To his surprise, however, the visitor was Freeman. And alone.
He carefully closed the door before speaking; when he did so, it was in a perfectly neutral tone.
“You probably noticed that I authorized the delivery of some refreshments to your quarters last night. I need a stiff drink. Make it whisky on the rocks.”
“I take it you’re not here?”
“What? Oh!” Freeman gave a hideous grin; his facial skin stretched so tight over his bones that it threatened to tear. “Quite correct. The monitors are being fed a wholly convincing set of lies.”
“Then—congratulations.”
“What do you mean?”
“This took a lot of courage on your part. Most people lack the guts to disobey an immoral order.”
Slowly, over several seconds, Freeman’s grin transformed into a smile.
“Goddamn,” he said. “Haflinger or whatever you’d rather call yourself. I fought like hell to stay objective, and I didn’t make it. Turns out I kind of like you. I can’t help it.”
Angrily he kicked around a chair and slumped into it.
A few moments later, over full glasses:
“Tell me something. What reflex got punched by whom to trigger this reaction?”
Freeman bridled. “No need to gibe at me. You can’t take credit for everything that’s happened inside my head.”
“At least you say credit, not blame … I suspect you found out you hate the people who give you your orders.”
“Ah … Yes. I got loaded with my final straw when they decided to bring Kate here. You were right about it not being my idea. So I did as I was told, neither more nor less.”
“So Hartz blasted you for not being smarter than he is. Galling, isn’t it?”
“Worse. Much worse.” Cradling his glass in bony fingers, Freeman leaned forward, staring at nothing. “All argument aside, I do believe that we need wisdom. Need it desperately. I have a conception of how it would be manifest. Hartz doesn’t have it. I think you do. And as to Kate …” The words trailed away.
“Kate Lilleberg is wise. No question of it.”
“I’m obliged to agree.” With a trace of defiance. “And because of it—well, you’ve seen.”
“What else would you expect? I don’t mean that sarcastically, by the way. Just as my recruitment to Tarnover was predictable once they learned of my existence, so her arrest was predictable when I led them to her.”
After a fractional hesitation Freeman said, “I get the idea you stopped classing me as one of them.”
“You absconded, didn’t you?”
“Hah! I guess I did.” He emptied his glass and waved aside the offer of a refill. “No, I’ll fix it. I know where … But it isn’t right, it can’t be right! What the hell did she do to deserve indefinite detention without trial, being interrogated until her soul is as naked as her body? We went off the track somewhere. It shouldn’t have turned out this way.”
“You think I may have notions about a different way?”
“Sure.” This response was crisp and instant. “And I want to hear them. I’ve lost my bearings. Right now I don’t know where in the world I am. You may find it hard to believe, but—well, I’ve always had an article of faith in my personal universe to the effect that maximizing information flow is objectively good. I mean being frank, and open, and candid, telling the truth as you see it regardless of the consequences.” A harsh laugh. “A shrink I know keeps insisting it’s overcompensation for the way I was taught to hide my body as a kid. I was raised to undress in the dark, sneak in and out the bathroom when nobody was looking, run like hell when I flushed the can for fear someone would notice me and think about what I’d done in there … Ah, maybe the poker’s partly right. Anyhow, I grew up to be a top-rank interrogator, dedicated to extracting information from people without torture and with the least possible amount of suffering. Phrase it that way and it sounds defensible, doesn’t it?”
“Of course. But it’s a different matter when the data you uncover are earmarked for concealment all over again, this time becoming the private property of those in power.”
“That’s it.” Freeman resumed his chair, fresh ice cubes tinkling in his refilled glass. “I took on the assignment to interrogate you like any other assignment. The list of charges against you was long enough, and there was one in particular that touched me on a sore spot. Feeding false data into the net, naturally. On top of which I’d heard about you. I moved here only three years ago—from Weychopee, incidentally, the place you know as ‘Electric Skillet’—and even then there was vague gossip among the students about some poker who once faded into the air and never got caught. You’ve become a sort of legend, did you know?”
“Anybody copying my example?”
Freeman shook his head. “They made it tougher to bow out. And maybe no one since your day has turned up with the same type of talent.”
“If so, doubtless he or she would have been drawn to your notice. You’re a person of considerable standing, aren’t you, Dr. Freeman? Or is it Mr. Freeman? I seem to have your measure pretty accurately. I’ll stab for ‘mister.’ ”
“Correct. My degrees are scholarates, not mere doctorates. I’ve always been very proud of that. Like surgeons over in Britain, taking offense at being called Dr. So-and -so. … But it’s irrelevant, it’s superfluous, it’s silly! Know what hit me hardest when I listened to your account of Precipice?”
“Tell me.”
“The dense texture of people’s lives. Filled out instead of being fined down. I’m trained in three disciplines, but I haven’t broadened out as a person from that base. I’ve fined down, focusing all I know along one narrow line.”
“That’s what’s wrong with Tarnover, isn’t it?”
“I—I half see what you mean. Amplify, please.”
“Well, you once defended Tarnover with the argument that it’s designed to provide an optimal environment for people so well adjusted to the rapid change of modern society that they can be trusted to plan for others as well as for themselves. Or words to that effect. But it’s not happening, is it? Why? Because it’s still under the overriding control of people who, craving power, achieved it by the same old methods they used in—hell, for all I know, in predynastic Egypt. For them there’s only one way to outstrip somebody who’s overtaking you. Go faster. But this is the space age, remember. And the other day I hit on a metaphor that neatly sums my point.”
He quoted the case of two bodies each in circular orbit.
Freeman looked faintly surprised. “But everybody knows—” he began, and then checked. “Oh. No, not everybody. I wish I’d thought of that. I’d have liked to ask Hartz.”
“I’m sure. But think it through. Not everybody knows. In this age of unprecedented information flow, people are haunted by the belief they’re actually ignorant. The stock excuse is that this is because there’s literally too much to be known.”
Freeman said defensively, “It’s true.” And sipped his whisky.
“Granted. But isn’t there another factor that does far more damage? Don’t we daily grow more aware that data exist which we’re not allowed to get at?”
“You said something about that before.” Freeman’s forehead creased with concentration. “A brand-new reason for paranoia, wasn’t that it? But if I’m to accept that you’re right, then … Damnation, it sounds as though you’re determined to deevee every single course of action we’ve taken in the past half century.”
“Yes.”
“But that’s out of the question!” Freeman straightened in dismay.
“No, that’s an illusion. A function of a wrongly chosen viewpoint. Take it by steps. Try the holist approach, which you used to decry. Think of the world as a unit, and the developed—the over-developed—nations as analogous to Tarnover, or better yet to Trianon. And think of the most successful of the less-rich countries as akin to those P-A communities which began under such unpromising circumstances yet which are turning out to be more tolerable places to live than most other cities on the continent. In short, what I’m talking about is Project Parsimony writ large: the discontinuation of an experiment that cost far too much to set up and hasn’t paid off.”