“Dr. Mayor,” I said, “you mentioned errors in your first book. What were they? Or what were the important ones? I’ve been thinking back, and I can’t decide.”
“I underestimated progress,” said Mayor shortly. “Señor Hakluyt, you are a stranger in Aguazul. You will therefore be inclined to dispute the dogmatic assertion that this is the most governed country in the world.”
Again that air of throwing down a gauntlet in debate, again that cocking of the head to imply a challenge. I said, “All right — I dispute it. Demonstrate.”
“The demonstration is all about you. We make it our business, first, to know what people think; we make it our business, next, to direct that thinking. We are not ashamed of that, señor, incidentally. Shall we say that — just as specific factors influence the flow of traffic, and you understand the factors and can gauge their relative importance — we now understand many of the factors that shape and direct public opinion? What is a man, considered socially? He is a complex of reactions; he takes the line of least resistance. We govern not by barring socially unhealthy paths, but by opening most wide those paths which are desirable. That is why you are here.”
“Go on,” I invited after a pause.
He blinked at me. “Say rather what is your view. Why is it we have adopted this round-and-round policy of inviting an expensive expert to solve our problems subtly, instead of saying, ‘Do this!’ and seeing it done?”
I hesitated, then counter-questioned. “Is this, then, the extension of an existing policy rather than a compromise between opposed personal interests?”
He threw up his hands. “But naturally!” he exclaimed, as though surprised to find me so obtuse. “Oh, it is ostensibly that there is conflict between one faction and another — but we create factions in this country! Conformism is a slow death; anarchy is a rapid one. Between the two lies a control which” — he chuckled — “like a lady’s corset in an advertisement, constricts and yet bestows a sense of freedom. We govern our country with a precision that would amaze you, I believe.”
His eyes shone suddenly, like a crusader’s faced with the first glimpse of Jerusalem. Like the crusader, too, his fire was somewhat quenched by the fact that his imagined ideal city was far from divine in appearance. But I had no chance to press the questions further; Cordoban, who had been following our talk with an air of repressed boredom, crumbling a roll on his dessert plate, seized his opportunity to interrupt.
“Chess, doctor?” he proposed, and Mayor turned to him with a sardonic expression.
“You wish to try again, Francisco?”
He did not wait for an answer, but snapped his ringers at a passing waiter, who cleared the table and deposited a board and pieces on it. Señora Cortes and Rioco shifted their chairs and bent forward with an air of expectancy which I found it hard to emulate — though a mediocre player myself, I had never found watching chess so fascinating. Obviously, though, these two were old opponents; their first half-dozen moves chased across the board. Then Cordoban, with a smug expression, made a pawn move that departed from the established pattern, and Mayor blinked and rubbed his chin.
“You learn, Francisco — piece by piece you learn,” he rumbled approvingly, and took the pawn. A series of exchanges as devastating as machine-gun fire cleared the board down to essentials, and then the pair of them settled to a long, thoughtful end game with three pawns apiece.
That part of chess had never seemed to me much more enthralling than checkers; obviously, though, Señora Cortes and Rioco did not share my opinion. They were as tense with excitement as fans at a Shield match waiting to see if the third wicket of a hat-trick would fall or not.
It fell. After fifteen or so more moves, Mayor rubbed his chin, shook his head, and indicated the square next to his opponent’s king. The significance of the gesture was lost on me, but the other two watching sighed in unison and Cordoban sat back with a crestfallen expression.
“What you should have done—” said Mayor, rapidly setting an enemy pawn back one square and bringing its neighbor forward. “So!”
We all stared at the board in silence for a few moments. Then Mayor grunted and got to his feet.
“Mañana esta otra dia,” he said comfortingly to Cordoban. “That is enough for today, I think. But there will be another time. Hasta la vista, Señor Hakluyt,” he added, turning to me and putting out his hand. If you have time to spare before you leave Aguazul, perhaps it would interest you to pay another visit here and see how our transmitting system operates.”
I shook hands. “Certainly,” I said. “Thanks for the invitation.”
And that was an invitation I would take up, I told myself. Moreover, from now on I was going to look out rather carefully for proof of these assertions Mayor had made — about Aguazul being the most governed country in the world. It sounded to me like wishful thinking; the system, if indeed it operated at all, could hardly be faultless, if only because it was still necessary to call out the police to break up a riot brewing in the Plaza del Sur on the day of my arrival. Possibly it was true compared with the country’s neighbors or with its own past; I didn’t see that this precision to which Mayor made claim was borne out in practice. Unless — and this possibility I found peculiarly disturbing — unless the government did things like turning out the police simply because the people expected it of them. In that case the underlying assumption was that, if it chose, the government could abolish the meeting in the Plaza del Sur without anyone feeling the need for them afterwards.
Could it be like that? Could it? Angers had said something about Vados’s regime taking seriously the saw that a government stands or falls by its public relations…
I checked myself. I was building a dizzy tower of speculation on secondhand evidence. The only solid facts I had to go on were the fact of my being here, the nature of the job I’d been given, and what I had been able to find out with my own observation. And those combined to indicate that — Mayor’s assertions to the contrary — the government of Aguazul was a reasonably beneficent authoritarian regime, competently administering a rather prosperous country without treading so hard on anyone’s feet that people felt it worth the trouble of changing it. Twenty years’ duration testified to the success of the formula they used — Mayor’s, or whoever else’s it might be.
But “the most governed country in the world”? That was to be taken with a grain of salt.
VIII
“So you starred in a television program yesterday, Señor Hakluyt,” said a quiet, husky voice near me. I looked up from the paper I was reading with my breakfast coffee in the lounge of the Hotel del Principe and saw Maria Posador.
“Buenos días, señora,” I said, indicating the empty chair beside me. “Yes, as a matter of fact I did. You saw the program?”
She sat down, unsmiling, not taking her eyes from my face. “No, I only heard about it,” she said. “It is too dangerous to watch television in Aguazul.”
“Too dangerous?”
She nodded. “You are a stranger in Vados, señor. I cannot blame you for that. But there is information I think it is my duty to give you.”
I searched her exquisite face for a hint of the real meaning behind her obscure words and failed. “Go ahead,” I shrugged. “I’m always willing to listen. Cigarette?”