Fred Hoyle - The Black Cloud

“Curiously enough I believe I do. As Geoff Marlowe was saying a few moments ago, you always argue logically, Kingsley, and it’s not logic you need now, it’s an understanding of people. Let’s take your last point first. From what we’ve learned from the Cloud we’ve every reason to believe that it’s going to stay around the Sun for somewhere between fifty and a hundred years. To most people that is as good as saying that it is staying permanently.”

“It’s not the same thing at all. In fifty years there’ll be a considerable change of the Earth’s climate, but it won’t be the same overwhelming change that’ll take place if the Cloud were to stay here permanently.”

“I’m not doubting it. What I’m saying is that to the great majority of people what happens after fifty years, or a hundred years if you like, isn’t of the slightest consequence. And I’ll deal with your other two points by admitting the grave risks that you’ve mentioned.”

“Then you admit my argument.”

“I admit nothing of the sort. Under what circumstances would you follow a policy that involved great risks? No, don’t try to answer. I’ll tell you. The answer is that you would follow a dangerous policy if all alternatives seemed worse.”

“But the alternatives are not worse. There was the alternative of doing nothing, and that would have involved no risk.”

“There would have been the risk of you becoming dictator of the world!”

“Catfish, man! I’m not the stuff dictators are made of. My only aggressive trait is that I can’t suffer fools. Do I look like a dictator?”

“You do, Chris,” said Marlowe. “Not to us, you don’t,” he continued hastily lest Kingsley should burst apart, “but to Washington you probably do. When a man starts talking to them as if they were backward schoolboys, and when it seems as if that same man possesses untold physical power, why then you can’t blame them for jumping to conclusions.”

“And there’s another reason why they would never reach any other conclusion,” added Parkinson. “Let me tell you the story of my life. I went to the right sort of schools, prep school and public school. In these schools the brightest boys are usually encouraged to study the Classics and, although it shouldn’t be I that say so, that’s what happened to me. I won a scholarship to Oxford, did reasonably well there, and found myself at the age of twenty-one with a head stuffed full of unmarketable knowledge, or at any rate unmarketable unless you’re very clever indeed, and I wasn’t that clever. So I entered the Administrative Civil Service, which course led me by stages to my present position. The moral of my life story is that I got into politics quite by accident, not by design. This happens with others too — I’m not unique and don’t aspire to be. But we accidental fishes are very much in the minority and we don’t usually occupy the most influential offices. The great majority of politicians are where they are because they want to be, because they like the limelight, because they like the idea of administering the masses.”

“This is indeed a confession, Parkinson!”

“Now do you see my point?”

“I’m beginning to see through a glass darkly. You mean that the mental make-up of a leading politician is likely to be such that he couldn’t dream it possible that anyone could find the prospect of becoming a dictator wholly unpalatable.”

“Yes, I can see it all, Chris,” Leicester grinned. “Graft everywhere, executions just for the laughs, no wife or daughter safe. I must say I’m glad I’m in on this.”

“In on it?’ said the Russian in some surprise. “Likely to get throat cut.”

“Yes, Alexis, we’ll not go into that just now!”

“Some things are getting a little clearer, Parkinson.” Kingsley went on pacing. “I still don’t understand, however, why the prospect of us dictating to the world, ridiculous as we know it to be, should seem a worse alternative than this dreadful course they’ve actually taken.”

“To Kremlin losing power worst thing,” said Alexis.

“Alexis puts it in a nutshell as usual,” answered Parkinson. “Losing power, utterly and completely, is the most dreadful prospect that a politician can think of. It overshadows everything else.”

“Parkinson, you shock me. I mean it. Heaven knows I think little enough of politicians but I cannot conceive of even the meanest person setting his personal ambitions above the fate of the whole species.”

“Oh, my dear Kingsley, how you fail to understand your fellow men! You know the biblical phrase, “Let not your right hand know what your left hand doeth.” Do you realize what that means? It means keeping your ideas in nice little watertight compartments, never letting them interact and contradict each other. It means that you can go to church one day a week and sin away the other six. Don’t imagine that anyone sees these rockets as a potential extinction for humanity. Not on your life. It’s rather the other way round, a bold stroke against an invader that has already destroyed whole communities and brought even the strongest nations near to disaster. It is a defiant answer of determined democracies to the threats of a potential tyrant. Oh, I’m not laughing, I’m being quite serious. And don’t forget Harry Leicester’s “no wife or daughter safe”. There’s a bit of that in it too.”

“But this is wholly ridiculous!”

“To us, yes. To them, no. It’s only too easy to read your own state of mind into what other people say.”

“Frankly, Parkinson, I think this business must have shaken you out of all good sense. It can’t be as bad as you think. There’s one point that proves it. How did you come to hear about these rockets? From London, didn’t you say?”

“It was from London.”

“Then obviously there’s some decency there.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Kingsley. It’s true that I can’t wholly prove my point, but I suggest that this information would never have reached us if the British Government had been in a position to join the U.S. and the Soviets. You see, we have no rockets to launch. Perhaps you realize that this country is less likely to suffer than others from your presumed rise to world domination. Whatever we like to pretend, Britain is sliding steadily and rapidly down the ladder of world power. Perhaps it wouldn’t be an altogether bad thing for the British Government if they saw the U.S., the Soviets, China, Germany, and the rest being made to toe the line by a group of men domiciled in Britain. Perhaps they feel that they will shine more strongly in your — or, if you prefer, our — reflected glory than they shine at present. Perhaps indeed when it comes to administrative matters they believe that they can hoodwink you into leaving the effective control in their hands.”

“Strange as it may seem, Parkinson, there have been times when I’ve persuaded myself that I am over-cynical.”

Parkinson grinned.

“For once in your life, Kingsley, my dear fellow, I’ll speak to you with a brutal frankness that should have been exercised on you many years ago. As a cynic you’re a dud, a wash-out, a mere playboy. At root, and I mean it quite seriously, you’re a starry-eyed idealist.”

Marlowe’s voice cut in.

“When you’ve finished analysing yourselves, don’t you think we ought to give some consideration to what we ought to do?”

“Like dam’ Chekhov play,” grunted Alexandrov.

“But interesting, and not a little shrewd,” said McNeil.

“Oh, there’s no difficulty about what we ought to do, Geoff. We’ve got to call the Cloud and tell it. That’s the only thing to do from every point of view.”

“You’re quite satisfied about that are you, Chris?”