Part 5 (1/2)

There were certain brain-cells, too, which had to be excised when they began disagreeing among themselves. Yav-Lorov was one of these; he was put on trial for contra- organicism, convicted without dissent, and brained with an iron mace. Execution by shooting was a useless expenditure of ammunition, and therefore a criminal waste of the resources of the State. His crime appears to have been disagreement with the Citizen First Controller about agrarian policy, again a matter of conservation of the resources of the State.

The resources of the State were the first concern of all; they had to be husbanded and multiplied. Every one of the humanoid resources-the body-cells, in the Citizen- Originator's metaphor-must perform precisely as much work as possible; they must be asked for no more, and they must deliver not one tap less. They must eat and wear and use what was barely necessary for the work they must do. They must reproduce themselves with the same machine-like efficiency with which they produced food and clothing and tools and weapons. After all, their children would be, in a very real sense, the tools and weapons of the State.

They were s.h.i.+fted from job to job, from place to place, from mate to mate, at the dictates of the First Controller and the Board of Deputy Control and the Board of Planning. They owned nothing, not even themselves. It must be said that Zov-Zolkov and his Deputy-Controllers drove themselves as hard as they drove the ”body-cells,” but that merely made the enslavement of Gir-Zashon complete.

In the earlier phases of the Organic State, technological advancement had top priority.

Dov-Soglov, when his thinking had not been distorted by too-rigid adherence to anatomical a.n.a.logies, had been a keen student of political history. He had realized that from the days of the First Sea Empire on Gvarda, the limiting factor upon the growth and survival of every state had been its level of technology, and he had postulated that the state can only grow numerically and geographically to the extent that it has the tools for supplying its subjects, communicating with the edges of its domain, and waging successful war upon its enemies. With this dictum Zov-Zolkov agreed wholeheartedly, not only because it would have been unthinkable for him not to do so, but because, if Dov-Soglov had not said so, he would have thought of it himself.

He established research and development centers; he selected the most intelligent ”body-cells” and trained them to be ”brain-cells”; he collected books on every scientific subject from all around the Central Sea; he imported scientists and technicians fromevery country on the globe and devised methods to encourage them to work for the State.

Steam-turbine engines were improved, and gas-turbine engines designed. Electricity, long a cla.s.sroom demonstration-toy in other lands, was studied and applied to industry and communication; electric lighting and power and the telephone were developed, and eventually the principles of radio were discovered.

Rav-Razkov was Zov-Zolkov's designated successor; after fifteen years as Second- Controller, he began to observe that the Citizen First Controller was growing absent- minded. If the director of the State Brain was beginning to fail, it was Rav-Razkov's clear Organicist duty to amputate him. The amputation was performed with a pinch of fast- acting poison in Citizen Zov-Zolkov's breakfast porridge; thereafter Rav-Razkov was Citizen First Controller.

The Organic State, in Rav-Razkov's. .h.i.therto scrupulously private opinion, had become too static. The body should grow; growth was an inescapable function of organic survival. The growing-pains began to be felt immediately on the neighboring continent of Thurv, still occupied by Zabashan troops. An intense infiltration of Organicist agents was carried on; incidents of conflict between Thurvans and Zabashan soldiers were provoked; atrocity-stories were manufactured and circulated wholesale; old songs and stories of Thurvan nationalism were rummaged out of the rag-bag of the past.

The Thurvan revolution, when it came, was organized and led from the start by Organicists; the Thurvan nationalists had been convinced that the Organic State was only interested in establis.h.i.+ng a friendly independent government on Thurv. A series of apparently spontaneous riots and uprisings was engineered, there were a number of sensational a.s.sa.s.sinations, and the Thurvan Civil War was off to a galloping start.

Naturally, as soon as the Zabashans on Thurv were all either ma.s.sacred or expelled, the Organicists took over; the pattern of their conquest of Gir-Zashon was repeated in detail, and Thurv became the second member of what was now being called the World Organic State. The orders, of course, came from Karkasha, and were transmitted through the ”herdsmen” to the ”cattle” in heavily Gir-Zashonan accents.

Even before the amputation of the former First Controller, a project had been forming in Rav-Razkov's mind. Now that he was in absolute and unquestioned authority, he began to give it his full attention.

Since the inst.i.tution bf the Organic State, in 2052, there had existed between it and the Puzzan version of Tisseism a mutually implacable hostility. ”Religion,” Dov-Soglov had written, ”is a dangerous hypnotic. It deadens the body-cells and prevents their obedience to the brain; it numbs the brain-cells and interferes with their control of the body.”

However, Rav-Razkov considered, even the most dangerous drugs have their uses; no surgeon would care to be without certain hypnotics and anaesthetics, for example. And he had noticed that the organism of Puzzaism had been functioning quite efficiently for a long time; its body-cells, the laity, were entirely submissive to the hierarchical brain- cells. If, in some way, the Organic State could only get control of this marvelous engine of intellectual domination...

He established a select group of young, competent, aggressive ”brain-cells” and put them to conducting an intensive study of Puzzan Tisseism. The secret police discovered a number of underground Puzzan congregations on Gir-Zashon, and were even aware of the ident.i.ty of a Puzzan archpriest, a Nimshan named Varthad, who was hiding at a farming-center along the coast, and who was in regular communication with thehierarchy at Tullon. Rav-Razkov ordered the police to pick up this archpriest and bring him in.

The prelate, when he was arrested, resigned himself to being brained with the state amputation mace, and took what solace he could from the martyr's crown that would be his in the Memory of Vran. Instead, he was conveyed in a fast car to Karkasha and taken directly to the private chambers of Rav-Razkov, where he was courteously invited to sit, and offered wine. Rav-Razkov even performed the supreme courtesy to his guest of drinking first from the bottle.

”Citizen Archpriest,” the First Controller said, ”I have to confess to you; I have been in grievous error.”

Archpriest Varshad started; these were the ritual words of a penitent. The unorthodox mode of address, however, warned him to move cautiously; a warning that was echoed and reinforced by every item of his surroundings.

”Brother First Controller, it is my duty to counsel all those who find themselves in error,” he replied. ”If you will tell me-”

”The writings of the Citizen Originator, Dov-Soglov, were the beginning, not the end, of the Organic State,” Rav-Razkov said. ”Man is indeed a body, and the State must govern and direct its citizens as the brain directs the body. But man is also a soul, and the State is a part of the Mind of Vran, as the individual is a part of the State. To govern , the soul, there must be religion, and as there must be agreement between the body and the soul, so must there be agreement between the State and the religion.”

”But the soul is more than the body, Brother First Controller,” Varthad reminded him timidly. ”It is eternal in the Memory of Vran, and the body perishes.”

”True,” Rav-Razkov agreed. ”So the State must be constructed according to religious principles... the principles of the true religion,” he added with feeling.

Varthad-caught his breath. Was it possible, he wondered, that a miracle had opened the heart of this wicked-no, this spiritually blind-man?

”As I am the First Controller of the State, I must be instructed in the principles of your religion, Citizen Archpriest, If you will stay here, with me- So Varthad was lodged in an apartment in the great building, the former palace of the Princes of Karkasha and now known as the Skull of the State; he was furnished a tailor to make his vestments, and given a dozen servants, all Puzzans. He spent his time teaching Rav-Razkov and his henchmen, and, of course, was in constant communication with Tullon.

Rav-Razkov's only fear was that things were going too well.

The Successor of Puzza, Avaraff XXI, was delighted with the reports which reached him from Varthad at Karkasha. His first glowing hopes of an immediate conversion to the Creed of all Organicist heathendom proved premature; Rav-Razkov was stubborn about relinquis.h.i.+ng some of his un-Vranly errors. He did, however, proclaim freedom of wors.h.i.+p to the followers of Puzza, and, what was almost as good, this grant of freedom was not extended to the Zaithuan heresy; Zaithuans were persecuted with even sterner rigor.

When Rav-Razkov estimated that things had gone about as far as they should, he took his next step, the incitement of war with the Continental Republic of Zabash. Some two or three thousand Zabashan troops had escaped from Thurv after the Civil War; they had carried home with them frightening stories of the new Gir-Zashonah weapons, and of thediscipline and ferocity of the ”volunteers” from Gir-Zashon. The rather loosely organized government of Zabath had fallen; the new government, a.s.suming extra-ordinary powers, had begun a frantic rearmament program, endeavoring to arm and train an army on the Gir-Zashonan pattern.

After a series of provocations and incidents intended to make Zabash appear to be the aggressor, war broke out. There were several spectacular but inconclusive naval battles, and a landing of Gir-Zashonan troops on the coast of Zabash, carefully staged to a.s.sume the appearance of a dangerous invasion. Avaraff XXI, the Successor of Puzza, fell neatly into the trap. He sent an offer of mediation to both the Premier of the Zabashan Re public and the Citizen First Controller. Rav-Razkov accepted at once, with protestations of his deep love of peace. Premier Moganna of Zabash, a pious Puzzan, could do nothing but follow suit. The peace-conference was held at Tullon, under the auspices of the Successor of Puzza and Interpreter of The Books of Tisse.

Rav-Razkov and the puppet First Controller of the Autonomous Organic State of Thurv, the latter a Thurvan Organicist educated at Karkasha. were all sweet conciliation.

Freedom of Puzzan wors.h.i.+p, which, to maintain the fiction of Thurvan autonomy, had not been established on that continent, was promptly decreed, and religious education of children was ordered on both Organicist continents. On Gir-Zashon and Thurv, the heretical Zaithan Confession was formally outlawed. The invasion force was withdrawn from Zabash, but in its place an army of secret agents was infiltrated into the country.

There was a long d.i.c.ker over indemnities, both sides magnanimously claiming to owe the most. In his ecclesiastical quality, Avariff proclaimed that there was nothing in the political principles of Organicism which conflicted with the tenets of Puzzanism or The Books of Tisse. The Organicist Party was given legal recognition in the Zabashan Republic. Rav-Razkov and his followers all announced their conversion to the creed of Puzza.

In the years following Rav-Razkov's rise to power, the technological program inst.i.tuted by Zov-Zolkov had been pus.h.i.+ng forward rapidly. Turbojet aircraft engines were devised, and high-alt.i.tude, high-performance airplanes were developed to use them.

The Organicist State possessed quite a few of them, including some specifically designed as heavy bombers, at the time of the Zabashan War. A few aircraft, mostly light fighters and reconnaissance planes, had been built elsewhere. After the peace of Tullon, Rav- Razkov expanded his plane-production enormously.

In 2078, five years after the Peace of Tullon, war broke out between the Organic States of Gir-Zashon and Thurv and the Kingdoms of Dudak; ostensibly as a result of a dispute over fis.h.i.+ng rights in the Outward Islands. The Dudakans had managed to build a few aircraft on their own, but by this time the Organic States possessed great fleets of them. They had also built large numbers of gas-turbine armored trucks, which carried cannon, rocket-launchers, and flame-projectors. Their standards blessed by Puzzan priests, the armies of Gir-Zashon and Thurv overran Dudak. Between one hot-season and the next, the whole continent was conquered, its cities blasted to rubble by Organicist aircraft.

One exception was the city of Urava, which was spared from bombardment and taken virtually intact by ground-troops. In Urava, Tisse had dictated his Books to Puzza; the building in which he had had his shop was still claimed to be in existence, even though the city had been totally destroyed several times in the twenty intervening centuries. TheShop of the Cobbler was supposed to have been miraculously spared, and was now reverently preserved. It still contained a shoemaker's bench, rather chipped up with the pa.s.sage of time, claimed to be the original. Devout pilgrims often fainted at the sight of it; all sorts of miraculous cures were reported. Little slivers of the original bench were sold to devout pilgrims at a nearby shop run by the Brothers of the Holy Order of The Books of Tisse. It was said that if all the slivers were put together, they would form a bench ten leagues long, two leagues wide, and half a league high.

That the Shop had, for so long, been in heretical hands had always been a burning sorrow to the Successors of Puzza. Now, by the arms of the Tissean Organic State, it was restored to the True Faith.

Rav-Razkov razed everything for blocks around the shop. Thousands of enslaved Dudakans toiled to build a shrine over it, and a huge temple of the Puzzan Creed, and a palace. Then Rav-Razkov sent a battle-fleet to Tullon to escort the Successor to the Holy City, which became both the center of Puzzan Tisseism and the capital of the World Organic State.

Two years later, an election on Zabash, marked by considerable pistol-and-truncheon campaigning, brought the Organicists into power. The conquest of Gvarda, the next year, was more a military parade than a war. Rav-Razkov now felt that his digression into Puzzan Tisseism had served its purpose. The hypnotic of religion could not be phased out, and slowly replaced with a completely secular form of Organicism.

Rav-Razkov's death came as a complete surprise to everyone, and especially Rav- Razkov himself. ”It is not time,” he was heard to murmur with his last breath. His funeral rites were conducted by the new Successor of Puzza, Varthad I, who always held that his deepest satisfaction was that he, personally, had converted the Citizen First Controller to Puzzanism. He was almost as proud of the fact that it was Rav-Razkov who had introduced him to the satisfying logic and inescapable beauty of Or-ganicism. Varthad I lived to see the two become indistinguishable. Rav-Razkov's t.i.tle and position was taken by Tov-Varsor, Puzzan priest as well as a political disciple of Rav-Razkov; he a.s.sumed, on the death of Varthad, the t.i.tle of Successor of Puzza and Dov-Soglov, and Spiritual and Organic Controller. The t.i.tle was eventually shortened to Successor-Controller.

There was a radio receiver at Skystabber Observatory, with its antenna directed to receive any possible signal from s.h.i.+ning Sister. Through the years it had been carefully maintained, its speaker kept turned up. It automatically tuned through the radio spectrum, s.h.i.+fting back and forth from one possible frequency to another. It produced, for almost a century and a half, an uninterrupted gabble of static, which the observatory staff quickly learned to ignore.

So, half a sun-trip after the west-to-east hot season of the year of the Railroad 556, it was some moments before anybody realized that the usual cacophony of whistling, squealing, crackling, and buzzing had briefly been interrupted by indisputable spoken words.

Whoever was nearest the radio jumped for it, tuning back to recapture the signal and then stabbing the frequency-s.h.i.+ft lock b.u.t.ton. More voices were coming in, jabbering excitedly, and there were noises that sounded more like automatic-weapons fire than like any kind of static. One of the observers grabbed a telephone and began calling all the stations on the lower peaks around Skystabber. Others were yelling the news to theliving-quarters. The head observer came running out of his bath, his fur white with soap- lather.

”Should we try to answer it?” a girl asked.

He listened for a minute, and then shook his head. ”No, they're not trying to communicate with us. Those background noises sound like gunfire; probably a gang-fight going on. If we did manage to cut in on their conversation, we'd only mess things up for them, maybe get somebody killed.”

”It certainly does sound like firing,” Kama Tessaro, the Chief a.n.a.lyser, said. ”Mondro Salgarvo was right in his theory about the cause of that black smoke that was sighted back in 416. ,Gavro, do you think we can determine which part of the planet these signals are coming from?”

”We'll play with the directional antenna,” Gavro Kanzalgo said, ”and see what happens.”

”Good,” Kama said, her eyes sparkling. ”If we can pinpoint the signal, or even come close, we can aim the telescope at that point on the Planet's rim. Maybe we can make out something.”

”Gavro! Gavro!” one of the junior a.s.sistants called. ”The head adviser of s.h.i.+ning Sister Combine is on the phone! Can you talk to him?”

”Of course; give me the phone! Why, this is the most wonderful thing ever! Our lovely Sister's children!” There was a hint of tears in Gavro's eyes, and his hand shook as he took the phone from the boy. ”Brando, old friend! Isn't this marvelous!”