One of the other teeps, a small dapper man with mustache and thinning hair, a shot glass in one hand, spoke up. “It would be interesting to know how much of that stuff Moore deliberately formulates in technical jargon to throw us off.”
“This is Peter Wakeman,” Shaeffer said.
Cartwright and Wakeman shook hands. The teep’s fingers were dainty and fragile; diffident fingers with none of the strength Cartwright was used to finding in his unclassifieds. It was hard to believe this was a man who headed the Corps, who had swung it away from Verrick at the critical moment. “Thanks,” Cartwright said.
“You’re welcome. But it had nothing to do with you.” The teep showed equal interest in the tall old man. “How does one get to be a Prestonite? I haven’t read any of the books; are there three?”
“Four.”
“Preston was the odd-ball astronomer who got the observatories to watch for his planet—right? They trained their telescopes and found nothing. Preston went out after it and finally died in his ship. Yes, I once thumbed through Flame Disc. The man who owned it was a real crackpot; I tried to teep him. All I got was a chaotic jumble of passion.”
“How do I teep?” Cartwright asked tightly.
There was a time of absolute silence. The three teeps were all at work on him; he forced his attention on the elaborate tv set in the corner and tried to ignore them.
“About the same,” Wakeman said presently. “You’re oddly phased for this society. The M-game places a great emphasis on the Aristotelian Golden Mean. You’ve got everything tied up in your ship. Outhouse or palace, if your ship goes down that’s the end of you.”
“It won’t go down,” Cartwright told him harshly.
The three teeps were amused. “In a universe of chance, nobody can predict,” said Shaeffer dryly. “It probably will be destroyed. Yet, it might get through.”
“After you’ve talked to Moore,” Wakeman said, “it’ll be interesting to see if you still predict success.”
Herb Moore slid lithely to his feet as Cartwright and Wakeman entered the lounge.
“Sit down,” Cartwright said. “I’ll talk to you here.”
Moore remained standing. “I won’t take up much of your time, Mr. Cartwright. I know you’ve got plenty to do.”
Wakeman grunted sourly.
“What do you want?” Cartwright demanded.
“Let’s put it this way. You’re in. Verrick is out. You hold the supreme position in the system. Right?”
“His strategy,” Wakeman said thoughtfully, “is to convince you you’re an amateur. That much we can get. He wants you to think you’re a sort of janitor sitting in the boss’ chair while he’s out closing some big deal.”
Moore began pacing around, cheeks flushed with excitement, gesturing vividly, highly animated by the flow of words beginning to pour out of his mouth. “Reese Verrick was Quizmaster ten years. He was Challenged daily and he met every Challenge. Essentially, Verrick is a skilled leader. He operated this job with more knowledge and ability than all the Quizmasters before him put together.”
“Except McRae,” Shaeffer pointed out, as he entered the lounge. “Don’t forget him.” He warmed up quickly. “Good old McRae.”
Cartwright felt sick at his stomach. He threw himself down in one of the soft chairs and lay wearily back as it adjusted to his weight and posture. The argument continued without him; the rapid words that flowed between the two teeps and Verrick’s bright young man were remote and dreamlike. He tried to concentrate on the reasonings, but they didn’t appear to concern him.
In many ways Herb Moore was right. He had blundered into somebody else’s office, position, and problems. He wondered vaguely where the ship was. Unless something had gone wrong it would soon be heading out toward Mars and the asteroid belt. Hadn’t customs fallen behind already? He examined his watch. The ship was gaining velocity at this very moment.
Moore’s sharp voice brought him back. He sat up straight and opened his eyes. “All right!” Moore was saying excitedly.
“The word’s gone out on the ipvic. The Convention will probably be held at the Westinghouse Hill; there’s more hotel space there.”
“Yes,” Wakeman was saying tightly. “That’s the usual place for the murderers to collect. There’s plenty of rooms at low rates.”
Wakeman and Moore were discussing the Challenge Convention.
Cartwright got unsteadily to his feet. “I want to talk to Moore. You two clear out of here. Go someplace else.”
The teeps conferred silently, then moved toward the door. “Be careful,” Wakeman warned him. “You’ve had a lot of emotional shocks today. Your thalamic index is too high.”
Cartwright closed the door after them and turned to face Moore. “Now we can get this settled once and for all.”
Moore smiled confidently. “Anything you say, Mr. Cartwright. You’re the boss.”
“I’m not your boss.”
“No, that’s so. A few of us stayed loyal to Reese. A few of us didn’t let him down.”
“You must think a lot of him.”
Moore’s expression showed that he did. “Reese Verrick is a big man, Mr. Cartwright. He’s done a lot of big things. He works on a vast scale.” He glowed happily. “He’s fully rational.”
“What do you want me to do? Give him back his position?” Cartwright heard his own voice waver with emotion. “I’m not giving this up. I don’t care how irrational this is. I’m here and I’m staying here. You can’t intimidate me! You can’t laugh me out!”
His voice echoed; he was shouting. He forced himself to calm down. Herb Moore smiled brightly and basked in his own warmth.
He’s young enough to be my son, Cartwright found himself thinking. He can’t be over thirty, and I’m sixty-three. He’s just a boy, a child prodigy. Cartwright tried to keep his hands from shaking, but he couldn’t. He was excited, too excited. He could hardly speak. He was all wrought up. And he was afraid.
“You can’t operate this,” Moore said quietly. “This isn’t your line. What are you? I examined the records. You were born October 5, 2140, outside the Imperial Hill. You’ve lived there all your life; this is the first time you’ve been on this side of Earth, let alone on another planet. You had ten years of nominal schooling in the charity department of the Imperial Hill. You never excelled in anything. From high school on you dropped courses that dealt with symbolization and took manual shop courses. You took welding and electronic repair, that sort of thing. You tried printing, for a while. After you got out of school you worked in a turret factory as a mechanic. You designed a few circuit improvements in plimp board design, but the Directorate rejected your patents as trivial.”
“The improvements,” Cartwright said with difficulty, “were incorporated in the bottle itself, a year later.”
“From then on you were bitter. You serviced the bottle at Geneva and saw your own designs in operation. You tried over five thousand times to win a classification, but you never had enough theoretical knowledge. When you were forty-nine you gave up. When you were fifty you joined this crackpot outfit, this Preston Society.”
“I had been attending meetings six years.”
“There weren’t many members at the time, and you finally were elected president of the Society. You put all your money and time into the crazy thing. It’s become your driving conviction, your mania.” Moore beamed happily, as if cracking an intricate equation. “And now you hold this position, Quizmaster, over a whole race, billions of people, endless quantities of men and material, maybe the sole civilization in the universe. And you see all this only as a means of expanding your Society.”
Cartwright choked futilely.
“What are you going to do?” Moore persisted. “Print a few trillion copies of Preston’s tracts? Distribute immense 3-D pictures of him and spread them all over the system? Supply statues, vast museums full of his clothing, false teeth, shoes, fingernail parings, buttons, shrines for the faithful to visit? You already hav
e one monument to go to: his worldly remains, in a broken-down wooden building in the Imperial slums, his bones on exhibit, the remains of the saint, to be touched and prayed over.
“Is that what you’re planning: a new religion, a new god to worship? Are you going to organize vast fleets of ships, send out endless armadas to search for his mystic planet?” Moore saw Cartwright flinch white; he plowed on, “Are we all going to spend our time combing space for his Flame Disc, or whatever he called it? Remember Robin Pitt, Quizmaster number thirty-four? He was nineteen years old, a homosexual, a psychotic. He lived with his mother and sister all his life. He read ancient books, painted pictures, wrote psychiatric stream-of-consciousness material.”
“Poetry.”
“He was Quizmaster one week; then the Challenge got him—thank God. He was wandering around the jungle back of these buildings, gathering wild flowers and writing sonnets. You’ve read about that. Maybe you were alive; you’re certainly old enough.”
“I was thirteen when he was murdered.”
“Remember what he had planned for mankind? Think back. Why does the Challenge-process exist? The whole bottle system is to protect us; it elevates and deprives at random, chooses random individuals at random intervals. Nobody can gain power and hold it; nobody knows what his status will be next year, next week. Nobody can plan to be a dictator: it comes and goes according to subatomic random particles. The Challenge protects us from something else. It protects us from incompetents, from fools and madmen. We’re completely safe: no despots and no crackpots.”
“I’m not a crackpot,” Cartwright muttered hoarsely. The sound of his own voice amazed him. It was weak and forlorn, without conviction. Moore’s broad smile increased; there was no doubt in his mind. “It’ll take me awhile to adjust,” he finished lamely. “I need time.”
“You think you can adjust?” Moore asked.
“Yes!”
“I don’t. You have approximately twenty-four hours. That’s about how long it takes to convene a Challenge Convention and pick the first candidate. There should be a lot to choose from.”
Cartwright’s thin body jerked. “Why?”
“Verrick has put up a million gold dollars to the one who gets you. The offer is good until won, until you’re dead.”
Cartwright heard the words, but they didn’t register. He was vaguely aware that Wakeman had come into the lounge and was moving up to Moore. The two of them walked away talking in low tones. He hardly heard them.
Like a frigid nightmare, the phrase “a million gold dollars” dripped and leaked into his brain. There’d be plenty of takers. With that much money an unk could buy a variety of classifications on the black market. The best minds in the system would gamble their lives for that, in a society that was a constant gamble, an unceasing lottery.
Wakeman came over to him shaking his head. “What a hopped-up mind. There was a lot of wild stuff we couldn’t catch. Something about bodies and bombs and assassins and randomness. He’s gone, now. We sent him off.”
“What he said is true,” Cartwright gasped. “He’s right; I have no place here. I don’t belong here.”
“His strategy is to make you think that.”
“But it’s true!”
Wakeman nodded reluctantly. “I know. That’s why it’s such a good strategy. We have a good strategy, too, I think. When the time comes, you’ll know about it.” He suddenly grabbed Cartwright by the shoulder. “Better sit down. I’ll pour you a drink; Verrick left some genuine Scotch around here, a couple of full cases.”
Cartwright shook his head mutely.
“Suit yourself.” Wakeman got out his pocket handkerchief and mopped his forehead. His hands were shaking. “I think I’ll have one, if you don’t mind. After teeping that high-powered blur of pathological drive, I can use a drink, myself.”
FOUR
Ted Benteley stood by the kitchen door inhaling warm smells of cooking food. The Davis house was pleasant and bright. Al Davis, minus his shoes, was sitting contentedly before the tv set in the living room, gazing earnestly at the ads. His pretty brown-haired wife Laura was preparing dinner.
“If that’s protine,” Benteley said to her, “it’s the best job of adulteration I’ve smelled.”
“We never have protine,” Laura answered briskly. “We tried it the first year we were married, but you can taste it no matter how they fix it up. It’s terribly costly to buy natural foods, of course, but it’s worth it. Protine is for the unks.”
“If it wasn’t for protine,” Al said, overhearing her, “the unks would have starved to death back in the twentieth century. You’re always passing out typical layman-type misinformation. Allow me to give you the straight dope.”
“Please do,” Laura said.
“Protine isn’t a natural algae. It’s a mutant that started out in culture tanks in the Middle East and gradually crept onto a variety of fresh-water surfaces.”
“I know that. When I go into the bathroom in the morning don’t I find the darn stuff growing all over the wash basin and the pipes and in the tub and in the—fixture?”
“It also grows over the Great Lakes,” Al said scientifically.
“Well, this isn’t protine,” Laura said to Ted. “This is a real beef roast, real spring potatoes and green peas and white rolls.”
“You two are living better than when I last saw you,” Benteley said. “What happened?”
A complex look crossed Laura’s dainty face. “Didn’t you hear? Al jumped a whole class. He beat the Government Quiz; he and I studied together every night after he got home from work.”
“I never heard of anybody beating the Quizzes. Was it mentioned on tv?”
“As a matter of fact it was.” Laura frowned resentfully. “That awful Sam Oster talked about it the whole length of a program. He’s that rabble-rouser who has such a big following among the unks.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know him,” Benteley admitted.
On the tv, glorious ads played back and forth like liquid fire. One after another they rose, hung for an instant, and then dropped away. Ads were the highest art-form; the finest creative talent was at work behind them. Ads combined color, balance, rhythm, and a restless aliveness that pulsed from the screen and into the cozy Davis living room. From hidden hi-fi speakers mounted within the walls random combinations of accompanying sound drifted.
“The Convention,” Davis said, indicating the screen. “They’re advertising for applicants and giving quite a bonus.”
A vortex of foaming light and color-texture lapping across the screen symbolized the Challenge Convention. The billowing mass broke apart, held, and reformed in new combinations. A pattern of unusually excited spheres danced their way across, and the accompanying music rose to a fever pitch.
“What’s it saying?” Benteley asked.
“I can switch to the l-Channel, if you want. Then you’ll have it straight.”
Laura hurried in with silver and china for the table. “Don’t put that l-Channel on; all the unks watch that. That’s why they have it both ways, this for us and the literal for them.”
“You’re wrong, honey,” Al said seriously. “The l-Channel is for news and factual information. The s-Channel is for pleasure. I enjoy watching it this way, but—” He waved his hand and the circuit switched abruptly. The vivid swirls of color and sound winked out. In their place the placid features of the Westinghouse news announcer appeared. “Here’s the same thing.”
Laura set the table and returned to the kitchen in a flurry of activity. The living room was friendly and comfortable. One wall was transparent; below the house stretched out the city of Berlin clustered around the Farben Hill, a vast towering center cone, black against the night sky. Bits of cold light drifted and rushed in the gloom: surface cars dancing like yellow sparks in the chill night shadows, disappearing into the vast cone like incandescent moths into the chimney of a cosmic lamp.
“How long have you been in fealty to Verrick?” Benteley asked Al
Davis.
Al tore himself away from the tv screen; it was now describing new experiments in C-plus reactors. “What’s that, Ted? I guess about three or four years.”
“You’re satisfied?”
“Sure, why not?” Al gestured around the pleasant, well-furnished living room. “Who wouldn’t be satisfied?”
“I’m not talking about this. I had the same thing over at Oiseau-Lyre; most classified people have set-ups like this. I’m talking about Verrick.”
Al Davis struggled to catch Benteley’s drift. “I never see Verrick. He’s been at Batavia, up until today.”
“You knew I’d sworn in to Verrick?”
“You told me this afternoon.” Davis’ kindly face beamed up at Benteley, relaxed and untroubled. “I hope that means you’ll be moving over here.”
“Why?”
Davis blinked. “Well, because then we’ll see more of you and Julie.”
“I haven’t been living with Julie for six months,” Benteley said impatiently. “That’s all off. She’s on Jupiter as some sort of work-camp official.”
“Well, I didn’t know. I haven’t seen you for a couple of years. I was as surprised as hell to see your face on the ipvic.”
“I came over with Verrick and his staff.” Benteley’s voice hardened with irony. “When Oiseau-Lyre released me I headed directly for Batavia. I wanted to get out of the Hill system once and for all. I went straight to Reese Verrick.”
“You did the right thing.”
“Verrick tricked me! He was quacked, out of the Directorate completely. I knew somebody was bidding up the Hills, somebody with plenty of funds. I wanted nothing to do with it—and now look.” Benteley’s resentment increased. “Instead of getting away from it, I’m where it’s dirtiest. It’s the last place on Earth I wanted to be.”
Indignation crept into Davis’ tolerant face. “Some of the nicest people I know are Verrick’s serfs.”
“They’re people who don’t care how they make their money.”
“You want to penalize Verrick because he’s a success? He’s made this Hill run. Is it his fault nobody else can operate like he can? There’s a natural selection and evolution. Those who can’t survive fall by the way.”