James Blish - Cities in Flight

However, the die was already cast; the City Fathers had called him the Mayor on the circuit, so Jorn had better be told at once that it was not Hazleton he was talking to. Bluff it out? Possible; but there lay the danger of using the Dirac: the instrument made it possible for any listener to tell Jorn, now or later, whatever facts Amalfi attempted for strategic reasons to withhold—

“READY, MR. MAYOR.”

Well, there was no help for that now. Amalfi said into the microphone:

“Go ahead.”

Immediately, the screen came alight. He was getting old; he had forgotten to tell the City Fathers to limit the call to audio only, so in actuality he had never had the option of withholding his identity. Well, regret was futile; and in fact he watched the face of Jorn the Apostle swimming into view before him with the keenest curiosity.

It was, startlingly, a very old face, narrow, bony and deeply lined, with bushy white eyebrows emphasizing the sunken darkness of the eyes. Jorn had been off the anti-agathics for at least fifty years, if indeed he had ever taken one. The realization was a profound and unexpected visceral shock.

“I am Jorn the Apostle,” the ancient face said. “What do you want of me?”

“I think you should pull off of New Earth,” Amalfi said. It was not at all what he had intended to say; it was in fact wholly contrary to the entire chain of reasoning he had just worked through. But there was something about the face that compelled him to say what was on his mind.

“I am not on New Earth,” Jorn said. “But I take your meaning. And I take it there are many people on New Earth who share your opinion, Mr. Amalfi, as is only natural. This does not affect me.”

“I didn’t expect it to, just as a simple statement of opinion,” Amalfi said. “But I can offer you good reasons.”

“I will listen. But do not expect me to be reasonable.”

“Why not?” Amalfi said, genuinely surprised.

“Because I am not a reasonable man,” Jorn said patiently. “The uprising of my followers on New Earth took place without orders from me; it is a gift which God himself has placed in my hand. That being the case, reason does not apply.”

“I see,” Amalfi said. He paused. This was going to be tougher to bring off than he had dreamed; in fact, he had his first doubt as to whether it could be brought off at all. “Are you aware, sir, that this planet is a hotbed of Stochasticism?”

Jorn’s bushy eyebrows lifted slightly. “I know that the Stochastics are strongest and most numerous on New Earth,” he said. “I have no way of knowing how deeply the philosophy has penetrated the populace of New Earth as a whole. It is one of the things I mean to see stamped out.”

“You’ll find that impossible. A mob of farm boys can’t eradicate a major philosophical system.”

“But how major is it?” Jorn said. “In terms of influence? I admit I have the impression that much of New Earth may be corrupted by it, but I have no certain knowledge that this is so. At the distance from New Earth that I am forced to operate, I may well be magnifying it in my mind, especially since it is so completely antithetical to the Word of God; it would be natural for me to assume that the homeland of Stochasticism is also a ‘hotbed’ of it. But I do not know this to be true.”

“So you will risk the souls of the Warriors of God on the assumption that it is not true.”

“Not necessarily,” Jorn said. “Considering the forces for which you speak, Mr. Amalfi, it is so plainly to your advantage to exaggerate the influence of Stochasticism; your very use of the tool suggests that, since I cannot think you mean me any advantage. I suspect that in actuality the Stochastics, like intellectuals at all times and in all places, are largely out of touch with the general assumptions of the culture in which they are operating; and that the people of New Earth are no more Stochastics than they are Warriors of God or anything else describable as a school of thought. If any label applies, they are simply a people who are no longer describable as Okies.”

Amalfi sat there and sweated. He had met his match and he knew it.

“And if you are wrong?” he said at last. “If Stochasticism is as ingrained on this planet as I’ve tried to warn you it is?”

“Then,” Jorn the Apostle said, “I must take the risk. My Warriors on New Earth are farm boys, as you have pointed out. I doubt that Stochasticism will make much headway with them; they will shrug it off, as contrary to common sense. They will be mistaken in that estimate, but how could they know that? Ignorance is the defense God the Father has given them, and I think it will be sufficient.”

There was the cue. Amalfi could only hope that it had not come too late.

“Very well,” he said, rather more grimly than he had intended. “Events will put us both to the proof; there is no more to be said.”

“No,” Jorn said, “there is this much more: you may actually have meant to do me a service, Mr. Amalfi. If it so proves out, then I will give the devil his due—one must be honest even with evil, there is no other good course. What do you want of me?”

And thus the verbal sparring-match had come so quickly to full circle; and this time there was no way to remain ignorant of, let alone to evade, the purport of the question. It was not political; it was personal; and it had been intended that way from the beginning.

“You could return me three hostages which your blockading fleet is holding,” Amalfi said. His mouth tasted of aloes. “A woman and two children.”

“Had you asked for that in the beginning,” Jorn the Apostle said, “I would have given it to you.” Was it actually pity in his voice? “But you have placed their lives upon the block of your own integrity, Mr. Amalfi. So be it; if I become convinced that I must lose New Earth because of Stochasticism, I will return the three before I withdraw my blockading squadron; otherwise, not. And, Mr. Amalfi—”

“Yes?” Amalfi whispered.

“Bear in mind what is at stake, and do not let your ingenuity overwhelm you. I know well that you are fabulously inventive; but human lives should not hang upon the success of a work of art. Go with God.” The screen was dark.

Amalfi mopped his forehead with a trembling hand. With his last words, Jorn the Apostle had succeeded in telling the whole story of Amalfi’s life, and it had not made comfortable listening.

Nevertheless, he hesitated only a moment longer. Though Jorn had probably already seen through the improvision which had occurred to Amalfi—late enough so that he had been unable to betray that, too, to Jorn over the Dirac for the universe to hear—there was no other course open but to try to carry it through. The alternative which Jorn had proposed actually came out to the same thing in the end: that of transforming a lie into the truth. If this was an art, as Amalfi had good reason to know it was, it was at the same time not a “work of art,” but only a craft; it was Jorn himself now who was committing human lives to the dictates of a work of art, that elaborate fiction which was his religion.

Being careful, this time, to cut the screen out of the circuit in advance, Amalfi called the Mayor’s office.

“This is the Commissioner of Public Safety,” he told the robot secretary. In ordinary times the machine would know well enough that there was no such office, but the confusion over there now must be such that the pertinent memory banks must by now have been by-passed; he felt reasonably confident that the phrase, a code alarm of long standing in the Okie days would get through to Hazleton; as in fact it did in short order.

“You are late calling in,” Mark’s voice said guardedly. “Your report is overdue. Can’t you report your findings in person?”