A Torrent of Faces Read online

  “Hmm. Do you speak Triton—or pidgin dolphinese?”

  “I don’t speak anything but Basic,” Jothen said composedly. “Kim speaks a lot of languages, since she’s in contact with the public most of the time. Besides, if you okay the trip, I can get conditioned in any language I need, you know that. As an employed citizen I’m allowed machine education in any subject essential to my specialty—and I think a trip like this would be ruled into that category.”

  Jothen leaned forward, bracing his hands on his thighs. “Look, Biond,” he said, “I’ve known you for some time, but even a stranger would have spotted that language question as the purest sort of quibble. As far as I can see, there isn’t a single good reason why I shouldn’t be allowed to leave Gitler for three weeks, except for this general policy of discouraging traveling. And I don’t mind telling you that I think that policy’s asinine.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Biond said, with the unconscious sigh of a man who has been given an unexpected lead out of a maze. “It’s essential. Let me ask you a question, Jo. When we have to put a disaster plan into operation, what’s the minimum number of people we have to move?”

  “I follow the Maneuvers Census as closely as you do. About a hundred million. A hundredth of one percent of the world population, whatever that is at the time.”

  “Right. That’s a lot of people, I think you’ll agree. Now then, suppose one percent of the present world population elects to take a monthly traveling vacation each year—people for whom we have to provide transportation, sure, but for whom we also have to provide transient housing, food, recreation. No, don’t get out the slide rule, because I know the figure like the back of my hand. It comes to about one point six billion people every month.”

  “I had no idea,” Jothen admitted.

  “It’s only the beginning. The figure is hypothetical, because we can’t figure on that percentage going on vacation annually—we don’t have that many people employed! Most of the world is idle. We don’t dare encourage them to move about as they please.”

  “Are you sure there are so few people on jobs?”

  “If I’m not sure, who would be? Look, Jo, you live in a city designed for an average population, but it’s an empty city, staffed with a maintenance crew, every member of which has a job. That’s a rare and highly artificial situation. Ever since the Cybernetic Revolution the number of employable people has been falling on an exponential curve. We literally have no use any more for anyone but creative and administrative minds, of a caliber our grandfathers would have thought very high indeed. Furthermore, the leaching-out of the gene pool, which took place while the population was reaching its current peak, has left us with a high majority of pure thumpheads. All but a tenth of one percent of the world is living on the dole—as is their right, of course. And next year, you and I and an appalling number of other employables may find ourselves outclassed by some new think-box—and then we’ll be living on the dole too.”

  Jothen pulled reflectively at his nose. “Then you don’t really have a vacation problem,” he said at last.

  “Of course we don’t. We have something far worse. We have a population that has nothing to do with itself all the time. Obviously we can’t allow the whole world to be constantly in transit, just because it’s bored. We’re barely able to keep our essential transportation running as it is. We must keep people at home. We do it in dozens of different ways. We keep language barriers up, for instance. We could give the world a common language overnight if necessary—after all, everyone who has a job can speak Basic now, and Basic doesn’t have to be a privilege—but instead we go out of our way to create language rivalries. On that point alone, we’ve Hispanized the Earth.”

  “I don’t know the term,” Jothen said.

  “Sorry. In old Spain, the man who spoke Catalan had a vast contempt for the man who spoke Basque. Now we’ve made it a point of honor for every man but the man with a job to speak no language but his own. We’ve encouraged local customs and cultural matrices in the same way. If you can’t sing the songs that are sung by everyone in a given city in a given year, you’re a fool and an outcast in that city—you may be torn to shreds by children. And so on.

  “There used to be a song in this part of the world, just about a millennium and a half ago, that summed it all up nicely. It asked how you kept the farmer down on the farm after he’d seen Paris.”

  “You gave him orders,” Jothen said wryly, “as you would me.”

  “No, because agriculture was a private industry then, fragmented—not a corporation. Our problem is even worse. We have no farmers, only managers. We have to keep the Parisian himself in Paris, though there’s nothing there for him to do, and nothing for him to do anywhere else either.”

  “Then why,” Jothen said quietly, “are you chewing up all this valuable time trying to keep one single man ‘down on the farm’? Why did I have to come to Novoe Washingtongrad to see you, if the only reason for turning me down is the general policy? You don’t try to keep every single applicant at home by making him travel to a personal interview. Why me?”

  “I didn’t say that the general policy was the only reason. I’m explaining the policy because you called it into question—now you can see that it makes sense. The reason I’m trying to keep you home is that I’m chairman of the Disaster Plans Board, and I don’t want to find myself evacuating a horde of people into a Disaster City that has no water engineer!”

  Biond calmed himself down hastily. There was absolutely no reason why he should be shouting at Jothen. After a while he added:

  “Which brings up another matter. The Jones Convention is scheduled for Gitler this year, starting two days after you’ve asked to leave. You wouldn’t know about it, but the Chavez Convention last month wasted water at such a terrific rate that Resources considered discontinuing convention years-entirely. I had to release half the staff of the city it was held in as unemployable.”

  “Where was that?” Jothen said interestedly.

  “I can’t say. It was a violation of the declassed men’s dignity to give you the name of the convention, even. Don’t trace it, please.”

  “Certainly not. But don’t worry about the Joneses. They’re a dwindling clan—we don’t expect more than a million of them to show up. If we’d been assigned the Singh Convention I’d have worried, but I think we’ll be able to quarter all the Joneses in the second level, northeast wing. The boys can handle them.”

  Biond shrugged. “On that your assessment is final, of course.”

  “Thanks. Well then, Biond, what’s the verdict?”

  “You have a job. That makes you a free agent. If in your judgment you can leave Gitler safely for three weeks, neither I nor anyone else in the world can prevent it.”

  “Hell, Biond, I know that,” Jothen said. “Naturally I want your approval, so I won’t be declassed if my judgment turns out to be faulty. Biond, please don’t spar with me. This trip is important to me. Just between friends, I hope to persuade Kim to marry me. So far I haven’t made a dent, but I have the feeling that with three uninterrupted weeks to work it out, things might be different. At least she’d have the chance to see what living with me on a twenty-four-hour basis would be like.”

  A small, cold shock wave launched itself in the pit of Biond’s stomach. Someone in Prime Center had been talking, someone had violated his dignity—perhaps Marg’t herself. How else could Jothen have known so precisely where he was most vulnerable? And given that knowledge, Jothen’s stroke was itself outrageous, as invasive as a parlor psych-analysis. Seen in this suffused orange light, the Triton Reef vacation, too, appeared to have been in Jothen’s mind as a prime goal from the beginning—he had accepted the impossibility of visiting any of the usual resorts with suspicious quickness…

  Biond was interrupted by light—two of the clear tabs on the console began to glow. As calls came in to the console, they were computer-screened and shifted into specific, coded, ultrahigh frequencies, depending upon their
general content and point of origin. Afterward the wave-guided signals passed through a dividing network into temporary storage, while the code went to the proper tab on the console; which tab lit, and what color, gave Biond an instant visual report on the nature of the call and its probable degree of urgency. The development of the system and a few simple adjuncts had thrown no one knew how many myriads of receptionists onto the dust heap; it had all happened long ago.

  One of the calls was from Prime Center; the tab light was green, indicating official business. Since most of the calls received by employed people on the job fell into that category, it was probably routine. Transport Corporation’s tab was yellow—moderately urgent. As Biond reached for the console, it turned scarlet—a rare signal, and one that had needed no explanation since the beginning of modem history.

  Biond’s hand hesitated over the button labeled tape, which would take off both messages for later inspection. Then he pressed it. No emergency that Transcorp could have discovered could affect the Disaster Plans Board intimately enough to demand action now, rather than five or ten minutes from now. Besides, emergencies are not met best by a distracted mind.

  The lights went out. Jothen watched Biond with alert expectancy. The shock wave spent itself in a series of small tingles in Biond’s fingers and toes. The diversion had given Biond’s reasoning, too, a chance to shake down. Clearly Jothen had spoken in confidence, not attacking Biond, but exposing his own dignity as an act of friendship. To turn him down would seem to Jothen an unfriendly act, or, at the worst, an unfeeling one. For Biond himself, it would be an act of envy; Jothen would not know that, but Biond would.

  Damn Marg’t Splain. And damn Chen U, for that matter.

  “I’ll stretch a point,” Biond said with sudden energy. “I think you’re right, Jo. DPB can spare you for a fortnight or so. And good luck with Dr. Wernicke. Why isn’t she with you, by the way?”

  “She’s on a field trip, otherwise I would have brought her to plead, of course. There’s been an epizootic of something or other in her area—false monarchs, whatever those are. Thanks for the wish—I’ll need some luck.”

  “The gene pool needs stock like yours and hers.”

  “That,” Jothen said, “is what I keep telling her, but somehow it doesn’t seem to be the right argument. None of the others seem to be either.” He stood up, smiling, and held out his hand. “Thanks again. I’ll keep posted, of course. I wouldn’t keep the poor old town standing on edge much longer, though, if I were you. My water system’s efficient, but that’s one strain it wasn’t designed to take.”

  Biond could not repress a tight grin. “It was an experiment,” he said. “I’ll file it under negative evidence…And—you’re welcome, Jo. ’Find the deeps at peace.’

  “‘And the darkness quiet,’” Jothen said, also in Triton. It was not until after the door had slid shut after him that Biond remembered that Jothen had claimed to know no language but Basic. The water engineer from empty, remote Gitler, Missouri, had had his boss outgunned from the beginning, and had known it.

  2 To Run a World

  Deban Tod took the package out of the delivery well and opened it. His huge, bland face fell theatrically. “This appears to be plankton chowder,” he said. “I had left special orders for all of us tonight, ladies and gentlemen, but they appear to have gone astray. I myself am damn tired of boiled brit.”

  “I’ve no objection,” Chen U said, shifting comfortably in his chair. The small-boned, neatly articulated man looked even smaller against Deban Tod’s outsize furniture, but he handled himself with such perfect assurance that it did not seem to matter. As chairman of World Resources Corporation he was effectively the president of the Earth (officially there was no such office, for the Union of Occupied Classes was an oligarchy with no single head, and Prime Center—the rulers of the world, now meeting here tonight—a committee with no chairman). Nevertheless, Chen U allowed no sense of this to pass from himself to other persons, no more than he allowed others to notice that his wife, Marg’t Splain, was a head and a half taller than he was. Chen U made himself neither great nor small; in repose, in speech, in gesture, in act, he let it be known that he was of a proper size for Chen U.

  “Nor I,” Biond said quickly. “By luck, I haven’t been served the stuff in a month.”

  “Very well,” Deban said. He thumped down beside Biond on the viewing couch. “Dip in, everybody.”

  Biond dipped in, although his appetite was puny. Like everyone else, he ate with his fingers for the most part, using the spoon only for foods not solid enough to pick up, and rinsing his fingers and lips periodically. The dining table, which had risen from the center of the floor, was provided with finger bowls sunken into its top. Induction valves, actuated by the approach of a hand, kept them half filled with tepid sea water containing a trace of citric acid. Everything loose on the table, including the almost indestructible napkins, was community property, and would be returned at the end of the meal to the neighborhood distribution center, where it would all be flamed clean.

  Late afternoon sunlight slanted in across the carpet-ment from the porch. Biond would have preferred to have taken his meal out there, but when Prime Center met in Deban’s apartment everyone had to eat indoors, even when the wind was right. In addition to being the elected head of Communications Corporation, Deban was an ardent amateur gardener. He belonged to a worldwide organization of such amateurs and faithfully followed every issue of the 3-V magazine devoted to the hobby.

  The flowers seemed to delight Dorthy Sumter, the slight, blond representative of Submarine Products Corporation. Submarine had originally been a wholly owned subsidiary of World Resources, and had been split off by its stockholders into an autonomous company only recently; hence Dorthy had not been seated on Prime Center long enough to have seen Deban s growths before.

  “Are they dangerous?” she said, peering through the silicoid at the ordered riot of color on the sunporch. Her Basic pronunciation was tinged with an accent Biond found hard to identify. It seemed almost Polynesian, but there was also enough agglutination in it to suggest that it had been influenced by Welsh. Suddenly Biond had it, and wondered how he could have missed it before—the accent was Triton, of course.

  “Yes and no,” Deban said. “Some people can develop sensitization reactions to some of them—allergies—given enough time. But I keep my garden sealed only for the same reason that the Biological Preserves are sealed—to keep my pets from seeding the World Forest. I imagine Chen U would be mightily irritated if some of these plants turned out to be cross-fertilizing some crop of his.”

  “It’s happened before,” Chen U said, ducking his chin politely to his chest in order to tuck in a biscuit.

  Marg’t Splain was looking thoughtfully at Dorthy’s back. The younger woman was wearing a scintillating emerald cincture that complemented her hair without making her tanned skin look sickly. Though she was extremely slim, her figure was delicate and interesting; her reason for wearing clothes indoors, therefore, was not immediately apparent. Most people wore clothing outside their apartments, either for specific protections if they worked, or for casual protection otherwise, but at home nudity was the rule.

  Biond was almost sure that Marg’t was wondering what kind of physical defect Dorthy had to conceal. He knew better; he had several times visited Dorthy’s home office at the Reef, while Submarine was being split off from Resources, and there, where she had been on her home grounds and quite certain of herself, her slight body had flashed unencumbered, unflawed, and singularly gracefully from task to task.

  The cincture, instead, was probably a measure of her new insecurity. She was still a little awed to be a member of Prime Center, and more than a little in awe of Marg’t, who bossed Transport Corporation. Biond guessed that she was simply avoiding having to observe the elaborate code of manners that applied to formal nudity—at least until she had learned to observe the far more elaborate code of precedence that prevailed on Prime Center.
r />   Biond had to admit that the precaution was wise. He loved Marg’t Splain, but he was under no illusions about her magnanimity. She would be quick to take offense should Dorthy inadvertently do something gauche for a nude woman, like running or bending over—to take offense, and make political capital of it. The simple clothing enabled Dorthy to stop worrying about that, at least.

  He also knew that speculative glances were occasionally coming his way as well. He was the only other clothed person at the meeting. He could only hope that the rest would take his formal breeches as a politeness to Dorthy. Most particularly, Chen U.

  Luckily, there was another distracting person present. Dorthy had brought a Triton with her—one of those miracles of tectogenetics who could live underseas or on the land with almost equal facility, who tended Submarine Products’ dimly undulating crops, and rode in partnership with its dolphins. The Tritons were a new human species, the first since H. sapiens himself.

  This one was called Storm; he was Dorthy’s executive vice president over his fellows. He was tall, with a dappled dark skin—though the colors meant nothing, for the Tritons could change their markings better than any chameleon; it was a subsidiary form of communication among them—and the long flat muscles of the swimmer. Storm was young, with a quietly handsome face. Though his intercostal spiracles were invisible now, his race could be told by the webbing of his fingers and toes, his crest, the tubercles that pebbled his hairless crown, and by several other more subtle signs.

  Of these the most striking was that he wept, constantly. This defect of the Tritons had thus far defeated every effort of the tectogeneticists, though they had bred out others far more complex. The Tritons’ body fluids necessarily shared exactly the tonicity of sea water, which meant that they were 1.5 percentage points saltier than the body fluids of land dwellers. This was also true of their tears; and as these evaporated in air, they quickly became too concentrated for the tissues of the eye to tolerate. As a result, a Triton on land wept two tears, quite automatically, each time he blinked.