A concrete floor, dusty and stained by pigeon droppings, lay under a high roof upheld by iron girders. From the doorway a long blue carpet ran into the shadowy distance. He walked down this till it touched a similar carpet at right angles. He turned the corner round a little gurgling fountain in a glass bowl and heard a hubbub of voices. A dozen security guards stood before the door of a circus tent. He went forward, holding out his pass and saying loudly, “Unthank delegate!”
A displeased-looking girl in red shirt and jeans appeared between the black-clad men and said, “I’m surprised to see you here, Lanark. I mean, everything’s finished. Even the food.” It was Libby. He muttered that he had come for the speeches.
“Why? The’ll be horribly boring, and you look as if you hadn’t washed for a week. Why do you want to hear speeches?”
He stared at her. She sighed and said, “Come inside, but you’ll have to hurry.”
He followed her through the door. The hubbub grew deafening as she led him along between the inner wall of the tent and a line of waiters carrying out trays laden with used dishes. He glimpsed the backs of people sitting at a table which curved away to the left and right. Libby pointed to an empty chair saying, “That was yours.”
He slunk into it as quietly as possible. A neighbor stared at him, said “Good God, a ghost!” and started chuckling. It was Odin. “It’s very, very, very good to see you,” said Powys, the other neighbour. “What happened? We’ve been terribly alarmed about you.”
The table formed a white-clothed circle filling most of the tent. There was a wineglass to each chair and a sign with the guest’s name and title facing outward. Red girls carried bottles about inside the circle, filling glasses. Lanark explained what had happened to him.
“I’m glad it was only that,” said Powys. “Some people whispered you’d been shot or abducted by the security guards. Of course we didn’t really believe it. If we had we’d have complained.”
“That rumour did the assembly a power of good,” said Odin cheerfully. “A lot of cowardly loudmouths were afraid to say a word during the big energy debate. Bloody idiots!”
“Well, you know,” said Powys, “I don’t mind admitting I was worried too. These guards are ugly customers, and nobody seems to know what their precise instructions are. Yes, the business of the last few days has been settled with unusual promptness, so you did not piss in vain. But it was reckless of you to pollute their river. They’re very fond of it.” Solveig came along the table filling wineglasses. He stared down at the tablecloth, hoping not to be noticed. There was a sound like a colossal soft cough then a perfectly amplified voice said, “Ladies and gentlemen, you will be glad to hear that after an absence of three days one of our most popular delegates has returned. The witty, the venerable, the not always perfectly sober Lord Provost Lanark of Greater Unthank is in his place at last.” Lanark’s mouth opened. Though total silence had fallen he seemed to hear a great roar go up. The multitude of glances on him—mocking, he was sure, condescending, contemptuous, amused—seemed to pierce and press him down. Someone yelled, “Give the man a drink!”
He sobbed and laid his head on the tablecloth. The hubbub of voices began again, but with more speculation than laughter in it. He heard Odin murmur, “That wasn’t necessary,” and Powys said, “No, they didn’t need to rub it in like that.” There was another soft cough and the voice said, “My lords, ladies and gentlemen, pray silence for Sir Trevor Weems, Knight of the Golden Snail, Privy Councillor of Dalriada, Chief Executive Officer of the Greater Provan Basin and Outer Erse Confederacy.”
There was some applause then Lanark heard the voice of Weems.
“This is a strange occasion for me. The man sitting on my left is the twenty-ninth Lord Monboddo. He has been many things in his time: musician, healer, dragon-master, scourge of the decimal clock, enfant terrible of the old expansion project, stupor mundi of the institute and council debates. I have known him as all these things and opposed him as every one of them. A rash, rampant, raving intellectual, that’s what I called him in the old days. Everyone remembers the unhappy circumstances in which his predecessor retired. I won’t tell you what I thought when I heard the name of the new Monboddo. If I spoke too plainly our excellent Quantum-Cortexin security guards might be obliged to lead me away under the Special Powers (Consolidation) Order and lock me in a very small room for a very long time. The fact is, I was appalled. Our whole Provan executive was flung into profound gloom when we realized we would be hosts to a general assembly chaired by the dreadful Ozenfant. But what has been the outcome?” There was a pause. Weems said fervently, “Ladies and gentlemen, this has been the most smoothly run, clear-sighted, coherent assembly the council has ever convened! There are many reasons for this, but I believe future historians will mainly ascribe it to the tact, tolerance and intelligence of the man sitting on my left. He need not shake his head! If he is a rebel we need more of them. Indeed, I might even be persuaded to vote for a revolution—if the twenty-ninth Lord Monboddo undertook to lead it!”
There was some loud laughter.
By slow degrees Lanark had come to sit upright again. The centre of the circle was empty. Far to the right Weems stood beside Lord and Lady Monboddo. Microphones protruded from a low bank of roses on the tablecloth before him. All the guests on that side of the circle were pink. On the other side they were sallow or brown, with the five members of the black bloc directly facing Monboddo. Several dark delegates talked quietly among themselves, not attending to the speech. Weems was saying, “… will be far too deep for me, I’m afraid, and what I do understand I’ll almost certainly disagree with. But he has heard so much from us in the past three days that it is only fair to allow him his revenge. And so, Lord Monboddo, I call on you to summarize the work of the council, Then, Now and Tomorrow.”
Weems sat down amid applause. Monboddo had been smiling down at the table with half-shut eyes. He arose and stood with one hand resting on the table, the other in his pocket, the smiling head tilted a little to one side. He waited until applause, faint conversation, coughs and stirrings sank into silence. As the silence continued his figure, casual yet unmoving, gained power and authority until the whole great ring of guests was like an audience of carved statues. Lanark was amazed that so many could make so complete a silence. It weighed on him like a crystal bubble filling the top of the tent and pressing down on his skull: he could shatter it any time by yelling a single obscenity, but bit his lips hard to stop that happening. Monboddo began to speak.
“Some men are born modest. Some achieve modesty. Some have modesty thrust upon them. I fear that Sir Trevor has firmly placed me in the last of these categories.”
Laughter went up, especially from Weems.
“Once I was an ambitious young department chief. I launched policies and had flashes of creative brilliance which, believe me, my friends, verged, I thought, upon genius! Well, ambition has met its nemesis. I now stand on the top tip of our vast pyramid and create nothing. I can only receive the brilliant proposals of younger, more actively placed colleagues and find ways to reconcile and promote them. I examine the options and discard, without emotions, those which do not fit our system. Such work uses a very small pan of human intelligence.”
“Oh, nonsense!” shouted Weems cheerfully.
“Not nonsense, no, my friend. I promise you that in three years all the limited skills of a council supremo will be embodied in the circuits of a Quantum-Cortexin humanoid, just as the skills of secretaries and special policemen are embodied. It may be my privilege to be the last of the fully human Lords Monboddo. The idea would flatter my very considerable vanity, were it not for the great improvement people will see in government business when the change takes place. Everything will suddenly go much faster.
Yes, today human government stands at a very delicate point of balance. But before opening the path ahead I must describe the steps which brought us here.
“So stand with me on the sun some six thousand years ago and consider, with sharper eyes than the eagle, the moist blue-green ball of the third planet. The deserts are smaller than now, the forest jungles much bigger, for where soil is thick, shrubberies clog the rivers and spread them out into swampland. There are no broad tracts of fenced field, no roads or towns. The only sign of men is where the globe’s western edge is rolling into the shadow of night. Some far-apart gleams are beginning on that dim curve, the fires of hunters in forest clearings, of fishers at river mouths, of wandering herdsmen and planters on the thin soil between desert and jungle, for we are too few to take good land from the trees. Our tiny tribal democracies have spread all over this world, yet we influence it less than our near relation the squirrel, who is important to the survival of certain hardwoods. We have been living here for half a million years, yet history, with its noisy collisions and divisions of code and property, has not yet started. No wonder the first historians thought men had been created a few centuries before themselves. No wonder later theorists called prehistoric men childlike, savage, rude, and thought they had wasted time in fighting and couplings even more ferocious than those of today.
“But big killings, like big buildings, need large populations to support them, and fewer people were born in 500,000 years of the stick-and-stone age than in the first 50 years of the twentieth century. Prehistoric men were too busy cooperating against famine, flood and frost to hate each other very much; yet they tamed fire and animals, mastered joinery, cooking, tailoring, painting, pottery and planting. These skills still keep most of us alive. Compared with the sowing and reaping of the first grain crop, our own biggest achievement (sending three men to and from a dead world in a self-firing bullet) is a marvellously extravagant baroque curlicue on the recentest page of human history.”
“That’s crap, Monboddo! And you know it!” yelled someone across the circle from Lanark. There was laughter from the darker-skinned delegates. Monboddo smirked at them before continuing:
“I still represent modern government, Mr. Kodac, do not worry. But the tools for harpooning other planets are still in the primitive phase, and it does no harm to admit that clever fellows like ourselves need not be ashamed of our ancestors. All the same, this petit-bourgeois world of gamekeepers and peasant craftmen bores me. Yes, it bores me. I thirst for the overweening exuberance of the Ziggurats and Zimbabwes, the Great Walls and Cathedrals. What is lacking from this prehistoric nature-park where sapient men have lived so long with such little effect? Surplus is lacking: that surplus of food, time and energy, that surplus of men we call wealth.
“So let a handful of centuries pass and look at the globe again. The biggest land mass is split into three continents by a complicated central sea. East of it, a wide river no longer meanders through swamps but flows in a distinct channel across a fertile geometry of fields and ditches. On the glittering surface boats and barges move upstream and down to unload their cargoes beside the cubes, cones and cylinders of the first city. A great house with a tower stands in the city centre. On the summit, high above the hazes of the river, the secretaries of the sky use the turning dome of heaven as a clock of light where sun, moon and galaxies tell the time to dig, reap and store. Under the tower the wealth of the state, the sacred grain surplus, is banked: sacred because a sack of it can keep a family alive for a month. This grain is stored life. Those who own it can command others. The great house belongs to modern men like ourselves, men, not skilful in growing and making things, but in managing those who do. There is a market beside the great house from which tracks radiate far across plain and forest. These tracks are beaten by tribesmen bringing fleeces, hides and whatever else can be exchanged for the life-giving grain. In time of famine they will sell their children for it. In time of war they can sell enemies captured in battle. The wealth of the city makes warfare profitable because the city managers know how to use cheap labour. More trees are felled, new canals widen the cultivated land. The city is growing.
“It grows because it is a living body, its arteries are the rivers and canals, its limbs are the trade routes grappling goods and men into its stomach, the market. We, whose state is an organization linking the cities of many lands, cannot know what sacred places the first cities seemed. Luckily the librarian of Babylon has described how they looked to a visiting tribesman:
He sees something he has never seen, or has not seen … in such plenitude. He sees the day and cypresses and marble. He sees a whole that is complex and yet without disorder; he sees a city, an organism composed of statues, temples, gardens, dwellings, stairways, urns, capitals, of regular and open spaces. None of these artifacts im presses him (I know) as beautiful; they move him as we might be moved today by a complex machine of whose purpose we are ignorant but in whose design we intuit an immortal intelligence.
“Immortal intelligence, yes. That undying intelligence lives in the great house which is the brain of the city, which is the first home of institutional knowledge and modern government. In a few centuries it will divide into law court, university, temple, treasury, stock exchange and arsenal.”
“Here here!” shouted Weems unexpectedly, and there was some scattered applause.
“Bugger this,” muttered Odin. “He’s talked for ten minutes and only just reached the topic.”
“I find these large vague statements very soothing,” said Powys.
“Like being in school again.”
“But all tribesmen are not servile adorers of wealth [said Monboddo]. Many have skill and greed of their own. The lords of the first cities may have fallen before nomads driving the first wheeled chariots. No matter! The new masters of the grain may only keep it with help from the clever ones who rule land and time by rod and calendar, and can count and tax what others make. The great riverine cultures (soon there are five of them) absorb wave after wave of conquerors, who add to the power of the managers by giving them horsemen for companions. So the growth of cities speeds up. Their trade routes interlock and grapple, they compete with each other. Iron swords and ploughshares are forged, metals command the wealth of the grain. The seaside cities arise with their merchant and pirate navies.”
“He’s getting faster,” whispered Powys. “He’s covered twelve civilizations in six sentences.”
“Men increase. Wealth increases. War increases. Nowadays, when strong governments agree there must not be another big war, we can still applaud the old battles and invasions which blended the skills of conquerors and conquered. The are no villains in history. Pessimists point to Attila and Tamerlane, but these active men liquidated unprofitable states which needed a destroyer to release their assets. Wherever wealth has been used for mere self-maintenance it has always inspired vigorous people to grasp and fling it into the service of that onrushing history which the modern state commands. Pale pink people like myself have least reason to point the scorning finger. Poets tell us that for two millennia Europe was boisterous with energies released by the liquidation of Asiatic Troy. I quote the famous Lancastrian epic:
“Since the siege and assault was ceaséd
at Troy,
The burgh broken and burned to
brands and ashes,
It was Aeneas the Able and his high
kind
That since despoiled provinces and
patrons became
Wellnigh of all the wealth in the West
Isles;
For rich Romulus to Rome riches he
swipes,
With great bobbaunce that burgh he
builds upon first,
And names with his own name as now
it hath;
Ticius in Tuscany townships founds, Langbeard in Lombardy lifts up homes, And far over the French flood Felix
Brutus,
On many banks full broad Britain he
builds with his winnings,
Where war and wreck and wonder By turns have waxed therein, And oft both bliss and blunder Have had their innings.
“Bliss and blunder. The flow of wealth around the globe has involved much of both, but wealth itself has continued to grow because it is always served by the winners.”
“Pale pink people,” muttered Odin broodingly. “Pale pink people.”
“I don’t think the blackies and brownies are much amused,” said Powys. “Are you all right, Lanark?”
Monboddo’s strong quiet voice purred on like a stupefying wind.
“… so north Africa becomes a desert, with several useful consequences….”
“After the clean camaraderie of the steam bath-house, the new recruits notice that their parents stink….”
“… but machinists only work efficiently in a climate of hope, so slavery is replaced by debt and money becomes a promise to pay printed by the government….”
“… by the twentieth century, wealth has engrossed the whole globe, which now revolves in a tightening net of thought and transport woven round it by trade and science. The world is enclosed in a single living city, but its brain centres, the governments, do not notice this. Two world wars are fought in thirty years, wars the more bitter because they are between different parts of the same system. It would wrong the slaughtered millions to say these wars did no good. Old machines, old ideas were replaced at unusual speed. Science, business and government quickly became richer than ever before. We must thank the dead for that.”
Monboddo glanced at Weems, who stood up and said solemnly, “This is surely a good time to remember the dead. There are hardly any lands where men have not died this century fighting for what they thought best. I invite all delegates to stand with me for two minutes and remember the friends, relations and countrymen who suffered to make us what we are.”
“Bloody farce,” muttered Odin, gripping Lanark under the elbow to help him rise.
“Soon be over,” whispered Powys, helping at the other side. The whole great circle gradually rose to their feet except the black bloc, who stayed obstinately seated. There was silence for a while; than a distant trumpet sounded outside the tent and everyone sat murmuringly down.
“What’s the point of this speech?” said Odin. “It’s too Marxian for the Corporate Wealth gang and too approving for the Marxists.”
“He’s trying to please everyone,” said Powys.
“You can only do that with vague platitudes. He’s like all these Huns—too clever for his own good.”
“I thought he came from Languedoc,” said Powys.
“As I reach our present dangerous time [said Monboddo, sighing], I fear I have angered almost everyone here by a perhaps too cynical view of history. I have described it as a growing and spreading of wealth. Two styles of government command the modern world. One works to reconcile the different companies which employ their people, the other employs the people themselves. Defenders of the first style think great wealth the reward and necessary tool of those who serve mankind best; to the rest it is a method by which strong people bully weak ones. Can I define wealth in a way which lets both sides agree with me? Easily.
“At the start of my talk I said wealth was a surplus of men. I now say a wealthy state is one which orders its surplus men into great enterprises. In the past extra men were used to invade neighbours, plant colonies and destroy competitors. But the liquidation of unprofitable states by warfare is not practical now. We all know it, which is why this assembly has been a success: not because I have been a specially good chairman but because you, the delegates of states big and small, have agreed to order onrushing history, onrushing wealth, onrushing men by majority decisions reached through open and honest debate.”
Weems started clapping again, but Monboddo talked vehemently over him.
“Believe me, this splendid logicalness has been achieved only just in time! More men have been born this century than in all the ages of history and prehistory preceding. Our man surplus has never been so vast. If this human wealth is not governed it will collapse—in places it is already collapsing—into poverty, anarchy, disaster. Let me say at once that I do not fear wars between any government represented here today, nor do I fear revolution. The presence of that great revolutionary hero, Chairman Fu of the People’s Republic of Xanadu, shows that revolutions are perfectly able to create strong governments. What we must unite to prevent are half-baked revolts which might give desperadoes access to those doomsday machines and bottled plagues which stable governments are creating, not to use, but to prevent themselves from being bullied by equals. No land today lacks desperadoes, brave greedy ignorant men who can no longer be sent to work in less busy parts of the world and are too ambitious to join a regular police force. No modern state lacks irresponsible intellectuals, the enemies of strong government everywhere. Both types seem anxious to break the world down into tiny republics of the prehistoric kind, where the voice of the dull and cranky would sound as loud as the wise and skilful. But a reversion to barbarism cannot help us. The world can only be saved by a great enterprise in which stable governments use the skills of institutional knowledge with the full backing of corporate wealth. Council, institute and creature everywhere must work together.
“The fuel supply of the present planet is almost exhausted. The food supply is already insufficient. Our deserts have grown too vast, our seas are overfished. We need a new supply of energy, for energy is food as well as fuel. At present, dead matter is turned into nourishment by farming, and by the consumption of uneducated people by clever ones. This arrangement is a failure because it is inefficient; it also puts clever people into a dependent position. Luckily our experts will soon be able to turn dead matter directly into food in our industrial laboratories—if we give them access to sufficient energy.
“Where can this energy be found? Ladies and gentlemen, it is all around us, it streams from the sun, gleams from the stars and sings harmoniously in every sphere. Yes, Mr. Kodac! It is time for me to admit that sending ships into space is not just an adventure but a necessity. That greater outer space is not, we now know, a horrid vacuum but a treasure house which can be endlessly, infinitely plundered—if we combine to do it. Once again the secretaries of the sky will be our leaders. We must build them a high new platform, a city floating in space where the clever and adventurous of every land, working in a clean, nearly weightless atmosphere, will reflect heat and sunlight down to the powerhouses of the world.
“It has been suggested we call this enterprise New Frontier or Dynostar. I suggest the Laputa Project….”
Monboddo’s speech had hypnotized Lanark. He listened openmouthed, nodding in the pauses. Whenever he understood a sentence it seemed to say everything was inevitable and therefore right. Yet his body grew less and less easy; his head buzzed; when Monboddo said “a high new platform, a city floating in space,” he seemed to hear another voice, harsh and incredulous, say, “The man’s a lunatic.”
Even so, he was appalled to find himself standing and shouting “EΧΕΧΕΧΕΧΕΧΕΧΕΧ” at the top of his voice. Powys and Odin gripped his wrists, but he wrenched them free and yelled, “EXCUSE ME! EXCUSE ME but Lord Monboddo lied when he said all the delegates agreed to manage things through open, honest debates! Or else he has been lied to by other people.”
There was silence. Lanark watched Monboddo watching him woodenly. Weems stood up and said quietly, “As host of this gathering I apologize to Lord Monboddo and the other delegates for … for Provost Lanark’s hysterical outburst. He is notorious for his lack of control in civilized company. I also demand that Provost Lanark take back these words.”
“I’m sorry I said them,” said Lanark, “but Lord Monboddo has deliberately or ignorantly told us a lie. I pissed off a bridge, but I should not have been locked up before I had spoken for Unthank! Unthank is being destroyed with no open agreement at all, jobs and homes are being destroyed, we’ve begun hating each other, the Merovicnic Discontinuity is threatened—”
He was deafened by a babel of laughter and talk. A row of black-clad men stood behind Weems and Lanark saw two of them walk around the tent toward him. His legs trembled so much that he sat down. Voices were shouting for silence somewhere on his left. Silence fell. He saw Multan of Zimbabwe standing up, smiling at Monboddo, who said shortly, “Speak, by all means.”
Multan looked round the table then said, “The Unthank delegate says this assembly has not held free and open debates. That’s not news to the black bloc. Is it news to anybody?”
He chuckled and shrugged. “Everybody knows three or four big boys run the whole show. The rest of us don’t complain, why should we? Words by themselves are no good. When we get organized big, we’ll complain and you’ll listen. You’ll have to listen. So this Lanark is very foolish to speak like he does. But he tells the truth. So on this side of the table we watch what happens. We laugh because it don’t matter to us how you claw each other. But we watch closely what happens, all the same.”
He sat down. Monboddo sighed and scratched his head. At last he said, “I will answer the Zimbabwe delegate first. He has told us, with admirable modesty, that he and his friends are not yet able to share the work of the council but will do so when they can. That is very good news; may the day come soon. The Unthank delegate’s case is less clear. I gather the police arrested him in the circumstances where his exalted rank was not apparent. He has missed our debates, but what can I do? I leave Provan one decimal hour from now. I can grant him a brief personal interview. I can promise that anything he says will be recorded in the assembly minutes for everyone to read. It is all I can offer. Is it sufficient?”
Lanark felt everyone watching him and wanted to hide his face again. He glanced over his shoulder and shivered at the sight of two black-suited men. One nodded and winked. It was Wilkins. Monboddo said loudly “If you wish this interview, my secretaries will escort you to a convenient place. Otherwise the matter must be dropped. Answer, please, there is not much time.”
Lanark nodded. He stood and walked from the tent between the secretaries, feeling old and defeated.