“Now you see why people like me don’t usually talk to anyone about all this,” Nixie said. “Most people tend to think we’re mad. The ayatollahs try to describe what they’ve seen, but they don’t have the words, or the help of scientists and screens like this. So they try to tell it in symbols. But people don’t even begin to understand.”
Danchekker smiled benignly. “It’s nothing to worry about,” he told her. “I’m sure that to you, it all seems quite real.” He half turned to take in Shilohin, as well, as he spoke. “It was only when I talked at length to Sandy and Gina that I became aware myself of the extraordinary ability of these Thurien systems to create totally compelling illusions inside the mind. Ganymean psychology is such that they don’t get carried away by it, but with humans, apparently, it can all too easily become a craved—for reality substitute. And that, my dear, I have no hesitation in saying, would appear to be the answer.”
Nixie smiled back at him in an easygoing way that said she could afford to wait until he changed his mind.
Danchekker turned back to Shilohin and waved a hand carelessly.
“In fact, I’d go as far as to say that I think we have the answer to Garuth’s whole problem. With JEVEX switched off, the solution is what I’ve maintained all along: time and patience. Let us forget any fantasies about unknown realms in other parts of the universe, and concentrate on the real fantasies—if you’ll pardon the contradiction. That is all we need concern ourselves with now.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The accused were brought into a plain but imposing courtroom of tiered seats facing the bench where the Supreme Judge sat, flanked by lesser judges, scholars, and advisers. On one side of the space before the bench, Hans Baumer watched from a chair at the table reserved for the prosecution’s counsel.
The first of the prisoners was an industrialist—or, at least, Baumer’s mildly whimsical, unconscious idealization of one. He was wearing a dark, pinstripe suit with a glittering tie clip, and had a million-dollar tan, silvering hair, and a white mustache. With him were an engineer, a scientist, and a liberal/existentialist philosopher.
The Public Accuser rose and looked first at the industrialist. “Your crimes are greed and the theft of human life. For you not only subordinated all other considerations to increasing your own wealth, but in addition encouraged, if not, indeed, compelled, others to the pursuit of mere sensual and material gratifications in order to command their desires and exploit their labor. By enlisting the lives of others to serve your own misguided ends, you denied them the opportunity for betterment of self that was their true reason for existing.”
“You may speak before the hearings commence,” the Judge directed.
The industrialist cast an unperturbed eye over the assembly. “Nonsense. I gave them what they wanted. It wasn’t my place to judge their tastes. If those tastes didn’t reflect the ideal that you consider it your business to approve, it wasn’t the fault of the mirror that I provided. And if I grew wealthy in the process, what of it? I took nothing from anyone. What I received, I created. Their lives had been squalid and wretched for thousands of years before I existed.”
The Accuser replied, “The greedy, too, had existed for thousands of years. But the means of mass exploitation had not been available—”He addressed the engineer. “—until you supplied it. You served as his henchman, building the factories and engines that would enslave millions.”
“Enslave them? I gave them life,” the engineer replied. “Before I came, three—quarters of their children died. Yes, in the early industrial years, life was sometimes hard. We couldn’t raise everyone to affluence in a day or a year. But they survived. That sounds like a pretty important first step toward any kind of ‘self-betterment’ to me.”
“They survived, yes, but to what end?” the Accuser asked, moving on to the scientist. “To know Truth? To awaken a knowledge of their real, spiritual selves?” He shook his head. “No. Because you blinded them by reducing Reality to observables accessible to reason, and told them that was all that exists.”