friend," he said. "They arepreparing a reception for you. You are a hero of Vinin, to have bravedso much for the cause."
The Vininese came forward suddenly and pulled aside the torn cloth atthe throat of Dirrul's tunic.
"But you--you must have a disk!" The Vininese was suddenly frightened."There is no tourist stamp on your arm. I don't understand."
"Paul Sorgel loaned me his when I left Agron." Dirrul felt in histunic pocket. "He said I was to give it to the Chief when I made myreport but if you must see it now--"
"No, no--by all means, keep it." The tall man's voice was pleasantagain. "I was simply afraid that someone might have come who--but itis nothing. I am weary from all this vigilance against the vagabonds.It is hard to think realistically."
"I was surprised to see so much lawlessness on Vinin."
"Then you're very naive, my friend. There's an element like that amongall people, although I must admit ours here have suddenly becomeexcessively active. Their attacks are so systematic and sowell-organized! Hardly a night passes without trouble at a work campor a transmitter station.
"Your transmitters are different from ours. Have you developed animprovement in technique?"
"They are, curious, aren't they? You must ask the Chief to tell youall about them." The Vininese chuckled with delight. "I wouldn't wantto spoil his surprise by letting you in on the secret first."
VII
The Vininese drove Dirrul to the city in a heavily armed surface car.Two of the infantrymen sat behind them, their rocket guns ready ontheir knees. It was testimony to the efficiency and organization ofVinin that such a finished reception could be prepared on such shortnotice. Dirrul's first intimation of the scope of the ceremony camewhen they stopped at a school to be cheered by the pupils.
Rank upon rank of boys and girls lined up smartly behind the high wirefence. They ranged in ages from tots, barely able to stand, to youngpeople in late adolescence. Except for the round metal disks, whichall of them wore, they were completely naked.
"Clothing breeds such false modesty and so many foolish frustrations,"Dirrul's host explained. "On Vinin every child is reared in completelyobjective equality. As soon as we take them from their parents--aboutthe time when they're first learning to walk--we give themidentification disks. Before that, when they're in the instinctperiod, the disks aren't necessary.
"After their basic education we classify them. The leader-class isissued permanent disks and the others give theirs up. The adjustmentis something very severe but on the whole the casualties are light."Suddenly the Vininese seized Dirrul's hand and looked into his eyes."I trust you follow me, my friend?"
"Yes," Dirrul answered. Reason led him to a conclusion as he looked atthe massed children, a conclusion he could not bring himself to face.He felt a new kind of fear, as cold as the depths of space and asdevoid of emotion. Instead of trusting to his own logic Dirrulstruggled to find a flaw in it--for a man cannot easily watch hisdream turn to dust in his hands.
They drove on into the city. Rows of men and women in working clotheslined the streets, cheering wildly in unison. Crossed Vininese flagswere draped between the buildings and brave-colored streamers dancedin the wind.
"A reception is good for them," the Vininese said. "We need heroesoccasionally. It's fortunate you came when you did. The vagabonds havehad a disturbing effect on morale and it's impossible to suppress thenews entirely."
The vehicle stopped before the towering government building. Dirrulwas led up a flight of stone steps to a wide porch overlooking themass of cheering upturned faces in the public square. He stoodmotionless while speeches were made and gay ribbon was draped aroundhis neck. The air shook with bright explosions--a huge flag wasunfurled over the porch--band music began to blare and a tidal wave ofprecision-trained Vininese infantry wheeled into the square.
An official touched Dirrul's arm. "You must take the salute of ourwork-leaders now."
Dirrul was pushed back against the stone railing as an orderly mobfiled past, blank-faced and chattering with meaningless pleasure. Manyof them pressed forward to touch his hand before the guards tactfullyhurried them on. When the organized confusion was at its height a tinysquare of paper was slipped into his hand.
Dirrul had no idea which of the mob had given it to him and he darednot glance at it. But he managed to hide the paper in the band of histunic.
Hour by hour the throng filed past, endless and meaningless. It was anagony for Dirrul. For the first time he looked into the face of hisdream and saw the reality of Vinin--order, discipline, efficiency--andutter blankness. Unhappily he recalled one of Dr. Kramer's lectures.
"... Defiance of convention, confusion, frustration, stubbornness--yesand a touch of the neurotic too--these goad the individual intosolving problems. And problem solving is progress. An orderly societythat asks no questions of itself, a society that has no doubts, is adying society...."
Dirrul understood the professor at last. He looked squarely at thefact of what he was, a traitor to his own people, on the verge ofbetraying them. He had been wonderfully deluded by his ownself-deception.
But the job wasn't quite finished. The Vininese would not have gone totake Glenna from the hospital if they had understood his teleray. Letthem splurge on their reception! He was unimpressed. When the timecame for questions to be answered he would conveniently forget why hehad been sent to Vinin. Nothing they could do would drag it out ofhim.
The crowd thinned and Dirrul was taken inside the building, where hisVininese host awaited him. Sighing deeply the Vininese stood up."These public displays do take so much of our time," he said, "butit's over now." This last seemed to amuse him and he repeated itsoftly before adding, "The Chief's ready to see you."
Remembering the note and the flimsy possibility that it might suggesta way out, Dirrul answered quickly, "But, sir, I really ought to cleanup first."
"You Agronians have such weird notions of propriety!"
"I would feel more presentable to your Chief if--if I could have abath. Perhaps I might even borrow a change of clothing."
The Vininese fingered his chin thoughtfully. "It might be moreamusing. Yes, the Chief can wait a few minutes longer for you tosatisfy your vanity."
He summoned a blank-faced liveried servant and asked for a cleanworker's suit for Dirrul. Then he took Dirrul to the wall tube andthey shot noiselessly to an upper floor. As he left Dirrul at thedoor of a luxurious suite, the Vininese said, "When you change yourclothes, my friend, don't forget to take the disk out of your tunic.The Chief will want it when you see him."
When he was sure he was alone Dirrul spread open the note. It was acrude drawing of a hearing aid and beneath it a cryptic sentencewritten in Agronian,
_I lost mine and so has Glenna now._
The signature was unmistakably Hurd's but the note made no sense.Hurd's hearing was as sound as Dirrul's. He had never used amechanical device--how could he have lost it then? _So hasGlenna_--that must be the key. Hurd somehow knew about the vagabondraiding party that had rescued Glenna from the mental hospital. Hemust have escaped from the Vininese earlier himself. He was probablyhiding somewhere in the capital.
Working on this hypothesis Dirrul made a guess that the thing Hurd hadlost was his illusion about the Vininese system. The hearing aidsymbolized what Hurd had been told about it, as opposed to the realitywhich he saw with his own eyes.
But such an interpretation didn't ring entirely true. It was tooinvolved for an idea which could have been better expressed in fourwords--_I know the truth_. Tossing the note aside Dirrul turned on thewater in the shower room and thoughtfully disrobed.
As he threw his tunic aside a violent paralyzing terror seized hismind, making his head sing with a screeching vibration. Blindly hesnatched up the tunic in order to stuff the cloth into his mouth so hewould not cry out. But as soon as he pressed it against his skin histerror vanished, like a siren suddenly stilled.
The pattern of the real truth fell into place then. Now he understoodthe power o
f Vinin. Experimentally he took Sorgel's disk out of histunic and laid it on a table. As soon as he did so the blindingnameless horror flamed up. When he held the disk again the exhaustingemotion vanished.
Looking back Dirrul saw an abundance of evidence that might have givenhim a clue, had he not spent so much mental effort bolstering hisillusion of Vinin. There was the circumstance of his own unrelentingterror when he was without the disk in the ravine--the painful sightof his captors puncturing the prisoners' eardrums--the soundless talkof the vagabonds, like the lip-reading of the deaf--the bleakorderliness of the cheering mobs--and, most obvious of all, thestrange transmitters atop the well-guarded stone block-buildings.
It was all there, even to the final