Lloyd Biggle Jr. - The World Menders

“The next time they make me a priest, I’ll bring the robes,” Farrari promised.

The following night they returned to base in a special highspeed passenger platform, and the coordinator found a message waiting for him: he was flatly forbidden to substitute a synthetic relief for one intended for a religious ceremony.

Accompanying the order was a new regulation that forbade tampering with technography.

Farrari did not fully comprehend his blunder until after he returned to base. An IPR agent as the kru’s priest! Such a glittering opportunity should have clipped a few centuries from that two-thousand-year prognostication, and it had slipped away only because Cultural Survey AT/ 1 Cedd Farrari had not bothered to learn the Rasczian language.

He immediately commenced the complete Rasczian series and so immersed himself in the language that when he encountered Ganoff Strunk in the corridor one day the records chief stared at him and exclaimed, “I thought you were still in Scorv!”

Farrari said absently, “No…”

“I have copies for you of the teloids of the interior of the Life Temple. If I’d known you were here, I’d have sent them over.”

“I’ve already seen the place,” Farrari said.

“You’ve seen—” Strunk grinned. “I forgot. Of course—you were inside, you saw it first hand.”

“I saw it,” Farrari said slowly, “but I didn’t look at it. Strange, isn’t it? From the moment I first saw a teloid of the exterior of that temple I’ve wondered what it was like inside. Then when I unexpectedly found myself inside I never thought to look around.”

“I don’t blame you,” Strunk said. “If the priests suddenly hauled me in there with me not knowing what they were up to, I wouldn’t have had much interest in studying art. But it doesn’t matter—our krolc got some excellent shots, including a couple of your performance. Everyone has been admiring your bow. Stop by and pick them up.”

“I will,” Farrari promised.

But he did not feel like working. Impatiently he paced the cluttered confines of his workroom, disregarding tasks left untouched since his Scory adventure, and when he tired of that he went to one of the remote conference rooms and sat looking out at the dazzling sweep of mountain scenery. Liano Kurne found him there. Strunk had sent her to deliver the Life Temple teloids that Farrari had failed to call for; probably he had said, “Give these to Farrari,” and anyone else would have left them in his workroom. She searched the entire base for him so she could place them in his hand.

Farrari thanked her and said he’d look at them when he found time.

“They’re very interesting,” she said.

“I’m sure they are,” Farrari murmured politely. “It’s a very interesting place.”

He turned again to gaze glumly at the mountain scenery. He had unaccountably lost all interest in Branoff IV culture, and it was just occurring to him that for the first time since his arrival he was facing up to the job he was supposed to do.

He had been functioning routinely as a Cultural Survey officer, which was not his assignment. His assignment was to study IPR problems from the Cultural Survey point-of-view. He still didn’t understand what that meant, but he hoped that an awareness of what he was not supposed to do was a step in the right direction.

When finally he turned away he was startled to find Liano waiting, her dark eyes fixed on him expectantly. She held out a small drinking goblet, a lovely thing of gold with an engraved figure on one side, a warrior in his most terrible aspect mounted upon a leaping gril, a bundle of short spears held aloft with one hand while the other poised a spear for throwing.

“That’s marvelous!” Farrari exclaimed.

“Is it good —art?” she asked anxiously.

“It’s splendid art. Where did you get it?”

“An ol gave it to me—to my husband and me. I often wondered where he got it.”

Farrari fingered the goblet in abashed silence.

“We never thought about art,” she went on meditatively. “I suppose that was because we worked with the olz. This is the only thing I ever saw that was art.”

Farrari leaped to his feet and gripped her arm. “That’s it!”

She gazed at him in wonderment.

He released her and continued excitedly, “I’m supposed to be studying IPR problems from the CS point-of-view. The olz are the main IPR problem on this planet, and the olz don’t have any culture! Not in the limited sense of that word, certainly. No art, no music, no literature—no wonder I’ve been beating my head trying to figure out just what I should study. Now I see the answer: nothing. There can’t be a Cultural Survey point-of-view without culture.”

“Couldn’t you give the olz some culture?” Liano asked timidly.

“You can’t give people culture any more than you can ‘give’ them democracy. The olz wouldn’t be able to accept it if it were offered. They’re surrounded by culture, by a quite high level of culture, and they seem completely unaware of it.”

He walked with her as far as the records section, where Ganoff Strunk greeted Farrari with a grin and then thoughtfully watched Liano as she returned to her desk. “They tell me you’ve been bit by the language bug,” he said to Farrari. “Giving up culture?”

“Not entirely,” Farrari said. “Just a moment ago I thought up a new principle for your Field Manual 1048-K: ONLY AN EXCEPTIONALLY TALENTED PEOPLE CAN CULTIVATE A SENSE OF BEAUTY ON EMPTY STOMACHS.”

Strunk laughed merrily. “That’s good. That’s very good. Why don’t you submit it? Did you know that IPR pays a hefty bonus for each suggestion that gets into the manual? The next edition will certainly have a Cultural Survey section, and there’ll be a rare opportunity for someone to acquire wealth. The first edition of a new section includes all the truisms that any idiot could think up. After that it gets progressively more difficult to crack the thing.”

Farrari set his teeth and refrained from telling him what the IPR Bureau could do with its slogan bonuses. “That classification formula you mentioned. High-low and low-high and the rest of it. Political factors over technological factors—wasn’t that the way it went?”

Strunk nodded.

“I wonder if anyone in IPR is aware that the same result could be achieved with a formula that reflects the diffusion of culture through a society. On Branoff IV the lowest class, represented by the olz, doesn’t have any. The upper classes have it all. That’s certainly an unbalanced fraction.”

“Hm-m-m—yes.” Strunk’s bald head bobbed agreement; his eyes fixed on Farrari alertly. “That’s an interesting thought. As our political-technological formula improves, your cultural formula should also improve. Cause and effect.”

“Which is the cause and which is the effect?” Farrari demanded. Strunk’s eyes widened. “Are you suggesting that an improvement in cultural dispersion would bring about a corresponding improvement in the political situation?”

“I don’t know, but why not? It’s easy to think up principles but infernally difficult to apply them.”

“Interplanetary Relations has been aware of that for some time,” Strunk said dryly.

“My hunch is that in every instance where your political-technological formula moves in the direction of improvement, there will be an accompanying improvement in the diffusion of culture.”

“That won’t get you much of an argument,” Strunk said. “THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF SOCIETY BRINGS ABOUT A CORRESPONDING DEMOCRATIZATION OF CULTURE. Of course. Another obvious truism. It’s like saying that daylight accompanies a sunrise. Why don’t you submit that one, too?” He guffawed heartily.