Imperial Stars 2-Republic and Empire (26 page)

"Why do you allow the heretic and traitor Marko Dalu to walk the streets of Kleedra?" Philar demanded.

"But, the man is a civil offender," the priest protested.

Philar snorted. "Has he not scoffed at the Divinity of the Glorious Emperor? Has he not hinted at higher powers than those of our temple? Has he not criticized the conduct of the temple and of the priests? And, has he not done all these things in public? His are certainly more heretical than civil offenses. It is up to you, and you alone. What are you going to do?"

The priest spread his hands. He knew there was something wrong with this conversation. He knew that there were other plans, but he couldn't think straight; not with this furious soldier standing over him.

"What can we do?" he inquired.

"First, send your priests out among the people and have them denounce Marko as a dangerous heretic, an evil man, who would cause the destruction of the entire village. Go to the governor and demand a temple trial for this man. Have the priests hint to the people that if Marko is not delivered to the temple, pestilence, fire and the sword will surely visit them." He paused. "I can assure you that fire and the sword are awaiting any open disobedience," he added.

The priest lifted his head. "These things, I will do," he said decisively.

Philar, Kalidar of the Imperial Guard of the Dalturan Empire, leaned back at his ease in his own quarters. At last, this assignment was nearly accomplished. Soon, he'd be able to go back and relax for a while. In the privacy of his room, he had removed his helmet, and the golden circlet glowed against his dark hair.

"Well, Marc," he was thinking, "I'm coming after you tomorrow. How do you feel?"

"Swell," came the answering thought.

"By the way, did you run to completion on this one?" Philar asked.

Marc was disdainful. "Think I'm a snail? Great Space, they gave me almost four years. I had the job done in three. I beat it all through their heads, then clinched it on the other side. Picked up more recruits than we actually need for the job, too."

Philar started ticking off points on his fingers. "Philosophy, Ethics—"

"Yeah, yeah," he was interrupted. "Philosophy, Behaviorism, Organization, Techniques, Ethics, the works. I even got time to throw in a lot of extra hints that'll take two or three periods to decipher. They've got physical and biological science, up to and including longevity. They've got Galactic Ethics. I even slipped them a short course in Higher Psychology. 'Course, they'll have to do all the groundwork for themselves, but my recruits understand a good share of the stuff. When they're able to release their knowledge, this planet'll be on the team."

"Nice going, pal," Philar chuckled. "Well, as I said, I'm coming after you tomorrow, complete with a whole bunch of nice, tough Dalturan guardsmen. Hope your body shield's in good shape."

"You space worm," stormed Marko. "If you let those primeval monkeys get rough with me, so help me, I'll—"

"Ah, ah," Philar shook his finger, "naughty thoughts."

"Master Intelligence Technician Philar!" A third thought broke in sternly.

Philar groaned. "Oooh, I've done it again. Yes, sir."

"Attention to orders. After completion of your assignment tomorrow, you will march to the seaport, Dalyra. There, you will embark for the capital, Baratea. During the voyage, you will fall over the side and be lost." An impression of amusement intruded. "I'll be at the controls, sergeant, and for your sins, I'm going to bring you in wet. My friend, you will be so waterlogged that you'll be able to go without water for at least half a period."

"Yes, captain." Philar was doleful. He took the circlet off, holding it at arm's length and looking at it sourly.

"Thought control," he snorted aloud. "Thought control, that's what it is." He clapped the mentacom back on and composed himself to sleep.

Kloru Noile, High Priest of Kleedra, sat at his worktable. As he read, he nodded his head. Finally, he looked up. "Well, Plana," he remarked to his assistant, "looks as though the last of the despots has called it a day." He held out the paper. The man took it and read.

Informal Report

From: Barcu Lores, Security Technician Second Class
To: NCOIC, Philosophical Section 5/G3-4/572
Subject: Duke Klonda Bal Kithrel

1. Psychological work on the subject is nearing completion. Bal Kithrel has decided to allow elections of all magistrates, as well as three members of the advisory council. He is also considering a revision of the property laws. It is believed that this is the beginning of constitutional rule in this area. Work is continuing—

Plana handed the paper back. "I believe, sergeant," he remarked, "that we'll get a good inspection report this time."

Contact! is an annual convention combining anthropologists and science fiction writers. The first one was held in the spring of 1983 in Santa Cruz, California.

I was invited to attend and present a paper. That sounded like fun, but it wasn't easy. As it happened, the previous week I was supposed to go to Houston, Texas for the L-5 Society Convention on Space Development, and from there to Ithaca, New York, where I delivered the annual C. P. Snow Memorial Lecture. I went directly from Ithaca to Santa Cruz. Since I hadn't been home for over a week, my paper was mostly written on airplanes.

That, incidentally, is much easier to do than it used to be, thanks to my NEC PC-8201 portable lap computer.

The first Contact! conference proved to be as interesting as I'd hoped, and the second was in many ways better. The conventions tend to be equally divided between fairly serious analysis and pure fun, with a kind of space-age Dungeons and Dragons game thrown in for free.

Since I wrote this essay, Charles Murray has published
Losing Ground
, a book that proves, or purports to prove, that most of the welfare policies of the U.S. are having precisely the opposite effect that the social scientists thought they would have. He cites the great Negative Income Tax experiment, which was apparently done quite well, and which seems to show beyond all doubt that if you give people free money, they don't work as much as they do when you don't. Naturally, the book has been either ignored or savagely attacked.

This was written some years ago, in haste, on an airplane, but I see no reason to revise a word of it.

"Literary intellectuals at one pole—at the other scientists . . . Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension."

Lord C. P. Snow:
The Two Cultures on the Scientific Revolution
[1959]

The late C. P. Snow was concerned that we were developing two powerful cultures, neither of which understood the other. He thought this very dangerous. Science, with its power over the physical world, is terrifying if not humanely controlled; humanists without science are helpless.

Examples of the consequences of this gap are not hard to find. Consider the following, which seems particularly relevant to science fiction readers.

From
Aviation Technical News
Volume IX, No. 5, published by Kerr Industrial Applications Center, Southeastern Oklahoma State University, for NASA's Technology Utilization Division. I give an EXACT quote:

LONG TIME PARKING
(From
Goddard News
Jan. 15, 1983, article by Charles Recknagel)
"The international Sun-Earth Explorer space craft has been parked 1.6 million km from the earth since 1978. During these approximately five years the space craft has been suspended at the point where the Earth's and the Sun's gravitational pull are equal. The point is called the 'Liberation point.' After monitoring the charged particles emanating from the sun these many years, NASA decided in Oct. of 82 that they would crank up the satellite and use it for another purpose. The vehicle will swing within 100 km. of the moon's surface Dec. 23 of'83."

Note "Liberation Point," and the ludicrous orbital mechanics. One might almost excuse John Holt. Holt, a well-known educator and popular lecturer, author of
Why Children Fail; How Children Learn; What Do I Do Monday?
, chose to attack the concept of space colonies in a special issue of
CoEvolution Quarterly
(1977) devoted to the subject.

In a section entitled
Technical Debate
Holt says, "It seems that if L-5 is a point where the gravitational fields of earth and moon cancel each other out, any movement toward either earth or moon would lead to a further movement in that direction, there being no correcting or opposing force. The effect of these forces might be very slight, so that we could say of a 64 million ton cylinder that it would take many thousands or tens of thousands of years before it finally reached the earth. Still, it would be rather hard for those on earth."

Holt's argument against space colonies
sounds
scientific, and he probably believes he is being scientific. He also objects on "moral" grounds. When Tom Heppenheimer (certainly no soft-spoken advocate) says that Holt's arguments are "largely theological, reflecting bias or intuitive dislike, rather than any semblance of reasoned assessment," Holt replies:

"Again 'theological.' My objections to this project are variously ethical, moral, philosophical, political, and economic. (I might add that, according to Gerald Piel, publisher of
Scientific American
, many scientists themselves oppose this project on moral grounds.) To call such objections 'theological' is imprecise, and has in it more than a whiff of Dr. Strangelove, or hard-nosed talk about 'mega-deaths' or 'credible first strike capability' or 'acceptable risks.' And this may be the point to note that in all of O'Neill's and Heppenheimer's talk about space colonies there is no mention of risks. The risks would in fact be enormous. We have already lost three lives in space, and almost three more; the Russians have lost at least three. This is a death rate of something over 6%. But our ventures into space have been very modest, and surrounded by the most elaborate and expensive precautions. It seems altogether reasonable to assume that if we begin complicated mining and industrial operations on the moon, our casualty rate will be higher, perhaps much higher."

When Heppenheimer says that "It cannot be denied that large numbers of people will freely volunteer to live in space, even under austere conditions, when this becomes possible," Holt, in footnote #51 (of 56; his annotations are at least as long as Heppenheimer's text; Heppenheimer's text was itself a reply to an unannotated essay by Holt; this is known as the fairness doctrine) says:

"I do deny it—unless, of course, they have been told terrible lies about what life and work in space is really like. I expect that this will happen, and in fact is happening, and it is one of my ethical and moral reasons for opposing this project."

The interesting part is that we are listening to scientific-sounding nonsense from a man who does not know high school physics, and seems to know little of probability. He is, however, a "humanist," and thus should know human behavior. Yet I wonder, and call to evidence Shackleton's experience:

Ernest Shackleton was adjutant to the 1901 South Polar expedition. In 1900 he placed the following advertisement:

"MEN WANTED for Hazardous Journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success." When he later reported on the advertisement's success, he said, "It seemed as though all the men in Great Britain were determined to accompany me, the response was so overwhelming."

I suspect I would have little difficulty recruiting qualified people for L-5 colonies, or indeed for an early lunar colony. Perhaps I'm wrong, but unlike Holt I have some evidence, and a smattering of data.

One may believe, as I do, that communications between scientists and non-scientists are in a sad state, and that this is a dangerous situation, without accepting C. P. Snow's picture as accurate. In my judgment the critical gap is not between "scientists" and "humanists," or between the sciences and the arts; the critical gap is between the so-called "social sciences" and everyone else.

This gap is exacerbated to the extent that neither scientists nor humanists believe there is scientific value in the "social sciences." In my judgment there is very little science in the "social sciences" and the use of the word "science" to describe these disciplines is generally either mendacious or farcical. Alas, it may also be tragic.

The real difference between arts and sciences is the difference between data and evidence; and the "social sciences" don't know the one from the other.

Imagine a spectrum. On one end you have science fiction. On the other end, you have hard science. What connects them is the nature of their subject matter.

The scientist requires hard facts. He needs data, ideally in the from of repeatable experiments. Data, to a scientist, is best generated in controlled experiments which can be described, published, and repeated.

Figure One: From Verisimilitude to Data
 

ART FORM Verisimilitude Plausibility Argumentative
LEGAL : Evidence : Selection : "Proof"
SCIENCE : Data : All of the data : Validation

The science fiction writer doesn't need any data. Certainly he must use some hard facts, because if
everything
is contrary to the reader's expectations, the work isn't going to be taken seriously: therefore, the science fiction writer makes use of "facts" not as data, but for verisimilitude and plausibility.

However, science fiction can't "prove" anything about the universe. We can speculate about it, we can try to expand people's horizons and stretch their imaginations; but we cannot, as science fiction writers, add to scientific knowledge, and this goes for "insights into the human condition" every whit as much as for contributions to nuclear physics.