Revolt in 2100 (28 page)

Consequently, it was a blow to his pride as sharp as had been the sentence to Coventry to discover that she classed him with the other inhabitants of Coventry as a poor unfortunate who needed help and sympathy because he was not quite right in his head.

He was furious and for one whole day he sulked alone, but the human necessity for self-justification and approval forced him to seek her out and attempt to reason with her. He explained carefully and with emotional candor the circumstances leading up to his trial and conviction, and embellished the account with his own philosophy and evaluations, then confidently awaited her approval.

It was not forthcoming. "I don't understand your viewpoint," she said. "You broke his nose, yet he had done you no harm of any sort. You expect me to approve that?"

"But Persephone," he protested, "you ignore the fact that he called me a most insulting name."

"I don't see the connection," she said. "He made a noise with his mouth-a verbal label. If the label does not fit you, the noise is meaningless. If the label is true in your case-if you
are
the thing that the noise refers to, you are neither more, nor less, that thing by reason of some one uttering the verbal label. In short, he did not damage you.

"But what you did to him was another matter entirely. You broke his nose. That is damage. In self-protection the rest of society must seek you out, and determine whether or not you are so unstable as to be likely to damage someone else in the future. If you are, you must be quarantined for treatment, or leave society-whichever you prefer."

"You think I'm crazy, don't you?" he accused.

"Crazy? Not the way you mean it. You haven't paresis, or a brain tumor, or any other lesion that the Doctor could find. But from the viewpoint of your semantic reactions you are as socially
unsane
as any fanatic witch-burner."

"Come now-that's not just!"

"What is justice?" She picked up the kitten she had been playing with. "I'm going in-it's getting chilly." Off she went into the house, her bare feet noiseless in the grass.

Had the science of semantics developed as rapidly as psycho-dynamics and its implementing arts of propaganda and mob psychology, the United States might never have fallen into dictatorship, then been forced to undergo the Second Revolution. All of the scientific principles embodied in the Covenant which marked the end of the revolution were formulated as far back as the first quarter of the twentieth century.

But the work of the pioneer semanticists, C. K. Ogden, Alfred Korzybski, and others, were known to but a handful of students, whereas psycho-dynamics, under the impetus of repeated wars and the frenzy of high-pressure merchandising, progressed by leaps and bounds.

Semantics, "the meaning of meaning," gave a method for the first time of applying the scientific method to every act of everyday life. Because semantics dealt with spoken and written words as a determining aspect of human behavior it was at first mistakenly thought by many to be concerned
only
with words and of interest only to professional word manipulators, such as advertising copy writers and professors of etymology. A handful of unorthodox psychiatrists attempted to apply it to personal human problems, but their work was swept away by the epidemic mass psychoses that destroyed Europe and returned the United States to the Dark Ages.

The Covenant was the first scientific social document ever drawn up by man, and due credit must be given to its principal author, Dr. Micah Novak, the same Novak who served as staff psychologist in the revolution. The revolutionists wished to establish maximum personal liberty. How could they accomplish that to a degree of high mathematical probability?

First they junked the concept of "justice." Examined semantically "justice" has no referent-there is no observable phenomenon in the space-time-matter continuum to which one can point, and say, "This is justice." Science can deal only with that which can be observed and measured. Justice is not such a matter; therefore it can never have the same meaning to one as to another; any "noises" said about it will only add to confusion.

But damage, physical or economic, can be pointed to and measured. Citizens were forbidden by the Covenant to damage another. Any act not leading to damage, physical or economic, to some particular person, they declared to be lawful.

Since they had abandoned the concept of "justice," there could be no rational standards of punishment. Penology took its place with lycanthropy and other forgotten witchcrafts. Yet, since it was not practical to permit a source of danger to remain in the community, social offenders were examined and potential repeaters were given their choice of psychological readjustment, or of having society withdraw itself from them-Coventry.

Early drafts of the Covenant contained the assumption that the socially unsane would naturally be hospitalized and readjusted, particularly since current psychiatry was quite competent to cure all non-lesional psychoses and cure or alleviate lesional psychoses, but Novak set his face against this.

"No!"
he protested. "The government must never again be permitted to tamper with the mind of any citizen without his consent, or else we set up a greater tyranny than we had before. Every man must be free to accept, or reject, the Covenant, even though we think him insane!"

The next time David MacKinnon looked up Persephone he found her in a state of extreme agitation. His own wounded pride was forgotten at once. "Why, my dear," he said, "whatever in the world is the matter?"

Gradually he gathered that she had been present at a conversation between Magee and the Doctor, and had heard, for the first time, of the impending military operation against the United States. He patted her hand. "So that's all it is," he observed in a relieved voice. "I thought something was wrong with you yourself."

" 'That's all-' David MacKinnon, do you mean to stand there and tell me that you knew about this, and don't consider it worth worrying about?"

"Me? Why should I? And for that matter, what could
I
do?"

"What could you do? You could go outside and warn them -that's what you could do . . . As to why you should-Dave, you're impossible!" She burst into tears and ran from the room.

He stared after her, mouth open, then borrowed from his remotest ancestor by observing to himself that women are hard to figure out.

Persephone did not appear at lunch. MacKinnon asked the Doctor where she was.

"Had her lunch," the Doctor told him, between mouthfuls. "Started for the Gateway."

"What! Why did you let her do that?"

"Free agent. Wouldn't have obeyed me anyway. She'll be all right."

Dave did not hear the last, being already out of the room and running out of the house. He found her just backing her little monocycle runabout out of its shed. "Persephone!"

"What do you want?" she asked with frozen dignity beyond her years.

"You mustn't do this! That's where the Fader got hurt!"

"I am going. Please stand aside."

"Then I'm going with you."

"Why should you?"

"To take care of you."

She sniffed. "As if anyone would dare to touch me."

There was a measure of truth in what she said. The Doctor, and every member of his household, enjoyed a personal immunity unlike that of anyone else in Coventry. As a natural consequence of the set-up, Coventry had almost no competent medical men. The number of physicians who committed social damage was small. The proportion of such who declined psychiatric treatment was negligible, and this negligible remainder were almost sure to be unreliable bunglers in their profession. The Doctor was a natural healer, in voluntary exile in order that he might enjoy the opportunity to practice his art in the richest available field. He cared nothing for dry research; what he wanted was patients, the sicker the better, that he might make them well again.

He was above custom and above law. In the Free State the Liberator depended on him for insulin to hold his own death from diabetes at arm's length. In New America his beneficiaries were equally powerful. Even among the Angels of the Lord the Prophet himself accepted the dicta of the Doctor without question.

But MacKinnon was not satisfied. Some ignorant fool, he was afraid, might do the child some harm without realizing her protected status. He got no further chance to protest; she started the little runabout suddenly, and forced him to jump out of its path. When he had recovered his balance, she was far down the lane. He could not catch her.

She was back in less than four hours. He had expected that; if a person as elusive as Fader had not been able to reach the Gate at night, it was not likely that a young girl could do so in daylight.

His first feeling was one of simple relief, then he eagerly awaited an opportunity to speak to her. During her absence he had been turning over the situation in his mind. It was a foregone conclusion that she would fail; he wished to rehabilitate himself in her eyes; therefore, he would help her in the project nearest her heart-he himself would carry the warning to the Outside!

Perhaps she would ask for such help. In fact, it seemed likely. By the time she returned he had convinced himself that she was certain to ask his help. He would agree-with simple dignity-and off he would go, perhaps to be wounded, or killed, but an heroic figure, even if he failed.

He pictured himself subconsciously as a blend of Sidney Carton, the White Knight, the man who carried the message to Garcia-and just a dash of d'Artagnan.

But she did not ask him-she would not even give him a chance to talk with her.

She did not appear at dinner. After dinner she was closeted with the Doctor in his study. When she reappeared she went directly to her room. He finally concluded that he might as well go to bed himself.

To bed, and then to sleep, and take it up again in the morning- But it's not as simple as that. The unfriendly walls stared back at him, and the other, critical half of his mind decided to make a night of it. Fool! She doesn't want your help. Why should she? What have you got that Fader hasn't got?-and better. To her, you are just one of the screwloose multitude you've seen all around you in this place.

But
I'm
not crazy!-just because I choose not to submit to the dictation of others doesn't make me
crazy.
Doesn't it, though? All the rest of them in here are lamebrains, what's so fancy about you? Not all of them-how about the Doctor, and- Don't kid yourself, chump, the Doctor and Mother Johnston are here for their own reasons; they weren't sentenced. And Persephone was born here.

How about Magee?-He was certainly rational-or seemed so. He found himself resenting, with illogical bitterness, Magee's apparent stability. Why should he be any different from the rest of us?

The rest of us? He had classed himself with the other inhabitants of Coventry. All right, all right, admit it, you fool-you're just like the rest of them; turned out because the decent people won't have you-and too damned stubborn to admit that you need treatment.

But the thought of treatment turned him cold, and made him think of his father again. Why should that be? He recalled something the Doctor had said to him a couple of days before: "What you need, son, is to stand up to your father and tell him off. Pity more children don't tell their parents to go to hell!"

He turned on the light and tried to read. But it was no use. Why should Persephone care what happened to the people Outside?-She didn't know them; she had no friends there. If
he
had no obligations to them, how could
she
possibly care? No obligations? You had a soft, easy life for many years-all they asked was that you behave yourself. For that matter, where would you be now, if the Doctor had stopped to ask whether or not he owed you anything?

He was still wearily chewing the bitter cud of self-examination when the first cold and colorless light of morning filtered in. He got up, threw a robe around him, and tiptoed down the hall to Magee's room. The door was ajar. He stuck his head in, and whispered, "Fader- Are you awake?"

"Come in, kid," Magee answered quietly. "What's the trouble? No can sleep?"

"No-"

"Neither can I. Sit down, and we'll carry the banner together."

"Fader, I'm going to make a break for it. I'm going Outside."

"Huh? When?"

"Right away."

"Risky business, kid. Wait a few days, and I'll try it with you."

"No, I can't wait for you to get well. I'm going out to warn the United States!"

Magee's eyes widened a little, but his voice was unchanged. "You haven't let that spindly kid sell you a bill of goods, Dave?"

"No. Not exactly. I'm doing this for myself-it's something I need to do. See here, Fader, what about this weapon? Have they really got something that could threaten the United States?"

"I'm afraid so," Magee admitted. "I don't know much about it, but it makes blasters look sick. More range- I don't know what they expect to do about the Barrier, but I saw 'em stringing heavy power lines before I got winged. Say, if you do get outside, here's a chap you might look up; in fact, be sure to. He's got influence." Magee scrawled something on a scrap of paper, folded the scrap, and handed it to MacKinnon, who pocketed it absent-mindedly and went on:

"How closely is the Gate guarded, Fader?"

"You can't get out the Gate; that's out of the question. Here's what you will have to do-" He tore off another piece of paper and commenced sketching and explaining.

Dave shook hands with Magee before he left. "You'll say goodbye for me, won't you? And thank the Doctor? I'd rather just slide out before anyone is up."

"Of course, kid," the Fader assured him.

MacKinnon crouched behind bushes and peered cautiously at the little band of Angels filing into the bleak, ugly church. He shivered, both from fear and from the icy morning air. But his need was greater than his fear. Those zealots had food-and he must have it.

The first two days after he left the house of the Doctor had been easy enough. True, he had caught cold from sleeping on the ground; it had settled in his lungs and slowed him down. But he did not mind that now if only he could refrain from sneezing or coughing until the little band of faithful were safe inside the temple. He watched them pass-dour-looking men, women in skirts that dragged the ground and whose work-lined faces were framed in shawls-sallow drudges with too many children. The light had gone out of their faces. Even the children were sober.