Mack Reynolds - Dawnman Planet

Wyler’s eyes went back to the report. “But to go on with it. Given first assignment with Supervisor Lee Chang Chu and, as a result, was made full agent… Umm, umm, worked with distinction on the planets Kropotkin, Avalon and Palermo. Has become one of Supervisor Jakes’ most trusted field men. Height, weight, ummm, fingerprints, eye pattern, skull measurements.” The Baron looked up. “Some of these statistics come directly from Section G files.”

“All right,” Ronny said in resignation. “You’ve made your point. You have a rather complete dossier on me.”

The Baron put down the report and turned on his charm with a smile. “So we can dispense with preliminaries and get to the point.”

Ronny said, “The point being that the Supreme Commandant of the Planet Phrygia is ambitious to encroach upon the sovereignty of fellow worlds belonging to the United Planets.”

“Which is one way of putting it.” The Baron nodded agreeably. “Tell me, Bronston, what is the eventual goal of this United Planets to which you have devoted your life?”

“The advancement of the human race!”

“Neatly summed up in but six words. But, my dear Bronston, man has made his advances down through the ages in a wide variety of methods. Your knowledge of history must be such that you recognize the contributions of strongmen who have arisen in time of need. The democratic principle does not always apply.”

Ronny said sharply, “My studies have led me to believe that man makes his greatest advances under conditions of freedom.”

“An example?”

The Section G agent groped for a good one. “The Athens of the Golden Age. The Athenian democracy nourished a culture such as had never been seen before, nor since.”

Baron Wyler chuckled. “My dear Bronston, have you never heard of the strongman, Pericles? Besides, calling the Athenian society a democracy is somewhat stretching a point, is it not? For every Athenian citizen free to pursue the arts and sciences, there were a dozen slaves, or more, kept in complete subjugation. Come now, do you contend that if these slaves—who did the drudgery necessary to maintain the leisure of the Athenian citizens—had been given their freedom, been given complete equality, that the Golden Age could have been?”

Ronny looked at him. The Baron was obviously no fool.

The Baron got up, brought the bottle from the bar and refreshed the glasses. The Section G agent was no connoisseur of wine, but, admittedly, this was the most pleasant beverage he could remember drinking. He wondered if it was available on Earth.

The Baron said, “Let me use a somewhat more recent example of strongman versus the mob.”

“I wasn’t exactly advocating mob rule.”

“Indeed? However, remember when the Egyptian Nasser seized power in his country, oh, somewhere about the middle of the 20th Century? His nation had been a backward one, dominated by the big powers, ignored in the world’s councils. When he took over the Suez Canal, all prophesied that the waterway would soon be silted up and impassable. Instead, within a few years, traffic had doubled. Borrowing, begging, securing funds and techniques from every source he could find, he began to industrialize, to irrigate, to find new potentials in his desert country. His soldiers were sent out to fill up the wells in thousands of native communities, supposedly a crime beyond understanding in a desert land. They filled them up and forced the fellahin to dig new wells in places where the water would not be contaminated with sewage. He sent soldiers out and rounded up the children and forced them into schools. Children that otherwise would have been taught nothing further than a few suras from the Koran. These were but a few things done by strongman Nasser.”

Ronny was scowling at him.

The Baron twisted his mouth in deprecation. “At the same time, and on the same continent, the newly emerged nation, the Congo, seemed unable to find an equivalent of Nasser. Instead, in an atmosphere of pseudo-democracy, they went from one barbarism to the next, going backward, rather than progressing. Come now, Citizen Bronston, don’t you think conditions sometimes call for a strongman?”

Ronny put his glass down. Thus far, he had been satisfied to hold his peace, if only to see just how the other was going to bounce the ball.

Now he said, “Interpreting history isn’t my field. I do know this, as Metaxa said, the human race is in the clutch. This is not the time for would-be strongmen to try to seize control of worlds other than their own. We can’t afford the time, nor the energies involved in interplanetary war. And, please don’t attempt to put over the idea that you, or anyone else, could form an empire from the largely individualistic United Planets, without war. Baron Wyler, you saw that charred body of the intelligent alien life form. You heard what Ross…”

The Baron held up a hand to restrain him. He nodded, still agreeable. “Indeed I did. And I was surprised that the estimable Commissioner was in possession of it. However, we could have shown him better examples.”

“Better examples?”

The Baron reached out and touched a switch on the coffee table. One wall of the room clouded, then became a giant screen.

The Baron fiddled with a small dial set into the table.

On the screen, there faded in an extensive laboratory. At least a dozen white-smocked men were working about an operating table. The Baron turned another dial, zooming in on the scene.

Ronny sucked in his breath. Those on the screen were dissecting two bodies of what were obviously specimens of the tiny life form Metaxa had deep frozen.

Another turn of the dial. A new room, more extensive than the last. At least several thousand men—technicians and mechanics—were working away at various benches, on various pieces of equipment: the nature of which, Ronny couldn’t even guess.

The Baron said wryly, “They’re trying to figure out the use of some of the devices, weapons or whatever, that we’ve gleaned from the alien planets.” He snorted his deprecation. “What if you took a squad of Neanderthal men and set them down in a 25th Century laboratory in the midst of all the products that century produced? What do you think they might accomplish?”

Ronny, his eyes bugging still, said, “Is there that much difference?”

“At least,” the Baron told him. “However, as our good Metaxa pointed out at the conference, this culture is not the one we must confront. This culture was destroyed by one beyond.”

Ronny nodded. “That is the basic point, Baron Wyler. That is why the human race doesn’t have the time to bother with ambitious men of the caliber of the Supreme Commandant of Phrygia. We know nothing at all about the culture beyond.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” the Baron said easily. “A taste more wine?”

He had Ronny staring again. “What do you mean by that?”

The Baron waggled a finger at him. “You see, my dear Bronston, we are far, far beyond Section G and its well-intentioned plans to preserve the race. Some time ago, long before the Space Forces exploration force located the alien planets, Phrygian cruisers had found them. Properly masked, of course, we were able to descend and explore. My laboratories have been working on the equipment, and even the bodies of the aliens, as you have seen. We found a few under conditions which had preserved them.”

“But you said something about the power beyond.”

The Baron nodded. “Yes. Our little aliens left enough in the way of photographs to indicate part of what we’re up against.”

“Photographs?”

“Both still photographs and also a tape that one of my more brilliant young men has been able to project. It would seem that our little aliens actually landed upon at least one of the beyond culture’s planets.”