“?” said Elmis, and entered contemplation, head on his knees.
Presently Drozma sighed. “A time factor, Elmis, or I wouldn’t interrupt your thought. Would the name ‘Benedict Miles’ suit you?”
“‘Miles’ — yes, a nice anagram. Urgent, sir?”
“Maybe. A human child becomes a man more swiftly than one can write a poem. Is your work in such state that you can leave it?”
“Someone else can always go on with it, Drozma.”
“Tell me more about it.”
“Still tracing ethical concepts as lines of growth. Trying to see through the froth of conflicts, wars, migrations, social cleavages, ideologies. I was restudying Confucius when you called me.”
“Tentative conclusions?”
“A few, confirming your own intuition of a hundred years ago: that a genuine ethical revolution — comparable to the discovery of fire, of agriculture, of social awareness — might be in progress about 31,000, and might develop for the necessary centuries. The germs are present. Hard to see, but certainly present, just as the germ of society was latent in pre-language family groups. Of course one can make no allowance for such unpredictables as atomic war, pestilence, a too sudden rise in the water level. Fortunately the dream of security is a human weakness we needn’t share. As a very rash prediction, Drozma, I think Union with them might be possible late in my son’s lifetime.”
“Truly…? Seems very soon, but it’s a refreshing thought. Well, here’s your mission. Observer Kajna came home yesterday. She was overdue, and with the worst of the journey ahead of her, when she had to wait on a train connection in Latimer — that’s a small city in Massachusetts. She spent the time in a park. A nice old gentleman was feeding the pigeons and talking to a boy about twelve years old. Kajna caught the Martian scent. She renewed her scent-destroyer, listened in on the conversation from another bench. The old man was Namir. She’d seen him once using a similar disguise in Hamburg, years ago. You know we try to keep track of the Abdicators so long as it doesn’t interfere with more important work. Kajna happens to feel rather strongly about them. She wanted to follow Namir, she had to get home to us soon, and as she listened a third necessity developed. In the end, when the old man and the boy went different ways, Kajna followed the boy, not Namir. Followed him to a lodging house where he lives. She inquired about a room, enough to start a conversation, pick up a few facts. The boy is the landlady’s only child — Angelo Pontevecchio. The landlady, Rosa Pontevecchio, is — Kajna used the term ‘sweet-minded.’ Not much education, and on a very different psychophysical level; a fat woman in poor health. Kajna saw and empathized enough to suggest valvular heart disease, but wasn’t sure. Well, then Kajna came home. Used her own judgment. As you will have to do.”
“And Namir?”
“Oh, he identified her after all. Mentioned it when he was here.”
“Whatever brought him? More than a century since he resigned.”
“I think, Elmis, he has some rather dirty little plans for Angelo, and wanted to find out what plans we had, if any. We have none, except as they will develop in your good Observer’s mind. The boy may or may not be as potentially important as Kajna felt he was. I hope he is — you know I wouldn’t send you out for a trivial cause. You’re to go there to Latimer, live in or near that lodging house as Benedict Miles. On your own. I must have your independent judgment. That’s why I won’t tell you any more about the child, and I’d rather you didn’t talk with Kajna about the mission before you go. As for Namir, you know the law of 27,140. The Abdicators aren’t to be acted against, so long as they do no positive harm.” Drozma stroked the ork as it rose to stretch squabby legs. His voice shook. “I can imagine situations in which you might have to review the definitions of that cloudy word ‘harm.’ You know also that an Observer must not risk violating human law, unless he is prepared to — to prevent betrayal of Salvayan physiology.”
“Sir, we don’t need euphemism, you and I. I’ll ask Supply to give me a suicide-grenade recheck. And, I think, a spare grenade, unless you object.”
Drozma bit his lip. “I don’t object. I’ve already told Supply to have everything ready for you…. Elmis, the bitterness I saw just now in Namir — I’d almost forgotten such feelings could exist. Be careful. I suppose he’s always in pain. His own thought turns on him and eats him like a cancer. Salvayan pain, remember. No matter how human he acts, don’t ever forget he has our lower threshold of suffering along with our greater endurance. I’m sure he still meditates, though he might deny it. And if his angry heart is set on a thing, he’ll turn aside for nothing except superior force.” Drozma shifted fretfully on his cushion. “It’s an extended mission, Elmis. If you feel you should stay for the whole of that boy’s lifetime, you have my leave. Spare no expense — be sure you draw all the human money you’ll need, and I’ll authorize the Toronto Communicator to honor any emergency requests. But even if you return quite soon I may not be here, so I think I’ll give you this.”
From under his cushion he took a wrapped package, heavy but small. “A mirror, Elmis. Unwrap it and look at it later if you like, not now. An Observer — his name is lost — brought this in 23,965 from the island now called Crete. Bronze — we’ve kept the patina away from the best reflecting side. I don’t suppose it’s the first mirror made by human beings, but surely one of the first. You might want the boy Angelo to look at his face in it. You see, we think it possible that he’s one of those who can learn how to look in a mirror.”
“Ah…! Am I good enough for such a mission?”
“Try to be. Do your best. The peace of the laws be with you.”
part one
The problem of darkness does not exist for a man gazing at the stars. No doubt the darkness is there, fundamental, pervasive and unconquerable except at the pin-points where the stars twinkle; but the problem is not why there is such darkness, but what is the light that breaks through it so remarkably; and granting this light, why we have eyes to see it and hearts to be gladdened by it.
Accept, Drozma, assurance of my continuing devotion. For reasons of safety I write in Salvayan instead of the English you prefer. This report was begun in greater leisure than I now have, and it follows a humanly fashionable narrative form: I had your entertainment in mind, knowing how you relish the work of human storytellers, and I only wish I had their skill. I have blundered, as you will see. The future is clouded, my judgment also. If you cannot approve what I have done and what I still must do, I beg you will make allowance for one who admires human creatures a little too much.
1
The bars are genial in Latimer in 30,963. A warmer life fills the evening streets than on my last visit to the States seventeen years ago. People stroll about more, spend less time rocketing in cars. It was a June Saturday when I reached Latimer, and found the city enjoying its week end snugly. There was peace. A pine-elm-and-maple, baked-beans-and-ancestors, Massachusetts sort of peace, to which I am partial. Getting born in the Commonwealth would help, if one had to be a human being.
Latimer is too far from Boston to be much under the influence of what Artemus Ward called the “Atkins of the West.” Latimer can make its own atmosphere: five large factories, a population over ten thousand, a fairly wealthy hill district, a wrong side of the tracks, two or three parks. The town was more populous a few years ago. As factories become cybernetic they move away from the large centers; the growth is in the suburbs and the countryside. Latimer in this decade is comfortably static — yet not quite comfortably, for there is a desolation in boarded-up houses, a kind of latent grief that few care to examine. In Latimer the twentieth century (human term) rubs elbows with the eighteenth and nineteenth in the New England manner. There is a statue of Governor Bradford half a block from the best movie theater. A restored-colonial mansion peers across Main Street at a rail-bus-and-copter station as modern as tomorrow.