The Highest Treason Read online

  _The Decision__

  Colonel Sebastian MacMaine didn't feel, that morning, as though thisday were different from any other. The sun, faintly veiled by a fewwisps of cloud, shone as it always had; the guards at the doors of theSpace Force Administration Building saluted him as usual; his brotherofficers nodded politely, as they always did; his aide greeted him withthe usual "Good morning, sir."

  The duty list lay on his desk, as it had every morning for years.Sebastian MacMaine felt tense and a little irritated with himself, buthe felt nothing that could be called a premonition.

  When he read the first item on the duty list, his irritation became alittle stronger.

  "_Interrogate Kerothi general.__"

  The interrogation duty had swung round to him again. He didn't want totalk to General Tallis. There was something about the alien thatbothered him, and he couldn't place exactly what it was.

  Earth had been lucky to capture the alien officer. In a space war,there's usually very little left to capture after a battle--especiallyif your side lost the battle.

  On the other hand, the Kerothi general wasn't so lucky. The food thathad been captured with him would run out in less than six months, andit was doubtful that he would survive on Earth food. It was equallydoubtful that any more Kerothi food would be captured.

  For two years, Earth had been fighting the Kerothi, and for two yearsEarth had been winning a few minor skirmishes and losing the majorbattles. The Kerothi hadn't hit any of the major colonies yet, but theyhad swallowed up outpost after outpost, and Earth's space fleet waslosing ships faster than her factories could turn them out. The hell ofit was that nobody on Earth seemed to be very much concerned about itat all.

  MacMaine wondered why he let it concern him. If no one else wasworried, why did he let it bother him? He pushed the thought from hismind and picked up the questionnaire form that had been made out forthat morning's session with the Kerothi general. Might as well get itover with.

  He glanced down the list of further duties for the day. It looked asthough the routine interrogation of the Kerothi general was likely toprovide most of the interest in the day's work at that.

  He took the dropchute down to the basement of the building, to thesmall prison section where the alien officer was being held. The guardssaluted nonchalantly as he went in. The routine questioning sessionswere nothing new to them.

  MacMaine turned the lock on the prisoner's cell door and went in. Thenhe came to attention and saluted the Kerothi general. He was probablythe only officer in the place who did that, he knew; the others treatedthe alien general as though he were a criminal. Worse, they treated himas though he were a petty thief or a common pickpocket--criminal, yes,but of a definitely inferior type._General Tallis, as always, stood and returned the salute. "Cut mawnik,Cunnel MacMaine," he said. The Kerothi language lacked many of thevoiced consonants of English and Russian, and, as a result, Tallis' useof _B__, _D__, _G__, _J__, _V__, and _Z__ made them come out as _P__,_T__, _K__, _CH__, _F__, and _S__. The English _R__, as it ispronounced in _run__ or _rat__, eluded him entirely, and he pronouncedit only when he could give it the guttural pronunciation of the German_R__. The terminal _NG__ always came out as _NK__. The nasal _M__ and_N_ were a little more drawn out than in English, but they were easilyunderstandable.

  * * * * *

  "Good morning, General Tallis," MacMaine said. "Sit down. How do youfeel this morning?"

  The general sat again on the hard bunk that, aside from the singlechair, was the only furniture in the small cell. "Ass well ass coot peexpectet. I ket ferry little exercisse. I ... how iss it set? ... Ipecome soft? Soft? Iss correct?"

  "Correct. You've learned our language very well for so short a time."

  The general shrugged off the compliment. "Wen it iss a matteh of learrnin orrter to surfife, one learrnss."

  "You think, then, that your survival has depended on your learning ourlanguage?"

  The general's orange face contrived a wry smile. "Opfiously. Yourpeople fill not learn Kerothic. If I cannot answerr questionss, I amuff no use. Ass lonk ass I am uff use, I will liff. Not?"

  MacMaine decided he might as well spring his bomb on the Kerothiofficer now as later. "I am not so certain but that you might havestretched out your time longer if you had forced us to learn Kerothic,general," he said in Kerothic. He knew his Kerothic was bad, since ithad been learned from the Kerothi spaceman who had been captured withthe general, and the man had been badly wounded and had survived onlytwo weeks. But that little bit of basic instruction, plus the work hehad done on the books and tapes from the ruined Kerothi ship, hadhelped him._"Ah?" The general blinked in surprise. Then he smiled. "Your accent,"he said in Kerothic, "is atrocious, but certainly no worse than minewhen I speak your _Inklitch_. I suppose you intend to question me inKerothic now, eh? In the hope that I may reveal more in my own tongue?"

  "Possibly you may," MacMaine said with a grin, "but I learned it for myown information."

  "For your own what? Oh. I see. Interesting. I know no others of yourrace who would do such a thing. Anything which is difficult is beneaththem."

  "Not so, general. I'm not unique. There are many of us who don't thinkthat way."

  The general shrugged. "I do not deny it. I merely say that I have metnone. Certainly they do not tend to go into military service. Possiblythat is because you are not a race of fighters. It takes a fighter totackle the difficult just because it is difficult."

  MacMaine gave him a short, hard laugh. "Don't you think gettinginformation out of _you__ is difficult? And yet, we tackle that."

  "Not the same thing at all. Routine. You have used no pressure. Nothreats, no promises, no torture, no stress."

  MacMaine wasn't quite sure of his translation of the last two negativephrases. "You mean the application of physical pain? That's barbaric."

  "I won't pursue the subject," the general said with sudden irony.

  "I can understand that. But you can rest assured that we would never dosuch a thing. It isn't civilized. Our civil police do use certain drugsto obtain information, but we have so little knowledge of Kerothi bodychemistry that we hesitate to use drugs on you."

  "The application of stress, you say, is not civilized. Not, perhaps,according to your definition of"--he used the English word--"_cifiliced__.No. Not _cifiliced_--but it works." Again he smiled. "I said that I havebecome soft since I have been here, but I fear that your civilizationis even softer."

  "A man can lie, even if his arms are pulled off or his feet crushed,"MacMaine said stiffly.

  The Kerothi looked startled. When he spoke again, it was in English. "Iwill say no morr. If you haff questionss to ask, ko ahet. I will nottake up time with furtherr talkink."

  A little angry with himself and with the general, MacMaine spent therest of the hour asking routine questions and getting nowhere, fillingup the tape in his minicorder with the same old answers that others hadgotten.

  He left, giving the general a brisk salute and turning before thegeneral had time to return it.

  Back in his office, he filed the tape dutifully and started on Item Twoof the duty list: _Strategy Analysis of Battle Reports_.

  Strategy analysis always irritated and upset him. He knew that if he'djust go about it in the approved way, there would be noirritation--only boredom. But he was constitutionally incapable ofworking that way. In spite of himself, he always played a little gamewith himself and with the General Strategy Computer.

  The only battle of significance in the past week had been the defenseof an Earth outpost called Bennington IV. Theoretically, MacMaine wassupposed to check over the entire report, find out where the losingside had erred, and feed correctional information into the Computer.But he couldn't resist stopping after he had read the first section:_Information Known to Earth Commander at Moment of Initial Contact_.

  Then he would stop and consider how he, personally, would have handledthe situation if he had been the Earth commander. So many
ships insuch-and-such places. Enemy fleet approaching at such-and-suchvelocities. Battle array of enemy thus-and-so.

  Now what?

  MacMaine thought over the information on the defense of Bennington IVand devised a battle plan. There was a weak point in the enemy'sattack, but it was rather obvious. MacMaine searched until he foundanother weak point, much less obvious than the first. He knew it wouldbe there. It was.

  Then he proceeded to ignore both weak points and concentrate on what hewould do if he were the enemy commander. The weak points were traps;the computer could see them and avoid them. Which was just exactly whatwas wrong with the computer's logic. In avoiding the traps, it alsoavoided the best way to hit the enemy. A weak point _is_ weak, nomatter how well it may be booby-trapped. In baiting a rat trap, youhave to use real cheese because an imitation won't work.

  _Of course_, MacMaine thought to himself, _you can always poison thecheese, but let's not carry the analogy too far._

  All right, then. How to hit the traps?

  * * * * *

  It took him half an hour to devise a completely wacky and unorthodoxway of hitting the holes in the enemy advance. He checked the timecarefully, because there's no point in devising a strategy if thebattle is too far gone to use it by the time you've figured it out.

  Then he went ahead and read the rest of the report. Earth had lost theoutpost. And, worse, MacMaine's strategy would have won the battle ifit had been used. He fed it through his small office computer to makesure. The odds were good.

  And that was the thing that made MacMaine hate Strategy Analysis. Toooften, he won; too often, Earth lost. A computer was fine for workingout the logical outcome of a battle if it was given the properstrategy, but it couldn't devise anything new.

  Colonel MacMaine had tried to get himself transferred to space duty,but without success. The Commanding Staff didn't want him out there.

  The trouble was that they didn't believe MacMaine actually devised hisstrategy before he read the complete report. How could anyone out-thinka computer?

  He'd offered to prove it. "Give me a problem," he'd told his immediatesuperior, General Matsukuo. "Give me the Initial Contact information ofa battle I haven't seen before, and I'll show you."

  And Matsukuo had said, testily: "Colonel, I will not permit a member ofmy staff to make a fool of himself in front of the Commanding Staff.Setting yourself up as someone superior to the Strategy Board is themost antisocial type of egocentrism imaginable. You were given the sameeducation at the Academy as every other officer; what makes you thinkyou are better than they? As time goes on, your automatic promotionswill put you in a position to vote on such matters--provided you don'tprejudice the Promotion Board against you by antisocial behavior. Ihold you in the highest regard, colonel, and I will say nothing to thePromotion Board about this, but if you persist I will have to do myduty. Now, I don't want to hear any more about it. Is that clear?"

  It was.

  All MacMaine had to do was wait, and he'd automatically be promoted tothe Commanding Staff, where he would have an equal vote with the othersof his rank. One unit vote to begin with and an additional unit forevery year thereafter.

  _It's a great system for running a peacetime social club, maybe_,MacMaine thought, _but it's no way to run a fighting force_.

  Maybe the Kerothi general was right. Maybe _homo sapiens_ just wasn'ta race of fighters.

  They had been once. Mankind had fought its way to domination of Earthby battling every other form of life on the planet, from the smallestvirus to the biggest carnivore. The fight against disease was stillgoing on, as a matter of fact, and Man was still fighting the elementalfury of Earth's climate.

  But Man no longer fought with Man. Was that a bad thing? The discoveryof atomic energy, two centuries before, had literally made warimpossible, if the race was to survive. Small struggles bred biggerstruggles--or so the reasoning went. Therefore, the society hadunconsciously sought to eliminate the reasons for struggle.

  What bred the hatreds and jealousies among men? What caused one groupto fight another?

  Society had decided that intolerance and hatred were caused byinequality. The jealousy of the inferior toward his superior; the scornof the superior toward his inferior. The Have-not envies the Have, andthe Have looks down upon the Have-not.

  Then let us eliminate the Have-not. Let us make sure that everyone is aHave.

  Raise the standard of living. Make sure that every human being has thenecessities of life--food, clothing, shelter, proper medical care, andproper education. More, give them the luxuries, too--let no man bewithout anything that is poorer in quality or less in quantity than thepossessions of any other. There was no longer any middle class simplybecause there were no other classes for it to be in the middle of.

  "The poor you will have always with you," Jesus of Nazareth had said.But, in a material sense, that was no longer true. The poor weregone--and so were the rich.

  But the poor in mind and the poor in spirit were still there--inever-increasing numbers.

  Material wealth could be evenly distributed, but it could not remainthat way unless Society made sure that the man who was more clever thanthe rest could not increase his wealth at the expense of his lessfortunate brethren.

  Make it a social stigma to show more ability than the average. Be kindto your fellow man; don't show him up as a stupid clod, no matter howcloddish he may be.

  _All men are created equal, and let's make sure they stay that way!_

  * * * * *

  There could be no such thing as a classless society, of course. Thatwas easily seen. No human being could do everything, learn everything,be everything. There had to be doctors and lawyers and policemen andbartenders and soldiers and machinists and laborers and actors andwriters and criminals and bums.

  But let's make sure that the differentiation between classes ishorizontal, not vertical. As long as a person does his job the best hecan, he's as good as anybody else. A doctor is as good as a lawyer,isn't he? Then a garbage collector is just as good as a nuclearphysicist, and an astronomer is no better than a street sweeper.

  And what of the loafer, the bum, the man who's too lazy or weak-willedto put out any more effort than is absolutely necessary to stay alive?Well, my goodness, the poor chap can't _help_ it, can he? It isn't_his_ fault, is it? He has to be helped. There is always _something_ heis both capable of doing and willing to do. Does he like to sit aroundall day and do nothing but watch television? Then give him a sheet ofpaper with all the programs on it and two little boxes marked _Yes_ and_No_, and he can put an X in one or the other to indicate whether helikes the program or not. Useful? Certainly. All these sheets can betallied up in order to find out what sort of program the public likesto see. After all, his vote is just as good as anyone else's, isn't it?

  And a Program Analyst is just as good, just as important, and just aswell cared-for as anyone else.

  And what about the criminal? Well, what _is_ a criminal? A person whothinks he's superior to others. A thief steals because he thinks he hasmore right to something than its real owner. A man kills because he hasan idea that he has a better right to live than someone else. In short,a man breaks the law because he feels superior, because he thinks hecan outsmart Society and The Law. Or, simply, because he thinks he canoutsmart the policeman on the beat.

  Obviously, that sort of antisocial behavior can't be allowed. The poorfellow who thinks he's better than anyone else has to be segregatedfrom normal society and treated for his aberrations. But not punished!Heavens no! His erratic behavior isn't _his_ fault, is it?

  It was axiomatic that there had to be some sort of vertical structureto society, naturally. A child can't do the work of an adult, and abeginner can't be as good as an old hand. Aside from the fact that itwas actually impossible to force everyone into a common mold, it wasrecognized that there had to be some incentive for staying with a job.What to do?

 
The labor unions had solved that problem two hundred years before.Promotion by seniority. Stick with a job long enough, and you'llautomatically rise to the top. That way, everyone had as good a chanceas everyone else.

  Promotion tables for individual jobs were worked out on the basis oflongevity tables, so that by the time a man reached the automaticretirement age he was automatically at the highest position he couldhold. No fuss, no bother, no trouble. Just keep your nose clean andlive as long as possible.

  It eliminated struggle. It eliminated the petty jockeying for positionthat undermined efficiency in an organization. Everybody deserves anequal chance in life, so make sure everybody gets it.

  Colonel Sebastian MacMaine had been born and reared in that society. Hecould see many of its faults, but he didn't have the orientation to seeall of them. As he'd grown older, he'd seen that, regardless of theposition a man held according to seniority, a smart man could exercisemore power than those above him if he did it carefully.

  A man is a slave if he is held rigidly in a pattern and not permittedto step out of that pattern. In ancient times, a slave was born at thebottom of the social ladder, and he remained there all his life. Onlyrarely did a slave of exceptional merit manage to rise above hisassigned position.

  But a man who is forced to remain on the bottom step of a stationarystairway is no more a slave than a man who is forced to remain on agiven step of an escalator, and no less so.

  Slavery, however, has two advantages--one for the individual, and onewhich, in the long run, can be good for the race. For the individual,it offers security, and that is the goal which by far the greatermajority of mankind seeks.

  The second advantage is more difficult to see. It operates only infavor of the exceptional individual. There are always individuals whoaspire to greater heights than the one they occupy at any given moment,but in a slave society, they are slapped back into place if they acthastily. Just as the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind can beking if he taps the ground with a cane, so the gifted individual cangain his ends in a slave society--provided he thinks out theconsequences of any act in advance.

  The Law of Gravity is a universal edict which enslaves, in a sense,every particle of matter in the cosmos. The man who attempts to defythe "injustice" of that law by ignoring the consequences of itsenforcement will find himself punished rather severely. It may beunjust that a bird can fly under its own muscle power, but a man whotries to correct that injustice by leaping out of a skyscraper windowand flapping his arms vigorously will find that overt defiance of theLaw of Gravity brings very serious penalties indeed. The wise man seeksthe loopholes in the law, and loopholes are caused by other laws whichcounteract--_not defy!_--the given law. A balloon full of hydrogen"falls up" in obedience to the Law of Gravity. A contradiction? Aparadox? No. It is the Law of Gravity which causes the density andpressure of a planet's atmosphere to decrease with altitude, and thatdecrease in pressure forces the balloon upwards until the balance pointbetween atmospheric density and the internal density of the balloon isreached.

  The illustration may seem obvious and elementary to the modern man, butit seems so only because he understands, at least to some extent, thelaws involved. It was not obvious to even the most learned man of, say,the Thirteenth Century.

  * * * * *

  Slavery, too, has its laws, and it is as dangerous to defy the laws ofa society as it is to defy those of nature, and the only way to escapethe punishment resulting from those laws is to find the loopholes. Oneof the most basic laws of any society is so basic that it is never,_ever_ written down.

  And that law, like all basic laws, is so simple in expression and soobvious in application that any man above the moron level has anintuitive grasp of it. It is the first law one learns as a child.

  _Thou shall not suffer thyself to be caught._

  The unthinking man believes that this basic law can be applied bybreaking the laws of his society in secret. What he fails to see isthat such lawbreaking requires such a fantastic network of lies,subterfuges, evasions, and chicanery that the structure itselfeventually breaks down and his guilt is obvious to all. The very stepshe has taken to keep from getting caught eventually become signpoststhat point unerringly at the lawbreaker himself.

  Like the loopholes in the law of gravity, the loopholes in the laws ofsociety can not entail a _defiance_ of the law. Only compliance withthose laws will be ultimately successful.

  The wise man works within the framework of the law--not only thewritten, but the unwritten law--of his society. In a slave society, anyslave who openly rebels will find that he gets squashed pretty quickly.But many a slave-owner has danced willingly to the tune of a slave whowas wiser and cleverer than he, without ever knowing that the tuneplayed was not his own.

  And that is the second advantage of slavery. It teaches the exceptionalindividual to think.

  When a wise, intelligent individual openly and violently breaks thelaws of his society, there are two things which are almost certain:One: he knows that there is no other way to do the thing he feels mustbe done, and--

  Two: he knows that he will pay the penalty for his crime in one way oranother.

  Sebastian MacMaine knew the operations of those laws. As a member of aself-enslaved society, he knew that to betray any sign of intelligencewas dangerous. A slight slip could bring the scorn of the slaves aroundhim; a major offense could mean death. The war with Keroth had thrownhim slightly off balance, but after his one experience with GeneralMatsukuo, he had quickly regained his equilibrium.

  At the end of his work day, MacMaine closed his desk and left hisoffice precisely on time, as usual. Working overtime, except in thegravest emergencies, was looked upon as antisocialism. The offender wassuspected of having Ambition--obviously a Bad Thing.

  * * * * *

  It was during his meal at the Officers' Mess that Colonel SebastianMacMaine heard the statement that triggered the decision in his mind.

  There were three other officers seated with MacMaine around one of thefour-place tables in the big room. MacMaine only paid enough attentionto the table conversation to be able to make the appropriate noises atthe proper times. He had long since learned to do his thinking undercover of general banalities.

  Colonel VanDeusen was a man who would never have made Private FirstClass in an army that operated on a strict merit system. His thinkingwas muddy, and his conversation betrayed it. All he felt comfortable intalking about was just exactly what he had been taught. Slogans,banalities, and bromides. He knew his catechism, and he knew it wassafe.

  "What I mean is, we got nothing to worry about. We all stick together,and we can do anything. As long as we don't rock the boat, we'll comethrough O.K."

  "Sure," said Major Brock, looking up from his plate in blank-facedsurprise. "I mean, who says different?"

  "Guy on my research team," said VanDeusen, plying his forkindustriously. "A wise-guy second looie. One of them."

  "Oh," said the major knowingly. "One of them." He went back to hismeal.

  "What'd he say?" MacMaine asked, just to keep his oar in.

  "Ahhh, nothing serious, I guess," said VanDeusen, around a mouthful ofsteak. "Said we were all clogged up with paper work, makin' reports ontests, things like that. Said, why don't we figure out something to popthose Carrot-skins outa the sky. So I said to him, 'Look, Lootenant,' Isaid, 'you got your job to do, I got mine. If the paper work's pilin'up,' I said, 'it's because somebody isn't pulling his share. And itbetter not be you,' I said." He chuckled and speared another cube ofsteak with his fork. "That settled him down. He's all right, though.Young yet, you know. Soon's he gets the hang of how the Space Forceoperates, he'll be O.K."

  Since VanDeusen was the senior officer at the table, the otherslistened respectfully as he talked, only inserting a word now and thento show that they were listening.

  MacMaine was thinking deeply about something else entirely, butVanDeusen's influence
intruded a little. MacMaine was wondering what itwas that bothered him about General Tallis, the Kerothi prisoner.

  The alien was pleasant enough, in spite of his position. He seemed toaccept his imprisonment as one of the fortunes of war. He didn'tthreaten or bluster, although he tended to maintain an air ofsuperiority that would have been unbearable in an Earthman.

  Was that the reason for his uneasiness in the general's presence? No.MacMaine could accept the reason for that attitude; the general'sbackground was different from that of an Earthman, and therefore hecould not be judged by Terrestrial standards. Besides, MacMaine couldacknowledge to himself that Tallis was superior to the norm--not onlythe norm of Keroth, but that of Earth. MacMaine wasn't sure he couldhave acknowledged superiority in another Earthman, in spite of the factthat he knew that there must be men who were his superiors in one wayor another.

  Because of his social background, he knew that he would probably forman intense and instant dislike for any Earthman who talked the wayTallis did, but he found that he actually _liked_ the alien officer.

  It came as a slight shock when the realization hit MacMaine that hisliking for the general was exactly why he was uncomfortable around him.Dammit, a man isn't supposed to like his enemy--and most especiallywhen that enemy does and says things that one would despise in afriend.

  Come to think of it, though, did he, MacMaine, actually have anyfriends? He looked around him, suddenly clearly conscious of the othermen in the room. He searched through his memory, thinking of all hisacquaintances and relatives.

  It was an even greater shock to realize that he would not be more thanfaintly touched emotionally if any or all of them were to die at thatinstant. Even his parents, both of whom were now dead, were only dimfigures in his memory. He had mourned them when an aircraft accidenthad taken both of them when he was only eleven, but he found himselfwondering if it had been the loss of loved ones that had caused hisemotional upset or simply the abrupt vanishing of a kind of security hehad taken for granted.

  And yet, he felt that the death of General Polan Tallis would leave anempty place in his life.

  Colonel VanDeusen was still holding forth.

  "... So I told him. I said, 'Look, Lootenant,' I said, 'don't rock theboat. You're a kid yet, you know,' I said. 'You got equal rights witheverybody else,' I said, 'but if you rock the boat, you aren't gonnaget along so well.'

  "'You just behave yourself,' I said, 'and pull your share of the loadand do your job right and keep your nose clean, and you'll come out allright.

  "'Time I get to be on the General Staff,' I told him, 'why, you'll betakin' over my job, maybe. That's the way it works,' I said.

  "He's a good kid. I mean, he's a fresh young punk, that's all. He'lllearn, O.K. He'll climb right up, once he's got the right attitude.Why, when I was----"

  But MacMaine was no longer listening. It was astonishing to realizethat what VanDeusen had said was perfectly true. A blockhead likeVanDeusen would simply be lifted to a position of higher authority,only to be replaced by another blockhead. There would be no essentialchange in the _status quo_.

  The Kerothi were winning steadily, and the people of Earth and hercolonies were making no changes whatever in their way of living. Themajority of people were too blind to be able to see what was happening,and the rest were afraid to admit the danger, even to themselves. Itrequired no great understanding of strategy to see what the inevitableoutcome must be.

  At some point in the last few centuries, human civilization had takenthe wrong path--a path that led only to oblivion.

  It was at that moment that Colonel Sebastian MacMaine made hisdecision.