I was particularly pleased when he took on the social telepaths themselves. Yes, I knew that the reason he could line up four of them to interview in the studio was that the government didn't dare forbid them to appear; Mounth was already as powerful as that.
'Don't look so uneasy, Thaw,' I said. 'The government never did much for us.' But he was frowning at Mounth addressing the telepaths from within his almost invisible protective cube, on which a few of his interviewees had thumped wildly.
'Of course we all know that the only thing we mustn't do within our own walls is harm,' Mounth was saying. 'And we know that one of your jobs is defining and preventing harm. It's a difficult job and I know we all admire those who do it well. But outside our own walls it's up to us all to be vigilant. Now I gather a few of the poorer people not a hundred miles north of here have been soliciting. It's quite illegal, of course, and I'm sure we'd agree with the government that nobody's so poor that it's necessary. It's the sort of thing that might make a sentimental person disobey government rules,' his gaze settling on the trapped expression of a tele-path which the holocamera didn't catch, 'but I shouldn't be surprised if I didn't even have to mention it again.'
'I've seen the people on the north side,' Thaw said to me, 'and even when Holoshows were at their worst those people made me feel like a millionaire.'
Me too, but I didn't say that; I said 'I'll admit he could have carried his economic redistribution a bit further before starting this.'
'One of these days you'll die of moderation. He'd have to push it a long way further before it took.'
'If Mounth were as dishonest as you want me to believe,' I said, 'the last people he'd challenge would be telepaths.'
Soon Mounth's contract came up for renewal. He didn't want more money; he wanted five shows a fortnight, and he got them. He also wanted me to direct. Most of my work was finding itself in the violence box. I'd felt Mounth's slight pained disapproval and had been distressed, because I respected him enough to identify achievement with his esteem. I agreed to direct Truthlight.
Then he began to extend his range from popular targets and the socially crucial to the accepted and applauded: gardeners, architects, tribalist percussionists. Not that his approach had ever been inflexibly hostile, of course; some of them came out smiling, perhaps even inspired. But more came out gripping their expressions as if they were the only part of them left unshaken, and probably they were.
The worst case was Clement, the lightpainter. 'And this is a copy of your most famous work,' Mounth said to him. 'It's been manufactured frequently. I'd like you to take another look at it with us. This long thin beam going in between these two round pink areas: now what are these? They have a kind of soft rather motherly quality, wouldn't you say? And why does this little jagged ray keep trying to escape? I'm sure you can tell us, but let me help.'
After that it became unbearable, and at last Clement walked out of the studio with nobody behind his eyes. Mounth saw my disquiet or perhaps he felt it, for he was looking at me when he said 'We mustn't be too ready to call things beautiful. Real beauty's beautiful all the way through.' I stopped my head nodding and determined to wait until I knew how Clement had been affected.
Others were quicker to condemn Mounth. Although, or perhaps because, Truthlight had the highest ratings in the career of holocasts or of tridi for that matter, every show was pelted with calls and letters of censure, anger, hatred. Mounth ignored the anonymous but often read out and answered the most pointed of the rest, complete with names and addresses, after his interviews. Then one accusation began to recur: that he was extending the range of his interviews so as not to run out of targets rather than from honest feeling. This time he was hurt and he asked me to help him answer.
We took the holocameras into the north side. Exteriors were still appallingly expensive, but Holoshows agreed this once.
Mounth stood among the rubblegardens which the gardeners had constructed to unify the environment. I had the holocameras watch some children collecting plastic bottles and cans to build a rubbush outside their five-miler, then turned them back to Mounth.
'When I lived here it wasn't a garden,' he said. 'We didn't build with rubble, we hurt each other with it. Over there is where I broke someone's hand with a stone because he wouldn't share his beer with me. And just there under the five-miler is where I thought I'd discovered what sex was about, all sweat and blood and haste and sharp bits of stone. I'm better than I was but I've a long way to go, and I want you all go there with me. Someday I'll get married, but not until I'm worthy to. Tell me my feelings don't make sense, then tell me what else does. We all want improvement, it doesn't matter what our politics are. That's why I do what I do.' As the holocameras returned to the children waiting for the adhesive on the bush to set I realized that Mounth hadn't been using his body or his image at all. He had answered with pure honest faith.
For the rest of his answer we took the next Truthlight to see his parents. We began at their front door. Everyone has a personal front door and a lift behind it, of course, but few have their own maintenance man living on the next level down. I posed Mounth's parents against the window and a clear twenty-five miles, and I was about to instruct the holocameras to track when I saw Mounth looking at me, and I realized that if anyone was falsifying to make a point it was I.
'I'm disappointed and a little hurt,' he said. 'You still don't quite believe my answers.' Maird, I said, silently, and effaced myself and let the holocameras gaze at his parents: chafing a little against each other but largely calm and self-contained, somewhat bemused by all the technicians, a little bewildered still after two years by their new demandingly clean and tidy home. 'This was the first thing I wanted to achieve, and the easiest,' was all Mounth said.
But it wasn't long after that I first looked up and frowned. While the attacks on him became more vicious, the letters and calls of support multiplied. More than one pleaded with him to interview the only group he'd consistently avoided, the government.
'I've pledged myself not to interfere in politics,' he said. 'To do so would be to interfere with democracy. So I can't lead you in that area, at least not directly. But I hope I don't have to. I hope' (and Thaw mirrored my frown and nodded) 'you've learned from me.'
Then, almost as if responding to Mounth's implicit challenge, the government produced thrones.
* * *
Perhaps their inventor was a government man. If he wasn't he must have been shrewd, for he forestalled any battle with the government's arbitary puritanism by selling the throne direct to them. Which meant monopoly; but since the throne wasn't a medium in the strict sense the government couldn't be accused of using it for dictatorial purposes.
What the throne was, nobody outside the manufacturing process knew. The workers were gagged by the secrets act; the thrones were on hire to subscribers and mustn't be tampered with on pain of prosecution; the power source was concealed and government-controlled, switched on for a quarter of an hour each evening and otherwise apparently dormant except as an alarm system to betray those who tried to dismantle their thrones. We were reassured that the thrones were physically and mentally harmless. After initial widespread distrust we confirmed the statement for ourselves; and discovered what the thrones did.