Roberts went out to the ship just outside, and, worn-out and half-dazed, and not knowing if he were the Duke Vaughan, or whether Oggbad was real, or what was going on, Roberts got back into the patrol ship, managed to get out of his armor without spearing Hammell with the tapering helmet-spike, and lifted off.
The viewscreen showed him that, down below, battered and bandaged tens of thousands were cheering the rising patrol ship. “Well,” said Roberts, sucking in a deep breath, “either they’re cheering us, or our departure.”
“Our apparent departure,” said Hammell.
“Correct,” said Roberts, starting to feel like himself again.
He swung the ship in a fast steep climb, taking it apparently toward outer space. When he’d gotten up high enough, the symbiotic computer told him that that was enough to enable it to fool the planetary computer into thinking they’d left the planet. Then Roberts came back from a different direction, and headed for the clearing.
“Well,” he said, “that gets us past the first crisis, anyway. Now they’ve got an urgent reason to stick together. The next thing we want to do is to lay down an overall ‘desire for order’ field in the city, and a ‘desire for adventure’ field outside. It seems to me there’s an interaction between a person’s natural desires, and the field impressed by the want-generator. People can only be comfortable when the two are compatible. What we want is for the workers to be in the city, and the warriors and hunters to be in the forest. This business of trying to cram different types into the same mold in the same place won’t work. Let’s have it so that if a man wants out, he can get out. But, after he does get out, survival is his problem.”
“What you figure,” said Hammell, “is that the ones that want to learn will find it possible to study; the ones that want to fight, to conquer something, will be able to do that; the ones that want to work will be able to. And the desire-fields will keep the warriors from raiding the workers, and the teachers from trying to drag the warriors into the classrooms; while the individual, if he outlives one desire, is free to settle in another place with a different outlook, so long as his own desire doesn’t so conflict with the desire-field there as to make him acutely uncomfortable?”
“That’s the general idea,” said Roberts. “And if we can do it, it ought to eliminate a lot of need for external controls, allow a good deal of freedom, and bring this place closer to being a paradise than it would ever be with a computer monotonously doling out food, clothing, lodging, and everything else on a ration system, and then insisting that now everyone should be happy. The computer is great for rationalizing the production and distribution of the necessities of life. But it just naturally gets stuck when it leaves desire out of its calculations.”
“Which,” said Hammell, “it naturally does. Human leaders do it themselves. There’s nothing quite like desire to wreck anyone’s calculations. Maybe even ours.”
Roberts nodded soberly. “Very possible. Well—We’ll see.”
* * *
Their accumulated leave was almost up when the three men took a final look at the city on the spy screen. The change in the place was noticeable not only in the glazed windows and painted buildings, but in the walk of the people who remained in the city. They no longer had to fear being knocked over the head and robbed for daring to do anything. Those of them who best loved a good knock-down drag-out fight, an ambush, or a raid for plunder, were out beyond the roboid-manned barrier line fighting Oggbad’s army. Either they had what it took, and came back with a heavy leather sack of fangs and claws which the computer—on Duke Vaughan’s order, relayed from a distance—would redeem at an impressive price in whatever merchandise or service the victorious warriors might choose—or else they lacked what it took and “went to Oggbad.” Those that tended to be warriors mostly with their mouths were in a worse spot yet. The workers invariably asked to see their trophies, while the warriors were becoming adept at spotting them on sight, and would lug them off to the forest just for the fun of it.
“Boy,” said Hammell, “what a place! And yet, if anyone should go around there now demanding a revolution, he’d get brained.”
Roberts nodded. “They don’t want to revolt, because their real desires have a legitimate outlet. Not just the desires they ought to have, but the desires they do have. A man who wants steak can get awfully sick of a steady diet of ice cream—even if it’s the best ice cream made, and he can’t find any fault with it.”
Morrissey said moodily, “I hate to leave this place. And I still don’t trust the head of those fanatics.”
Hammell said, “Just among the three of us, it’s going to be a little hard to go back to being a cargo-control officer after being His Imperial Highness, Duke Ewald of Greme.”
Roberts said, “The first chance we get, after we stock up on more parts for the want-generator, I think we’d better come back here.”
Hammell and Morrissey at once looked up with enthusiasm.
“After all,” said Roberts, “from the way things are going, poor Oggbad is going to need help.”
THE KING’S LEGIONS
Vaughan Roberts, in the control seat of the salvaged Interstellar Patrol ship that had cost most of his life savings, glanced briefly at the battle screen, which showed his two friends’ second-hand space yacht being hauled around in a gravitor beam. Then he looked back at the auxiliary screen, where an exaggeratedly military-looking individual, with the insignia of a lieutenant colonel, spoke in brisk authoritative tones:
“By order of the Commanding Officer, Squadron R, 876th Interstellar Combat Wing, Space Fleet XII, you are hereby commanded to halt for inspection re Exotic Drugs Act, Section 16 . . .”
Roberts, who had spent some time in the Space Force himself, had never before seen such a combination of meticulously close-cropped iron-gray hair, stiff face, and ramrod-straight posture, with uniform pressed into dentproof, knife-edged creases. Over the left shirt pocket of this uniform were three rows of ribbons, and while Roberts did not recognize half of them, there was one that he knew to be the Cross of Space, with three stars. The Cross of Space was awarded sparingly—to win it required proof of heroism in the face of such danger that it was rare for the hero to come back alive. Try as he might, Roberts could not visualize the miracle that would enable the same man to win this award four times and live.
” . . . Paragraph E,” the stiffly-erect figure went on. “You will not resist the beam. You will not attempt to parley. You will open outer hatches to admit boarding parties without delay . . .”
Roberts glanced around.
The patrol ship, the purchase of which Roberts considered an unusual stroke of luck, was equipped with devices he could never have afforded to buy new. One of these could extrude a set of metal arms, to spin a shell of camouflage around the ship, hide its formidable armament, and create the appearance of a harmless rebuilt derelict. Other devices could make fast precise measurements of shape, size, mass, and other characteristics, passing them to computers which searched almost instantaneously through hosts of reference standards to determine what the data might mean. On this information, presented to the pilot in symbols on the battle screen, the patrol ship’s battle computer could act at once, bringing the ship’s weapons to bear on changing targets, and altering speed, course, and attitude to meet the situation. Presiding over the weapons, sensing elements, computers, and various special devices, and acting toward the pilot as a combination conscience and subconscious mind, was what was known as the “symbiotic computer.” At this moment, the symbiotic computer, in its own way, was doubtless considering the rasping, authoritative voice:
“You will at all times obey the instructions of the inspecting personnel. You will cooperate fully in exposing your ship to thorough search for contraband. Resistance, or procrastination, will be dealt with severely . . .”
But the many symbols now appearing on the battle screen were what riveted attention.
It gave Roberts pause to consider who would want such things as:
a) A large salvaged cruiser stripped for ultrafast acceleration.
b) An irregular rocky object some four hundred feet in diameter, hollowed out inside, with several large masses of undetermined nature floating around the interior.
c) A simulated Space Force dreadnought mocked up on a girder-ship frame.
d) An irregular metallic object eighty feet across, with fusion guns sunk in hidden wells.
Roberts fingered the curved surface of a small glowing ball recessed into the control console. As he turned the ball, a corresponding white circle on the battle screen moved from one symbol to the next, and each in turn was enlarged, to show fine detail. Roberts now saw such things as a big cargo section with what looked like severe damage; hidden inside were grapples to seize any ship that came close enough to give help.