meetings depressed and discouraged; what was very unusual was for him to come back in a bad temper as well.
Indra knew that something had gone wrong the moment he entered the house. “Let me know the worst,” she said resignedly as her exhausted husband flopped into the most comfortable chair in sight. “Do you have to find a new job?”
She was only half joking, and Franklin managed a wan smile. “It’s not as bad as that,” he answered, “but there’s more in this business than I thought. Old Burrows had got it all worked out before he took the chair; someone in the Secretariat had briefed him pretty thoroughly. What it comes to is this: Unless it can be proved that food production from whale milk and synthetics will be drastically cheaper than the present method, whale slaughtering will continue. Even a ten percent saving isn’t regarded as good enough to justify a switch-over. As Burrows put it, we’re concerned with cost accounting, not abstruse philosophical principles like justice to animals.
“That’s reasonable enough, I suppose, and certainly I wouldn’t try to fight it. The trouble started during the break for coffee, when Burrows got me into a corner and asked me what the wardens thought about the whole business. So I told him that eighty per cent of them would like to see slaughtering stopped, even if it meant a rise in food costs. I don’t know why he asked me this particular question, unless news of our little survey has leaked out.
“Anyway, it upset him a bit and I could see him trying to get around to something. Then he put it bluntly that I’d be a key witness when the inquiry started, and that the Marine Division wouldn’t like me to plead the Thero’s case in open court with a few million people watching. “Suppose I’m asked for my personal opinion?” I said. “No one’s worked harder than me to increase whale-meat and oil production, but as soon as it’s possible I’d like to see the bureau become a purely conservation service.” He asked if this was my considered viewpoint and I told him that it was.
“Then things got a bit personal, though still in a friendly sort of way, and we agreed that there was a distinct cleavage of opinion between the people who handled whales as whales and those who saw them only as statistics on food-production charts. After that Burrows went off and made some phone calls, and kept us all waiting around for half an hour while he talked to a few people up in the Secretariat. He finally came back with what were virtually my orders, though he was careful not to put it that way. It comes to this: I’ve got to be an obedient little ventriloquist’s dummy at the inquiry.”
“But suppose the other side asks you outright for your personal views?”
“Our counsel will try to head them off, and if he fails I’m not supposed to have any personal views.”
“And what’s the point of all this?”
“That’s what I asked Burrows, and I finally managed to get it out of him. There are political issues involved. The Secretariat is afraid that the Maha Thero will get too powerful if he wins this case, so it’s going to be fought whatever its merits.”
“Now I understand,” said Indra slowly. “Do you think that the Thero is after political power?”
“For its own sake — no. But he may be trying to gain influence to put across his religious ideas, and that’s what the Secretariat’s afraid of.”
“And what are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know,” Franklin answered. “I really don’t know.”
He was still undecided when the hearings began and the Maha Thero made his first personal appearance before a worldwide audience. He was not, Franklin could not help thinking as he looked at the small, yellow-robed figure with his gleaming skull, very impressive at first sight. Indeed, there was something almost comic about him — until he began to speak, and one knew without any doubt that one was in the presence both of power and conviction.
“I would like to make one thing perfectly clear,” said the Maha Thero, addressing not only the chairman of the commission but also the unseen millions who were watching this first hearing. “It is not true that we are trying to enforce vegetarianism on the world, as some of our opponents have tried to maintain. The Buddha himself did not abstain from eating meat, when it was given to him; nor do we, for a guest should accept gratefully whatever his host offers.
“Our attitude is based on something deeper and more fundamental than food prejudices, which are usually only a matter of conditioning. What is more, we believe that most reasonable men, whether their religious beliefs are the same as ours or not, will eventually accept our point of view.
“It can be summed up very simply, though it is the result of twenty-six centuries of thought. We consider that it is wrong to inflict injury or death on any living creature, but we are not so foolish as to imagine that it can be avoided altogether. Thus we recognize, for example, the need to kill microbes and insect pests, much though we may regret the necessity.
“But as soon as such killing is no longer essential, it should cease. We believe that this point has now arrived as far as many of the higher animals are concerned. The production of all types of synthetic protein from purely vegetable sources is now an economic possibility — or it will be if the effort is made to achieve it. Within a generation, we can shed the burden of guilt which, however lightly or heavily it has weighed on individual consciences, must at some time or other have haunted all thinking men as they look at the world of life which shares their planet.
“Yet this is not an attitude which we seek to enforce on anyone against his will. Good actions lose any merit if they are imposed by force. We will be content to let the facts we will present speak for themselves, so that the world may make its own choice.”
It was, thought Franklin, a simple, straightforward speech, quite devoid of any of the fanaticism which would have fatally prejudiced the case in this rational age. And yet the whole matter was one that went beyond reason; in a purely logical world, this controversy could never have arisen, for no one would have doubted man’s right to use the animal kingdom as he felt fit. Logic, however, could be easily discredited here; it could be used too readily to make out a convincing case for cannibalism.
The Thero had not mentioned, anywhere in his argument, one point which had made a considerable impact on Franklin. He had not raised the possibility that man might someday come into contact with alien life forms that might judge him by his conduct toward the rest of the animal kingdom. Did he think that this was so far-fetched an idea that the general public would be unable to take it seriously, and would thus grow to regard his whole campaign as a joke? Or had he realized that it was an argument that might particularly appeal to an ex-astronaut? There was no way of guessing; in either event it proved that the Thero was a shrewd judge both of private and public reactions.
Franklin switched off the receiver; the scenes it was showing now were quite familiar to him, since he had helped the Thero to film them. The Marine Division, he thought wryly, would now be regretting the facilities it had offered His Reverence, but there was nothing else it could have done in the circumstances.
In two days he would be appearing to give his evidence; already he felt more like a criminal on trial than a witness. And in truth he was on trial — or, to be more accurate, his conscience was. It was strange to think that having once tried to kill himself, he now objected to killing other creatures. There was some connection here, but it was too complicated for him to unravel — and even if he did, it would not help him to solve his dilemma.
Yet the solution was on the way, and from a totally unexpected direction.
CHAPTER XXIII
Franklin was boarding the plane that would take him to the hearings when the “Sub-Smash’ signal came through. He stood in the doorway, reading the scarlet-tabbed message that had been rushed out to him, and at that moment all his other problems ceased to exist.
The SOS was from the Bureau of Mines, the largest of all the sections of the Marine Division. Its title was a slightly misleading one, for it did not run a single mine in the strict sense of the word. Twenty or thirty years ago there had indeed been mines on the ocean beds, but now the sea itself was an inexhaustible treasure chest. Almost every one of the natural elements could be extracted directly and economically from the millions of tons of
