Hambro was so tall that when he crossed his legs both feet touched the floor. He had been my teacher during my period of indoctrination and now I realized that I shouldn't have come. Hambro's lawyer's mind was too narrowly logical. He'd see Rinehart simply as a criminal, my obsession as a fall into pure mysticism ... You'd better hope that is the way he'll see it, I thought. Then I decided to ask him about conditions uptown and leave ...
"Look, Brother Hambro," I said, "what's to be done about my district?"
He looked at me with a dry smile. "Have I become one of those bores who talk too much about their children?"
"Oh, no, it's not that," I said. "I've had a hard day. I'm nervous. With Clifton's death and things in the district so bad, I guess ..."
"Of course," he said, still smiling, "but why are you worried about the district?"
"Because things are getting out of hand. Ras's men tried to rough me up tonight and our strength is steadily going to hell."
"That's regrettable," he said, "but there's nothing to be done about it that wouldn't upset the larger plan. It's unfortunate, Brother, but your members will have to be sacrificed."
The distant child had stopped singing now, and it was dead quiet. I looked at the angular composure ot his face searching for the sincerity in his words. I could feel some deep change. It was as though my discovery of Rinehart had opened a gulf between us over which, though we sat within touching distance, our voices barely carried and then fell flat, without an echo. I tried to shake it away, but still the distance, so great that neither could grasp the emotional tone of the other, remained.
"Sacrifice?" my voice said. "You say that very easily."
"Just the same, though, all who leave must be considered expendable. The new directives must be followed rigidly."
It sounded unreal, an antiphonal game. "But why?" I said. "Why must the directives be changed in my district when the old methods are needed -- especially now?" Somehow I couldn't get the needed urgency into my words, and beneath it all something about Rinehart bothered me, darted just beneath the surface of my mind; something that had to do with me intimately.
"It's simple, Brother," Hambro was saying. "We are making temporary alliances with other political groups and the interests of one group of brothers must be sacrificed to that ot the whole."
"Why wasn't I told of this?" I said.
"You will be, in time, by the committee -- Sacrifice is necessary now --"
"But shouldn't sacrifice be made willingly by those who know what they are doing? My people don't understand why they're being sacrificed. They don't even know they're being sacrificed -- at least not by us ..." But what, my mind went on, if they're as willing to be duped by the Brotherhood as by Rinehart?
I sat up at the thought and there must have been an odd expression on my face, for Hambro, who was resting his elbows upon the arms of his chair and touching his fingertips together, raised his eyebrows as though expecting me to continue. Then he said, "The disciplined members will understand."
I pulled Tarp's leg chain from my pocket and slipped it over my knuckles. He didn't notice. "Don't you realize that we have only a handful of disciplined members left? Today the funeral brought out hundreds who'll drop away as soon as they see we're not following through. And now we're being attacked on the streets. Can't you understand? Other groups are circulating petitions, Ras is calling for violence. The committee is mistaken if they think this is going to die down."
He shrugged. "It's a risk which we must take. All of us must sacrifice for the good of the whole. Change is achieved through sacrifice. We follow the laws of reality, so we make sacrifices."
"But the community is demanding equality of sacrifice," I said. "We've never asked for special treatment."
"It isn't that simple, Brother," he said. "We have to protect our gains. It's inevitable that some must make greater sacrifices than others ..."
"That 'some' being my people ..."
"In this instance, yes."
"So the weak must sacrifice for the strong? Is that it, Brother?"
"No, a part of the whole is sacrificed -- and will continue to be until a new society is formed."
"I don't get it," I said. "I just don't get it. We work our hearts out trying to get the people to follow us and just when they do, just when they see their relationship to events, we drop them. I don't see it."
Hambro smiled remotely. "We don't have to worry about the aggressiveness of the Negroes. Not during the new period or any other. In fact, we now have to slow them down for their own good. It's a scientific necessity."
I looked at him, at the long, bony, almost Lincolnesque face. I might have liked him, I thought, he seems to be a really kind and sincere man and yet he can say this to me ...
"So you really believe that," I said quietly.
"With all my integrity," he said.
For a second I thought I'd laugh. Or let fly with Tarp's link. Integrity! He talks to me of integrity! I described a circle in the air. I'd tried to build my integrity upon the role of Brotherhood and now it had changed to water, air. What was integrity? What did it have to do with a world in which Rinehart was possible and successful?
"But what's changed?" I said. "Wasn't I brought in to arouse their aggressiveness?" My voice fell sad, hopeless.
"For that particular period," Hambro said, leaning a little forward. "Only for that period."
"And what will happen now?" I said.
He blew a smoke ring, the blue-gray circle rising up boiling within its own jetting form, hovering for an instant then disintegrating into a weaving strand.
"Cheer up!" he said. "We shall progress. Only now they must be brought along more slowly ..."
How would he look through the green lenses? I thought, saying, "Are you sure you're not saying that they must be held back?"
He chuckled. "Now, listen," he said. "Don't stretch me on a rack of dialectic. I'm a brother."
"You mean the brakes must be put on the old wheel of history," I said. "Or is it the little wheels within the wheel?"
His face sobered. "I mean only that they must be brought along more slowly. They can't be allowed to upset the tempo of the master plan. Timing is all important. Besides, you still have a job to do, only now it will be more educational."
"And what about the shooting?"
"Those who are dissatisfied will drop away and those who remain you'll teach ..."
"I don't think I can," I said.
"Why? It's just as important."
"Because they are against us; besides, I'd feel like Rinehart ..." It slipped out and he looked at me.
"Like who?"
"Like a charlatan," I said.
Hambro laughed. "I thought you had learned about that, Brother."
I looted at him quickly. "Learned what?"
"That it's impossible not to take advantage of the people."
"That's Rinehartism -- cynicism ..."
"What?"
"Cynicism," I said.
"Not cynicism -- realism. The trick is to take advantage of them in their own best interest."
I sat forward in my chair, suddenly conscious of the unreality of the conversation. "But who is to judge? Jack? The committee?"
"We judge through cultivating scientific objectivity," he said with a voice that had a smile in it, and suddenly I saw the hospital machine, felt as though locked in again.
"Don't kid yourself," I said. "The only scientific objectivity is a machine."
"Discipline, not machinery," he said. "We're scientists. We must take the risks of our science and our will to achieve. Would you like to resurrect God to take responsibility?" He shook his head. "No, Brother, we have to make such decisions ourselves. Even if we must sometimes appear as charlatans."