Seaton and Crane in the Skylark of Valeron proved that our galaxy, the Milky Way, lies in a lenticular universe by charting every galaxy in that universe. And they suggested to the various learned societies that the two celestial aggregates should be named, respectively, the First Galaxy and the First Universe.
Many millions of parsecs distant from Tellus and its First Galaxy, then, out near the Arbitrary Rim of the First Universe, there lay the Realm of the Llurdi. This Realm, which had existed for over seventy thousand Tellurian years, was made up of four hundred eighty-two planets in exactly half that many solar systems.
Two planets in each populated system were necessary because the population of the Realm was composed of two entirely different forms of highly intelligent life. Of these two races the Jelmi — the subject race, living practically in vassalage — were strictly human beings and lived on strictly Tellus-type worlds.
The master race, the Llurdi, had originated upon the harsh and hostile planet Llurdiax — Llurdiaxorb Five — with its distant, wan, almost-never-seen sun and its incessant gales of frigid, ice-laden, ammonia- and methane-impregnated, forty-pounds-to-the-square-inch air. Like mankind, they wore clothing against the rigors of their environment. Unlike mankind, however, they wore clothes only for protection, and only when protection was actually necessary. Nor was Llurdiax harsh or forbidding — to them.
It was the best of all possible worlds. They would not colonize any planet that was not as nearly as possible like the mother world of their race.
Llurdi, although they are erect, bifurcate, bi-laterally symmetrical, bi-sexual, mammalian, and have a large crania and six-digited hands each having two opposed thumbs, are not humanoids. Nor, despite their tremendous, insensitive, unfreezable wings, are they either birds or bats. Nor flying cats, although they have huge, vertically-slitted eyes and needle-sharp canine teeth that protrude well below and above their upper and lower lips. Also, they have immensely strong and highly versatile tails; but there is nothing simian about them or in their ancestry.
The Realm was not exactly an empire. Nor was Llanzlan Klazmon the Fifteenth exactly an emperor. The title “Llanzlan” translates, as nearly as possible, into “Director”; and that was what Klazmon regarded himself as being.
It is true that what he said, went; and that if he didn’t like any existing law he expunged it from all existence. But that was exactly the way things should be. How else could optimum conditions be achieved and maintained in an ever-expanding, ever-changing, ever-rising economy? He ruled, he said and thoroughly believed, with complete reason and perfect fairness and strictly in accordance with the findings of the universe’s largest and most competent computers as to what was for the best good of all.
Wherefore everyone who did not agree with him was automatically, obviously, and unquestionably — wrong.
Llurdias, the capital city of the world Llurdiax and of the Realm, had a population of just over ten million and covered more than nine hundred square miles of ground. At its geometrical center towered the mile-square, half-mile-high office-residence-palace (the Llurdian word “llanzlanate” has no Tellurian equivalent) of Llanzlan Klazmon the Fifteenth of the Realm of the Llurdi. And in that building’s fifth sub-basement, in Hall Prime of Computation, Klazmon and his Board of Advisors were hard at work.
That vast room, the first receptor of all the reports of the Realm, was three-quarters full of receivers, recorders, analyzers — bewilderingly complex instrumentation of all kinds.
From most of these devices tapes were issuing — tapes that, en route to semi-permanent storage, were being monitored by specialists in the hundreds of different fields of the Llurdan-Jelmi economy.
Klazmon the Fifteenth and his Board, seated at a long conference table in hard-upholstered “chairs” shaped to fit the Llurdan anatomy, were paying no attention to routine affairs.
“I have called this meeting,” the ruler said, “to decide what can be done to alleviate an intolerable situation. As you all know, we live in what could be called symbiosis with the Jelmi; who are so unstable, so illogical, so birdbrained generally that they would destroy themselves in a century were it not for our gentle but firm insistence that they conduct themselves in all matters for their own best good. This very instability of their illogical minds, however, enables them to arrive occasionally at valid conclusions from insufficient data; a thing that no logical mind can do. These conclusions — they are intuitions, really — account for practically all the advancement we Llurdi have made and explain why we have put up with the Jelmi — yes, cherished them — so long.”
He paused, contemplating the justice of the arrangement he had just described. It did not occur to him that it could in any way be described as “wrong.”
He went on: “What most of you do not know is that intuitions of any large worth have become less and less frequent, decade by decade, over the last few centuries. It was twelve years ago that the Jelm Jarxon elucidated the Jarxon’ band of the sixth order, and no worth-while intuition has been achieved since that time. Beeloy, has your more rigorous analysis revealed any new fact of interest?”
A young female stood up, preened the short fur back of her left ear with the tip of her tail, and said, “No, sir. Logic can not be applied to illogic. Statistical analysis is still the only possible tool and it cannot be made to apply to the point in question, since it is incapable of certainty and since the genius-type mind occurs in only one out of thousands of millions of Jelmi. I found a very high probability, however — point nine nine nine plus — that the techniques set up by our ancestors are wrong. In breeding for contentment by destroying the discontented we are very probably breeding out the very characteristics we wish to encourage.”
“Thank you, Beeloy. That finding was not unanticipated. Kalton, your report on Project University, please.”
“Yes, sir.” An old male, so old that his fur was almost white, stood up. “Four hundred males and the same number of females, the most intelligent and most capable Jelmi alive, were selected and were brought here to the Llanzlanate. They were put into quarters that were Jelm-type in every respect, even to gravity. They were given every inducement and every facility to work-study and to breed.”
“First, as to work-study. They have done practically nothing except waste time. They seem to devote their every effort to what they call ‘escape’ by means of already-well known constructions of the fifth and sixth orders — all of which are of course promptly negated. See for yourselves what these insanely illogical malcontents are doing and know for yourselves that, in its present form, Project University is a failure as far as producing intuitions is concerned.”
Kalton picked up a fist-sized instrument between the thumbs of his left hand and a tri-di “tank” appeared on the table’s top, in plain sight of every member of the Board. Then, as he began to finger controls, a three-dimensional scene in true color appeared in the tank; a smoothly-flowing, ever-shifting scene that moved from room to room and from place to place as the point of view traversed the vast volume of the prison.
It did not look like a prison. The apartments, of which there were as many as the Jelmi wanted, were furnished as luxuriously as the various occupants desired; with furniture and equipment every item of which had been selected by each occupant himself or herself. There were wonderful rugs and hangings; masterpieces of painting and of sculpture; triumphs of design in fireplaces and tables and chairs and couches. Each room or suite could be set up for individual control of gravity, temperature, pressure, and humidity. Any imaginable item of food or drink was available on fifteen seconds’ notice at any hour of the day or night.