“Scaling?”
Kargil made adjustments, nudging a delicate assembler that required slippage by some small multiple of hydrogen diameters. “When you build a charge-inverter this size to make antiprotons, you can’t just use your computers and your brains and your technical artistry to shrink what you have; you must reinvent physics. Stars and man and ant and nanomachine all live by different laws. Scale up a nanomotor to ant size and it will fly apart. Scale up an ant to man size and he won’t be able to walk or breathe. Scale up a man to moon size and he will collapse into a sphere. Of course, scaling the other way gets you into the same morass of troubles.” Kargil stabilized his setup behind a forcefield glimmer before dismissing Jama. “Be a good soul and go help Sweet Toes with dinner while I finish up here.”
“Isn’t she asleep with the others?”
“Nope. I just caught her wandering along the gallery from the edge of my eye. I signaled her that you’d be having dinner with us—she and I share a hand-waving code. We can continue our discussion over food. Be patient. I’m leading up to a chat about scaling and politics because you seem to light up like a torch whenever I mention politics. I like people who wish to improve our Second Empire, but I’m not impressed when the enormity of the task is underestimated. A government, working well at, say, the thousand or million or even billion population level, will simply not function at the quadrillion level.”
“But...”
“Sweet Toes needs your help,” commanded the captain of the ship.
So Hyperlord Kikaju Jama found himself in the service chamber with a young lady huddled over the cuisinator muttering to herself “Decisions... decisions... decisions.” When he sat down beside her, she switched on a nearby flat-plate so that he could see the recipe she was contemplating. “I’ve got almost everything I need for Rustamese Chicken Casserole Concoction. I haven’t got ginger. What’s ginger?” “I imagine it’s some kind of spice. My fam informs me that it’s some kind of rootstalk.”
“But what does it taste like?”
“The Galaxy is a big place.”
“I know what that means; it means you don’t knowShe smiled mischievously. “Shall we risk it? The cuisinator says it can fabricate enough gingercells for the recipe in only two or three inamins.” An inamin was the time it took for light to sprint ten billion meters. “We’ll risk it!”
“As long as we have a quaffable beverage standing by for emergencies in case it happens to be a strong spice.”
“The drinking mugs are on the top shelf,” she suggested. “At just your height.”
Later Kargil arrived with his boy in tow. “Freidi, meet
Hyperlord Kikaju Jama. You do not have to salute him, but you do have to show proper respect and pass him the salt when he asks for it.” Freidi gave Jama a shy smile. Not far behind him was the youngest on her three-wheeled pusher pretending that she was a swooshing vac-train. They all sat down in the dining alcove while the Hyperlord served steaming plates.
“Good! I see the ship’s stores are still holding out!” That was the captain’s own manner of saying grace. The ginger turned out to be a success—only Baby Girl demanded cereal flakes instead.
From inside his coat, as if by magic, Kargil produced a round melon for dessert, much to the delight of the children for whom such a succulent treat was a rarity. While he carved it up into slices, he fixed his eyes on Jama but spoke to Sweet Toes as Captain Kargil Linmax. “I’m pleased to hear that you’ve been studying Faraway.”
“You stuffed my fam with Faraway history. How could I avoid it!” she replied scornfully. “I know more about Faraway antiques than you do, I’ll bet you a Mallow Credit Note.”
“Tell our Hyperlord what you know about the original government. He seems to be interested in its forms.”
“You mean when all those scientists were exiled?”
“Yes. How did they manage their affairs?”
“An academic variation of democracy,” she said with her spoon poised over the melon slice.
“How does that work?”
“When there’s too many people to fill an auditorium,” she said with her mouth full, “you elect a representative to sit in the hall for you. The academic variation is when you have tenured representatives.”
“How well did it work?”
“It worked fine. When you’re tenured you don’t have to worry about making a fool of yourself to get reelected. You can make whatever laws you choose.”
“How did it work out in the long run?”
“It didn’t. By the time Cloun-the-Stubbom clobbered Faraway, it was already a tyranny. The Founder predicted that so it doesn’t matter.” She caught her superior officer at just the moment when he was ready to interrupt her with another questioning prompt, and witheringly silenced him by eye-flash before she turned to address their Hyperlord guest. “Has he given you his ‘scaling’ lecture yet?”
“I do believe he has,” said Kikaju. His voice was gentle. She went on doggedly, “So you know what Pm yapping about. Democracy doesn’t scale. Once you’ve conquered a few cubic leagues of space, it is a wheezing ant blown up to elephant size who can’t even lift himself off the floor. I know what an elephant is. Once you’ve conquered a hunk of the Galaxy—that’s ten quadrillion zillion people—a representative doesn’t represent anybody but himself, and that’s the definition of a tyrant.” She didn’t want to say anymore. She wanted to eat her melon so she came to a quick conclusion. “That’s why the First Empire ended up with emperors and why we ended up with Pscholars.”
Hyperlord Kikaju Jama fully understood that the authoritarian old captain had meant this child’s recitation for him as a dig at his interest in quaint political systems of the past. He weighed his answer, more to the man than the young girl. “I’ve always felt the need to explore new forms of government. I think the present tyranny will have to be replaced.” There; he had said it. He watched the old man’s expressive face for a reaction and was willing to continue only when he caught the glint of agreement and a reserved half-smile.
Nevertheless caution ruled Jama’s next sentences. The Fellowship’s eyes were everywhere, feeding samples into psychohistory’s statistical machine. “After fifteen centuries, I believe the Pscholars have lost their vitality. What can we do? When looking for alternatives, it is always wise to review the wisdom of the past. There are myriad forms of possible government, many of them having already been tried. Previously I mentioned to you my interest in the Founder’s early Faraway experiment in government from which the Pscholars have so grievously deviated.”
“It failed” said Kargil, “and the Founder knew in advance that it would fail. Therefore he prepared for us the Pscholars who have not failed. He conceived and shaped this group as merit elitists, the best of the best. They have at no time even pretended to be democratic and will indeed argue compellingly, and accurately in my opinion, that democratic forms will not work on a galactic scale.” He shrugged fatalistically. “Will our Pscholars fail too? Come entropy’s cold watch, they might.”
Later at evensong, when the children had been formally relieved of watch duty in full naval tradition (and by being tucked into bed and kissed), the two men of the incoming watch gathered in the eerie light of the workshop to stare at the growing atomos. After a period of contemplative silence the talk began again, abruptly, at Hyperlord Jama’s instigation. He had decided that an aggressive gambit was needed to open up a whole new phase in the sly game they were playing. “And if they do fail?” he asked, breaking the silence. Jama meant, of course, the psychohistorians.