Hoddan gaped up at him.
"You mean there's a possibility that—"
"Of course!" said the ambassador in surprise. "You haven't phrased it that way, but you're actually a rebel. A revolutionist. You defy authority and tradition and governments and such things. Naturally the Interstellar Diplomatic Service is inclined to be on your side. What do you think it's for?"
Chapter 2
In something under two hours Hoddan was ushered into the ambassador's office. He'd been refreshed, his torn clothing replaced by more respectable garments, and the places where stun-pistols had stung him, soothed by ointments.
But, more important, he'd worked out and firmly adopted a new point of view.
He'd been a misfit at home on Zan. He was not contented with the humdrum and monotonous life as a member of a space-pirate community. Piracy was a matter of dangerous take-offs in cranky rocket ships, to be followed by weeks or months of tedious and uncomfortable boredom in highly unhealthy re-breathed air. No voyage ever contained more than ten seconds of satisfactory action. All fighting took place just out of the atmosphere of the embattled planet. Regardless of the result of the fight, the pirates had to get away fast when it was over, lest overwhelming forces swarm up from the nearby world. It was intolerably devoid of anything an ambitious young man would want.
Even when one had made a good prize—with the life-boats of the foreign ship darting frantically for ground—and even after one got back to Zan with the captured ship, even then there was little satisfaction to a pirate's career. Zan had not a large population. Piracy couldn't support a large number of people. Zan couldn't attempt to defend itself against even single, heavily armed ships that sometimes came in passionate resolve to avenge the disappearance of a rich freighter or a fast, new liner. So the people of Zan, to avoid being hanged, had to play innocent. They had to be convincingly simple, harmless folk who cultivated their fields and lived quiet, blameless lives. They might loot, but they couldn't use their loot where investigators could find it. They had to build their own houses and make their own furniture and grow their own food. So life on Zan was dull. Piracy was not profitable in the sense that one could live well by it. It simply wasn't a trade for anybody like Hoddan.
So he'd abandoned all that. He'd studied electronics in books looted from passenger-ship libraries. Within months after his arrival on a law-abiding planet, he was able to earn a living at electronics as an honest trade.
And that was unsatisfactory, too. Law-abiding communities were no more thrilling or rewarding than piratical ones. A payday now and then did not make up for the tedium of earning. Even when one had money there was not much to do with it. On Walden, to be sure, the level of civilization was so high that most people took to psychiatric treatments so they could stand it, and the neurotics vastly out-numbered the more normal folk. But on Walden, electronics was only a way to make a living, like piracy, and there was no more fun to be had out of being civilized.
What Hoddan craved, of course, was a sense of achievement. Technically, there were opportunities all about him. He'd developed one, and it would save millions of credits a year if it were adopted. But it did not happen to be anything that anybody wanted. He'd tried to force its use and he was in trouble. Now he saw clearly that a law-abiding world was no more satisfactory than a piratical one.
The ambassador received him with a cordial wave of the hand.
"Things move fast," he said cheerfully. "You weren't here half an hour before there was a police captain at the gate. He explained that an excessively dangerous criminal had escaped jail and been seen climbing the embassy wall. He very generously offered to bring some men in and capture you and take you away—with my permission, of course. He was shocked when I declined."
"I can understand that," said Hoddan.
"By the way," said the ambassador. "Young men like yourself . . . Ah . . . is there a girl involved in this?"
Hoddan considered.
"A girl's father," he acknowledged, "is the real complainant against me."
"Does he complain," asked the ambassador, "because you want to marry her, or because you don't?"
"Neither," Hoddan told him. "She hasn't quite decided that I'm worth defying her rich father for."
"Good!" said the ambassador. "It can't be too bad a mess while a woman is being really practical. I've checked your story. Allowing for differences of viewpoint, it agrees with the official version. I've ruled that you are a political refugee, and so entitled to sanctuary in the embassy. And that's that."
"Thank you, sir," said Hoddan.
"There's no question about the crime," observed the ambassador, "or that it is primarily political. You proposed to improve a technical process in a society which considers itself beyond improvement. If you'd succeeded, the idea of change would have spread, people now poor would have gotten rich, people now rich would have gotten poor, and you'd have done what all governments are established to prevent. So you'll never be able to walk the streets of this planet again in safety. You've scared people."
"Yes, sir," said Hoddan. "It's been an unpleasant surprise to them, to be scared."
The ambassador put the tips of his fingers together.
"Do you realize," he asked, "that the whole purpose of civilization is to take the surprises out of life, so one can be bored to death? That a culture in which nothing unexpected ever happens is in what is called its 'golden age'? That when nobody can even imagine anything happening unexpectedly, that they later fondly refer to that period as the 'good old days'?"
"I hadn't thought of it in just those words, sir."
"It is one of the most avoided facts of life," said the ambassador. "Government, in the local or planetary sense of the word, is an organization for the suppression of adventure. Taxes are, in part, the insurance premiums one pays for protection against the unpredictable. And your act has been an offense against everything that is the foundation of a stable, orderly and damnably tedious way of life—against civilization, in fact."
Hoddan frowned.
"Yet, you've granted me asylum."
"Naturally!" said the ambassador. "The Diplomatic Service works for the welfare of humanity. That doesn't mean stuffiness. A golden age in any civilization is always followed by collapse. In ancient days savages came and camped outside the walls of super-civilized towns. They were unwashed, unmannerly, and unsanitary. Super-civilized people refused even to think about them! So presently the savages stormed the city walls and another civilization went up in flames."
"But now," objected Hoddan, "there are no savages."
"They invent themselves," the ambassador told him. "My point is that the Diplomatic Service cherishes individuals and causes which battle stuffiness and complacency and golden ages and monstrous things like that. Not thieves, of course. They're degradation, like body-lice. But rebels and crackpots and revolutionaries who prevent hardening of the arteries of commerce and furnish wholesome exercise to the body politic—they're worth cherishing!"
"I think I see, sir," said Hoddan.
"I hope you do," said the ambassador. "My action on your behalf is pure diplomatic policy. To encourage the dissatisfied is to insure against the menace of universal satisfaction. Walden is in a bad way. You are the most encouraging thing that has happened here in a long time. And you're not a native."