Gordon Dickson - Wolfling

Once more Heinman held a whispered consultation with the Governor. This time when it broke off, however, both men looked annoyed and a little dissatisfied.

“Are you trying to tell us, Mr. Keil,” said Heinman, and it was more of an honest, open demand for information than any of the questions the Committee chairman had asked Jim earlier, “that all the actions you took on the Throne World were justified, not merely for the good of the Emperor there, but for the good of the people of Earth back here?”

“Yes,” said Jim.

“I’d like to believe you,” said Heinman, and at the moment it sounded as if he actually would have liked to believe Jim. “But you’re asking us to take a great deal on faith. Not the least of which is how you could come to know the plans of this Prince Galyan, when they necessarily must have been kept extremely secret.”

“They were kept secret,” said Jim. “Certain of the Governors and Nobles on the Colony Worlds”—his eyes lingered for a second on the Alpha Centauran Governor—“had to know about his plan to get rid of the Starkiens. The Princess Afuan and Melness, the master servant in the Throne World palace, had to know other parts. But as much as possible, Galyan told nobody but himself.”

“Then how could you find out?” demanded another member of the Committee—a short-bodied, fat man in high middle age whom Jim did not recognize.

“I’m an anthropologist,” said Jim dryly. “My main field of interest is human culture, in all its types and variations. And there’s a certain limit to the variations that can take place in human culture, given concentrated population, no matter how advanced the culture may be. The social arrangement of the High-born on the Throne World, and the social arrangements of the Nobles on the Colony Worlds, which mirrored the Throne World arrangement, were at odds with the cultural level which the High-born themselves believed they had achieved. The High-born—and the colonial Nobles in imitation—were split into small artificial cliques or groups which operated essentially like noyaux .”

Jim paused and waited for them to ask him what noyaux were. Heinman did.

“The French ethnologist Jean-Jacques Petter coined the term noyau as a label for a society of inward antagonism,” Jim answered. “Robert Ardrey, writing some years later, identified it as a ‘neighborhood of territorial proprietors bound together by a dear-enemy relationship.’ The Callicebus monkey is an example of the noyau in nature. Each Callicebus family spends its time, apart from eating and sleeping, in going to the borders of that territory which they had marked out for their own among the general treetops and engaging in screaming and threatening with the adjoining family of Callicebus, who have also come to their boundary so that the display of antagonism can take place. This, except for the fact that physical territory was replaced by ‘position’ and screaming and threats were replaced by intrigue to make the next person or group lose status among his fellows, exemplifies the noyau -likesituation existing among the High-born on the Throne World. The only ones exempt from it were those like the High-born Ro, because she was an atavism—a throwback at a time when the High-born specialized physical and mental type was not yet fully developed—and therefore the others considered her not able to compete… Although, she was.”

Jim paused again. For a moment no one on the Committee said anything. Then Heinman spoke again.

“A little earlier,” he said, “you were likening these High-born to superior beings, compared to us here on Earth. Now you’re comparing them to a society of monkeys. They can’t be both.”

“Oh, yes, they can,” said Jim. “Ardrey also made the statement that ‘nations produce heroes, noyaux geniuses.’ In the case of the Throne World, which set the pattern for the colonial Governors and Nobles, the process was reversed. Geniuses made noyaux. The Callicebus monkey lives in what is essentially a utopia. Food and drink are right at hand for him on the trees. Just so, the High-born on the Throne World also lived in a utopia where their technology took care of every possible physical need or want they could have. Normally, under utopian conditions, they should have grown soft and become easy prey to the members of the human race on the Colony Worlds who did not have it quite so soft. That’s the historical turnover of society, in which an aristocracy weakens and becomes supplanted by those from below.”

“Why didn’t it happen with the Highborn?” asked Heinman.

“Because they succeeded in achieving something unique—a practical, self-perpetuating aristocracy,” said Jim. “The Empire began by pooling all its best minds on the planet that was later to become the Throne World. When it became the Throne World, it still drew to it anyone of unusual talent who appeared on any of the other worlds. This gave it a small trickle, a small but continuous supply, of new blood. In addition to this, the aristocracy that developed on the Throne World and became the High-born did something earlier aristocracies never were able to do. It required each member of the aristocracy to know everything there was to know about the technology that made the Empire work. In other words, the High-born were not merely pan-geniuses, they were pan-authorities. The High-born Ro, behind me now, given time, materials, and labor, could turn the Earth into a complete small duplicate of the Empire in every technological respect.”

Heinman frowned.

“I don’t see the connection between this, and their being noyaux,” the chairman said.

“An indefinitely self-perpetuating aristocracy,” said Jim, “runs counter to the instinctive process of human evolution. In effect, it creates an artificial situation in which social, and therefore individual, evolution can’t take place. Such an aristocracy, while it can’t be destroyed from the outside, therefore has to end up destroying itself. In short—the High-born after certain lengths of time had no alternative than to begin to become decadent. And they are decadent.”

The Governor leaned over urgently to whisper in Heinman’s ear. But Heinman shrugged him off almost angrily.

“…As soon as I realized they were decadent,” said Jim, keeping his eye not only on Heinman, but on the Governor, “I realized that the seeds of the destruction of their Empire were already sown. The noyaux into which their social patterns had degenerated were evidence of that decadence. In other words, within a few centuries at most, the Empire would start to break up, and no one there would have any time to bother with us back here on Earth. Unfortunately, at the same time, I discovered Galyan’s plan to seize power for himself. Not all the High-born were ideally satisfied by the outlet the noyaux gave their emotions and hungers. A few individuals—like Galyan, and Slothiel, and Vhotan—wanted and needed the real thing in the matter of conflict and victory, rather than the shadow of its substance, which the bickering between the noyaux and the Game of Points offered them. Also, Galyan was dangerous. Like the Emperor, he was mad—but he was effectively mad, the kind of man who could put his madness to practical use, in contrast to his cousin. And Galyan had plans for Earth. He would have sucked us into the decadence of the Empire, before the Empire had time to collapse of its own weight.”

Jim paused. He felt a sudden longing to look around at Ro, to see how she was taking this revelation. But he dared not turn.

“So,” he said, “I set out to stop and destroy Galyan—and I did.”

He stopped speaking. The Committee members at the table, the Governor, even the people sitting silent in the room behind him, continued to stay noiseless and unmoving for several seconds, as if they expected him to continue talking. Finally a slow stir along the line of the Committee members signaled their recognition of the fact that he was through.