In a world of order and stability, which in its broad out-lines had not changed for a billion years, it was perhaps not surprising to find an absorbing interest in games of chance. Humanity had always been fascinated by the mystery of the falling dice, the turn of a card, the spin of the pointer. At its lowest level, this interest was based on mere cupidity-and that was an emotion that could have no place in a world where everyone possessed all that they could reasonably need. Even when this motive was ruled out, however, the purely intellectual fascination of chance remained to seduce the most sophisticated minds. Machines that behaved in a purely ran-dom way-events whose outcome could never be predicted, no matter how much information one had-from these phi-losopher and gambler could derive equal enjoyment.
And there still remained, for all men to share, the linked worlds of love and art. Linked, because love without art is merely the slaking of desire, and art cannot be enjoyed un-less it is approached with love.
Men had sought beauty in many forms-in sequences of sound, in lines upon paper, in surfaces of stone, in the move-ments of the human body, in colors ranged through space. All these media still survived in Diaspar, and down the ages others had been added to them. No one was yet certain if all the possibilities of art had been discovered; or if it had any mean-ing outside the mind of man.
And the same was true of love.
Six
Jeserac sat motionless within a whirlpool of numbers. The first thousand primes, expressed in the binary scale that had been used for all aritmetical operations since electronic computers were invented, marched in order before him. Endless ranks of 1’s and 0’s paraded past, bringing before Jeserac’s eyes the complete sequence of all those numbers that pos-sessed no factors except themselves and unity. There was a mystery about the primes that had always fascinated Man, and they held his imagination still.
Jeserac was no mathematician, though sometimes he liked to believe he was. All he could do was to search among the infinite array of primes for special relationships and rules which more talented men might incorporate in general laws. He could find how numbers behaved, but he could not ex-plain why. It was his pleasure to hack his way through the arithmetical jungle, and sometimes he discovered wonders that more skillful explorers had missed.
He set up the matrix of all possible integers, and started his computer stringing the primes across its surface as beads might be arranged at the intersections of a mesh. Jeserac had done this a hundred times before, and it had never taught him anything. But he was fascinated by the way in which the numbers he was studying were scattered, apparently ac-cording to no laws, across the spectrum of the integers. He knew the laws of distribution that had already been dis-covered, but always hoped to discover more.
He could scarcely complain about the interruption. If he had wished to remain undisturbed, he should have set his annunciator accordingly. As the gentle chime sounded in his ear, the wall of numbers shivered, the digits blurred together, and Jeserac returned to the world of mere reality.
He recognized Khedron at once, and was none too pleased. Jeserac did not care to be disturbed from his ordered way of life, and Khedron represented the unpredictable. However, he greeted his visitor politely enough and concealed all trace of his mild concern.
When two people met for the first time in Diaspar-or even for the hundredth-it was customary to spend an hour or so in an exchange of courtesies before getting down to business, if any. Khedron somewhat offended Jeserac by racing through these formalities in a mere fifteen minutes and then saying abruptly: «I’d like to talk to you about Alvin. You’re his tutor, I believe.»
«That is true,» replied Jeserac. «I still see him several times a week-as often as he wishes.»
«And would you say that he was an apt pupil?»
Jeserac thought that over; it was a difficult question to answer. The pupil-tutor relationship was extremely important and was, indeed, one of the foundations of life in Diaspar. On the average, ten thousand new minds came into the city every year. Their previous memories were still latent, and for the first twenty years of their existence everything around them was fresh and strange. They had to be taught to use the myriad machines and devices that were the background of everyday life, and they had to learn their way through the most complex society Man had ever built.
Part of this instruction came from the couples chosen to be the parents of the new citizens. The selection was by lot, and the duties were not onerous. Eriston and Etania had devoted no more than a third of their time to Alvin’s up-bringing, and they had done all that was expected of them.
Jeserac’s duties were confined to the more formal aspects of Alvin’s education; it was assumed that his parents would teach him how to behave in society and introduce him to an ever-widening circle of friends. They were responsible for Alvin’s character, Jeserac for his mind.
«I find it rather hard to answer your question,» Jeserac replied. «Certainly there is nothing wrong with Alvin’s intelligence, but many of the things that should concern him seem to be a matter of complete indifference. On the other hand, he shows a morbid curiosity regarding subjects which we do not generally discuss.»
«The world outside Diaspar, for example?»
«Yes-but how did you know?»
Khedron hesitated for a moment, wondering how far he should take Jeserac into his confidence. He knew that Jeserac was kindly and well-intentioned, but he knew also that he must be bound by the same taboos that controlled every-one in Diaspar-everyone except Alvin.
«I guessed it,» he said at last.
Jeserac settled down more comfortably in the depths of the chair he had just materialized. This was an interesting situation, and he wanted to analyze it as fully as possible. There was not much he could learn, however, unless Khedron was willing to co-operate.
He should have anticipated that Alvin would one day meet the Jester, with unpredictable consequences. Khedron was the only other person in the city who could be called eccentric-and even his eccentricity had been planned by the designers of Diaspar. Long ago it had been discovered that without some crime or disorder, Utopia soon became un-bearably dull. Crime, however, from the nature of things, could not be guaranteed to remain at the optimum level which the social equation demanded. If it was licensed and regulated, it ceased to be crime.
The office of Jester was the solution-as first sight naive, yet actually profoundly subtle which the city’s designers had evolved. In all the history of Diaspar there were less than two hundred persons whose mental inheritance fitted them for this peculiar role. They had certain privileges that protected them from the consequences of their actions, though there had been Jesters who had overstepped the mark and paid the only penalty that Diaspar could impose-that of being banished into the future before their current incarnation had ended.
On rare and unforeseeable occasions, the Jester would turn the city upside-down by some prank which might be no more than an elaborate practical joke, or which might be a calculated assault on some currently cherished belief or way of life. All things considered, the name «Jester» was a highly appropriate one. There had once been men with very similar duties, operating with the same license, in the days when there were courts and kings.
«It will help,» said Jeserac, «if we are frank with one another. We both know that Alvin is a Unique that he has never experienced any earlier life in Diaspar. Perhaps you can guess, better than I can, the implications of that. I doubt if anything that happens in the city is totally unplanned, so there must be a purpose in his creation. Whether he will achieve that purpose-whatever it is-I do not know. Nor do I know whether it is good or bad. I cannot guess what it is.»
«Suppose it concerns something external to the city?»