The Final Circle of Paradise Page 19

  “It won’t be required,” I said. “I had not enough time to become addicted. Did Rimeyer tell you anything?”

  “But of course not,” he said with vast sarcasm. “Why should he do that? He was ordered to find the drug, and he did, and he used it, and now he apparently considers his duty discharged. He became an addict himself, don’t you see. He is silent. He is loaded with this brew up to his ears, and it’s useless to talk to him! He raves that he has murdered you and constantly asks for his radio.” Matia stopped short and gazed at the radios. “Strange,” he said and looked at me. “However, I like orderliness. Oscar got here first, and he has certain deductions both about the goodies and the conduct of the operation. Let’s begin with him.”

  I looked at Oscar.

  “About what operation?”

  “The devil knows,” said Matia. “The raiding of the center. You haven’t located the center yet?”

  The hunt is on, I thought, and said, “No, I didn’t. A center I haven’t latched on to. But -”

  “All in good order, in proper order,” said Matia severely and banged the table with the flat of his hand. “Oscar, you may begin, and as for you, Ivan, you listen attentively and make your deductions. If you are still capable, that is.”

  Oscar began. Obviously he was a good worker. He moved fast, energetically, and purposefully. True, Rimeyer had twisted him around his finger as well as he had me.

  Nevertheless, Oscar had been able to grasp much in spite of it.

  He understood that the sought—for “goodies” were known locally as “slug.” Very rapidly he had grasped the connection between slug and Devon. He divined that neither the Fishers, nor the Perches, nor the Sorrowers had any relation to our problem. He had deduced with superb insight that in this town it was practically impossible to hide any secret. He had even been able to insinuate himself into the confidence of the Intels, and had established beyond any doubt that there were only two truly secret societies — the Art Patrons and the Intels. Since the Art Patrons could be eliminated, that left only the Intels…

  “It was not contrary to the conviction which I had formed,” said Oscar, “that the only people with access to laboratories and capable of conducting scientific or quasi-scientific research were the students and professors in the university. It’s true that the factories in the city also have laboratories. There are only four of them, and I have investigated them all. These laboratories are stringently specialized and are loaded to the limit with ongoing work. As the factories work around the clock, there is no basis whatsoever to postulate that the industrial labs could become centers of slug manufacture. On the other hand, out of the seven university labs, two are obviously surrounded with an atmosphere of mystery. I was unable to determine what goes on in them, but I spotted three students, who, I believe, should know for sure…”

  I listened to him intently, amazed at how much he had been able to accomplish here, but it was already all too clear to me where his main error lay. I could see he was following a false trail, and alongside of that, there grew within me a vague feeling of an even more significant error, of a most important error, the error in the underlying premises of the Council.

  “I arrived at the visualization,” he continued, “of a gangsterlike organization of the vertical type with rigorously separated functions in decentralized sections. The production section is involved in the manufacture and perfection of the slug… I should inform you that slug, whatever it may be, is being perfected: I was able to establish that in the beginning.

  Devon was not employed at all… Next, the marketing section is concerned with expanding the slug distribution, while the strong-arm section terrorizes the population and interdicts all debate on that topic… The intimidation of the people…”

  Now I understood it all.

  “Just a minute, Oscar,” I said. “Can you guarantee that in the entire city there are only two secret organizations?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Only the Art Patrons and the Intels.”

  “Please continue, Oscar,” said Matia with displeasure. “I would ask you not to interrupt, Ivan.”

  “Sorry,” I said. Oscar continued to talk, but I was no longer listening. Something flared in my mind. The traditional initial model for all our undertakings, with its invariant axiom predicating the existence of a ramified organization of evildoers, had been shattered into dust, and I was only amazed that I had failed heretofore to recognize its inane complexity in the context of this simple-minded country. There were no secret shops guarded by gloomy persons with brass knuckles, there were no wary, unprincipled businessmen, there were no traveling salesmen with double-walled shirt collars stuffed with contraband, and it was quite for nothing that Oscar was drafting the elegant chart of squares and circles, connected by a confusion of lines, and inscribed with the words “center,”

  “staff,” and numerous question marks. There was nothing to demolish and be and no one to send off to Baffin Land… But there was modern industry involved in everyday trade, there were state stores where slugs were sold for fifty cents apiece, and there were — but only in the beginning one or two individuals not devoid of inventiveness and dying of inactivity and thirsting for new sensations. And there was the medium-sized country where, once upon a time, abundance and affluence were the end to be attained, and they never did become the means to another end. And that was all that was needed.

  Someone inserted a slug into a radio by mistake and lay down in the bath to relax and maybe listen to some good music or to hear the latest news — and it started. The news oozed and remnants of phonors found their way into the garbage ducts, then someone figured out that slugs could be obtained not only from phonors, but could simply be bought in stores. Someone was inspired to use aromatic salts and someone employed Devon.

  People started to die in their baths from nervous exhaustion, and the statistical department of the Security Council submitted a top secret report to the Presidium. It became apparent at once that all such deaths occurred with people who had come here as tourists. And furthermore, that there were far more such deaths in this country than anywhere else on the planet. As so often happens, a false theory was constructed on well-verified facts, and we, one after another, well schooled in conspiracy, were sent here to uncover the secret gang of dealers in a new and unknown drug, and we arrived here and did stupid things. But, as always, no labor goes for naught, and if you must look for the guilty, then all were guilty, from the mayor to Rimeyer, and if so, then no one was guilty, and now we have to -

  “Ivan,” said Matia irritably, “are you asleep?”

  They were both looking at me. Oscar was extending me his notebook with the diagrams. I took the notebook and threw it on the table.

  “Listen,” I said. “Oscar has done wonders, of course, but we have come a cropper again! Oscar, you have seen such a lot, but you understood nothing. If there are any people in this land who hate slug, it’s the Intels. The Intels are not gangsters, they are desperate men and patriots. They have but one aim — to stir this bog. By any means. To give this city some kind of purpose, to force it away from the trough They are sacrificing themselves, do you understand? They invite fire upon themselves, they are attempting to arouse the town to come sort of common emotion, even if it has to be hatred. Can it be you haven’t heard of the tear gas, the shooting up of the shivers? They are not making slug in the laboratories, they are building bombs and cooking tear gas… and generally breaking the laws on weapons technology. They are preparing a putsch for the twenty-eighth, but as for slug — here it is!”

  I shoved one at each of them, and simultaneously expounded everything I thought on the subject.

  At first, they listened to me in disbelief. Then they stared at the slugs, not taking their eyes off them until I’d finished, and when I did, they were quiet for quite a while.

  Matia held his slug as though it were a buzzing wasp. There was displeasure written on his face.

  “Vacuum tubusoid… Hmmm… In fa
ct… and radios…

  there is something to it.”

  Matia stuck the slug in his shirt pocket and announced decisively, “There is nothing in it. That is, of course, I am very pleased with you, Ivan, since you have apparently found that which was needed, but your work is in the Council and not with the Commission of World Problems. They adore philosophy there, and haven’t done a single useful thing to date. As for you, you have been working with us for ten years now, but you still haven’t grasped the simple truth: if there is a crime, there must be a criminal.”

  ’That’s not true,” I said.

  “That is true!” said Matia. “Don’t start a debate with me!

  You are eternally debating!… Be quiet, Oscar. It’s my turn to talk. I am asking you, Ivan, what is the worth of your version?

  What do you propose to do? But be concrete, please! Be concrete!”

  “Concretely…” I faltered.

  True enough, my version did not suit them.

  They probably didn’t even consider it a version.

  For them it was just philosophizing. They were men, so to say, of resolute action, knights of immediate decisive measures., They let nothing slide. They cut through knots and demounted Damocles’ swords. They made rapid decisions, and having made them, they no longer doubted. They didn’t know how to be otherwise. That was their world-view — and I was the only one to consider that their time had passed. Patience, I thought. I am going to need an awful lot of patience. Suddenly, I understood that life’s logic was again ripping me away from my best comrades, and that now it would be especially hard for me, since the resolution of this argument would take a long time, a very long time… They were both looking at me.

  “Concretely,” I repeated. “Concretely I suggest a plan for the development and spread of a humanistic viewpoint in this country.”

  Oscar grimaced with distaste, and Matia said biliously: “Nah! I am talking seriously.”

  “So am I. What we need is not detectives, nor squads armed with machine pistols.”

  “We need a decision!” said Matia, “not conversations, but decisions!”

  ’That’s precisely what I am proposing — a decision.”

  Matia reddened “We have to save people,” he said. “Souls we can save after we save the people… Don’t annoy me, Ivan!”

  “While you are restructuring world-views,” said Oscar, “people will be dying or turning into idiots.”

  I didn’t want to argue, but said anyway, “As long as world-views are not restructured, people will be dying and turning into idiots, and no squads will help. Remember Rimeyer!”

  “Rimeyer forgot his duty,” raged Matia.

  “Exactly,” said I.

  Matia slammed his mouth shut and, tearing off his glasses, was silent for a while, his eyes rotating angrily. He was, without a doubt, a man of iron; you could actually watch turn drive his rage inward. In a minute he was entirely calm and smiling placidly.

  “Yes,” he said. “It seems that I am forced to admit that intelligence as a social institution has regressed to the piteous end. Apparently we destroyed the last of the true operatives in the time of the last putsches. “Knife” -

  Dannziger; “Bamboo” — Savada; “Doll” — Grover; “Ram” -

  Boas… True, they were bought and they were sold, they had no country, they were scum, lumpens, but they worked! “Sirius” -

  Haram… worked for four intelligences and was a scoundrel. He was a filthy animal. But if he gave information, it was real information, clear, precise, and timely. I can recollect ordering him hung without the slightest pity, but when I look at my current co-workers, I can understand what a loss that was… Granted, a man can fail in the end and become a drug addict, as “Bamboo” Savada did finally. But why write lying reports? Rather resign, excuse yourself, don’t write any reports at all… I arrive in this town in the profound conviction that I know it through and through, because I have had here for ten years an experienced, proved, resident agent.

  And suddenly I determine that I know precisely nothing. Every local kid knows who the Fishers are. But I don’t know. I know only that the KVS Society which occupied itself with about the same things as the Fishers was disbanded and outlawed three years ago. I know this from the reports of the resident. But at the local police I am informed that the VAL Society was formed two years ago, which I did not learn from the resident’s reports. I am employing a simplified example, since I really don’t give a damn about the Fishers, but this becomes transformed into a general style of work. Reports are delayed, reports lie, reports misinform… in the end reports are simply invented. One man openly resigns from the Council and doesn’t consider it incumbent upon him to so inform his superior. He has enough, you see; he had intentions to communicate but somehow couldn’t find the time… Another, instead of fighting the drug problem, becomes an addict himself… And the third philosophizes.”

  He nodded at me with regretful bitterness.

  “Understand me correctly, Ivan,” he continued. “I am not opposed to philosophy. But philosophy is one thing and our work altogether another. Judge for yourself, Ivan. If there is no secret headquarters, if we are faced with a deluge of do-it-yourself enterprise, then why all the secretiveness? All this conspiratorial atmosphere? Why is slug enveloped in such mystery? I allow that Rimeyer is silent because of pangs of conscience in general and specifically on your account, Ivan.

  But the rest? Slug is not illegal; everyone knows about it and yet everyone keeps it a secret. Oscar, here, doesn’t philosophize; he postulates that the inhabitants are simply terrorized. I can understand that. And what do you postulate, Ivan?”

  “In your pocket,” I said, “there is a slug. Go in the bathroom. There’s Devon on the shelf — one tablet orally, four in the water. There’s some whiskey in the medicine chest. Oscar and I will wait. And then you can tell us aloud, so we can hear, we your comrades in work and your underlings, about your sensations and experiences. And we — better it should be Oscar — should listen, but as for me, I think I’ll leave.”

  Matia put on his glasses and stared at me.

  “You are implying that I won’t tell? You propose that I, too, will be derelict in my duty?”

  “What you will learn will have no relation whatsoever to your duty. That you will renege on subsequently. As did Rimeyer. Comrades, this is slug. It’s a cute device, which awakens fantasy and directs it where it will, particularly where you yourself subconsciously — and I mean subconsciously — would like to direct it. The further you are removed from the animal, the more inoffensive would slug be, but the closer to the animal, the more you would be impelled to adhere to the conspiratorial way. The animals themselves are altogether silent. They just know how to press the lever.”

  “What lever?”

  I explained about the rats to them.

  “Did you try it yourself?” asked Matia.

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “As you can see, I tend to silence.”

  Matia sibilated for some time and then said, “Well, I am no nearer to the animal than you are. How do you put it in?”

  I loaded the radio and handed it to him. Oscar was following all this with interest.

  “God be with me,” said Matia, “Where is your bath? I’ll wash after my trip while I’m at it.”

  He locked himself in, and we could hear him dropping things.

  “Strange affair,” said Oscar.

  “It’s really not an affair,” I contradicted. “It’s a piece of history, Oscar, and you would like to fit it into a file and tie it with a ribbon. But this is no gangster business. It should be obvious to a hedgehog, as Yurkovsky used to say.”

  “Who?”

  “Yurkovsky, Vladimir Sergeyevitch. There was such a renowned planetologist. I worked with him.”

  “Aah,” said Oscar, “By the way, on the plaza by the Hotel Olympic there is a monument to a Yurkovsky.”

  “The very same man.”
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br />   “Really?” said Oscar. “On the other hand, it’s quite possible. However, the monument was not put up because he was a renowned planetologist. It’s simply that for the first time in the history of the city, he broke the electronic roulette bank.

  It was decided to immortalize such a feat.”

  “I expected something of the sort,” I murmured. I felt depressed.

  The shower began to hiss in the bathroom, and there was a frightful roar from Matia, At first, I decided that he turned on ice water instead of warm, but he kept yelling and then began to curse in the most horrendous terms. Oscar and I exchanged glances. He was generally calm, interpreting this as the typical action of slug, and his face exhibited a compassionate expression. The latch rattled wildly, the door flew open with a crash. Bare heels slapped in the bedroom, and a naked Matia rolled into the study.

  “Are you some kind of an idiot?” he bellowed at me. “What sort of filthy trick is this?”

  I went numb. Matia resembled a grotesque zebra. His well-fed body was covered with poison-green vertical stripes.

  He reared and stamped his feet, spraying emerald drops. When we regained our composure and investigated the site of the accident, we learned that the shower head had been stuffed with a sponge saturated with a green dye. I remembered Len’s note and guessed that Vousi was the culprit. It took a long while to restore a normal atmosphere. Matia viewed the incident as a boorish joke and an inadmissible disregard of subordinate discipline and behavior. Oscar horse-laughed. I scrubbed Matia with a brush and explained. Then Matia announced that from now on he wouldn’t trust anyone and would try out slug when he got home. He dressed and went into conference with Oscar on the plans for blockading the city.

  I was cleaning up in the bath and thinking that with this, my work in the Council was coming to an end, and another kind of work was beginning — which I did not know how to begin. I would have liked to include myself in the blockade planning, not because I considered it necessary, but because it was so simple, so much more simple than to return to people their souls which had been devoured by affluence, and to teach each one to think of world problems in the same way as his own personal ones.