“You made an inquiry,” the guard said, “about Winner Ihjel. We are holding him here in the hospital, following the disgraceful way in which he broke into your room.”
“I have no charges to make. Will you ask him to come and see me at once?”
The guard controlled his shock. “I’m sorry, Winner—I don’t see how we can. Dr Caulry left specific orders that you were not to be—”
“The doctor has no control over my personal life.” Brion interrupted. “I’m not infectious, nor ill with anything more than extreme fatigue. I want to see that man. At once.”
The guard took a deep breath, and made a quick decision. “He is on the way up now,” he said, and rung off.
“What did you do to me?” Brion asked as soon as Ihjel had entered and they were alone. “You won’t deny that you have put alien thoughts in my head?”
“No, I won’t deny it. Because the whole point of my being here is to get those ‘alien’ thoughts across to you.”
“Tell me how you did it,” Brion insisted. “I must know.”
“I’ll tell you—but there are many things you should understand first, before you decide to leave Anvhar. You must not only hear them, you will have to believe them. The primary thing, lie clue to the rest, is the true nature of your life here. How do you think the Twenties originated?”
Before he answered, Brion carefully took a double dose of the mild stimulant he was allowed. “I don’t think,” he said; “I know. It’s a matter of historical record. The founder of the games was Giroldi, the first contest was held in 378 A.B. The Twenties have been held every year since then. They were strictly local affairs in the beginning, but were soon well established on a planet-wide scale.”
“True enough,” Ihjel said. “But you’re describing what happened. I asked you how the Twenties originated. How could any single man take a barbarian planet, lightly inhabited by half-mad hunters and alcoholic farmers, and turn it into a smooth-running social machine built around the artificial structure of the Twenties? It just couldn’t be done.”
“But it was done!” Brion insisted. “You can’t deny that. And there is nothing artificial about the Twenties. They are a logical way to live a life on a planet like this.”
Ihjel laughed, a short ironic bark. “Very logical,” he said; “but how often does logic have anything to do with the organization of social groups and governments? You’re not thinking. Put yourself in founder Giroldi’s place. Imagine that you have glimpsed the great idea of the Twenties and you want to convince others. So you walk up to the nearest louse-ridden, brawling, superstitious, booze-embalmed hunter and explain clearly how a program of his favourite sports—things like poetry, archery and chess—can make his life that much more interesting and virtuous. You do that. But keep your eyes open at the same time, and be ready for a fast draw.”
Even Brion had to smile at the absurdity of the suggestion. Of course it couldn’t happen that way. Yet, since it had happened, there must be a simple explanation.
“We can beat this back and forth all day,” Ihjel told him, “and you won’t get the right idea unless—” He broke off suddenly, staring at the communicator. The operation light had come on, though the screen stayed dark. Ihjel reached down a meaty hand and pulled loose the recently connected wires. “That doctor of yours is very curious— and he’s going to stay that way. The truth behind the Twenties is none of his business. But it’s going to be yours. You must come to realize that the life you lead here is a complete and artificial construction, developed by Societies experts and put into application by skilled field workers.”
“Nonsense!” Brion broke in. “Systems of society can’t be dreamed up and forced on people like that. Not without bloodshed and violence.”
“Nonsense, yourself,” Ihjel told him. “That may have been true in the dawn of history, but not any more. You have been reading too many of the old Earth classics; you imagine that we still live in the Ages of Superstition. Just because fascism and communism were once forced on reluctant populations, you think this holds true for all time. Go back to your books. In exactly the same era democracy and self-government were adapted by former colonial states, like India and the Union of North Africa, and the only violence was between local religious groups. Change is the lifeblood of mankind. Everything we today accept as normal was at one time an innovation. And one of the most recent innovations is the attempt to guide the societies of mankind into something more consistent with the personal happiness of individuals.”
“The God complex,” Brion said; “forcing human lives into a mould whether they want to be fitted into it or not.”
“Societies can be that,” Ihjel agreed. “It was in the beginning, and there were some disastrous results of attempts to force populations into a political climate where they didn’t belong. They weren’t all failures—Anvhar here is a striking example of how good the technique can be when correctly applied. It’s not done this way any more, though. As with all of the other sciences, we have found out that the more we know, the more there is to know. We no longer attempt to guide cultures towards what we consider a beneficial goal. There are too many goals, and from our limited vantage point it is hard to tell the good ones from the bad ones. All we do now is try to protect the growing cultures, give a little jolt to the stagnating ones—and bury the dead ones. When the work was first done here on Anvhar the theory hadn’t progressed that far. The understandably complex equations that determine just where in the scale from a Type I to a Type V a culture is, had not yet been completed. The technique then was to work out an artificial culture that would be most beneficial for a planet, then bend it into the mould.”
“How can that be done?” Brion asked. “How was it done here?”
“We’ve made some progress—you’re finally asking How. The technique here took a good number of agents, and a great deal of money. Personal honour was emphasized in order to encourage duelling, and this led to a heightened interest in the technique of personal combat. When this was well entrenched Giroldi was brought in, and he showed how organized competitions could be more interesting than haphazard encounters. Tying the intellectual aspects onto the framework of competitive sports was a little more difficult, but not overwhelmingly so. The details aren’t important; all we are considering now is the end product. Which is you. You’re needed very much.”
“Why me?” Brion asked. “Why am I special? Because I won the Twenties? I can’t believe that. Taken objectively, there isn’t that much difference between myself and the ten runner-ups. Why don’t you ask one of them? They could do your job as well as I.”
“No, they couldn’t. I’ll tell you later why you are the only man I can use. Our time is running out and I must convince you of some other things first.” Ihjel glanced at his watch. “We have less than three hours to deadline. Before that time I must explain enough of our work to you to enable you to decide voluntarily to join us.”
“A very tall order,” Brion said. “You might begin by telling me just who this mysterious ‘we’ is that you keep referring to.”
“The Cultural Relationships Foundation. A non-governmental body, privately endowed, existing to promote peace and ensure the sovereign welfare of independent planets, so that all will prosper from the good will and commerce thereby engendered.”
“Sounds as if you’re quoting,” Brion told him. “No one could possibly make up something that sounds like that on the spur of the moment.”
“I was quoting, from our charter of organization. Which is all very fine in a general sense, but I’m talking specifically now. About you. You are the product of a tightly knit and very advanced society. Your individuality has been encouraged by your growing up in a society so small in population that a mild form of government control is necessary. The normal Anvharian education is an excellent one, and participation in the Twenties has given you a general and advanced education second to none in the galaxy. It would be a complete waste of your entire life if you now took all this training and wasted it on some rustic farm.”
“You give me very little credit. I plan to teach—”
“Forget Anvhar!” Ihjel cut him off with a chop of his hand. “This world will roll on quite successfully whether you are here or not. You must forget it, think of its relative unimportance on a galactic scale, and consider instead the existing, suffering hordes of mankind. You must think what you can do to help them.”
“But what can I do—as an individual? The day is long past when a single man, like Caesar or Alexander, could bring about world-shaking changes.”
“True—but not true,” Ihjel said. “There are key men in every conflict of forces, men who act like catalysts applied at the right instant to start a chemical reaction. You might be one of these men, but I must be honest and say that I can’t prove it yet. So in order to save time and endless discussion, I think I will have to spark your
