The first raindrops were falling as the two came out into the street. Lightning forked vividly overhead. Goram shuddered in the raw damp chill. “Foul place,” he muttered. “No weather control, not even a roof for the city—uncivilized.”

  Heym made no reply, though he tried to unlock his jaws. The blade in his pocket seemed to have the weight of a world. He looked down from his stringy height at the soldier’s squat massiveness. I’ve never killed, he thought dully. I’ve never even fought, physically or mentally. I’m no match for him. It’ll have to be a sneak thrust from behind.

  They entered the hotel. The clerk was reading a journal whose pages seemed purely mathematical symbols. He was probably a scientist of some kind in his main job. There was, luckily for Goram, no register to sign, the clerk merely nodded them casually toward their room.

  “No system here,” muttered Goram. “How can they keep track of anybody without registry?”

  “They don’t,” said Heym. “And they don’t have to.”

  The room was large and airy and well furnished. “I’ve slept in worse, places,” said the soldier grudgingly. He flopped into a chair. “But it’s the first place where the hired help reads technical journals that I’ve seen.”

  “The social order here is unique,” Heym repeated himself. “The colonists evolved through families, clans, tribes, kingdoms, and republics in a matter of centuries. Finally the most advanced countries worked out the present system, which was universally adopted when planetary government was established.”

  “What is it?”

  “Well, it’s a kind of democratic socialism—really the only logical form of government for a race of geniuses, at least until robots are developed. You see, the race needs an advanced civilization, with its technical advantages, in order to give the brilliant minds contact with each other and resources to carry out and propagate their ideas. Yet no high-grade mind should be put to the myriad routine and menial tasks essential to running a civilization, everything from garbage collection to government. The present set-up is a compromise, in which everyone puts in a small proportion of his time at those jobs. He can do manual work, or teach, or run a public-service enterprise like a farm or restaurant—whatever he wishes. And he can work steadily at it for a few years and then have all his needs taken care of for the rest of his life, or else put in a few hours a day, two or three, over a longer period of time. The result is that needs and a social surplus are available for all, as well as education, health services, entertainment, or whatever else is considered desirable. The planet could, in fact, do without money, but it’s more convenient to pay in cash than fill out credit slips.

  “Incidentally, that’s probably one reason there’s no great interest in providing more material goods for all—it would mean that everyone would have to put in more time in the mines and factories and less on his chosen work. Which is apparently a price that genius is unwilling to pay. I don’t think there’ll be any great progress in applied science until the research project established some time back perfects the robots it’s set for a goal.”

  “Uh-huh,” muttered Goram. “And just let them expand into the Galaxy and find we have such robots—left unproduced since the Imperial populace has to be kept busy—and see what they’ll do. They’d be able to wreck the whole set-up, just by inventing and distributing, and they’ll know it.”

  “Can’t you credit them with being smart enough to see the reasons for maintaining the status quo?” asked Heym desperately. “They don’t want the barbarians on their necks any more than we do. They’ll help us maintain the Empire until they have developed a way to change conditions safely.”

  “Maybe.” Goram’s mouth was tight. “Still, they’ll hold the balance of power, which is something no group except the Imperium can be permitted to do. Spirit! How do you even know they’ll be on our side? They may decide their best advantage lies with our rivals. Or they may be irritated with our having used them so cavalierly all these centuries.”

  “They won’t hold grudges,” said Heym. “A genius doesn’t.”

  “How do you know?” Goram sprang out of his chair and paced the floor. His voice rose almost to a shout. “You’ve said all along that the genius is naturally peaceful and tolerant and unselfish and every other of the milk-and-water virtues. Yet, your own history is against you all the way. Every great military leader has been a genius. There’ve been sadistic geniuses, and bigoted geniuses, and criminal geniuses—yes, insane geniuses! Why, every one of the hundred billion or so important men in the Imperial government is a genius—on our side—and more than half the barbarian chiefs are known to have genius intellect.” He swung a red and twisted face on the psychologist. “How do you know this is a planet of saints? Answer me that!”

  Thunder roared in the fulgurous sky, rolling and booming between the rain-running streets. The single dim electric bulb in the room flickered. Wind whined around the corners of the building.

  Heym took out a cigarette pack with fingers that shook. He held it out to Goram, who shook his heavy bullet head in angry refusal. The psychologist took time to bring one of the cylinders into his mouth and puff it into lighting. He drew smoke deeply into his lungs, fighting for steadiness.

  It was his last real chance to convince Goram. If this failed, he’d just have to try to murder the soldier. If that attempt miscarried—oh, Spirit, then Station Seventeen and the Empire were doomed. But if he succeeded, well, he might be able to convince the Imperial police that it had been an accident, a runaway animal or something of the sort, or they might send him to the disintegration chamber for murder. In any case, there would be a faint hope that the next inspector would be a reasonable man.

  He said slowly; “To explain the theory of historical progress, I’d have to give you a fairly long lecture.”

  Goram sprawled back into his chair, crude and strong and arrogant. His little black eyes were drills, boring into the psychologist’s soul. “I’m listening,” he snapped.

  “‘Well”—Heym walked up and down the floor, hands clasped behind his back—“it’s evident from a study of history that all progress is due to gifted individuals. Always, in every field, the talented or otherwise fortunate few have led and the mass has dumbly followed. A republic is the only form of state which even pretends to offer self-government, and as soon as the population becomes any size at all the people are again led by the nose, their rulers struggling for power with money and such means of mass hypnotism as news services and other propaganda machines. And all republics become dictatorships, in fact if not in name, within a few centuries at most. As for art and science and religion and the other creative fields, it is still more obviously the few who lead.

  “The ordinary man is just plain stupid. Perhaps proper mind training could lift him above himself, but it’s never been tried. Meanwhile he remains immensely conservative, only occasional outbreaks of mindless hysteria engineered by some special group stirring him out of his routine. He follows, or rather he accepts what the creative or dominant minority does, but it is haltingly and unwillingly.

  “Yet it is society as a whole which does. History is a mass action process. Gifted individuals start it off, but it is the huge mass of the social group which actually accomplishes the process. A new invention or a new land to colonize or a new philosophy or any other innovation would have no significance unless everybody eventually adopted or exploited or otherwise made use of it. And society as a whole is conservative, or perhaps I should say preservative. Civilization is ninety-nine percent habit, the use of past discoveries or the influence of past events. Against the immense conservatism of mankind in the mass, and in comparison to the tremendous accumulation of past accomplishment, the achievement of the individual genius or the small group is almost insignificant. It is not surprising that progress is slow and irregular and liable to stagnation or violent setbacks. The surprising thing is really that any event of significance can happen at all.”

  Heym paused. Thunder snarled in the sky and the rain drummed on the windowpane with cold restless fingers. Goram stirred impatiently. “What are you leading up to?” he muttered.

  “Simply this.” Heym’s hand fell into his pocket and closed on the smooth hard handle of the knife. Goram slumped in his chair, head lowered, staring sullenly at the floor. If the blade were driven in now, right into that bull neck, a paralyzing blow and then a swift slash across the jugular—

  The intensity of the hatred welling up in him shocked Heym. He should be above the brutal level of his enemy. Yet—to see his blood spurt!

  Steady—steady—That move of desperation might not be necessary.

  “Two factors control the individual in society,” said Heym, and the detached calm of his voice was vaguely surprising to him. “They are only arbitrarily separable, being aspects of the same thing, but it’s convenient to take them up in turn.

  “There is first the simple weight of social pressure. We all want to be approved by our fellows, within reasonable limits at least. The mores of the society, whatever they may be, are those of the individual. Only a psychopath would disregard them completely. Not only does society apply force on the nonconformist, but mere disapproval can be devastating. It takes a really brave—and somewhat neurotic—individual to be different in any important respect. Many have paid with their lives for innovating. So a genius will be hampered in making original contributions, and they are adopted only slowly. It usually takes a new idea many generations to become accepted. The astonishing rate of growth of science, back in the days when free research was permitted and even encouraged, indicates how rapid progress can be when there are no barriers.

  “And, of course, this social pressure usually forces conformity even on reluctant individuals. A scientist may be naturally peaceful, for instance, but he will hardly ever refuse to engage in war research when so directed.

  “The second hold of the mass on the individual is subtler and more effective. It is the mental conditioning induced by growing up in a society where certain conditions of living and rules of thought are accepted. A ‘born’ pacifist, growing up in a warlike culture, will generally accept war as part of the natural order of things. A man who might have been a complete skeptic in a science-based society will nearly always accept the gods of a theocracy if he has been brought up to believe in them. He may even become a priest and direct his logical talents toward elaborating the accepted theology—and help in the persecution of unbelievers. And so on. I needn’t go into detail. The power of social conditioning is unbelievable—combined with social pressure, it is almost insuperable.

  “And—this is the important point—the rules and assumptions of a society are accepted and enforced by the mass—the overwhelming majority, shortsighted, conservative, hating and fearing all that is new and strange, wishing only to remain in whatever basic condition it has known from birth. The genius is forced into the straight-jacket of the mediocre man’s and the moron’s mentality. That he can expand any distance at all beyond his prison is a tribute to the supreme power of the high intellect.”

  Heym looked out at the empty street. Rain blew wildly across its darkened surface. Lightning glared blindingly, almost in his eyes. His voice rose over the shattering thunder: “The Solarian Empire is nothing but the triumph of stupidity over intelligence. If every man could think for himself, we wouldn’t need an empire.”

  “Watch yourself,” muttered Goram. “The ruling class has a certain latitude of speech, but don’t overstep it.” And more loudly: “What does this mean in the case of Station Seventeen?”

  “Why, it’s a triumphant confirmation of the historical theory I was just explaining,” said Heym. “We’ve isolated pure genius from mediocrity and left it free to work out its own destiny. The result has even exceeded our predictions.

  “Most of man’s history has been spent in the stone ages, because the savage is even more superstitious and conservative than the civilized man, whose culture does have a certain momentum. But the people of this planet had invented metallurgy and writing within a thousand years of the colony’s establishment. The essential difference was that there was progress made each generation, rather than every hundred or thousand generations. Every mind is creative, and every individual is willing to accept the ideas and work of every other.

  “No doubt there are aggressive and conservative and selfish people born. But on this world the weight of social conditioning and social pressure is away from those tendencies, they don’t get a chance to develop themselves.

  “Man’s brain is physically not qualitatively different from that of the other higher mammals. It has no feature not found in the brain of an ape, say. But the quantitative difference, in the relatively immense forebrain, leads to a qualitative difference of mental type. Man is sharply differentiated from the other animals by the power to make indefinite orders of abstraction. Hence progress is possible for him.

  “It seems”—Heym’s voice rose over the whistle of wind—“that genius shows a similar qualitative distinction, due to quantitative difference, from mere human intelligence. The genius is basically a distinct type, just as the moron is on the other end of the scale. And here—on Seventeen—the new type has been set free.”

  He turned around from the window. The voice of the storm seemed remote, lost in the tremendous silence that suddenly filled the room. Goram sat motionless, staring at the floor, and the slow seconds ticked away before he spoke.

  “I don’t know—” he murmured. “I don’t know—”

  Defeat and despair and a binding hatred rose into Heym’s throat, tasting of vomit. You don’t know! His mind screamed the thought, it seemed incredible that Goram should sprawl there, not moving, not hearing. No, you don’t know. Your sort never does, never has known anything but his own witless bestial desires, its own self-righteous rationalization of impulses that should have died with Smilodon. You’ll destroy Seventeen, in spite of all reason, in sheer perversity—and you’ll say you did it for the good of the Empire!

  The knife seemed to spring of its own accord into his hand. He was lunging forward before he realized it. He saw the blade gleam down as if another man were wielding it. The blow shocked back into his muscles and for an instant his mind wavered, it wasn’t real—what am I doing?

  No time to lose. Goram twisted around in his seat, yelling, grabbing for Heym. The knife was deep in his neck. Heym yanked at it—pull it loose, stick it in the throat, kill—

  Something struck him from behind. The world shattered in a burst of stars, he crashed to the floor and rolled over. Through a haze of dizzy pain he saw men bending over Goram—men of the planet, rescuers for the monster who would annihilate them.

  Words tumbled from the hotel clerk, anxious, shaken: “Are you hurt? Did you—Still, lie still, here comes a doctor—”

  Pain curled Goram’s lips back from his teeth, but he muttered reply: “No…I’m all right…flesh wound—”

  The doctor bent over his bloody form. “Deep,” he said, “but it missed the important veins. Here I’ll just pull it out—”

  “Go ahead,” whispered Goram. “I’ve taken worse than this, though…I never expected it here.”

  Heym lay on the floor while they worked over the soldier. His ringing, whirling head throbbed toward steadiness, and slowly, with so tremendous an impact that it overloaded his nerves and entered his consciousness without emotional shock, the realization grew.

  Goram had spoken to the natives—in their own language.

  A man bent over the psychologist “Are you all right?” he asked. “I’m sorry I had to hit you so hard. Here—drink this.”

  Heym forced the liquid down his throat. It coursed fierily through his veins, he sat up with an arm supporting him about his waist and held his head in his hands.

  Someone else spoke, the voice seemed to come from across an abyss: “Did he hear?”

  “I’m afraid so.” Goram, his neck bandaged, spoke painfully. A rueful smile crossed his ugly face. “The excitement was too much for me, or I would have kept silent. This is going to be—inconvenient.”

  The men of the planet helped Heym into a chair. He began to revive, and looked dazedly across at the man he had tried to kill. The others stood around the chairs, tall bearded men in barbaric dress, watching him with alertness and a strange pity.

  “Yes,” said Tamman Goram very quietly, “the assistant Grand Marshal of the Solarian Empire is a native of Station Seventeen.”

  “Who else?” whispered Heym. “How and why? I tried to kill you because I thought you meant to order the planet sterilized.”

  “It was an act,” said Goram. “I meant to concede at last that the station was harmless and could be safely left to the Foundation’s observers. Coming from one who had apparently been strongly inclined to the opposite view, the statement would have been doubly convincing to Imperial officialdom. It was a powerful and suspicious minister who ordered the investigation, and I went to soothe his feelings. His successor will be one of our men, who will see that Station Seventeen drops into safe obscurity as an unimportant and generally unsuccessful experiment conducted by a few harmless cranks.”

  “But…aren’t you…weren’t you—”

  “Oh, yes. My history is perfectly genuine. I was planted as an obscure recruit in the border guards many years ago, and since then my rise has been strictly in accord with Imperial principles. All our men in the Empire will bear the most searching investigation. Sometimes they come from families which have lived several generations on Imperial planets. Our program of replacing key personnel with our men is planned centuries ahead of time, and succeeds by the simple fact that on the average, over long periods of time, they are so much more capable than anyone else.”

  “How long—?”

  “About five hundred years. You underestimated the capabilities of your experimental animals.” Goram rested for a moment, then asked, “If human intelligence is qualitatively different from animal intelligence, and genius is different from ordinary reasoning power—then tell me, what about the equivalent of geniuses in a world where the average man is a genius by the usual standards?”