“I think so-but you can never tell what goes on inside those remarkable minds. He was certainly interested, even cornplimentary. I apologized, by the way, for not inviting him here. He said he quite understood, and had no wish to bang his head on our ceiling.”
“What did you show him today?”
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“The bread-and-butter side of the Colony, which he didn’t seem to find as boring as I always do. He asked every question
you could imagine about production, how we balanced our
budget, our mineral resources, the birth rate, how we got our food, and so on. Luckily I had Secretary Harrison with me, and he’d come prepared with every Annual Report since the
Colony began. You should have heard them swapping statistics.. The Inspector’s borrowed the lot, and I’m prepared to bet that when we see him tomorrow he’ll be able to quote any
figure back at us. I find that kind of mental performance frightfully depressing.”
He yawned and began to peck haif-heartedly at his food.
“Tomorrow should be more interesting. We’re going to do the schools and the Academy. That’s when I’m going to ask some questions for a change. I’d like to know how the Overlords bring up their kids-assuming, of course, that they have any.”
That was not a question that Charles Sen was ever to have answered, but on other points the Inspector was remarkably talkative. He would evade awkward queries in a manner that was a pleasure to behold, and then, quite unexpectedly, would become positively confiding.
Their first real intimacy occurred while they were driving away from the school that was one of the Colony’s chief prides. “It’s a great responsibility,” Dr. Sen had remarked, “training these young minds ftr the future. Fortunately, human beings are extraordinarily resilient: it takes a pretty bad upbringing to do permanent damage. Even if our aims are mistaken, our little victims will probably get over it. And as yoti’ve seen, they appear to be perfectly happy.” He paused for a moment, then glanced mischievously up at the towering figure of his passenger. The Inspector was completely clothed in some reflecting silvery cloth so that not an inch of his body was exposed to the fierce sunlight. Behind the dark glasses, Dr. Sen was aware of the great eyes watching him emotionlessly-or with emotions which he could never understand. “Our problem in bringing up these children must, I imagine, be very similar to yours when confronted with the human race. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“In some ways,” admitted the Overlord gravely. “In others, perhaps a better analogy can be found in the history of your colonial powers. The Roman and British Empires, for that
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reason, have always been of considerable interest to us. The case of India is particularly instructive. The main difference
between us and the British in India was that they had no real
motives for going there-no conscious objectives, that is, except such trivial and temporary ones as trade or hostil~ty to
other European powers. They found themselves possessors
of an Empire before they knew what to do with it, and were
never really happy until they had got rid of it again.”
“And will you,” asked Dr. Sen, quite unable to resist the
opportunity, “get rid of your empire when the time arises?”
“Without the slightest hesitation,” replied the Inspector.
Dr. Sen did not press the point. The forthrightness of the
reply was not altogether flattering: moreover, they had now
arrived at the Academy, where the assembled pedagogues
were waiting to sharpen their wits on a real, live Overlord.
“As our distinguished colleague will have told you,” said Professor Chance, Dean of the University of New Athens, “our main purpose is to keep the minds of our people alert, and to enable them to realize all their potentialities. Beyond
this island”-his gesture indicated, and rejected, the rest of
the globe-“I fear that the human race has lost its initiative.
It has peace, it has plenty-but it has no horizons.”
“Yet here, of course.. . ?” interjected the Overlord blandly.
Professor Chance, who lacked a sense of humour and was vaguely aware of the fact, glanced suspiciously at his visitor.
“Here,” he continued, “we do not suffer from the ancient obsession that leisure is wicked. But we do not consider that it is enough to be passive receptors of entertainment. Everybody on this island has one ambition, which may be summed up very simply. It is todo something, however small it may be, better than anyone else. Of course, it’s an ideal we don’t all achieve. But in this modern world the great thing isto have an ideal. Achieving it is considerably less important.”
The Inspector did not seem inclined to comment. He had discarded his protective clothing, but still wore dark glasses even in the subdued light of the Common Room. The Dean wondered if they were physiologically necessary, or whether they were merely camouflage. Certainly they made quite impossible the already difficult task of reading the Overlord’s thoughts. He did not, however, seem to object to the some-140
what challenging statements that had been thrown at him, or the criticisms of his race’s policy with regard to Earth which they implied.
The Dean was about to press the attack when Professor
Sperling, Head of the Science Department, decided to make it a three-cornered fight.
“As you doubtless know, sir, one of the great problems of
our culture has been the dichotomy between art and science.
I’d very much like to know your views on the matter. Do you subscribe to the view that all artists are abnormal? That their work-or at any rate the impulse behind it-is the result of some deep-seated psychological dissatisfaction?”
Professor Chance cleared his throat purposefully, but the
Inspector forestalled him.
“I’ve been told that all men are artists to a certain extent, so that everyone is capable of creating something, if only on a rudimentary level. At your schools yesterday, for example, I noticed the emphasis placed on self-expression in drawing, painting and modelling.~The impulse seemed quite universal, even among those clearly destined to be specialists in science. So if all artists are abnormal, and all men are artists, we have an interesting syllogism.…”
Everyone waited for him to complete it. But when it suited
their purpose the Overlords could be impeccably tactful.
The Inspector came through the symphony concert with flying colours, which was a good deal more than could be said for many human members of the audience. The only concession to popular taste bad been Stravinsky’s “Symphony of Psalms”: the rest of the programme was aggressively modernistic. Whatever one’s views on its merits, the performance was superb, for the Colony’s boast that it possessed some of the finest musicians in the world was no idle one. There had been much wrangling among the various rival composers for the honour of being included in the programme, though a few cynics wondered if it would be an honour at all. For all that anyone knew to the contrary, the Overlords might be tone deaf.
It was observed, however, that after the concert Thanthalteresco sought out the three composers who had been present,
and complimented them all on what he called their “great
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ingenuity”. This caused them to retire with pleased but vaguely baffled expressions.
It was not until the third day that George Greggson had a chance of meeting the Inspector. The theatre had arranged a kind of mixed grill rather than a single dish-two one-act plays, a sketch by a world-famous impersonator, and a ballet sequence. Once again all these items were superbly executed and one critic’s predicnon-“Now at least we’ll discover if the Overlords can yawn”-was falsified. Indeed, the Inspector laughed several times, and in the correct places.
And yet-no-one could be sure. He might himself be putting on a superb act, following the performance by logic alone and with his own strange emotions completely untouched, as an anthropologist might take part in some primitive rite. The fact that he uttered the appropriate sounds, and made the expected responses, really proved nothing at all.
Though George had been determined to have a talk with the Inspector, he failed utterly. After the performance they exchanged a few words of introduction, then the visitor was swept away. It was completely impossible to isolate him from his entourage, and George went home in a state of extreme frustration. He was by no means certain what he wished to say even if he had had the chance, but somehow, he felt sure, he could have turned the conversation round to Jeff. And now the opportunity had gone.
His bad temper lasted two days. The Inspector’s flyer had departed, amid many protestations of mutual regard, before the sequel emerged. No-one had thought of questioning Jeff, and the boy must have been thinking it over for a long time before he approached George.
“Daddy,” he said, just prior to bedtime. “You know the Overlord who came to see us?”