“Agreed,” Wagoner said.
“All right. Then maybe you’ll also agree that the essence of a vital culture is its ability to defend itself. The West has beaten off the Soviets for a century nowbut as far as I can see, the Bridge is the West’s ‘Diagram of Power’, its pyramids, or what have you. All the money and the resources that went into the Bridge are going to be badly needed, and won’t be there, when the next Soviet attack comes.”
“Which will be very shortly, I’m told,” Wagoner said, with complete calm. “Furthermore, it will be successful, and in part it will be successful for the very reasons you’ve outlined.
For a man who’s been cut off from the Earth for years, Helmuth, you seem to know more about what’s going on down there than most of the general populace does.”
“Nothing promotes an interest in Earth like being off it,”
Helmuth said. “And there’s plenty of time to read out here.”
Either the drink was stronger than he had expected, or the senator’s calm concurrence in the collapse of Helmuth’s entire world had given him another shove towards nothingness; his head was spinning.
Wagoner saw it. He leaned forward suddenly, catching Helmuth flat-footed. “However,” he said, “it’s difficult for me to agree that the Bridge serves, or ever did serve,.a ritual purpose.
The Bridge served a huge practical purpose which is now ful-filleddie Bridge, as such, is now a defunct project.”
“Defunct?” Helmuth repeated faintly.
“Quite. Of course we’ll continue to operate it for a while, simply because you can’t stop a process of that size on a dime, and that’s just as well for people like Dillon who are emotionally tied up in it. You’re the one person with any authority in the whole station who has already lost enough interest in the Bridge to make it safe for me to tell you that it’s being abandoned.”