“You are observant, Ms. Marin,” Baumer said, conceding a nod. “No, none of those. The Ganymeans have connected ZORAC into the regular comnet. You can get a translation facility on channel fifty-six. It’s handy-we can talk to the Jevlenese anywhere.”
“What’s ZORAC?” Gina asked to keep up her image, at the same time crossing imaginary fingers that ZORAC wouldn’t recognize her and return some wisecrack. But either Baumer had switched the channel off, or only a subset of ZORAC’s capacity was available to the public net, or it was programmed with enough manners to know when to keep quiet-Gina had not learned enough about it, yet, to know which.
“The Ganymean computer aboard the Shapieron,,” Baumer replied. “It doesn’t play straight into your head like the Thurien computers do.” He waved a hand. “Oh, I’m not really conversant with these technical matters. It needs microphones, screens, and things. You’ll find out about it when you meet some of the people in PAC.”
“That’s Planetary Administration Center, right?”
“Yes. Perhaps you should try and get to see some of the Ganymeans on Garuth’s staff-theoretically he is in charge of everything.”
“Yes, I know.”
Baumer frowned down at the desk and shook his head in thinly disguised irritation. “You really should have got more of an agenda arranged before you came.” He reached for a pad and picked up a pen. “Anyway, his chief scientist is a woman called Shiohin-”
“A Ganymean, you mean?”
“Yes. She should be of some help. She’s involved with a number of Jevlenese and Terrans who are investigating alleged agents on Earth.” He scribbled a few lines. “Those are a couple of other names that work under her. And here are a few of the Jevlenese that it might be worth your while approaching. This last one, Reskedrom, was quite high up in the Federation while it lasted, and should be useful-but he’s not easy to get to. Your best bet would be to start at COJA: Coordinating Office for Jevlenese Affairs-that’s a department inside PAC. They keep lists and charts of who’s what and where, and everything that’s going on.” Baumer finished writing, tore off the top sheet of the pad, and pushed it across. “That should help. But otherwise, I don’t think I have very much to offer, I’m afraid.”
Gina took the slip and put it in a pocket. “Thanks anyway. I did meet a bunch of UNSA people on the ship, but they’re really only coming here to look into Ganymean science. They’re tied up setting up their labs, anyhow, so I don’t have anyone to show me around.” She paused to give Baumer time to react if he chose. He didn’t. Still reluctant to let it go at that, Gina waited a few seconds longer, and then inquired, “What do you do here that keeps you so busy?”
“I am a sociologist. I have a whole new society to work with.”
Baumer’s choice of phrasing suggested an approach. Gina had read all of the reports he had written, which Hunt had run off for her from PAC’s files. “Control” seemed to be the dominant word in Baumer’s vocabulary. In his eyes, Earth had gone too far down the path of degeneracy as represented by the insanity of the free market and the corrosion of liberal morality for there to be any hope left of saving it. But the situation on Jevlen, if only those with the power could be made to see, offered a clean slate on which to begin anew and engineer the model society. And Baumer knew just how it should be done.
“That’s interesting,” she said. “Which way could Jevlen’s society be heading, do you think, after it gets straightened out?”
Baumer sat back in his chair and looked at the far wall. The indifference that had hung in his eyes until then changed to a hint of a gleam. “There’s an opportunity here,” he replied. “An opportunity to build the society that could have existed on Earth, and now never will-without all the greed and arrogance that doesn’t care what it destroys; one based on true equality and values that count.”
Gina looked at him as if he had just said something that she didn’t hear very often. “I’ve often thought the same thing myself,” she said. Inside, she felt a twinge of disgust at her own hypocrisy; but she had known what the job would entail when she agreed to do it. “Is that why you came here from Earth?” she asked him.
Baumer sighed. “I came here to get away from a world that has been left spiritually devastated by its infatuation with bourgeois trivia and mindless distractions. The banks and the corporations own everybody now, and the qualities that they reward are the ones that suit their needs: loyalty and obedience. And the cattle are content, grazing in the field. Nobody wants to think about what it’s doing to them, or where it’s all leading. They don’t want to think at all. It’s gone too far now for anything to change. But here, on Jevlen, there’s been a forced stop to the lunacy, a reexamination of everything. With the right people of vision in control, it could turn out different.”
“You really think so?” Gina’s tone suggested that it all sounded too good to be true.
“Why not? The Jevlenese are human, too, made of the same clay. They can he molded.”
“How would you make it different, if you could?” Gina asked.
That got him talking.
What Jevlen needed was for the anarchy that was the cause of all its problems to be replaced by centralized direction of the planet’s affairs, with tighter control over all aspects of existence. The way to achieve that was through a dizzying system of government programs and agencies. And the chance was there now, because the first step to putting the machinery in place had already been achieved with the setting up of the Ganymean planetary administration.
“But that’s not the way Ganymeans seem to think,” Gina pointed out.
“And look at the mess they’ve made. They don’t understand human needs. They must be made to understand.”
Approved goods and services, along with desirable levels for their consumption, should be determined by regional planning boards, and industry limited to the minimum necessary to provide them-thus eliminating any need for a wasteful competitive business sector. Occupations should be assigned on the basis of society’s needs, balanced against aptitude scores accumulated during “social conditioning”-the term that Baumer used for education-although he was prepared to concede that due consideration could be given to individual preference if circumstances permitted. Access to entertainment and leisure activities should be rationed into a reward system to facilitate the achievement of quotas.
However, although she stayed for another forty minutes, it was all pretty much in keeping with the picture that Gina had already formed, and she learned little that was new.
Baumer saw himself as one of those outcasts from the herd, set apart in the company of those such as van Gogh, Nietzsche, Lawrence, and Nijinsky, by the sensitivity of seeing too much and too deep. Everybody was born with the mystical spark dormant within them, but its potential was quenched by the modern world’s delusions of objectivity and rationality. Preoccupation with the external, and the false elevation of science as the way to find knowledge and salvation, had diverted humanity from the inner paths that mattered. He particularly detested the general adulation accorded to the “practical.” Aristophanes had ridiculed Socrates, and Blake had hated Newton for the same reason.
Nevertheless, despite Gina’s hope that she might have made some indent, he sidestepped another attempt by her to extend their relationship socially. She eventually left without obtaining any commitment for them to talk again, or any feeling that she had achieved very much.
Thinking through the discussion on her way back to PAC, she felt grubby at the deception that she had lent herself to. Behind its facade of indignation and righteousness, the line she had forced herself to listen to was, like so many philosophies that she had heard from other misfits and self-styled iconoclasts, really nothing more than a massive exercise in self-justification. Because they didn’t fit, the world would have to be changed.