The Octagonal Raven (25 page)

“You’re right,” she said dryly. “They usually understate problems and overstate happiness and contentment, and they only show what exists now.”

“What problem do you see that the numbers don’t show?” I asked.

“The same one that’s brought down most societies in history—the growing dissatisfaction of most people with the cultural and governmental structure. It hasn’t been this bad since pre-Collapse times.”

I wanted to ask her how she knew…but then, if RennZee were right, she’d seen more than I had, and she was clearly closer to the norms in Tyanjin—or anywhere—than I was.

“It’s getting worse.”

“Why?” I asked. “Maybe most people aren’t pre-selects, but most of the medical and gross hereditary deficiencies are gone. Except for those who choose to be poor—”

“Do the faithies and the netless choose to be poor?” parried Elysa. “Or does their refusal to have the interconnected world intruding into every aspect of their lives doom them to lack of power and comparative poverty?”

“…everyone is healthy. The average norm tests higher than all but the most gifted of the population would have a millennia ago, and he or she lives better, much better,” I pointed out.

“Are you trying to be dense?” she snapped.

I closed my mouth.

“People don’t operate on absolute status, but relative status. Even before the Collapse, something like ninety-nine percent of the people in Noram lived better than all but the richest individuals had as little as two centuries before. Yet the sociologists kept classifying the twenty percent of the population with the least control of resources as poor—even when they would have been considered well-off on other continents. And these people truly believed themselves poor and deprived, and they acted that way.”

I shook my head.

“It’s no different today. Human beings are status animals. We haven’t taken that out of the genes, not with all the pre-selection. No matter how much people have, they consider themselves poor if others have a great deal more.”

That got a shrug of acceptance from me. “Of course.”

“I’d be happier if your calm were based on understanding rather than ignorant complacency.” Her voice could have sliced through the empty platters before us.

I refilled my small teacup and waited.

“Go on….” I finally suggested. Even if her observations were correct, and I was beginning to believe that they were, which was disturbing enough, those observations didn’t offer much insight into why people were trying to kill me, as opposed to Father and Gerrat, but Elysa had also made it quite clear that she wasn’t answering my questions. Not yet, anyway.

“As you pointed out, there’s virtually no difference on a genetic level, that is, between the genetic material of a pre-select—before genetic manipulation—and that of a norm.”

“And?” I asked the question, even though I had a disturbingly clear picture of where her logic was leading.

“You know what I’m going to say. You just won’t admit it.”

“You’re suggesting that great differences in wealth and control of resources are the result of minute differentiations between human beings, and that the majority of those differentiations are created by pre-selection, because it obviates regression to the mean genetically.”

Her eyes were deep and almost sad. “And that means nothing to you?”

“Well…” I suggested. “Since any parent can finance pre-selection, it would also seem that those who don’t are those who refuse to sacrifice for their offspring, and you’re blaming those who are willing to pay for a better chance for their children for the failures of those who won’t.”

“It’s not that simple.
You
come from a family where the cost of pre-selection is a minute fraction of family wealth. You sacrifice nothing, except perhaps a new glider for a year or two or…whatever luxury is de trop at the moment. A less wealthy family gives up all but spartan comfort for close to twenty years for each child that they wish to gift with pre-selection. Don’t talk to me about sacrifice. You don’t even know what it is. You live more modestly than all your family—and less than five percent of the planet could afford what you call an austere life style.”

Except…I didn’t think it was austere, and never would have said that.

“So…you’re suggesting that the world is about to come apart and that there is a pre-select conspiracy which wants to consolidate its power over the communications nets in order to sway public opinion enough to allow it—or the pre-selects—to maintain power?”

Elysa smiled. “You see. It wasn’t that hard to figure out.”

“That still doesn’t say why people are after me.”

“Oh? It doesn’t?” She slid out of the booth.

I scrambled after her.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“I answered your questions, didn’t I?” She turned and drew aside the curtain enough to pass.

“No.”

She ignored me and kept moving.

I didn’t say anything until we were back outside, where the misting rain had stopped, and the clouds were beginning to lift. She had turned back in the general direction of the magtrain station.

“You still haven’t told me why you used the spray on me.”

“You should be able to figure that out. To warn you. I was the one who set up the laser. Do you remember the old lady who was lost?”

“You?”

She nodded. “That way, it made it difficult for people to attack you directly. The wall was clumsy, and you had been prepared.”

“Prepared?”

“You had the special nanites in your system. You still do.” She turned down a side street that was more than an alley.

Outside of a young man in black trousers and a black shirt, lounging against the wall a good hundred meters further on, near where the street dead-ended in a loading dock, the street-like alley was empty.

“But why?”

“To prepare you for what you need to do.”

She extended a card. “You asked about Eldyn. He has the other answers.”

I took the card, and opened my mouth, then jumped sideways as I saw her pull something shiny from her overcoat pocket.

Light flared around me, and I reacted automatically, using scanners and senses to move. The nanites that protected my eyes helped as well.

When I could see, I was fifty meters away…shaking my head.

Elysa was gone, as if she’d never been there.

“Got to be careful with that type…man…blind you and take what she can.” The language wasn’t quite standard, but the nanites came up with a rough translation. The young man looked at me, as if suddenly seeing my height. Then he backed away, and a filament knife came out. “Stay away from me….”

I was only too happy to avoid the filament knife…and I stepped back, my eyes still on the hard-faced youth, but he didn’t move as I eased away, checking the buildings and the muted shadows that suddenly seemed everywhere. There were still crowds on the street that ran between the pre-select wall and who knew where.

I just stood on the corner for a moment, the oblong card in my hand.

There wouldn’t be any point in waiting around her dwelling—if it even happened to be her real dwelling. She could avoid me forever, since she knew Tyanjin and I didn’t.

I looked at the address on the card, and it made no sense to me.

Just like everything else hadn’t. On the surface, none of it made sense. She’d waited around for me to show up—promised me answers, given me a tour of Tyanjin, some philosophy, and an address—and vanished. It all reminded me of the kinds of tests Mertyn used to give, a good thirty years past—bits and pieces, and we were supposed to put them together.

I was a methodizer…and having trouble…with conflagrations, tours of areas filled with resentful norms…

I swallowed—hard, wondering how I could have been so slow. It was like the falling cemetery wall, all over again.

Fledgling: Cedacy, 450 N.E.

My first dwelling had been scarcely that—five small rooms on the bottom of the lower Hill in Vallura, and a glider hangar that had a manual door barely big enough to accommodate my glider—but I’d been determined to live within my projected means. The first year had been tough, but by the third year, I’d found a vacant hectare up for sale near the top of the lower Hill and purchased it. After that, I’d done the rough design myself before getting Kharl’s architect to finish it correctly.

Then, I had to wait to gather funds—none from my inheritance—and find the right builder. Finally, while it was being finished, I took a trip, a very short one compared to what I’d done when I’d mustered out of the Federal Service—and I took the induction tube, far less costly than using the glider.

Along the way, I found myself in Cedacy, the home of Southern University and one of the few places where the effect of the Collapse and the Chaos Years had been minimal. There were even two statuary relics that dated from well before then, untouched—a statuary ring called a Centurium for reasons that the guides couldn’t explain and a larger-than-life-sized bronze of a horse plowing through snowdrifts. According to legend, the horse had somehow made the university possible, although how a horse could have done that escaped me. Then, some legends are just that, and better left unquestioned.

Rhedya’s brother Haywar and his wife lived there, and they’d asked me to dinner at their place, a low and most modest villa that sat halfway up the hill to the west of the university. Since in two days I’d exhausted both uniqueries in Cedacy, neither that good for all their expense, I was looking forward to dinner. I was sitting on the veranda, sipping a beaker of verdyn, enjoying the breeze that brought the scent of pines, when Frydrik approached. He was in his third or fourth year at HMudd University, but on some sort of holiday break.

“Sit down and join me,” I offered.

“Thank you, ser.” Frydrik was twenty-one, green-eyed, broad-shouldered, and bright. He’d gone to the engineering school, as I recalled, although Southern University had a perfectly good engineering school, because of troubles with his PIAT scores and because his parents felt that he needed to get away from home. The young man sat on the edge of the cushion chair, his eyes flicking toward the door from the veranda into the great room.

“How are your studies going?” I asked.

“Does it really matter, ser?”

I could sense the tension in his body, even without the augmentation nanites and my internal systems. “That depends on what you want to do. I’m glad I took all the courses that gave me a basis for being a methodizer.”

“I’m studying EDI, waveguide, lasers, and other communications technologies. I suppose those will come in useful when I go to work for Uncle Gerrat.”

“Do you want to work for UniComm? You don’t sound enthused.” I straightened in the lounge chair and turned toward him. “You don’t have to.”

“I don’t? Mother and Father just finished paying off my pre-select loan last year. I don’t exactly want to spend twenty to thirty years of my life doing that for my children. Especially since I bombed my PIAT. I’m sure you know that.”

“If you have talent enough to be studying advanced communications technologies at HMudd, there are all sorts of opportunities out there,” I pointed out.

“With which enormous organization?”

“I might point out that I’ve managed without becoming part of one.”

“What did it cost you, ser? Twenty-five years when you scarcely saw Earth?”

“Everything has a price, Frydrik. Independence has a higher one. Do you think you’re exempt from the charges life imposes?” I tried to keep the irritation out of my voice.

“You’re just one of the tokens, Uncle Daryn,” Frydrik said mildly. “My father, and all those who think there are real choices in life, they can point to you and say, ‘See. Look at Daryn Alwyn.’ But not everyone has the kind of talents you do. Most of us end up working for some organization or another, and I figure I might as well use the family contacts to work for one that pays well.”

I held back a wince. “There are other talents besides mine. And…anyone can write or compose the sort of thing I do,” I pointed out. “It doesn’t take special equipment. It doesn’t take special access. Almost every school-age child has access to the same equipment I use—or close enough that it makes little difference.”

“Little differences aren’t that little,” Frydrik countered, his voice rising ever so slightly. “Remember, we share something like ninety-eight percent of the DNA of a chimpanzee. And what’s the difference in basic writing and communicating ability between you and the average methodizer? A few percentage points? If that? What makes the difference is the viewpoint, the advantages, the training.”

He was partly right about that, but whole cultures had fallen because they had adopted partial truths. That distinction wasn’t something that did much good to talk about or comm to the entire world. That was something that the First Age hadn’t wanted to understand. And clearly Frydrik didn’t, either, but I had to try. “First, Frydrik, every society has leaders and elites. By definition, societies require them. That’s not a matter of dispute. The dispute is how those elites are developed or selected and how much power they have. Neither tyranny nor mob rule have proven workable. Too much democracy becomes mob rule; too little leads to tyranny, then oppression, and eventually rebellion and bloodshed.” I cleared my throat and risked a glance at my in-law nephew.

He was still listening, I feared, if only to find a point where he could refute me.

“We have developed a system of informally selecting our elites based on perceptual integrative ability, and it works. It’s lasted far longer than any other system, and, under it, people have greater freedoms than ever before in history.”

“And it all rests on a little test that doesn’t even measure everything that a human being is or may do.”

“No, it doesn’t,” I conceded. “And there are many people out there who don’t have that high a PIAT score who lead their fields.” I took a deep breath. “We all know that observing what is and measuring it correctly are not completely accurate. But to try to do so is not a form of bias. It’s a better tool than anything used before.”

“That’s like saying coercion is an improvement over slavery.”

“Inappropriate as the comparison is, there’s some truth in it.” I agreed, then continued. “Forget about tests for a moment. Some people accomplish various tasks better than other people. That can be demonstrated in a variety of skills and professions. In others, accomplishment is less clearly the result of what might be measured as superior ability. I acknowledge that. So will most discerning individuals.” I paused. “Do you think that a choice of occupation should be solely a matter of your choice, regardless of your ability? Do you believe that recognition or rewards should be a matter of chance? Or that the less able should be rewarded, instead of the more able?”

“No.” But his frown remained.

“So…your objection to the current system is what?”

“You pigeonhole people on the basis of tests and judgments before they can demonstrate anything.”

Rather than give an automatic response—that almost everyone pigeonholed people on the basis of fragmentary information—I paused, then almost laughed as I discovered I was fingering my chin, the way my father did. After a moment, I tried to provide a thoughtful answer. “I was an interstellar pilot. Only one in one or two hundred applicants gets picked for training. Less than one in five of those makes it through. The initial selection process is a judgment in advance based on mental and physical tests. The vast majority of those rejected would not make as a good a pilot as those who are chosen. There are doubtless some who are rejected who would make good pilots. Tests and interviews are not infallible. But even the Federal Union does not have the resources to actually try to train those thousands of potential pilots to determine who might be the best. Every few years, the system is reevaluated; it was while I was going through it.” I paused. “Isn’t your objection really that you dislike systems that depersonalize people, that make them digits and test scores?”

“No…it’s that only people like you, even like me, have a chance of fully using the system. Everyone else is at a disadvantage, and yet you and Father and your father—they all pretend that the system is absolutely fair, and absolutely just.”

“It’s not absolutely fair. Nothing is absolutely fair. I agree with you. That isn’t the question. The question is what, if anything, can be done about it. And that goes on both a societal level and on a personal level.” I smiled raggedly. “One reason why I went into the Federal Service was so that I would have more choices. That’s what allowed me to become a freelance methodizer and edartist.”

“You had advantages other people didn’t. How many people have a retirement stipend and inherited stocks and credits to tide them over while they’re trying to establish themselves, to follow their dreams?”

“Frydrik…I shouldn’t tell you this…but you should know. I earned the retirement, and I’ve never touched one credit of what I inherited.”

“But you could,” he pointed out.

“I didn’t.”

“You have all the answers, about how this is the best of all possible worlds.” The young man lifted his eyebrows.

“You’ve cribbed that, Frydrik, but, no, I don’t believe it’s the best of all possible worlds. I do believe that it’s better than any world that’s come before.”

“Ah, yes. The tyranny of the able, and the tyrants define who is able. You and the ancient racists. I thought better of you…. You’re just like my parents. You’re all already inhumed, even though you’re still technically alive.”

“That’s a bit harsh, nephew.”

“It’s accurate, ser. You are inured to the pain of people who are intelligent enough to know what they can never have. You’re blind to the injustice of a system that categorizes people so early that they can’t even have the chance to try for their dreams.”

“I’m not blind to it, Frydrik,” I said gently. “I just don’t have a better system. Anything else that’s been tried is worse.”

“Words…justifications…” He rose with a bow.

“Frydrik…you have some valid points. You don’t like the system.” I stood. “Fine. Don’t just complain. Figure out how to improve it in a way that doesn’t make just your life better, but one that improves it for everyone. Too many revolutions in history made life better for the new elite, and worse for everyone else.” I smiled. “And if you bring me a better idea, I’ll work it into one or more of my edart pieces—if you’d like that.”

“Perhaps I will, ser. Perhaps I will. Thank you for your time.” He bowed, then turned away.

I looked out at the sun-flooded cedar and juniper-covered slopes on the east side of town. Frydrik, alas, had just proven the worth of the PIAT with his failure to understand that a society could not be geared to fulfill all dreams of all people.

And yet…how many Frydriks were there? Was there a tyranny any more absolute than that of pure ability, and if we did refine the systems and tests to better judge people’s potential…would that improve matters? Or increase the feeling of tyranny for those who lacked ability—a fraction of the population that was all too big to ignore and not quite adept enough to be trusted to guide society?

I took a sip of the verdyn. The cinnamint tasted bitter.