After a surreptitious check up on sewer outlets one evening, he returned to the apartment, to find Sam DeRudder there with another.
John entered the living room and came to an abrupt halt, his eyes bugging. He blurted, “Mister of the Harmons!”
Harmon looked up from where he sat on a comfort chair and said, “The name is Milton, John. Milton Harmon. Milt to my friends—such as they are.”
Sam DeRudder came over from the autobar, drinks in hand. He proffered one to Harmon. “That’s right—you two haven’t seen each other since John’s coming to New Sidon.”
John blurted, “But… but you wear not the robes of the followers of Krishna.”
Harmon’s aging over the past few years had softened considerably his sourness of expression and acidity of voice. He said, and there was a far wistfulness somewhere, “And I am not always sure, John, that I appreciate Sam’s giving me the antidote at the end of my decade rather than letting me take the booster dose.”
“Antidote?” John still flabbergasted, looked from his old enemy back to DeRudder.
Sam DeRudder, amused, handed John the second drink and headed back for the bar to dial himself one. He said, “Take that. You look as though you need it.”
And then, from the bar, “You’ve been assimilating fast these last days, John, but you simply haven’t had the time to pick up all aspects of life beyond Caledonia. You might spend a couple of hours at the communicator checking out soma.”
John was bewildered. “I don’t understand.” He looked at Harmon, as though accusingly. “You mean, you are no longer a worshipper at the Shrine of Kalkin, the false religion against the Holy?”
Harmon said ruefully, “I wouldn’t state it exactly that way.”
Sam DeRudder returned with his drink. “Briefly, John, when soma first came on the scene, the League took a tolerant view, as usual in matters pertaining to religion. However, there were dangerous aspects to the use of soma, which you’re fully aware of and I needn’t go into. League Canons now provide that the initial dosage of soma may not be effective for more than a decade. At that point, they who have taken it have two courses. They may take their booster dose and, ah, continue to follow the path of Lord Krishna. Or they may take antisoma and return, well, to the land of the living.”
Harmon said, a note of deprecation there, “It’s not the way I put it, Sam. Until you have taken soma yourself and walked with the Lord Krishna, you can have no idea of the reality of the experience.”
“However, no, thanks,” DeRudder said. He looked back at John. “Milt Harmon is an old, old associate. When his decade was up, I made sure to be there and made sure he took antisoma, rather than a new charge.”
“And what effect does this antisoma have?”
“It creates a prejudice against dosage of the hallucinogen. Otherwise…” The Sidonian shrugged. “Otherwise, there are few who wouldn’t continue to tread the way of the Avatara of Kalkin and the path of Lord Krishna.”
John finished his drink in one fell gulp but did not take his eyes from Harmon.
That worthy shook his head in self-deprecation. “John Hawk, I suppose I owe you apologies. You see, one effect of a decade spent with Krishna has a permanent aspect Though I am now…” He looked at DeRudder. “… now normal, many of the frailties and shortcomings of my former self have been burnt away or, if you will, cast aside. So then, my apologies for the harm I caused you”—he twisted his mouth ruefully—“or tried to in years past.”
John was saved the necessity of a reply by the musical note of the door.
Sam DeRudder went to answer it and returned with Nadine Pond, brisk and efficient as ever, her recorder slung over her shoulder.
She nodded to those present. “Milt, John. Have you already got underway?”
After coming to his feet to acknowledge her presence, Harmon said, “We’ve just been giving John a rundown on the short and longcomings of soma.”
“Longcomings,” she snorted. “I’ve never been an admirer of the effects of soma on the average person. For some, yes; the mentally upset, perhaps, under proper medical direction.
Milt Harmon reseated himself and said softly, “If you’ve never experienced it, don’t knock it.”
“You should know,” Nadine Pond told him, finding a place for herself in a comfort chair. “However, so far as outfits such as our United Interplanetary Mining sponsoring its use on recalcitrant natives, it defeats its purpose. Those who take soma are not good workers. They lack aggression, ambition, initiative. Perhaps your devoted follower of Lord Krishna is right, but whether or not ambition and aggression are desirable traits, men without them are not good workers. The zombi story is a myth. A zombi would be but worthless, even at brute physical labor. Two mentally and physically healthy men set to work digging a hole would accomplish the task in half the time a squad of zombis would. Why? Because they’d figure out some way to lighten the load which is, after all, on their shoulders. The zombis wouldn’t care.”
“I have heard the argument before, as one promoting free enterprise,” DeRudder said from the autobar, where he was dialing the newcomer a drink.
The assignment clerk-cum-anthropologist was impatient. “Not just free enterprise, or capitalism, which is the less mealy-mouthed term, but any socioeconomic system. Even under chattel slavery that slave who was bright and aggressive and had initiative could get to the top—unless his master was an unbelievably stupid dully. Many an ancient empire was in actuality run by slaves. They might have borne such titles as secretary or major-domo, but they were the brains behind the emperor. The same applied under feudalism. That man with push and brains could overcome the handicap of being born of low degree.”
“So far, you’ve mentioned class divided society.”
“The same applies to a collectivized society. Whenever man works, the bright and aggressive will attempt to make the load lighter, and he is as valuable under socialism, or even anarchism, for that matter, as he is under private ownership. Do you labor under the illusion that when the Russians were abuilding their so-called communist state the bright and efficient, the innovator and progressive, didn’t forge to the top?”
“They had a lot of disadvantages, in that particular example,” DeRudder argued, although not very strongly.
“That they did. But those who thwarted them eventually disappeared from the scene, especially the zombi types. As a Caledonian would say, the proof is there before you. Because they did reach their goals. It took time, but eventually they industrialized and became the second of the world powers of the period, and the reason was that eventually direction eased out of the hands of the politicians, at least on an industrial level, and into the hands of scientists, technicians and engineers.”
DeRudder sighed and lowered himself into his own favorite comfort chair. “So much for soma,” he said. “Let us get to the project at hand.” He looked at John contemplatively. “It’s not up to us to make final decisions, of course. This is simply a preliminary investigation of the possibilities. However, John Hawk, how would you like to be Mayor of New Sidon?”
John, who was even still in a mental whirl over the words of the past fifteen minutes, could only gape.
“Mayor!” he blurted.
Harmon chuckled. Nadine Pond smiled amusement.
“That’s right,” DeRudder nodded.
“But… but if I understand… if what I have been reading this past week… but that’s your equivalent of eldest sachem of a town. Even more than that.”