From the Ocean from teh Stars (29 page)

start looking around for a suitable mammal—preferably amphibious—
to be the next director."

On a planet of instantaneous and universal communications, ideas
spread from pole to pole more rapidly than they could once have done by word of mouth in a single village. The skillfully edited and presented pro
gram which had spoiled the appetites of a mere twenty million people on
its first appearance had a far larger audience on its second. Soon there
were few other topics of conversation; one of the disadvantages of life in a
peaceful and well-organized world state was that with the disappearance
of wars and crises very little was left of what was once called "news." Indeed, the complaint had often been made that since the ending of national
sovereignty, history had also been abolished. So the argument raged in
club and kitchen, in World Assembly and lonely space freighter, with no
competition from any other quarter.

The World Food Organization maintained a dignified silence, but be
hind the scenes there was furious activity. Matters were not helped by the
brisk lobbying of the farm group, which it had taken no great foresight
on Indra's part to predict. Franklin was particularly annoyed by the efforts
of the rival department to profit from his difficulties, and made several
protests to the Director of Plankton Farms when the infighting became
a little too rough. "Damn it all, Ted," he had snarled over the view-
phone on one occasion, "you're just as big a butcher as I am. Every ton
of raw plankton you process contains half a billion shrimps with as much
right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as my whales. So don't
try to stand in a white sheet. Sooner or later the Thero will work down
to you—this is only the thin edge of the wedge."

"Maybe you're right, Walter," the culprit had admitted cheerfully
enough, "but I think the farms will last out my time. It's not easy to make people sentimental over shrimps—they don't have cute little ten-ton ba
bies to nurse."

That was perfectly true; it was very hard to draw the line between maudlin sentimentality and rational humanitarianism. Franklin remem
bered a recent cartoon showing the Thero raising his arms in protest while
a shrieking cabbage was brutally dragged from the ground. The artist
had taken no sides; he had merely summed up the viewpoint of those who
considered that a great deal of fuss was being made about nothing. Per
haps this whole affair would blow over in a few weeks when people be
came bored and started arguing about something else—but he doubted
it. That first television program had shown that the Thero was an expert

in molding public opinion; he could be relied upon not to let his campaign
lose momentum.

It took less than a month for the Thero to obtain the ten per cent vote
needed under the constitution to set up a commission of inquiry. The fact
that one tenth of the human race was sufficiently interested in the matter
to request that all the facts be laid before it did not mean that they
agreed with the Thero; mere curiosity and the pleasure of seeing a de
partment of the state fighting a defensive rear-guard action was quite
enough to account for the vote. In itself, a commission of inquiry meant
very little. What would matter would be the final referendum on the com
mission's report, and it would be months before that could be arranged.

One of the unexpected results of the twentieth century's electronic
revolution was that for the first time in history it was possible to have a truly democratic government—in the sense that every citizen could ex
press his views on matters of policy. What the Athenians, with indifferent
success, had tried to do with a few thousand score of free men could now
be achieved in a global society of five billions. Automatic sampling devices
originally devised for the rating of television programs had turned out to have a far wider significance, by making it a relatively simple and in
expensive matter to discover exactly what the public really thought on
any subject.

Naturally, there had to be safeguards, and such a system would have
been disastrous before the days of universal education—before, in fact,
the beginning of the twenty-first century. Even now, it was possible for some emotionally laden issue to force a vote that was really against the best interests of the community, and no government could function unless it held the final right to decide matters of policy during its term of
office. Even if the world demanded some course of action by a ninety-
nine per cent vote, the state could ignore the expressed will of the people
—but it would have to account for its behavior at the next election.

Franklin did not relish the privilege of being a key witness at the
commission's hearings, but he knew that there was no way in which he could escape this ordeal. Much of his time was now spent in collecting data to refute the arguments of those who wished to put an end to whale slaughtering, and it proved to be a more difficult task than he had imag
ined. One could not present a neat, clear-cut case by saying that proc
essed whale meat cost so much per pound by the time it reached the
consumer's table whereas synthetic meats derived from plankton or algae
would cost more. Nobody knew—there were far too many variables.
The biggest unknown of all was the cost of running the proposed sea dairies, if it was decided to breed whales purely for milk and not for
slaughter.

The data were insufficient. It would be honest to say so, but there was
pressure on him to state outright that the suspension of whale slaughtering would never be a practical or economic possibility. His own loyalty to the
bureau, not to mention the security of his present position, prompted him in the same direction.

But it was not merely a matter of economics; there were emotional
factors which disturbed Franklin's judgment and made it impossible for
him to make up his mind. The days he had spent with the Maha Thero,
and his brief glimpse of a civilization and a way of thought far older than
his own, had affected him more deeply than he had realized. Like most
men of his highly materialistic era, he was intoxicated with the scientific
and sociological triumphs which had irradiated the opening decades of
the twenty-first century. He prided himself on his skeptical rationalism, and his total freedom from superstition. The fundamental questions of
philosophy had never bothered him greatly; he knew that they existed,
but they had seemed the concern of other people.

And now, whether he liked it or not, he had been challenged from a
quarter so unexpected that he was almost defenseless. He had always
considered himself a humane man, but now he had been reminded that
humanity might not be enough. As he struggled with his thoughts, he be
came progressively more and more irritable with the world around him,
and matters finally became so bad that Indra had to take action.

"Walter," she said firmly, when Anne had gone tearfully to bed after
a row in which there was a good deal of blame on both sides, "it will save
a lot of trouble if you face the facts and stop trying to fool yourself."

"What the devil do you mean?"

"You've been angry with everybody this last week—with just one ex
ception. You've lost your temper with Lundquist—though that was partly my fault—with the press, with just about every other bureau in the division, with the children, and any moment you're going to lose it with me. But there's one person you're not angry with—and that's the Maha Thero,
who's the cause of all the trouble."

"Why should I be? He's crazy, of course, but he's a saint—or as near
it as I ever care to meet."

"I'm not arguing about that. I'm merely saying that you really agree
with him, but you won't admit it."

Franklin started to explode. "That's utterly ridiculous!" he began.
Then his indignation petered out. It
was
ridiculous; but it was also per
fectly true.

He felt a great calm come upon him; he was no longer angry with the
world and with himself. His childish resentment of the fact that
he
should

There was no reason why he should be ashamed of the fact that he had grown to love the great beasts he guarded; if their slaughter could be avoided, he should welcome it, whatever the consequences to the bureau. The parting smile of the Thero suddenly floated up into his memory. Had that extraordinary man foreseen that he would win him around to his point of view? If his gentle persuasiveness—which he had not hesitated to combine with the shock tactics of that bloodstained television program—could work with Franklin himself, then the battle was already half over.

☆
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Life was a good deal simpler in the old days, thought Indra with a sigh. It was true that Peter and Anne were both at school or college most of the time, but somehow that had given her none of the additional leisure she had expected. There was so much entertaining and visiting to do, now that Walter had moved into the upper echelons of the state. Though perhaps that was exaggerating a little; the director of the Bureau of Whales was still a long way—at least six steps—down from the rarefied heights in which the president and his advisers dwelt.

But there were some things that cut right across official rank. No one could deny that there was a glamour about Walt's job and an interest in his activities that had made him known to a far wider circle than the other directors of the Marine Division, even before the
Earth Magazine
article or the present controversy over whale slaughtering. How many people could name the director of Plankton Farms or of Fresh-Water Food Production? Not one to every hundred that had heard of Walter. It was a fact that made her proud, even though at the same time it exposed Walter to a good deal of interdepartmental jealousy.

Now, however, it seemed likely to expose him to worse than that. So far, no one in the bureau, still less any of the higher officials of the Marine Division or the World Food Organization imagined for one moment that Walter had any private doubts or that he was not wholeheartedly in support of the
status quo.

Her attempts to read the current
Nature
were interrupted by the private-line viewphone. It had been installed, despite her bitter protests, the day that Walter had become director. The public service, it seemed, was not good enough; now the office could get hold of Walter whenever it liked, unless he took precautions to frustrate it.

"Oh, good morning, Mrs. Franklin," said the operator, who was now practically a friend of the family. "Is the director in?"

"I'm afraid not," said Indra with satisfaction. "He hasn't had a day off for about a month, and he's out sailing in the bay with Peter. If you want to catch him, you'll have to send a plane out; J.94's radio has broken down again."

"Both
sets? That's odd. Still, it's not urgent. When he comes in, will you give him this memo?"

There was a barely audible click, and a sheet of paper drifted down into the extra large-sized memorandum basket. Indra read it, gave the operator an absent-minded farewell, and at once called Franklin on his perfectly serviceable radio.

The creak of the rigging, the soft rush of water past the smooth hull— even the occasional cry of a sea bird—these sounds came clearly from the speaker and transported her at once out into Moreton Bay.

"I thought you'd like to know, Walter," she said, "the Policy Board is having its special meeting next Wednesday, here in Brisbane. That gives you three days to decide what you're going to tell them."

There was a slight pause during which she could hear her husband moving about the boat; then Franklin answered: "Thanks, dear. I know what I've got to say—I just don't know how to say it. But there's something I've thought of that you can do to help. You know all the wardens' wives—suppose you call up as many as you can, and try to find what their husbands feel about this business. Can you do that without making it look too obvious? It's not so easy for me, nowadays, to find what the men in the field are thinking. They're too liable to tell me what they imagine I want to know."

There was a wistful note in Franklin's voice which Indra had been hearing more and more frequently these days, though she knew her husband well enough to be quite sure that he had no real regrets for having taken on his present responsibilities.

"That's a good idea," she said. "There are at least a dozen people I should have called up weeks ago, and this will give me an excuse. It probably means that we'll have to have another party though."

"I don't mind that, as long as I'm still director and can afford to pay for it. But if I revert to a warden's pay in a month or so, we'll have to cut out the entertaining."

"You don't really think—"

"Oh, it won't be as bad as that. But they may shift me to some nice safe job, though I can't imagine what use I am now outside the bureau.

GET OUT OF THE WAY, YOU BLASTED FOOL
CAN'T YOU SEE WHERE