he had realized. Like most men of his highly materialistic era, he was intoxicated with the scientific and sociological triumphs which had irradiated the opening decades of the twenty-first century. He prided himself on his skeptical rationalism, and his total freedom from superstition. The fundamental questions of philosophy had never bothered him greatly; he knew that they existed, but they had seemed the concern of other people.
And now, whether he liked it or not, he had been challenged from a quarter so unexpected that he was almost defenseless. He had always considered himself a humane man, but now he had been reminded that humanity might not be enough. As he struggled with his thoughts, he became progressively more and more irritable with the world around him, and matters finally became so bad that Indra had to take action.
“Walter,” she said firmly, when Anne had gone tearfully to bed after a row in which there was a good deal of blame on both sides, “it will save a lot of trouble if you face the facts and stop trying to fool yourself.”
“What the devil do you mean?”
“You’ve been angry with everybody this last week — with just one exception. You’ve lost your temper with Lundquist — though that was partly my fault — with the press, with just about every other bureau in the division, with the children, and any moment you’re going to lose it with me. But there’s one person you’re not angry with — and that’s the Maha Thero, who’s the cause of all the trouble.”
“Why should I be? He’s crazy, of course, but he’s a saint — or as near it as I ever care to meet.”
“I’m not arguing about that. I’m merely saying that you really agree with him, but you won’t admit it.”
Franklin started to explode. “That’s utterly ridiculous!” he began. Then his indignation petered out. It was ridiculous; but it was also perfectly true.
He felt a great calm come upon him; he was no longer angry with the world and with himself. His childish resentment of the fact that he should be the man involved in a dilemma not of his making suddenly evaporated. There was no reason why he should be ashamed of the fact that he had grown to love the great beasts he guarded; if their slaughter could be avoided, he should welcome it, whatever the consequences to the bureau.
The parting smile of the Thero suddenly floated up into his memory. Had that extraordinary man foreseen that he would win him around to his point of view? If his gentle persuasiveness — which he had not hesitated to combine with the shock tactics of that bloodstained television program — could work with Franklin himself, then the battle was already half over.
CHAPTER XXII
Life was a good deal simpler in the old days, thought Indra with a sigh. It was true that Peter and Anne were both at school or college most of the time, but somehow that had given her none of the additional leisure she had expected. There was so much entertaining and visiting to do now that Walter had moved into the upper echelons of the state. Though perhaps that was exaggerating a little; the director of the Bureau of Whales was still a long way — at least six steps — down from the rarefied heights in which the president and his advisers dwelt.
But there were some things that cut right across official rank. No one could deny that there was a glamour about Walt’s job and an interest in his activities that had made him known to a far wider circle than the other directors of the Marine Division, even before the Earth Magazine article or the present controversy over whale slaughtering. How many people could name the director of Plankton Farms or of Fresh-Water Food Production? Not one to every hundred that had heard of Walter. It was a fact that made her proud, even though at the same time it exposed Walter to a good deal of interdepartmental jealousy.
Now, however, it seemed likely to expose him to worse than that. So far, no one in the bureau, still less any of the higher officials of the Marine Division or the World Food Organization imagined for one moment that Walter had any private doubts or that he was not wholeheartedly in support of the status quo.
Her attempts to read the current Nature were interrupted by the private-line viewphone. It had been installed, despite her bitter protests, the day that Walter had become director. The public service, it seemed, was not good enough; now the office could get hold of Walter whenever it liked, unless he took precautions to frustrate it.
“Oh, good morning, Mrs. Franklin,” said the operator, who was now practically a friend of the family. “Is the director in?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Indra with satisfaction. “He hasn’t had a day off for about a month, and he’s out sailing in the bay with Peter. If you want to catch him, you’ll have to send a plane out; J.94’s radio has broken down again.”
“Both sets? That’s odd. Still, it’s not urgent. When he comes in, will you give him this memo?”
There was a barely audible click, and a sheet of paper drifted down into the extra large-sized memorandum basket. Indra read it, gave the operator an absent-minded farewell, and at once called Franklin on his perfectly serviceable radio.
The creak of the rigging, the soft rush of water past the smooth hull — even the occasional cry of a sea bird — these sounds came clearly from the speaker and transported her at once out into Moreton Bay.
“I thought you’d like to know, Walter,” she said, “the Policy Board is having its special meeting next Wednesday, here in Brisbane. That gives you three days to decide what you’re going to tell them.”
There was a slight pause during which she could hear her husband moving about the boat; then Franklin answered: “Thanks, dear. I know what I’ve got to say — I just don’t know how to say it. But there’s something I’ve thought of that you can do to help. You know all the warden’s wives — suppose you call up as many as you can, and try to find what their husbands feel about this business. Can you do that without making it look too obvious? It’s not so easy for me, nowadays, to find what the men in the field are thinking. They’re too liable to tell me what they imagine I want to know.”
There was a wistful note in Franklin’s voice which Indra had been hearing more and more frequently these days, though she knew her husband well enough to be quite sure that he had no real regrets for having taken on his present responsibilities.
“That’s a good idea,” she said. “There are at least a dozen people I should have called up weeks ago, and this will give me an excuse. It probably means that we’ll have to have another party though.”
“I don’t mind that, as long as I’m still director and can afford to pay for it. But if I revert to a warden’s pay in a month or so, we’ll have to cut out the entertaining.”
“You don’t really think — ‘
“Oh, it won’t be as bad as that. But they may shift me to some nice safe job, though I can’t imagine what use I am now outside the bureau. GET OUT OF THE WAY, YOU BLASTED FOOL–CAN’T YOU SEE WHERE YOU’RE GOING? Sorry, dear — too many week-end sailors around. We’ll be back in ninety minutes, unless some idiot rams us. Pete says he wants honey for tea. Bye now.”
Indra looked thoughtfully at the radio as the sounds of the distant boat ceased abruptly. She half wished that she had accompanied Walter and Pete on their cruise out into the bay, but she had faced the fact that her son now needed his father’s company rather than hers. There were times when she grudged this, realizing that in a few months they would both lose the boy whose mind and body they had formed, but who was now slipping from their grasp.
It was inevitable, of course; the ties that bound father and son together must now drive them apart. She doubted if Peter realized why he was so determined to get into space; after all, it was a common enough ambition among boys of his age. But he was one of the youngest ever to obtain a triplanetary scholarship, and it was easy to understand why. He was determined to conquer the element that had defeated his father.
But enough of this daydreaming, she told herself. She got out her file of visiphone numbers, and began to tick off the names of all the wardens’ wives who would be at home.
The Policy Board normally met twice a year, and very seldom had much policy to discuss, since most of the bureau’s work was satisfactorily taken care of by the committees dealing with finance, production, staff, and technical development. Franklin served on all of these, though only as an ordinary member, since the chairman was always someone from the Marine Division or the World Secretariat. He sometimes came back from the
