Karl Marx who got results fast, and see how they did it.”
“And what were the results worth?” Massey asked. “Generations of people wasting
their lives away buying crutches because they’d been brainwashed into thinking
they were cripples.”
Buhl studied his glass for a moment, then looked up. “That’s a noble sentiment,
Mr. Massey, but who’s to blame for people being conditionable in the first
place?”
“A society that fails to teach them to think for themselves, trust in their own
judgment, and rely on their own abilities,” Massey said.
“But that’s not what most people want,” Sylvia Fenton insisted. “They want to
believe that something smarter and stronger than they are knows all the answers
and will take care of them—a God, the government, a cult leader, or some magic
power . . . anything. If they’re going to change, they’ll change in their own
time. All you can do until then is take the world as you find it and make the
most of your opportunities.”
“Opportunities for what?” Massey said. “To persuade ordinary people that wanting
a better living is really a trivial distraction from the higher things that
really matter, and fob them off with superstitions that tell them they’ll get
theirs later, in some hereafter, some other dimension, or whatever—if they’ll
only believe, and work harder. Is that what I’m supposed to do?”
“Why do you owe them anything else?” Buhl asked. He shrugged. “The ones who can
make it will make it anyway. Are the rest worth the effort?”
“From the way a lot of them end up, no,” Massey agreed frankly. “But the
potential they start out with is something else. The most squandered resource on
this planet is the potential of human minds— especially the minds of young
people. Yes, I believe the effort to realize some of that potential is worth
it.”
The conversation continued for a while longer, but the positions remained
essentially unaltered. Each side had heard the other’s viewpoint before, and
neither was about to be converted. Eventually Mrs. Ramelson appeared with a
request from the guests for a further, impromptu, performance, and after a few
closing pleasantries Massey left with her to return to the dining room.
Silence descended for a while after their departure. At last Ramelson commented
genially, “Well, at least we know where we stand: If we fly our flag on the good
ship Zambendorf, Massey will be out to torpedo it. I can’t say I’m entirely
surprised, but we all agreed it had to be tried. . . .” He looked across at the
saturnine figure of Caspar Lang, the deputy chief executive of GSEC, who had
said little since Massey’s arrival and was brooding in one of the leather
armchairs opposite the door. Lang raised his ruggedly chiseled, crew-cut head
and returned a hard-eyed inquiring look as he caught the motion. “So if we’re
sending our ship into hostile waters, we’d better make sure it has a strong
escort squadron,” Ramelson went on. He closed his eyes and brought a hand to his
brow. “You could find yourself with a tough job on your hands at the end of your
voyage, my powers tell me, Caspar. . . . We’d better make sure you take plenty
of ammunition along.”
“Don’t give me any of that crap, you little tramp!”
“Who the hell do you think you are to call me a tramp? You—you of all people!”
“Just stop screaming for two seconds and listen to yourself for chrissakes! What
sort of a woman screams like that? What do you—”
“Me? Me? I am not screaming!”
“Goddamit!”
The exchange ended with a shout and the crash of breaking china as Joe Fellburg
nipped a switch to cut off the sound. He sat back and cocked an inquiring eye at
Zambendorf. “What do you think?” he asked.
Zambendorf nodded and looked impressed as he ran his eye once more over the
compact assembly of electronics and optical gadgetry that Fellburg had set up on
a small table in an upper room in Zambendorf’s villa. The equipment had “fallen
off’ a CIA truck and found its way to Fellburg via a devious route that involved
one of his former military-intelligence buddies and a communications technician