Frank Herbert - High-Opp

O’Brien’s eyes blazed. “Brutality! Is it brutal to…”

“Oh, be quiet,” said Movius, his tone disgusted. “Who’s to be the judge of who we might argue here? Each of us thinks he knows his motives. The truth is, we actually know very little about our motivations and probably care less. The difference between us, O’Brien, is a matter of distance—the distance from our racial roots at which we operate. You’re far away; I’m close.”

“Mmmmm,” said O’Brien.

“And this loyalty index. I’ve been studying that. It really has damned little to do with loyalty.”

“True,” said O’Brien. “The index could be said more truthfully to measure the degree of compassion a person feels for his fellow humans. Loyalty index is a popular catch phrase tacked onto the measurement because the higher the index the greater degree of loyalty to a cause or person.”

“Much of your business is a sham,” said Movius. “I’ve decided that…”

“Ah, yes, the decision,” O’Brien interrupted him. “When did you come to this decision, if I may ask?”

Why would he want to know that? Movius wondered. He shrugged, said, “The other night… in bed.”

“Ahhhh.” O’Brien made the sound as though he had seen a great light.

“More of your stock in trade,” said Movius. “ Ahhhhh . The witch doctor’s mysterious incantation.” He raised his hand as O’Brien started to speak “I just about have you figured, O’Brien. You set me up for this business. You picked me up when I came along, way back before I was Liaitor. You decided that here was something you could use. You…”

“Just a moment.” O’Brien sounded bored. “Why should we want you?”

“In a moment,” said Movius. He turned, marched to the chart which he knew plotted some element of his life. “You want to ride the tiger, O’Brien?” Movius reached up, ripped the chart from the wall. “Then wake up to the fact that your tiger is no longer tame. Prepare yourself for some scratches.”

“You will not leave here alive,” said O’Brien.

Movius smiled at him. “Don’t be rash, O’Brien. Find out your tiger’s strength first. A wounded tiger is much more dangerous than an unwounded tiger.”

“So?”

“This is a fallacy.” Movius kicked the chart on the floor. “No man can be reduced to a line on a chart with any hope that predictions from that line will be infallible. You cannot know what will stimulate a man’s awareness from minute to minute. The person you’ve charted here is many people—the son of a frustrated ex-teacher, a rising executive, a blind young man who lived in a world of his own projections, then the low-opped seeker after revenge, the focus point of a revolution.”

“And now he’s the great lover,” said O’Brien tauntingly. “Movius, you’ve outlasted your usefulness.”

“Is that your latest prediction?”

“Yes. Primarily, because you’ve become aware of your position. We needed you for the figurehead of the revolution. You were valuable as long as you were ignorant of that fact. A man conscious of his own importance to such a movement does not have the reckless courage this job requires.”

“You informed me yourself, you know,” said Movius. He put his hands in his pockets, watched O’Brien.

The Bu-Psych head turned away. “That was my mistake. But it isn’t irreparable. There are other…”

Movius interrupted him with an abrupt, barking laugh. “I warned, O’Brien, not to do anything rash. Listen carefully. I have a dozen men in your organization. They will kill you if you harm me. You have no way of…”

“How could you? You haven’t had the time!”

“Time? What is time? Rather, say I’ve had the opportunity. Now I’m going to tell you my decision. I’m taking over, O’Brien. You’ll listen to how you fit into my plans and you’ll do what I say or else.”

O’Brien sounded more hesitant. “Oh?”

“Today, I started a chain of events which will eventuate in by-passing the master opinion controls.”

“That’s impossible!”

“I’m happy to hear you say that, O’Brien. I’m hoping The Coor et al feel the same way.”

“It is a known scientific fact that the control beam cannot be…”

“Will you shut up?” Movius glowered at the man. “Save your double talk for someone you can impress. Nine years ago in the Comp Section another fellow and I figured out a way to tap the beam. We did it as an exercise for the very reason that people said it couldn’t be done. Then we dropped it because we didn’t see any value in it and knew it would cause a lot of trouble for us. People would want to know why we did it.”

O’Brien’s mouth was open. He closed it with a snap.

“I am about to demonstrate the danger of fixed-pattern thinking. The proper moves have been right in front of your nose for so long you haven’t been able to see them. You see through them.”

O’Brien leaned back against his table. “Do go on.” His tone was patronizing.

“The registration kiosks of the world are controlled from this city,” said Movius. “The small percentage of the population which constitutes a sample is called…”

“If you mean that the questions are formulated here, transmitted from here and computed here, yes, that’s true. But what does that have to do with…”

“What would happen if The Coor’s transmitter fed its questions into a relay station? Let us say that relay station is equipped with a staff of about four of your best semantic analysts, who then take his carefully prepared question and distort it to obtain precisely the answer The Coor does not want. Then this relay station puts the new question back on the beam. Say a three minute delay.”

“It couldn’t be done!”

“Couldn’t it? It’s going to be done. I’ve a crew working on it right this minute.”

O’Brien shrugged. “All right then. You do it. Your interference would work once—maybe twice; then Glass would stop putting questions until he’d smoked you out. And what would you have accomplished?”

“You have it figured the way I figure it,” said Movius. “But you miss the essential point.” He held up a hand, bent down a finger. “We wish to stage a revolution.” Another finger bent down. “One of the government’s strongest points is the inertia—the ‘Oh, what the hell?’ attitude of so many people who don’t feel they have cause to revolt. They’re a millstone around the neck of our revolution. Potential informers, potential enemies every one.” Another finger bent down. “And why? Because the government operates behind a mask of legality which they feel has the semantic label correct. ”

“You sound like Quilliam London,” muttered O’Brien.

“Do I really?” Movius bent his other finger, clenched his hand into a fist. “We take away the government’s major tool of legality and they will be forced to come out from behind the mask. It’s either that or admit they’ve loaded the questions to get their own answers. They’d never do that.”

“Everybody knows that anyway,” said O’Brien.

“You make a common error,” said Movius. “Everybody knows this because I know. Before many people could know this they’d have to admit to themselves that they’d forged their own shackles and raised their own despots. Most people don’t have a strong enough ego to do that. History has never seen such a mass admission. No. People strike out at a scapegoat, someone or something else which absorbs all of the personal guilt.” Movius smiled. “I’m fitting Glass for so tight a hair coat you won’t be able to tell him from a goat—a scapegoat.”

O’Brien straightened. “So you’re taking over. If you think your silly threat against my life is going to make me…”