing at all. Those may only be effects, and the real cause be a collective unconscious revolt against all this steel and machinery. If we evolved among forests, do we dare cut down every tree on Earth?”

  Iyeyasu didn’t answer. He was used to his master’s moods. He looked at him with compassionate small eyes.

  “If this be so,” said Svoboda, “then perhaps my maneuverings have served no real purpose. But come, we Practical Men have no time to stop and think.”

  The sardonicism uplifted him. He went back and sat down behind his desk and waited, a cigarette between his fingers.

  The door opened for Jan on the stroke of 0900. Svoboda’s first shocked thought was Bernice. Oh, God, he had forgotten how the boy had Bernice’s eyes, and she fifteen years in the earth. He sat for a moment in an aloneness that stung.

  “Well?” said Jan coldly.

  Svoboda braced his thin shoulders. “Sit down,” he invited.

  Jan perched on a chair’s edge and stared across the desk. He had grown a lot thinner, his father noticed, and tense, but the youthful awkwardness was gone. An uncompromising harsh face jutted above that plain gray’ tunic.

  “Smoke?” asked the Commissioner.

  “No,” said Jan.

  “I hope everything is all right at home? Your wife? Your children?” Most men are privileged to see their own grandchildren. Ah, stop sniveling, you tinpot Machiavelli.

  “We are in physical health,” said Jan. His voice was like iron. “You are a busy man, Commissioner. I don’t wish to take up your time unduly.”

  “No, I suppose not. “Svoboda put another cigarette between his lips, remembered he was still holding the first, and ground it out with needless violence. Self-control returned, to parch his tones. “I imagine, when the question of a conference between myself and a representative of your new Constitutionalist Association first arose, it seemed most natural for me to have your president, Mr. Wolfe, come see me. You may wonder why I specified you instead, who are only the engineering delegate on your policy committee.”

  Jan’s mouth tightened. “I hope you did not plan a sentimental appeal.”

  “Oh, no. The fact is, Wolfe and I have had several discussions.” Svoboda chuckled. “Ah-ha. That startled you, eh? Now if I were determined to wreck your organization, I would let you stew over the fact. But the truth is merely that Wolfe talked to me on the ’phone, unofficially, and sounded me out on various points. Of course, that entailed me sounding him out too, but we came to a tacit agreement.”

  Svoboda leaned on his elbows, puffed smoke, and went on: “It’s been several months since your organization was formed. Constitutionalists have been joining it by the thousands, all over the world. What they want from it varies—some, a spokesman for their grievances; some, doubtless, a revolutionary underground; the majority probably have no more than vague unformulated expectations of help. Since you have not yet adopted any clear-cut program, you have disappointed no one. But now your committee must soon come up with a definite plan of action, or see the outfit revert to jelly.”

  “We will,” said Jan. “Since you know so much, I can tell you what our first step will be. We’re going to make a formal petition for repeal of your so-called school decree. We’re not without influence on several of our fellow Commissioners. If the petition is denied, we will call for stronger measures.”

  “The economic squeeze.” Svoboda’s big bald head nodded. “Thereafter strikes, disguised as mass resignation. Boycotts. Civil disobedience, if that fails. And then—Oh, well. It’s a classic pattern.”

  “Classic because it works,” said Jan. The blood crept up his dark cheeks, making him heartbreakingly boylike again.

  “Sometimes.”

  “You could save a lot of trouble all around by canceling the decree at once. In that case, we might be willing to compromise on a few points.”

  “Oh, but I’m not going to,” Svoboda folded his hands as if in prayer, rolled his eyes upward, and chanted piously around his cigarette, “The public interest demands the public school.”

  Jan jumped erect. “You know that’s only a hypocritical way of destroying us!” he exclaimed.

  “As a matter of fact,” said Svoboda, “I plan to have the curriculum modified next fall. The time now devoted to critical analysis of certain classics could better be spent in rote memorization. And then, with hallucinogens becoming so important socially, a practical course in their proper use—”

  “You shriveled-up son of a sewer!” screamed Jan. He lunged across the desk.

  Iyeyasu was there, without seeming to cross the floor between. The edge of a hand cracked down on Jan’s wrist. The other hand, stiff-fingered, poked him in the solar plexus. Jan gasped out his wind and collapsed backward.

  “Careful, there,” warned Svoboda.

  “No harm done, sir,” Iyeyasu assured him. He eased Jan into the chair and began kneading his shoulders and the base of his skull. “He gets air back in a minute.” With an ill concealed rage: “Is not a way to speak to your father.”

  “For all I know,” said Svoboda “he may have been literally correct.”

  The glaze left Jan’s eyes, but no one talked for a while. Svoboda lit another cigarette and stared into space. He wanted to look at the boy, there might never be another chance, but it would be poor tactics. Jan slumped under Iyeyasu’s mountainous form. At last he spoke, sullenly:

  “I don’t apologize. What else could you expect?”

  “Nothing, perhaps.” Svoboda made a bridge of his fingers and regarded his son across them. “There will certainly be resistance to such measures. And yet I am only underlining a conflict which would otherwise proceed to the same inevitable end. You did not let me explain why you, rather than Wolfe, are your people’s representative today. The fact is that you are young and hot-headed, a much better spokesman for the upcoming Constitutionalist generation than an older, more cautious, less indoctrinated man. The extremists in your party might repudiate any agreement Wolfe made, simply because he is Wolfe, notoriously all things to all men. But if you endorse a plan of action, they will listen.”

  “What agreement can we make?” he snarled back at him. “Unless you return our children to us—”

  “No maudlin figures of speech, please. Let me explain the difficulty. You and the government represent opposing ways of life. They simply cannot be reconciled. Once, perhaps, there was a possibility of co-existence. There may be again in the future, when the issues no longer seem vital. But not now. Just suppose that we did give in, repealed the education decree and reinstated your school system. It would be a victory for you and a defeat for us. You would gain not only your objective, but confidence, support, strength; we would lose correspondingly.

  How long before you made your next demand? You have other grudges beside this. Having gotten back your schools, you may next want back the right to criticize political basics. If you gain that, you will want the right to agitate publicly. Having gotten that, you will want representation on the Commission. Then you will want laws against dope. Then—But I need not elaborate—It seems best to settle the issue now, once and for all, before you get too strong. And that’s why you won’t get as much support from my colleagues as you expect.”

  Jan bristled. “If you think this is the final word—”

  “Oh, no. I have already indicated how you will fight. I’m also well aware of your potential for accumulating weapons, subverting military units, and at last resorting to force. A number of Guardians want to arrest the lot of you right now. But alas, you are too important. Imagine the chaos, if suddenly a fourth of the technical personnel in Minerals or Pelagiculture vanished, without even training their successors! Or if Wolfe was suddenly removed from his devious routes of supply, where would half the mistresses on Highlevel get new gowns to outshine the other half? Then, also, it’s notorious that martyrs are a stimulant to any cause. There would be plenty of young men, who had never cared one way or another about your philosophy, suddenly fired by the vision of a thing bigger than themselves—Yes, we might provoke the very war we were setting out to forestall.”

  Svoboda leaned back. He had the boy on the ropes now, he saw: bewildered eyes, half parted lips, a hand raised as if uncertain whether to defend or appeal or offer thanks.

  “There is a possible compromise,” he said.

  “What?” The question was barely audible, in that big room which faced a winter sky.

  “Rustum. E Eridani II.”

  “The new planet?” Jan’s head snapped up. “But—”

  “If the most dissatisfied Constitutionalists left voluntarily, after making proper arrangements for replacement personnel and so on, the pressure would be off us. Then, in time, we could back down on the school issue and please your stay-at-home fellows, without actually being defeated on it. Or, even if we didn’t, you would be quit of us. The successful planting of a colony would be kudos for the Commission, a shot in the arm for space travel, and therefore well worth our support and encouragement. As for the considerable expense involved—you all own valuable property which couldn’t be taken with you, so you can sell out and thereby finance the passage and the necessary equipment.

  “It’s an old pattern in history. Massachusetts, Maryland, Pennsylvania, were all promoted by a government which was hostile to the ideals involved. Why not a repeat performance?”

  “But twenty light-years,” whispered Jan. “Never to see Earth again.”

  “You’ll have to give up a lot,” agreed Svoboda. “But in return, you will escape the risk of destruction by force or absorption by my evil schemes.” He shrugged. “Of course, if your nice radiant-heated sea house is more important than your philosophy, by all means stay home.”

  Jan shook his head, as if it had taken a blow. “I’ll have to think about it,” he mumbled.

  “Consult Wolfe,” said Svoboda. “He’s already looked into the matter.”

  “What?” The eyes that were Bernice’s grew candid with surprise.

  “I told you Wolfe is not a fire-eater,” said Svoboda, grinning. “I gather he’s discussed the possibility of war, and done some organizing for it, but I suspect he’s really been trying for no more than a strong bargaining position—so he can make us send you to Rustum.”

  This was the right note, he saw. If Wolfe the mentor had really been operating behind the scenes, Jan would have less fear of a bomb in whatever scheme was proposed.

  “I’ll have to talk to him.” The boy stood up. He was suddenly trembling. “To all of them. We’ll have to think—Good-by.”

  He turned and stumbled toward the door.

  “Good-by, kid,” said Svoboda.

  He didn’t think Jan heard him. The door closed.

  Svoboda sat without moving for a long time. The cigarette between his fingers burned so low that it scorched him. He swore, dropped it in the disposer, and struggled to his feet. The broken foot was hurting him again.

  Iyeyasu glided around the desk. Svoboda leaned on the tree trunk arm, shuffling to the clear wall until he could stare out and catch a glitter of open ocean.

  “Your son comes back, yes?” asked Iyeyasu finally.

  “I doubt it,” said Svoboda.

  “You wanting them to go to the planet?”

  “Yes. And they will. I haven’t been working all these years without getting to know my machinery.”

  The sun out there was pale, but its light hurt Svoboda’s eyes, so he had to rub them with a knuckle. He said aloud, in a precise but somehow not steady tone: “Old Inky was an educated man in his way. He used to claim that the only axiom in human geometry is, the straight line is not the shortest distance between two points. In fact, there are no straight lines. I find that’s pretty true.”

  “This was your plan, sir?” Iyeyasu’s voice held more sympathy than intellectual interest.

  “Uh-huh. Anker’s work showed me there was no hope for Earth in the foreseeable future. Maybe something will evolve here a thousand years hence, but that won’t help my son much. I wanted to get him out while there was still time. But he couldn’t go alone. It would have to be as part of a colony. And the colonists would have to be healthy, independent, able people—nothing else was likely to survive. I was gambling that a habitable planet would be discovered, but I could not gamble that it would be very hospitable…But why should such people leave? On the whole, given half a chance, they would do rather well at home.

  “So there had to be an obstacle on Earth which sheer drive and intelligence could not overcome. What sort would that be? Well, it’s in the nature of intercultural conflicts to be insoluble. When axioms clash, logic is helpless. So I set up a rival society within the Federation. That wasn’t hard. Here in North America, a dying culture had just tried to assert itself by rebellion, and failed; but it wasn’t dead yet. It only needed to be given a new spirit and a sense of direction. I had

  Anker’s philosophy for a background. I had Laird, a marvelous actor with much brains and no conscience. He proved expensive, but faithful, largely because I made it plain what would happen if he wasn’t. When his work was finished, I retired him—a new face, a new name, and a lavish pension. He caroused himself to death four years ago. Of course, the possibility that I had had Laird murdered was always left open: the first irritating wound. Among others.”

  Svoboda remembered a boy who raged from the house and never came back. He sighed. One can’t foresee every detail. At least Bernice’s grandchildren would grow up as thinking individuals, if Rustum didn’t eat them first.