Imagine: anything. The thrones made that both an offer and an equation. Sit in your throne, pull the crown forward on its arm and cap your skull with it and there it is, surrounding you and solid: your imagination. It's as though all your senses have become eidetic, and that's as close as you'll come to understanding what you're doing. Don't drift, because if you lose control you'll only be disappointed; construct your quarter of an hour toward a climax and you'll feel enriched, not disillusioned, when you take off the crown. Don't look for advertising; listen to your friends who've tried it.
So we did, and the government thrived, and Mounth disapproved. 'If you want to ignore what's wrong with the world now's your chance,' he said. 'Don't change it, just make a world for yourself. But that world's a selfish world and you shut other people out. I don't even want to think how many people must look at their wife or their husband wearing a crown, and wonder. You won't let yourselves be seduced by advertising, haven't you the will not to be seduced by yourselves?'
I'd been one of the first to hire a throne; I knew Mounth believed what he was saying but that didn't mean he was right all the time. This was too large an issue even for him, I thought, he would have to content himself with comment and with the support of those who agreed with him.
I didn't delude myself long. First we fought the thrones for ratings. Holoshows would have asked him if he hadn't suggested it to them, and so Truthlight was moved to overlap both sides of thronetime. Somehow Mounth arranged for the first set of ratings to reach him before anyone else saw them; but we all knew what they showed when Mounth strode out of Holoshows, looking at nobody. Not all the audience he lost when the thrones were about to be switched on even bothered to return to Truthlight when thronetime was over.
Then he seemed to resign himself to the attitude I'd predicted, though from the first I was disturbed by the way he did so. On the next Truthlight he didn't have a victim; he read out attacks and answered them, and seemed to be dawdling until thronetime. But there was a tension, a sense that he was delaying for some reason. A minute before thronetime he began to stare silently at the chronometer. We and the holocameras gazed at him. Thronetime clicked into place and he turned to the holocameras.
'Now I can talk to all of you who believe we have free will and that it's worth having,' he said. 'Now the others aren't listening. I think they must be the ones who tell us no murder is premeditated.'
'And he's talking maird if he contradicts them,' Thaw said in my ear.
'Well, perhaps they're right and we've taken care of that problem,' Mounth said. 'Let's leave aside those of you who are old or alone and wouldn't care if they were premeditated, shall we? And let's look at something everyone seems to have forgotten. If premeditated murders became common, if murder became an everyday activity, then the tension that produced them wouldn't be high enough for the social telepaths to track down. There'd be only one way to stop them, as there used to be, and that's the death penalty. Don't say anything yet,' he said. Think about it. And if you think this is just a fantasy of mine, I may surprise you.'
'All the evidence shows there are fewer murders now the thrones are channelling tension,' Thaw told him when he'd finished. And the social telepaths prevented most of the rest, reading emotional tensions unauthorized, by one of those inconsistencies without which no society functions. It was a job in which they could use their talents, and one in which they could feel disliked for what they did rather than what they were: preventing violence by talkouts based on telepathic readings, and if necessary by hypnotic sessions involving a panel of four, popularly regarded as the evil tamperer and the others not seeing, hearing, admitting what he was about. I suddenly realized that Mounth's faith in himself had borne him above and past that sort of work without a glance.
'Fewer murders, are there?' he said to Thaw. 'In that case you needn't worry how my hypothetical murders are punished.'
In the next few days his method began to pay off, perhaps even more spectacularly than he'd anticipated. Letters and calls of support mounted and toppled off his desk, and all from people who'd been crowned during Truthlight but now were angrily demonstrating their free will. Mounth smiled slightly each time he returned to his desk from reading our files on the government. I had no idea what he was planning, and I wasn't sure I wanted to be involved.
THREE
WHEN Mounth acted nobody had a chance to anticipate. I was just one of the audience, gazing and gaping as he listed the ministers, all the most personally unattractive members of the government, who'd been murdered by their secretaries and aides during the past fortnight's thronetimes.'
'I hardly need to be more honest, but I shall be,' he said. 'I watched most of these murders happen, and I had no authority to do so. But our government has never punished unauthorized telepathy when it's been used in the service of the law. If I misjudged and must be punished, then I accept. But,' he said with wide-eyed innocence to the holocameras, 'in that case our government must accept that these murders are the purest harmless fantasy and do nothing about them.'
When some of those he'd named were demoted he ignored them; he was sure of himself. Once our reporters had established that three of the aides had been dismissed, Mounth pounced.
'I was going to suggest that these people could be examined by social telepaths, but now it seems I needn't,' he said. 'The government lawyers say they want to talk to me about my behaviour. I've said of course they can, here on Truth-light in front of us all. I believe there's a question we all want to ask them. Something on these lines: if these murders aren't a serious matter why have these people been dismissed? If even the government's as worried as that, what are we supposed to do? Not knowing if we've been murdered, is that supposed to reassure us? Do they want us to say never mind, it isn't real? Haven't they been telling us it's absolutely real, isn't that the whole appeal of it? Then where's the law in all this. Is it pretending not to notice? We can't dismiss our murderers, haven't we ordinary people the right to demand protection?'
At the side of my eye Thaw's face turned and loomed at me. I met his expression, for we both knew that Mounth was taking an extraordinary chance in describing himself that way. I saw in Thaw's eyes, and felt moving uneasily in my mind, a sudden conviction that he would succeed.
'Aren't we entitled to ask that these murders are stopped in the only way that works?' Mounth said. 'Are you thinking you don't need protection? How do you know? I can't be sure, can you? Wouldn't you rather know you're safe? If you agree don't call, don't write. Think it to me. Think it now.' And in millions of rooms his smile slowly grew and warmed and embraced his audience.
I didn't direct the first of the Truthlights on the law. A trainee director took over on my free nights, and was overwhelmed by the chance to handle such material. Before the show began I wandered into the studio to make sure no technical disasters were threatening. Thaw, whom Holoshows had self-protectively asked to mediate, was making his way to the stage. I was wishing him good luck when a reporter looked in to give us the news. Mounth had foregone his protective cube as a gesture to the lawyers, and was waiting at the back of the studio to walk on and face the panel.