17
Karellen's request, though it might have been expected at any time since the foundation of the Colony, was something of a bombshell. It represented, as everyone was fully aware, a crisis in the affairs of Athens, and nobody could decide whether good or bad would come of it.
Until now, the Colony had gone its way without any form of interference from the Overlords. They had left it completely alone, as indeed they ignored most human activities that were not subversive or did not offend their codes of behaviour. Whether the Colony's aims could be called subversive was uncertain. They were non-political, but they represented a bid for intellectual and artistic independence. And from that, who knew what might come? The Overlords might well be able to foresee the future of Athens more clearly than its founders—and they might not like it.
Of course, if Karellen wished to send an observer, inspector, or whatever one cared to call him, there was nothing that could be done about it. Twenty years ago the Overlords had announced that they had discontinued all use of their surveillance devices, so that humanity need no longer consider itself spied upon. However, the fact that such devices still existed meant that nothing could be hidden from the Overlords if they really wanted to see it.
There were some on the island who welcomed this visit as a chance of settling one of the minor problems of Overlord psychology—their attitude towards Art. Did they regard it as a childish aberration of the human race? Did they have any forms of art themselves? In that case, was the purpose of this visit purely esthetic, or did Karellen have less innocent motives?
All these matters were debated endlessly while the preparations were under way. Nothing was known of the visiting Overlord, but it was assumed that he could absorb culture in unlimited amounts. The experiment would at least be attempted, and the reactions of the victim observed with interest by a battery of very shrewd minds.
The current chairman of the council was the philosopher, Charles Yan Sen, an ironic but fundamentally cheerful man who was not yet in his sixties and was therefore still in the prime of life. Plato would have approved of him as an example of the philosopher-statesman, though Sen did not altogether approve of Plato, whom he suspected of grossly misrepresenting Socrates. He was one of the islanders who was determined to make the most of this visit, if only to show the Overlords that men still had plenty of initiative and were not yet, as he put it, “fully domesticated”.
Nothing in Athens was done without a committee, that ultimate hallmark of the democratic method. Indeed, someone had once defined the Colony as a system of interlocking committees. But the system worked, thanks to the patient studies of the social psychologists who had been the real founders of Athens. Because the community was not too large, everyone in it could take some part in its running and could be a citizen in the truest sense of the word.
It was almost inevitable that George, as a leading member of the artistic hierarchy, should be one of the reception committee. But he made doubly sure by pulling a few strings. If the Overlords wanted to study the Colony, George wanted equally to study them. Jean was not very happy about this. Ever since that evening at the Boyces', she had felt a vague hostility towards the Overlords, though she could never give any reason for it. She just wished to have as little to do with them as possible, and to her one of the island's main attractions had been its hoped-for independence. Now she feared that this independence might be threatened.
The Overlord arrived without ceremony in an ordinary manmade flyer, to the disappointment of those who had hoped for something more spectacular. He might have been Karellen himself, for no one had ever been able to distinguish one Overlord from another with any degree of confidence. They all seemed duplicates from a single master-mould. Perhaps, by some unknown biological process, they were.
After the first day, the islanders ceased to pay much attention when the official car murmured past on its sightseeing tours. The visitor's correct name, Thanthalteresco, proved too intractable, for general use, and he was soon christened “The Inspector”. It was an accurate enough name, for his curiosity and appetite for statistics were insatiable.
Charles Yan Sen was quite exhausted when, long after midnight, he had seen the Inspector back to the flyer which was serving as his base. There, no doubt, he would continue to work throughout the night while his human hosts indulged in the frailty of sleep.
Mrs. Sen greeted her husband anxiously on his return. They were a devoted couple, despite his playful habit of calling her Xantippe when they were entertaining guests. She had long ago threatened to make the appropriate retort by brewing him a cup of hemlock, but fortunately this herbal beverage was less common to New Athens than the old.
“Was it a success?” she asked as her husband settled down to a belated meal.
“I think so—but you can never tell what goes on inside those remarkable minds. He was certainly interested, even complimentary. I apologized, by the way, for not inviting him here. He said he quite understood, and had no wish to bang his head on our ceiling.”
“What did you show him today?”
“The bread-and-butter side of the Colony, which he didn't seem to find as boring as I always do. He asked every question you could imagine about production, how we balanced our budget, our mineral resources, the birth rate, how we got our food, and so on. Luckily I had Secretary Harrison with me, and he'd come prepared with every Annual Report since the Colony began. You should have heard them swapping statistics. The Inspector's borrowed the lot, and I'm prepared to bet that when we see him tomorrow he'll be able to quote any figure back at us. I find that kind of mental performance frightfully depressing.” He yawned and began to peck halfheartedly at his food.
“Tomorrow should be more interesting. We're going to do the schools and the Academy. That's when I'm going to ask some questions for a change. I'd like to know how the Overlords bring up their kids—assuming, of course, that they have any.”
That was not a question that Charles Sen was ever to have answered, but on other points the Inspector was remarkably talkative. He would evade awkward queries in a manner that was a pleasure to behold, and then, quite unexpectedly, would become positively confiding. Their first real intimacy occurred while they were driving away from the school that was one of the Colony's chief prides. “It's a great responsibility,” Dr. Sen had remarked, “training these young minds for the future. Fortunately, human beings are extraordinarily resilient: it takes a pretty bad upbringing to do permanent damage. Even if our aims are mistaken, our little victims will probably get over it. And as you've seen, they appear to be perfectly happy.” He paused for a moment, then glanced mischievously up at the towering figure of his passenger. The Inspector was completely clothed in some reflecting silvery cloth so that not an inch of his body was exposed to the fierce sunlight. Behind the dark glasses, Dr. Sen was aware of the great eyes watching him emotionlessly—or with emotions which he could never understand. “Our problem in bringing up these children must, I imagine, be very similar to yours when confronted with the human race. Wouldn't you agree?”
“In some ways,” admitted the Overlord gravely. “In others, perhaps a better analogy can be found in the history of your colonial powers. The Roman and British Empires, for that reason, have always been of considerable interest to us. The case of India is particularly instructive. The main difference between us and the British in India was that they had no real motives for going there—no conscious objectives, that is, except such trivial and temporary ones as trade or hostility to other European powers. They found themselves possessors of an Empire before they knew what to do with it, and were never really happy until they had got rid of it again.”
“And will you,” asked Dr. Sen, quite unable to resist the opportunity, “get rid of your empire when the time arises?”
“Without the slightest hesitation,” replied the Inspector.
Dr. Sen did not press the point. The forthrightness of the reply was not altogether flattering: moreover,
