This Fortress World (27 page)

…
and as I lay there, remembering how the pebble was gone and how fear first entered my world with Frieda, not knowing whether it was night or morning, Laurie came for me.

She knocked at the door, and I knew it was Laurie. I got up and opened the door. I hadn't undressed when I lay down after she left me.

"The Archbishop will see you," she said. She didn't look at my face. Maybe it was just as well. It was unshaven and haggard with sleeplessness.

She led me back down the corridors, and I thought of the three things I had to do, one for humanity and two for myself, before the game would be over.

"Why did he hate you so much?" Laurie said.

"Who?" I asked.

"The Abbot."

"He's an ambitious man," I said. "And he said he was—I believe he is—my father."

She turned her head and shot a swift glance at me over her shoulder and looked back to the front. "The poor man," she said softly.

I knew what she meant. "Yes," I said.

She stopped in front of a door and knocked gently.

"Come in," said a soft voice from within the cabin.

Laurie slid the door back, and we entered the room. It was not much bigger than the cubicle I had slept in. In the center of the room sat an old man in a chair. He was pale and his hair was pure white, and I realized after a moment that he was crippled. He couldn't walk. And I knew, too, that he wasn't as old as I had thought. Disease and pain and sorrow had eaten away at him. They had etched lines in his face and scooped out hollows for his eyes to sleep in.

And his eyes were wise and his eyes were kind and I knew that I could trust him.

"So," he said gently, "we meet at last, my son."

"At last?"

"I've been interested in what has happened to you and what you have done."

I bowed my head and said nothing.

"Sit down," he said.

We pulled out chairs from against the wall and sat down, I opposite him and Laurie beside him. She took one of his thin hands in hers and held it. I realized that they were ranged against me.

"And the pebble turned out to be useless and worthless," he said.

I turned toward Laurie. "You told him!" I said accusingly.

She raised her head defiantly. "Yes," she said. "I couldn't let you bargain with him. You might ask for something it would hurt him to give."

I leaned back again in my chair, cold and angry. "Your word means nothing?"

"I've sacrificed more."

"And yet you meant it when you said it. What changed your mind? What was said later?"

The Archbishop had been looking back and forth between us. Now he raised one almost transparent hand. "Children!" he said. We fell silent and glared at each other. "She told me," he said, and smiled ruefully. "But I'm afraid she was thinking more of you than of me. This child knows me too well. Now that I am committed, I can't refuse you anything within reason."

I frowned and glanced at Laurie. She was looking at the Archbishop. Her face was pale.

"What is it you want, my son?"

"Later," I said. "You said that the pebble is useless and worthless. But if you had lived with it as long as I have, you might change your mind. Because you're only half right. The pebble is useless but not worthless."

"A subtle distinction."

"But a valuable one. We can't use it, true. Because we don't have the power to carry out its instructions; it isn't addressed to us. But it isn't worthless because it suggests an idea which could reshape the galaxy and prepare the way for the Third Empire. It suggests two ideas, in fact."

"I'm afraid I don't follow you, my son."

"You will pardon me, then, if I repeat many things which may be old to you. But perhaps you haven't had the facts of the galaxy hammered home to you as I have."

"And what facts are those?"

"The galaxy is split up into thousands of separate worlds, each at war with the others, each a fortress which cannot be conquered except at a cost almost more than the world is worth. And the basic reason is that defense is far superior to offense."

The old man nodded agreement.

"And so," I went on, "we have the fortress psychology which pervades everything. It means isolation, fear of attack, hatred of the alien. It means strong, centralized governments. It means concentrations of power, wealth, and authority. It means oppressed populations, looking ignorantly, hopefully, fearfully to superiors for defense and order. It means stagnation, decay, and slow rot which will eventually destroy all semblance of human civilization as technical skill and knowledge are destroyed or forgotten and slowly the links between worlds are broken."

"That would be true," the Archbishop said, "except for the Church. It is a storehouse of knowledge and technical skill."

"Let me come back to that in a moment. As long as this vicious circle of defense, centralization, ignorance, and fear continues, there is no hope for the galaxy, and all the knowledge held by the Church is worthless if no one is fit to receive it."

"Are you suggesting, then," the Archbishop said, raising one white eyebrow, "that we strengthen the powers of offense, that we give weapons to ambitious rulers and thus break the circle."

I shook my head. "That's one solution, and it might work. But the carnage and destruction would be terrible, and if, eventually, one ruler managed to unite the galaxy by force, it's probable that he would have little left to rule. No, the answer doesn't lie in making warfare more destructive."

Laurie frowned. "Then what is the answer?"

"Slowly, slowly," I said. I hesitated, trying to frame my ideas in the right pattern. I had the answer, and I was sure of it, but it wasn't any good unless I could convince the Archbishop. "The basic necessity of the fortress is the ignorance of the people. An intelligent, educated people can't be kept inside a fortress. Knowledge is a physical force which would burst the walls from within. The rulers know that. The first principle of their political philosophy is to keep their subjects weak; the second is to keep them ignorant. One is physical, the other is mental; but essentially they are the same. Let the people have no weapons."

I looked at the Archbishop, but his lined, impassive face gave no hint of understanding.

"Go on," he said.

"The problem," I said, "is communication."

"But that is the answer the Citizens had," Laurie objected. "And it didn't work."

"An idea may be valid no matter what its source," the old man said quietly. "Go on, my son."

"They had the answer," I agreed, "but they didn't have the method. They tried to do it with books. That was understandable because books were the least censorable method of communication available to them, and the written word is still the mode and stimulus of clear thinking. But they had to give the people an incentive to learn to read. The incentive they chose was not something thoughtful, which the rulers could not and would not supply, but something emotional, which the rulers could counter with ease, which cost them nothing."

"Perhaps," Laurie said sarcastically, "they should have offered treatises on mathematics and logic."

"No," I said seriously, "although even those might have done better. But it wasn't good enough. The method was wrong, because the written word
is
censorable—when the people must be taught to read. There is only one completely uncensorable method of communication."

"And that is?" said the Archbishop.

I love you, Laurie.

She flushed and then her eyes brightened. "The mind. Of course."

"And how do you propose to communicate from mind to mind?" the Archbishop asked. "Laurie tells me that the true telepaths have not yet been reborn."

"Telepaths?"

"That is the word for them. I read it somewhere a long time ago."

"Telepaths," I repeated, and looked up. "We do it every day."

"Indeed?" The Archbishop's eyebrows were raised.

Laurie's face was alive with interest. "We do. Of course. In the Cathedrals. The services are given mentally, by the machine. We've had it all the time and we didn't recognize it."

I nodded. "The uncensorable method of communication."

But the Archbishop was shaking his head. "Would you have the Church preach rebellion? That isn't our way. Our duty is to preserve man's inheritance until he comes of age."

"And what if he never comes of age?" I asked quietly. "He will never come of age if the Church does nothing. He will only sink deeper and deeper into savagery. Ignorance, like knowledge, is a cumulative thing. Knowledge is a pressure from within; ignorance is a weight, and the deeper it pulls man down the heavier it grows."

"No. No," the Archbishop was saying. "It isn't possible."

"The Church has a duty it isn't fulfilling. It must make mankind worthy to receive his inheritance. Now, the Church, the one great galactic force, is no better than the individual rulers. The rulers give the people bread and circuses; the Church gives them solace and miracles. One pacifies the body, the other the spirit; there is no real difference between them. Calm the people; make them contented with their lot."

"And if we act, what will keep the Church from being destroyed?"

"Its strength," I said.

"It isn't strong enough to defy the rulers," the Archbishop said. "We have existed this long, and grown, because we didn't challenge the temporal power."

"No, we complemented it, and the people lost. Everywhere the power of the Church is underestimated, its leaders fearful and weak. The rulers would think a long time before attacking the Church; it would bring on a battle which would leave that world wide open to conquest. But that isn't the only source of strength. The rulers need the Church; without it unrest would be ten times as great. Were it not for the treasure house that the Church represents, in the final analysis the galaxy would be better off without the Church. There is still a third source of strength which is always ignored—the people themselves, who would not stand by and see the Church destroyed by the rulers. Threaten the Church, and the people would rebel."

"Perhaps," the Archbishop admitted, "but we can't gamble with the future of the Church."

"But you can gamble with the future of humanity? Without the people, what is the Church worth? But you are imagining something that I haven't suggested. I don't advise anything as obvious as inciting the people to rebellion. That would be too risky. I suggest only that the Church pass onto the people some of its inheritance, not devices but knowledge—which is, in the end, more potent—the kind of knowledge they can handle. Beginning with the knowledge of how to read."

Laurie's eyes were burning with inspiration. "
A is for Alien; B is for Bondage."

"F is for Fortress," I said.
"F is for Freedom.
And when they can read, you give them simple books, and when they master those, you give them more difficult books."

"But we aren't equipped to write books or to print them in quantity," the Archbishop objected.

"The Citizens are."

"Are you suggesting that we join forces with them?"

"They have good men," I said, "and clever ones. And some of their aims should coincide with some of yours. I'm suggesting that you join with the best elements of all forces that are working for freedom and a reuniting of the splintered galaxy. The Citizens and the Peddlers and the enlightened nobility, if there is any, because basically you are all seeking the same thing."

"Intrigue and spying and secrecy," the Archbishop said with distaste.

"You didn't hesitate to participate in them before."

He bowed his head in admission.

"There is another part to it," I said. "The pebble is an inheritance now, too, and the message it contains sets forth a mission. The telepathy machines can watch for the incipient telepath, whoever he may be. He can be taken aside and helped and put with others of his kind in some sort of colony, and someday the true telepaths will be reborn. Only then will a real basis for a lasting society be available, because it must be built on universal understanding which is impossible without telepathy. It will be reparation for the crime men committed against the telepaths of Earth, that the machine men used to ferret them out and destroy them should be used to reunite the scattered ability."

"And what of The Word, what of our religion? Under the program you set forth, it would wither away and vanish."

"What is the Church? You must face that question. Is it a religion or a vault for man's inheritance? Go back to Jude. Was the religion he founded an end in itself or a means? Was he a prophet or a wise man? I think he was one of the last of the telepaths—a scientist certainly—who saw the galaxy exploding and saw that man's only hopes of preserving his ancient knowledge was to surround it with mysticism. The miracles themselves—not religious miracles but demonstrations of little-known phenomena. Go back to The Word itself. See how generations of theologians have changed it. See how we have lost sight of Jude's purpose and raised around ourselves a wall of self-deception.

"But I don't think our religion will wither away. The ethics are good; the principles are sound. The best and strongest in it will be alloyed with the new, and emerge stronger and finer. And that which withers, should wither. That which helps to keep the people poor and helpless, which drags them down, which doesn't lead them upward into the light, should vanish. For the Church is not a storehouse now. You can go into a storehouse and take out what you need. The Church is a fortress, too, and it keeps the people out when it should let them in. Before the other fortresses crumble, we must throw down our own walls."

The Archbishop sighed. "But it would take so long. Centuries. Millennia."

"I'm not saying it would be easy. There's no shortcut to peace and freedom and a united galaxy. You can't repair the damage of thousands of years with a few days' labor. But we must make a beginning, and those who come after must continue the work."

"When you are young," the Archbishop said softly, "it is easy to think in such terms. But when you are old, as I am, you seek goals that are more immediate. You don't foresee the difficulties that I recognize. Someday, in a year or two or three, I shall be dead"—I saw Laurie clutch his hand tightly—"and my successor will go his own way, will set the Church into new paths. How can I plan in centuries when the Bishops' Council will elect a man who may not agree with my goals?"