The Final Circle Of Paradise Part 22

"staff," and numerous question marks. There was nothing to demolish and be and no one to send off to Baffin Land.... But there was modern industry involved in everyday trade, there were state stores where slugs were sold for fifty cents apiece, and there were -- but only in the beginning one or two individuals not devoid of inventiveness and dying of inactivity and thirsting for new sensations. And there was the medium-sized country where, once upon a time, abundance and affluence were the end to be attained, and they never did become the means to another end. And that was all that was needed.

Someone inserted a slug into a radio by mistake and lay down in the bath to relax and maybe listen to some good music or to hear the latest news -- and it started. The news oozed and remnants of phonors found their way into the garbage ducts, then someone figured out that slugs could be obtained not only from phonors, but could simply be bought in stores. Someone was inspired to use aromatic salts and someone employed Devon.

People started to die in their baths from nervous exhaustion, and the statistical department of the Security Council submitted a top secret report to the Presidium. It became apparent at once that all such deaths occurred with people who had come here as tourists. And furthermore, that there were far more such deaths in this country than anywhere else on the planet. As so often happens, a false theory was constructed on well-verified facts, and we, one after another, well schooled in conspiracy, were sent here to uncover the secret gang of dealers in a new and unknown drug, and we arrived here and did stupid things. But, as always, no labor goes for naught, and if you must look for the guilty, then all were guilty, from the mayor to Rimeyer, and if so, then no one was guilty, and now we have to -- "Ivan," said Matia irritably, "are you asleep?"

They were both looking at me. Oscar was extending me his notebook with the diagrams. I took the notebook and threw it on the table.

"Listen," I said. "Oscar has done wonders, of course, but we have come a cropper again! Oscar, you have seen such a lot, but you understood nothing. If there are any people in this land who hate slug, it's the Intels. The Intels are not gangsters, they are desperate men and patriots. They have but one aim -- to stir this bog. By any means. To give this city some kind of purpose, to force it away from the trough They are sacrificing themselves, do you understand? They invite fire upon themselves, they are attempting to arouse the town to come sort of common emotion, even if it has to be hatred. Can it be you haven't heard of the tear gas, the shooting up of the s.h.i.+vers? They are not making slug in the laboratories, they are building bombs and cooking tear gas ... and generally breaking the laws on weapons technology. They are preparing a putsch for the twenty-eighth, but as for slug -- here it is!"

I shoved one at each of them, and simultaneously expounded everything I thought on the subject.

At first, they listened to me in disbelief. Then they stared at the slugs, not taking their eyes off them until I'd finished, and when I did, they were quiet for quite a while.

Matia held his slug as though it were a buzzing wasp. There was displeasure written on his face.

"Vacuum tubusoid... Hmmm... In fact... and radios ...

there is something to it."

Matia stuck the slug in his s.h.i.+rt pocket and announced decisively, "There is nothing in it. That is, of course, I am very pleased with you, Ivan, since you have apparently found that which was needed, but your work is in the Council and not with the Commission of World Problems. They adore philosophy there, and haven't done a single useful thing to date. As for you, you have been working with us for ten years now, but you still haven't grasped the simple truth: if there is a crime, there must be a criminal."

'That's not true," I said.

"That is true!" said Matia. "Don't start a debate with me!

You are eternally debating!... Be quiet, Oscar. It's my turn to talk. I am asking you, Ivan, what is the worth of your version?

What do you propose to do? But be concrete, please! Be concrete!"

"Concretely..." I faltered.

True enough, my version did not suit them.

They probably didn't even consider it a version.

For them it was just philosophizing. They were men, so to say, of resolute action, knights of immediate decisive measures., They let nothing slide. They cut through knots and demounted Damocles' swords. They made rapid decisions, and having made them, they no longer doubted. They didn't know how to be otherwise. That was their world-view -- and I was the only one to consider that their time had pa.s.sed. Patience, I thought. I am going to need an awful lot of patience. Suddenly, I understood that life's logic was again ripping me away from my best comrades, and that now it would be especially hard for me, since the resolution of this argument would take a long time, a very long time.... They were both looking at me.

"Concretely," I repeated. "Concretely I suggest a plan for the development and spread of a humanistic viewpoint in this country."

Oscar grimaced with distaste, and Matia said biliously: "Nah! I am talking seriously."

"So am I. What we need is not detectives, nor squads armed with machine pistols."

"We need a decision!" said Matia, "not conversations, but decisions!"

'That's precisely what I am proposing -- a decision."

Matia reddened "We have to save people," he said. "Souls we can save after we save the people.... Don't annoy me, Ivan!"

"While you are restructuring world-views," said Oscar, "people will be dying or turning into idiots."

I didn't want to argue, but said anyway, "As long as world-views are not restructured, people will be dying and turning into idiots, and no squads will help. Remember Rimeyer!"

"Rimeyer forgot his duty," raged Matia.

"Exactly," said I.

Matia slammed his mouth shut and, tearing off his gla.s.ses, was silent for a while, his eyes rotating angrily. He was, without a doubt, a man of iron; you could actually watch turn drive his rage inward. In a minute he was entirely calm and smiling placidly.

"Yes," he said. "It seems that I am forced to admit that intelligence as a social inst.i.tution has regressed to the piteous end. Apparently we destroyed the last of the true operatives in the time of the last putsches. "Knife" -- Dannziger; "Bamboo" -- Savada; "Doll" -- Grover; "Ram" -- Boas... True, they were bought and they were sold, they had no country, they were sc.u.m, lumpens, but they worked! "Sirius" -- Haram... worked for four intelligences and was a scoundrel. He was a filthy animal. But if he gave information, it was real information, clear, precise, and timely. I can recollect ordering him hung without the slightest pity, but when I look at my current co-workers, I can understand what a loss that was.... Granted, a man can fail in the end and become a drug addict, as "Bamboo" Savada did finally. But why write lying reports? Rather resign, excuse yourself, don't write any reports at all.... I arrive in this town in the profound conviction that I know it through and through, because I have had here for ten years an experienced, proved, resident agent.

And suddenly I determine that I know precisely nothing. Every local kid knows who the Fishers are. But I don't know. I know only that the KVS Society which occupied itself with about the same things as the Fishers was disbanded and outlawed three years ago. I know this from the reports of the resident. But at the local police I am informed that the VAL Society was formed two years ago, which I did not learn from the resident's reports. I am employing a simplified example, since I really don't give a d.a.m.n about the Fishers, but this becomes transformed into a general style of work. Reports are delayed, reports lie, reports misinform... in the end reports are simply invented. One man openly resigns from the Council and doesn't consider it inc.u.mbent upon him to so inform his superior. He has enough, you see; he had intentions to communicate but somehow couldn't find the time.... Another, instead of fighting the drug problem, becomes an addict himself.... And the third philosophizes."

He nodded at me with regretful bitterness.

"Understand me correctly, Ivan," he continued. "I am not opposed to philosophy. But philosophy is one thing and our work altogether another. Judge for yourself, Ivan. If there is no secret headquarters, if we are faced with a deluge of do-it-yourself enterprise, then why all the secretiveness? All this conspiratorial atmosphere? Why is slug enveloped in such mystery? I allow that Rimeyer is silent because of pangs of conscience in general and specifically on your account, Ivan.

But the rest? Slug is not illegal; everyone knows about it and yet everyone keeps it a secret. Oscar, here, doesn't philosophize; he postulates that the inhabitants are simply terrorized. I can understand that. And what do you postulate, Ivan?"

"In your pocket," I said, "there is a slug. Go in the bathroom. There's Devon on the shelf -- one tablet orally, four in the water. There's some whiskey in the medicine chest. Oscar and I will wait. And then you can tell us aloud, so we can hear, we your comrades in work and your underlings, about your sensations and experiences. And we -- better it should be Oscar -- should listen, but as for me, I think I'll leave."

Matia put on his gla.s.ses and stared at me.

"You are implying that I won't tell? You propose that I, too, will be derelict in my duty?"

"What you will learn will have no relation whatsoever to your duty. That you will renege on subsequently. As did Rimeyer. Comrades, this is slug. It's a cute device, which awakens fantasy and directs it where it will, particularly where you yourself subconsciously -- and I mean subconsciously -- would like to direct it. The further you are removed from the animal, the more inoffensive would slug be, but the closer to the animal, the more you would be impelled to adhere to the conspiratorial way. The animals themselves are altogether silent. They just know how to press the lever."

"What lever?"

I explained about the rats to them.

"Did you try it yourself?" asked Matia.

"Yes."

"And?"

"As you can see, I tend to silence."

Matia sibilated for some time and then said, "Well, I am no nearer to the animal than you are. How do you put it in?"

I loaded the radio and handed it to him. Oscar was following all this with interest.

"G.o.d be with me," said Matia, "Where is your bath? I'll wash after my trip while I'm at it."

He locked himself in, and we could hear him dropping things.

"Strange affair," said Oscar.

"It's really not an affair," I contradicted. "It's a piece of history, Oscar, and you would like to fit it into a file and tie it with a ribbon. But this is no gangster business. It should be obvious to a hedgehog, as Yurkovsky used to say."

"Who?"

"Yurkovsky, Vladimir Sergeyevitch. There was such a renowned planetologist. I worked with him."

"Aah," said Oscar, "By the way, on the plaza by the Hotel Olympic there is a monument to a Yurkovsky."

"The very same man."

"Really?" said Oscar. "On the other hand, it's quite possible. However, the monument was not put up because he was a renowned planetologist. It's simply that for the first time in the history of the city, he broke the electronic roulette bank.

It was decided to immortalize such a feat."

"I expected something of the sort," I murmured. I felt depressed.

The shower began to hiss in the bathroom, and there was a frightful roar from Matia, At first, I decided that he turned on ice water instead of warm, but he kept yelling and then began to curse in the most horrendous terms. Oscar and I exchanged glances. He was generally calm, interpreting this as the typical action of slug, and his face exhibited a compa.s.sionate expression. The latch rattled wildly, the door flew open with a crash. Bare heels slapped in the bedroom, and a naked Matia rolled into the study.

"Are you some kind of an idiot?" he bellowed at me. "What sort of filthy trick is this?"

I went numb. Matia resembled a grotesque zebra. His well-fed body was covered with poison-green vertical stripes.

He reared and stamped his feet, spraying emerald drops. When we regained our composure and investigated the site of the accident, we learned that the shower head had been stuffed with a sponge saturated with a green dye. I remembered Len's note and guessed that Vousi was the culprit. It took a long while to restore a normal atmosphere. Matia viewed the incident as a boorish joke and an inadmissible disregard of subordinate discipline and behavior. Oscar horse-laughed. I scrubbed Matia with a brush and explained. Then Matia announced that from now on he wouldn't trust anyone and would try out slug when he got home. He dressed and went into conference with Oscar on the plans for blockading the city.

I was cleaning up in the bath and thinking that with this, my work in the Council was coming to an end, and another kind of work was beginning -- which I did not know how to begin. I would have liked to include myself in the blockade planning, not because I considered it necessary, but because it was so simple, so much more simple than to return to people their souls which had been devoured by affluence, and to teach each one to think of world problems in the same way as his own personal ones.

"Isolate this pus bag from the rest of the world, isolate it totally, that's the total of our philosophy," orated Matia.

That was aimed at me. But perhaps not even me. For Matia was a brilliant mind. He understood too well that isolation was always a defense, but here we had to attack. But he knew how to advance only with squads, and this was embarra.s.sing to him.

To rescue. For how long would you need rescuing? When would you learn to rescue yourselves? Why were you eternally harkening to priests, fascists, demagogues, and imbecile Opirs?

Why didn't you want to exert your brains? Why did you resist thinking so? Why couldn't you understand that the world is vast, complex, and fascinating? Why was everything simple and boring tc you? In what way did your mind differ from the mind of Rabelais, Swift, Lenin, Einstein, Makarenko, Hemingway, and Strogoff? Someday I would grow tired of all this. Someday when I had no more strength and conviction. For I was similar to you. But I wanted to help you, and you didn't want to help me....

Reg and Len came over after school, and Len said, "We have decided, Ivan. We will go to the Gobi Central." He had red fuzz on his lip and huge red hands, and I could see that it divas he who had thought up the Gobi trip, and quite recently -- not more than ten minutes ago. Reg, as usual, was silent, chewing on a blade of gra.s.s and placidly studying me with his calm gray eyes. He has become altogether a square, I thought, and said, "Wonderful book, isn't it?" "Yes, indeed," said Len.

"We understood at once where we should go." Reg was quiet.

"Heat and stench are suspended in the shadow of these hard laboring dragons," I said from memory. "They devour everything under them -- the ancient Mongolian prayer gate, the bones of a two-humped beast fallen in some sand storm..." "Yes," said Len, while Reg went on chewing his blade of gra.s.s. "Every time," I continued (now from Ichin-dagli), "that the sun arrives at a mathematically precise required position, a strange mirage blossoms out in the East -- of a strange city with white towers which no one has yet seen in reality. " "One should see that with his own eyes," said Len, and laughed. "Friend Len," I said, "it's too fascinating and therefore too simple. You will see that it's too simple yourself and it will become an unpleasant disappointment." No, I hadn't said it right. "Friend Len," I said, "what sort of a mirage is that? Here is one.

Seven years ago, in your mother's house, I saw a truly marvelous mirage: both of you standing before me almost grown up..." No -- I was saying that for myself, not for them. It should be said differently. "Friend Len," I said, "seven years ago you explained to me that your people were accursed. We came here and removed the curse from you and Reg and from many other children who had no parents. And now it's your turn to remove, the curse, which..."

It will be very difficult, but I'll explain it to them.

One way or another, I'll get it across. We have known from childhood how to remove the curses on the barricades and on construction sites and in laboratories, and you will remove the last of the curses, you will be the future teachers and educators. In the last war -- the most bloodless and the most difficult for its soldiers.

Upstairs Vousi screeched and Len started to cry piteously.

Oscar's voice boomed in the study. How well off he is, I thought. Simple: slug is bad, harmful, unnatural. Therefore, it must be destroyed, forbidden by law, and then you must watch closely that the law is strictly enforced. Only Matia is smarter than that, because he is older and more experienced.

Matia can still be pulled over to my side. My word doesn't mean anything to him, but others will be found to whom he will listen.... How wonderful that I can now cry out to the whole world and be heard by millions of like-thinkers!

And then I thought that I would not leave this place. I had been here only three days. It could not be that there was no one here who would be with us. No one who hated all this with a deadly hatred, who wanted to blast this dull sated world out of its stasis. Such people always existed and always will.

Perhaps that bibliophile driver or that tall, harsh one of the Intels... and who knew how many more. They stumbled about as though they were blind. We would do everything in our power to help them so that they would not waste their anger on trifles.

It was our place to be here now. And my place, too.

What a labor lies ahead, I thought, what a task! For the time being, I didn't know where to begin in this Country of the b.o.o.b, caught unprepared in a flood of affluence, but I knew that I wouldn't leave here as long as the immigration laws permitted. And when they stopped permitting it, I would break them....

Last-modified: Sat, 29 Aug 1998 16:24:12 GMT.

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