His sheep. He smiled at them paternally, possessively, as his special vehicle rolled along the howling, face-filled mile between the Hovel of Service and the Educational, Center. His sheep. And these policemen on motorcycles, these policemen on foot whose arms were locked against; the straining crowds every step of the way, these were his sheepdogs. Another kind of domesticated animal.
That’s all he had been, thirty-three years ago, when he’d landed on this island fresh from a rural Service of Security training school to take his first government job as a policeman in Capital City. A clumsy, over-excited sheepdog. One of the least important sheep-dogs of the previous regime’s Servant of All.
But three years later, the peasant revolt in his own district had given him his chance. With his special knowledge of the issues involved as well as the identity of the real leaders, he’d been able to play an important role in crushing the rebellion. And then, his new and important place in the Service of Security had enabled him to meet promising youngsters in the other services — Moddo, particularly, the first and most useful human he had personally domesticated.
With Moddo’s excellent administrative mind at his disposal, he had become an expert at the gracious art of political throat-cutting, so that when his superior made his bid for the highest office in the world, Garomma had been in the best possible position to sell him out and become the new Servant of Security. And from that point, with Moddo puffing along in his wake and working out the minutiae of strategy, it had been a matter of a few years before he had been able to celebrate his own successful bid in the sizzling wreckage of the preceding administration’s Hovel of Service.
But the lesson he had taught the occupants of that blasted, projectile-ridden place he had determined never to forget himself. He couldn’t know how many Servants of Security before him had used their office to reach the mighty wooden stool of the Servant of Alclass="underline" after all, the history books, and all other books, were rewritten thoroughly at the beginning of every new regime; and the Oral Tradition, usually a good guide to the past if you could sift the facts out properly, was silent on this subject. It was obvious, however, that what he had done, another could do—that the Servant of Security was the logical, self-made heir to the Servant of All.
And the trouble was you couldn’t do anything about the danger but be watchful.
He remembered when his father had called him away from childhood games and led him out to the hills to tend the sheep. How he had hated the lonesome, tiresome work! The old man had realized it and, for once, had softened sufficiently to attempt an explanation.
“You see, son, sheep are what they call domestic animals. So are dogs. Well, we can domesticate sheep and we can domesticate dogs to guard the sheep, but for a smart, wide-awake shepherd who’ll know what to do when something real unusual comes up and will be able to tell us about it, well, for that we need a man.”
“Gee, Pa,” he had said, kicking disconsolately at the enormous shepherd’s crook they’d given him, “then why don’t you—whatdoyoucallit-domesticate a man?”
His father had chuckled and then stared out heavily over the shaggy brow of the hill. “Well, there are people trying to do that, too, and they’re getting better at it all the time. The only trouble, once you’ve got him domesticated, he isn’t worth beans as a shepherd. He isn’t sharp and excited once he’s tamed. He isn’t interested enough to be any use at all.”
That was the problem in a nutshell, Garomma reflected. The Servant of Security, by the very nature of his duties, could not be a domesticated animal.
He had tried using sheepdogs at the head of Security; over and over again he had tried them. But they were always inadequate and had to be replaced by men. And —one year, three years, five years in office—men sooner or later struck for supreme power and had to be regretfully destroyed.
As the current Servant of Security was about to be destroyed. The only trouble—the man was so damned useful! You had to time these things perfectly to get the maximum length of service from the rare, imaginative individual who filled the post to perfection and yet cut him down the moment the danger outweighed the value. And since, with the right man, the danger existed from the very start, you had to watch the scale carefully, unremittingly…
Garomma sighed. This problem was the only annoyance in a world that had been virtually machined to give him pleasure. But it was, inevitably, a problem that was with him always, even in his dreams. Last night had been positively awful.
Moddo touched his knee again to remind him that he was on exhibition. He shook himself and smiled his gratitude. One had to remember that dreams were only dreams.
They had the crowds behind them now. Ahead, the great metal gate of the Educational Center swung slowly open and his car rumbled inside. As the motorcycle policemen swung off their two-wheelers with a smart side-wise flourish, the armed guards of the Service of Education in their crisp white tunics came to attention. Garomma, helped nervously by Moddo, clambered out of the car just as the Center Band, backed by the Center Choir, swung into the roaring, thrilling credo of Humanity’s Hymn:
After five verses, protocol having been satisfied, the band began The Song of Education and the Assistant Servant of Education, a poised, well-bred young man, came down the steps of the building. His arm-spread and “Serve us, Garomma,” while perfunctory, was thoroughly correct. He stood to one side so that Garomma and Moddo could start up the steps and then swung in, straightbacked, behind them. The choirmaster held the song on a high, worshipping note.
They walked through the great archway with its carved motto, All Must Learn from the Servant of All, and down the great central corridor of the immense building. The gray rags that Garomma and Moddo wore flapped about them. The walls were lined with minor employees chanting, “Serve us, Garomma. Serve us! Serve us! Serve us!”
Not quite the insane fervor of the street mobs, Garomma reflected, but entirely satisfactory paroxysms nonetheless. He bowed and stole a glance at Moddo beside him. He barely restrained a smile. The Servant of Education looked as nervous, as uncertain as ever. Poor Moddo! He was just not meant for such a high position. He carried his tall, husky body with all the elan of a tired berry-picker. He looked like anything but the most important official in the establishment.
And that was one of the things that made him indispensable. Moddo was just bright enough to know his own inadequacy. Without Garomma, he’d still be checking statistical abstracts for interesting discrepancies in some minor department of the Service of Education. He knew he wasn’t strong enough to stand by himself. Nor was he sufficiently outgoing to make useful alliances. And so Moddo, alone of all the Servants in the Cabinet, could be trusted completely.
In response to Moddo’s diffident touch on his shoulder, he walked into the large room that had been so extravagantly prepared for him and climbed the little cloth-of-gold platform at one end. He sat down on the rough wooden stool at the top; a moment later, Moddo took the chair that was one step down, and the Assistant Servant of Education took the chair a further step below. The chief executives of the Educational Center, dressed in white tunics of the richest, most flowing cut, filed in slowly and stood before them. Garomma’s personal bodyguards lined up in front of the platform.