'With respect to what?'
'With respect,' said Cellioni, with a sudden harshness about his thin lips, 'to our policy toward the Outer Worlds.'
'My editorial attitude represents what I feel and think, Mr. Secretary.'
'I allow this. You have your right to your feelings and your thoughts. Yet it is injudicious to spread them about nightly to an audience of half a billion.'
'Injudicious, according to you, perhaps. But legal, according to anybody.'
'It is sometimes necessary to place good of country above a strict and selfish interpretation of legality.'
Keilin tapped his foot twice and frowned blackly.
'Look,' he said, 'put this frankly. What is it you want?'
The Secretary of Information spread his hands out before him. 'In a word - co-operation! Really, Mr. Keilin, we can't have you weakening the will of the people. Do you appreciate the position of Earth? Six billions, and a declining food supply! It is insupportable! And emigration is the only solution. No patriotic Earthman can fail to see the justice of our position. No reasonable human being anywhere can fail to see the justice of it.'
Keilin said: 'I agree with your premise that the population problem is serious, but emigration is not the only solution. In fact, emigration is the one sure way of hastening destruction.'
'Really? And why do you say that?'
'Because the Outer Worlds will not permit emigration, and you can force their hand by war only. And we cannot win a war.'
'Tell me,' said Cellioni softly, 'have you ever tried emigrating? It seems to me you could qualify. You are quite tall, rather light-haired, intelligent -'
The video-man flushed. He said, curtly: 'I have hay fever.'
'Well,' and the secretary smiled, 'then you must have good reason for disapproving their arbitrary genetic and racist policies.'
Keilin replied with heat: 'I won't be influenced by personal motives. I would disapprove their policies, if I qualified perfectly for emigration. But my disapproval would alter nothing. Their policies are their policies, and they can enforce them. Moreover, their policies have some reason even if wrong. Mankind is starting again on the Outer Worlds, and they - the ones who got there first - would like to eliminate some of the flaws of the human mechanism that have become obvious with time. A hay fever sufferer is a bad egg - genetically. A cancer prone even more so. Their prejudices against skin and hair colors are, of course, senseless, but I can grant that they are interested in uniformity and homogeneity. And as for Earth, we can do much even without the help of the Outer Worlds.'
'For instance, what?'
'Positronic robots and hydroponic farming should be introduced, and - most of all - birth control must be instituted. An intelligent birth control, that is, based on firm psychiatric principles intended to eliminate the psychotic trends, congenital infirmities -'
'As they do in the Outer Worlds -'
'Not at all. I have mentioned no racist principles. I talk only of mental and physical infirmities that are held in common by all ethnic and racial groups. And most of all, births must be held below deaths until a healthful equilibrium is reached.'
Cellioni said, grimly: 'We lack the industrial techniques and the resources to introduce a robot-hydroponic technology in anything less than five centuries. Furthermore, the traditions of Earth, as well as current ethical beliefs, forbid robot labor and false foods. Most of all, they forbid the slaughter of unborn children. Now, come, Keilin, we can't have you pouring this out over video. It won't work; it distracts the attention; it wakens the will.'
Keilin broke in, impatiently: 'Mr. Secretary, do you want war?'
'Do I want war? That is an impudent question.'
'Then, who are the policy-makers in the government who do want war? For instance, who is responsible for the calculated rumor of the Pacific Project?'
'The Pacific Project? And where did you hear of that?'
'My sources are my secret.'
'Then, I'll tell you. You heard of this Pacific Project from Moreanu of Aurora on his recent trip to Earth. We know more about you than you suppose, Mr. Keilin.'
'I believe that, but I do not admit that I received information from Moreanu. Why do you think I could get information from him? Is it because he was deliberately allowed to learn of this piece of trumpery?'
Trumpery?'
'Yes. I think Pacific Project is a fake. A fake meant to inspire confidence. I think the government plans to let the so-called secret leak out in order to strengthen its war policy. It is part of a war of nerves on Earth's own people, and it will be the ruin of Earth in the end.'
'And I will take this theory of mine to the people.'
'You will not, Mr. Keilin,' said Cellioni, quietly.
'I will.'
'Mr. Keilin, your friend, Ion Moreanu is having his troubles on Aurora, perhaps for being too friendly with you. Take care that you do not have equal trouble for being too friendly with him.'
'I'm not worried.' The video man laughed shortly, lunged to his feet and strode to the door.
Keilin smiled very gently when he found the door blocked by two large men: 'You mean, I arn under arrest right now.' 'Exactly,' said Cellioni. 'On what charge?' 'We'll think ot some later.' Kelin left - under escort
On Aurora, the mirror image of the afore-described events was taking place, and on a larger scale.
The Foreign Agents Committee of the Gathering had been meeting now for days - ever since the session of the Gathering in which Ion Moreanu and his Conservative Party made their great bid to force a vote of no confidence. That it had failed was in part due to the superior political generalship of the Independents, and in some part due to the activity of this same Foreign Agents Committee.
For months now, the evidence had been accumulating, and when the vote of confidence turned out to be sizably in favor of the Independents, the Committee was able to strike in its own way.
Moreanu was subpoenaed in his own home, and placed under house arrest. Although this procedure of house arrest was not, under the circumstances, legal - a fact emphatically pointed out by Moreanu - it was nevertheless successfully accomplished.
For three days Moreanu was cross-examined thoroughly, in polite, even tones that scarcely ever veered from unemotional curiosity. The seven inquisitors of the Committee took turns in questioning, but Moreanu had respite only for ten-minute intervals during the hours in which the Committee sat.
After three days, he showed the effects. He was hoarse with demanding that he be faced with his accusers; weary with insisting that he be informed of the exact nature of the charges; throat-broken with shouting against the illegality of the procedure.
The Committee finally read statements at him -
'Is this true or not? Is this true or not?'
Moreanu could merely shake his head wearily as the structure spidered about him.
He challenged the competency of the evidence and was smoothly informed that the proceedings constituted a Committee Investigation and not a trial -
The chairman clapped his gavel, finally. He was a broad man of tremendous purpose. He spoke for an hour in his final summing up of the results of the inquiry, but only a relatively short portion of it need be quoted.
He said: 'If you had merely conspired with others on Aurora, we could understand you, even forgive you. Such a fault would have been held in common with many ambitious men in history. It is not that at all. What horrifies us and removes all pity is your eagerness to consort with the disease-ridden, ignorant and subhuman remnants of Earth.
'You, the accused, stand here under a heavy weight of evidence showing you to have conspired with the worst elements of Earth's mongrel population -'
The chairman was interrupted by an agonized cry from Moreanu, 'But the motive! What motive can you possibly attribute -'
The accused was pulled back into his seat. The chairman pursed his lips and departed from the slow gravity of his prepared speech to improvise a bit.
'It is not,' he said, 'for this Committee to go into your motives. We have shown the facts of the case. The Committee does have evidence -' He paused, and looked along the line of the members to the right and the left, then continued. 'I think I may say that the Committee has evidence that points to your intentions to use Earth manpower to engineer a coup that would leave you dictator over Aurora. But since the evidence has not been used, I will go no further into that, except to say that such a consummation is not inconsistent with your character as displayed at these hearings.'
He went back to his speech. Those of us who sit here have heard, I think, of something termed the "Pacific Project," which, according to rumors, represents an attempt on the part of Earth to retrieve its lost dominions.
'It is needless to emphasize here that any such attempt must be doomed to failure. And yet defeat for us is not entirely inconceivable. One thing can cause us to stumble, and that one thing is an unsuspected internal weakness. Genetics is, after all, still an imperfect science. Even with twenty generations behind us, undesirable traits may crop up at scattered points, and each represents a flaw in the steel shield of Aurora 's strength.