Planet in Peril (6 page)

The solicitude was wrong, altogether wrong. There was one possibility, he reflected wryly, that might account for it.
Stenner
seemed to have had some doubts as to his mental balance. It might be that Ledbetter had them, to an even greater degree. Some people were naturally polite and considerate to the insane.

Temporizing, he said: “I suppose you must be right” He hesitated, summoning up words that would deceive the tall friendly man opposite him. “I won’t conceal the fact that my assistant—Sara
Koupal
—made a very great impression on me.” He smiled. “I couldn’t conceal it, anyway, could I? It’s in
Stenner’s
report. There is no doubt in my mind that I love her. I found it hard to recognize that she might be dead; harder that her death had been of her own volition.” He looked at Ledbetter, 42 his embarrassment producing a good effect of honesty. “I still do.”

“Naturally you do,” Ledbetter said. “I don’t think we need to call in
Stenner’s
amateur psychoanalysis. Whether the affections are conditioned or free, one feels them—and damned painfully at times. This has been a bad business, even if an innocent one. Of course you would be inclined to see things the way you did. Anyone would. And it can’t be much consolation to you now to be told that you will get over it—though you will. Work is a useful thing in that respect. I hope the flip I showed you won’t put off the work, just because it hints at the possibility of things being changed. Actually, they will probably carry on under their inertia; you would be surprised if you knew some of the lines of research that have been automatically O.K.’d, year after year.”

Charles said: “You want me to go back to the lab?” Ledbetter said: ‘I’m pretty sure I can swing you under my jurisdiction.
Mettrill
is not the kind to stand on a question of prestige if he sees a chance of less work or less trouble. You will be O.K.”

“
Stenner’s
advice,” Charles said, “was to visit Psycho and Med. He went so far as to suggest the prescription, too—a high-
mesc
course and a holiday trip.”

“You can disregard
Stenner
. You are as sane as he is, and considerably more intelligent.”

“As a matter of fact, I don’t find the suggestion altogether repulsive. I could do without the
mesc
, but there is something about the holiday trip that appeals.” Ledbetter said emphatically: “Take my
advice—work is the best remedy. A holiday trip is no good except to a mind already contented. You’ve got to learn to live with things. Work provides the best way of doing that.” There was an emphasis behind his words which it was difficult to believe stemmed entirely from his concern for Charles. Ledbetter wanted him back at the lab.

Charles said: “I guess it takes different people different ways. I’m not sure that it takes me that way. I have an idea a holiday trip would be quite attractive.” He glanced across at Ledbetter. “The change of scene, for one thing. The lab has acquired a few memories even in so short a time.”

“Face them,” Ledbetter said. ‘It's the only way to get on top of them; they would hit you with much more force when you finally got back.”

“But then,” Charles said, “I would be better able to cope with them. Or so I think. I take it there wouldn’t be any actual
objection
to my consulting P and M and asking for the break?”

Ledbetter said, with obvious reluctance: “No. Of course you can. How long had you thought of asking for?”

“I hadn’t thought. But with my grade and record, and with
Stenner’s
report, I think I could probably get six months if I asked, don’t you? And it happens that I have another six months’ holiday furlough to my credit. I could take a year off.”

Ledbetter was startled. “A year? What about the work?”

Charles shrugged. “It doesn’t seem to have any urgency, as you and Nikko-
Tsi
have both pointed out.” Ledbetter looked as though he were going to say something, and then thought better of it. Charles let a pause rest between them, to encourage him, but without effect. Then he relented. “I don’t imagine I should want anything like that time, though. I’ve never had much pleasure out of furloughs in the past, and I don’t suppose this will be any exception.”

Ledbetter looked as though he had just thought of something. He said brightly: “I hope you won’t take too long, for personal reasons. I’m looking forward to your hospitality to let me get those yachting trips in.”

The KF studio had at one time been a brewery; long low-ceilinged rooms were broken at intervals by peculiar vertical shafts. Charles found
Dinkuhl
watching the interior of Room 17 through the glass partition.

He touched his arm;
Dinkuhl
looked round.

“Charlie! I heard you’d joined a procession to the morgue”

Charles said: "I’ve come for some more of your excellent advice, Hiram. And for permission to listen in on your grapevine.”

Dinkuhl
performed his characteristic mocking grin. "Advice is something we always have available. As for the grapevine, I’m not so sure. Come on upstairs, anyway, and I’ll get you a drink.”

There were two comfortable chairs in the upstairs room.
Dinkuhl
directed him to one, and went across to a spindly top-heavy Welsh dresser that just about covered one wall. He opened up a cupboard.

"Take what comes?”

"Within reason.” He watched
Dinkuhl
pour two glasses and bring them over, together with the bottle, on a tray. “Turnip and tomato again?”

Dinkuhl
shook his head. “The real stuff. Plum brandy. Well now. How’ve you been missing KF?”

"To tell you the truth, I hadn’t given it a thought.” "You’re a lucky man.”
Dinkuhl
let his nose rest for a moment against the edge of his glass. "Ah. That’s a bad business you landed in.”

"What do you know about it?”

"Nothing,”
Dinkuhl
said blandly. “You tell me.”

Charles told him. When he had finished,
Dinkuhl
replenished their glasses. Charles looked at him. “Well?” “And your good friends in UC haven’t quite succeeded in persuading you that you are a promising psychotic?”
Dinkuhl
asked.

“I had my doubts at times, but I have none now.” "Good boy. It has long been a fixed principle of mine to assume that the world around me was populated by mugs and
fleecers
; I never take any man’s word unless I know he has an axe to grind, and know just what the axe is. Then I can make allowances.”

"What axe have you got?”

"An interesting point. Two, principally—to further
anything that looks as though it may sabotage, in the least degree, the managerial world in which we live; and to save my own skin”

Charles grinned. "All right. I’ll settle for them.”

"Not yet you won’t. First I have to justify my seditious attitude.” He finished his own glass. “You’re not drinking.”

"Not at your pace. I don’t think I need the justification. I’m more concerned with getting some advice.”

Dinkuhl
filled his own glass. "The advice can wait. It won’t be of an order to require your urgent attention-urgent within the next half-hour at any rate. Why do I wish to destroy this world-wide fatherly society of managerial in whose bosom we five? Why indeed?”

Charles resigned himself to the situation. "Because the end is in sight—the end of KF?”

"Partly, partly. But a few other things as well. Tell me —what anniversary falls two years from now?”

"I don’t know. Should I?”

"It’s the anniversary of the War. What do you know about the War—about the way the society of today came into being? I’ll ask you another question. Professor
Koupal
taught History at Berkeley, one of the very few academic institutions which provide tuition in that subject. How many students did he have?”

"Before his disappearance? Two.”

"You surprise me. Yes. Two. I doubt if there are a score of students reading History in continental North America. Although you could not be expected to appreciate it, this is—historically speaking—an extraordinary state of affairs. Other decadent periods have misread and distorted the history of their origins; ours is the first to have succeeded in ignoring it altogether.”

“Decadent?”

Dinkuhl
sighed. “I hoped I shouldn’t have to argue about that. You must have been viewing Red League. Man conquering the last barrier—twenty-first-century Man grasping for a new heritage among the Stars— Conquering the Chill Lunar Wastes. But tell me: how long is it since the lunar base was established? You don't remember. It was there when you were a child. Perhaps you can remember when the last attempts were made at Mars and Venus? You should remember them.”

Charles thought. “The Del
Marro
expedition—”

“Over twenty years ago.”
Dinkuhl
glanced at him sardonically. “You were a young man, then, settling down into your niche at Saginaw. That was Mars. They had ruled Venus out ten years before that”

“The difficulties are very great.”

“Not as great as they were for the first trip to the Moon. But in any case, we aren't trying any longer. The work has been abandoned. Not worth the risk.”

“The Moon,” Charles pointed out “hasn’t been worth it. Except possibly in terms of astronomical research.” “By which,”
Dinkuhl
said, “you display yourself as a true child of your age. If you are going to calculate that land of endeavor in terms of profit and loss, then you have failed before you start. No, that is decadence.” “All right,” Charles said. “I see why you would like to put a bomb under it all.”

Dinkuhl
ignored him. “How did things get like this?” He reached for the bottle without pausing and refilled his own glass and—over his gestured protest—Charles'. “In the twentieth century they knew—those of them that could see any further than their noses—that they were heading for a crash. And they got it, of course. They got the lot—atom bombs, hydrogen bombs, breakdown, disease, famine. The world's
Dark Age
beginning anew.

“And yet, before they had even had time to attune themselves to the new conditions—while they were still eating each other in order to stay alive and not for any pleasure in the taste of human flesh—the breakdown was over. The incredible was happening, and a new society was rising, lifting itself, as far as they could see, by its own bootstraps.

“Even though people today have succeeded so well in obliterating the memory of their origins, it is generally remembered that Atomics was the first of the
managerials
, the resurgent center about which the forces of reconstruction gathered. From Philadelphia the call went out, and across the world, after a brief hesitation, came the response.

“The fact is that communications had become so good that, short of wiping out every small center of population, civilization was bound to recover. And not even all the large centers were wiped out, though few escaped quite as happily as Philadelphia. Atomics provided the nucleus of the new grouping of society, and the other
managerials
grew up around them; under their wing. The obvious ones first—United Chemicals, Agriculture, Hydroponics, Lignin Industries, Telecom, Steel, Mining and the rest; and after them the
secondaries
: Psycho and Med, Genetics Division, Leisure Group, and so on. The Council of
Managerials
was set up and now, as you know, in theory all
managerials
are independent and equal and with full sovereign rights. A balance of power.”

“One thing I’ve never understood,” Charles said. “How did
Siraq
come to be left out?”

“The
Siraqis
had spent centuries clutching the idea of a deity-centered nation. The managerial world had nothing in it they could possibly prefer to the concept of a Blessed Land. They made good use of the interregnum to occupy the Near East, and after that they stayed put.

“Today their country is cultivated up to the hilt and for the time being they have caught up with their population increase. Now, unless I am badly mistaken, you will see them go ahead.”

“With the aid and comfort of Channel KF?”

“That,” said
Dinkuhl
, “is my problem.” He paused in the act of filling the glasses again. “I had almost forgotten that you had a problem, too. Tell me, what objective precisely have you got in view?”

“I should like to establish to my own satisfaction that my view of the recent happenings is the right one. More
to the point, I should like to find Sara
Koupal
and ask her to marry me”

“What’s the situation about leave?”

“I’ve been to P and M. They’ve given me up to six months’ leave, and a number of containers of
mescaline
which I tipped down a drain.”

“What are you doing with the leave—officially?”

“A trip to the Pacific Islands.”

“Got die tickets?”

Charles patted his notecase pocket.

“Hand them over.”
Dinkuhl
took the transparent plastic envelope containing the small colored plastic cards. “I know someone who will quite enjoy this trip. I would go myself if I didn’t have something else to do.” He glanced at Charles. “It is important that the tickets should have been used, just in case someone inquires. Now then, we’re ready. First to my place, for a little plastic make-up and then elsewhere.”