Startled, she swallowed before retorting, “What do you imagine I can do?”
“Probably nothing, I fear. Yet the chance of a hint, a clue, any spark of enlightenment no matter how faint, led me to call you and request a confidential talk. I emphasize ‘request.’ You cannot help unless you do so freely.”
“What do you want?” she whispered. “I repeat, I’m not in any revolutionary group—never was, unless you count me clerkin’ in militia durin’ independence fight—and I don’t know zero about what may be goin’ on.” Pride returned. “If I did, I’d kill myself rather than betray him. Or his cause.”
“Do you mind talking about them, though? Him and his cause.”
“How—?” Her answer faded out.
“My lady,” Desai said, and wondered how honest his plea sounded to her, “I am a stranger to your people. I have met hundreds by now, myself, while my subordinates have met thousands. It has been of little use in gaining empathy. Your history, literature, arts are a bit more helpful, but the time I can devote to them is very limited, and summaries prepared by underlings assigned to the task are nearly valueless. One basic obstacle to understanding you is your pride, your ideal of disciplined self-reliance, your sense of privacy which makes you reluctant to bare the souls of even fictional characters. I know you have normal human emotions; but how, on Aeneas, do they normally work? How does it feel to be you?
“The only persons here with whom I can reach some approximation of common ground are certain upper-class Townfolk, entrepreneurs, executives, innovators—cosmopolites who have had a good deal to do with the most developed parts of the Empire.”
“Squatters in Web,” she sneered. “Yes, they’re easy to fathom. Anything for profit.”
“Now you are the one whose imagination fails,” Desai reproved her. “True, no doubt a number of them are despicable opportunists. Are there absolutely none among Landfolk and University? Can you not conceive that an industrialist or financier may honestly believe cooperation with the Imperium is the best hope of his world? Can you not entertain the hypothesis that he may be right?”
He sighed. “At least recognize that the better we Impies understand you, the more to your advantage it is. In fact, our empathy could be vital. Had— Well, to be frank, had I known for sure what I dimly suspected, the significance in your culture of the McCormac Memorial and the armed households, I might have been able to persuade the sector government to rescind its orders for dismantling them. Then we might not have provoked the kind of thing which has made your betrothed an outlaw.”
Pain crossed her face. “Maybe,” she said.
“My duty here,” he told her, “is first to keep the Pax, including civil law and order; in the longer run, to assure that these will stay kept, when the Terran troops finally go home. But what must be done? How? Should we, for example, should we revise the basic structure altogether? Take power from the landed gentry especially, whose militarism may have been the root cause of the rebellion, and establish a parliament based on strict manhood suffrage?” Desai observed her expressions; she was becoming more open to him. “You are shocked? Indignant? Denying to yourself that so drastic a change is permanently possible?”
He leaned forward. “My lady,” he said, “among the horrors with which I live is this knowledge, based on all the history I have studied and all the direct experience I have had. It is terrifyingly easy to swing a defeated and occupied nation in any direction. It has occurred over and over. Sometimes, two victors with different ideologies divided, such a loser among them, for purposes of ‘reform.’ Afterward the loser stayed divided, its halves perhaps more fanatical than either original conqueror.”
Dizziness assailed him. He must breathe deeply before he could go on: “Of course, an occupation may end too soon, or it may not cany out its reconstruction thoroughly enough. Then a version of the former society will revive, though probably a distorted version. Now how soon is too soon, how thoroughly is enough? And to what end?
“My lady, there are those in power who claim Sector Alpha Crucis will never be safe until Aeneas has been utterly transformed: into an imitation Terra, say most. I feel that that is not only wrong—you have something unique here, something basically good—but it is mortally dangerous. In spite of the pretensions of the psychodynamicists, I don’t believe the consequences of radical surgery, on a proud and energetic people, are foreseeable.