'I will hear whatever you have to say, Mr. President.'
'Well - the external amenities, at least. That's hopeful. Or do you think a video-tracer is attached to the room?'
Keilin merely lifted his eyebrows.
Moreno said: 'It isn't. We are quite alone. We must be alone; otherwise, how could I tell you safely that it is being arranged for you to be elected president under a constitution now being devised? Eh, what's the matter?'
Then he grinned at the look of bloodless amazement in Kei-lin's face. 'Oh, you don't believe it. Well, it's past your stopping. And before an hour is up, you'll understand.'
'I'm to be president?' Keilia struggled with a strange, hoarse voice. Then, more firmly: 'You are mad.'
'No. Not I. Those out there, rather. Out there in the Outer Worlds.' There was a sudden vicious intensity in Moreno 's eyes, and face, and voice, so that you forgot he was a little monkey of a man with a perpetual cold. You didn't notice the wrinkled, sloping forehead. You forgot the baldish head and ill-fitting clothes. There was only the bright and luminous look in his eyes, and the hard incision in his voice. That you noticed.
Keilin reached blindly backward for a chair, as Moreno came closer and spoke with increasing intensity.
'Yes,' said Moreno. 'Those out among the Stars. The godlike ones. The stately supermen. The strong, handsome master-race. They are mad. But only we on Earth know it.
'Come, you have heard of the Pacific Project. I know you have. You denounced it to Cellioni once, and called it a fake. But it isn't a fake. And almost none of it is a secret. In fact, the only secret about it was that almost none of it was a secret.
'You're no fool, Keilin. You just never stopped to work it all out. And yet you were on the track. You had the feel of it. What was it you said that time you were interviewing me on the program? Something about the attitude of the Outer Worldling toward the Earthman being the only flaw in the former's stability. That was it, wasn't it? Or something like that? Very well, then; good! You had the first third of the Pacific Project in your mind at the time, and it was no secret after all, was it?
'Ask yourself, Keilin - what was the attitude of the typical Auroran to a typical Earthman? A feeling of superiority? That's the first thought, I suppose. But, tell me, Keih'n, if he really felt superior, really superior, would it be so necessary for him to call such continuous attention to it? What kind of superiority is it that must be continuously bolstered by the constant repetition of phrases such as "apemen," "submen," "half-animals of Earth," and so on? That is not the calm internal assurance of superiority. Do you waste epithets on earthworms? No, there is something else there.
'Or let us approach it from another tack. Why do Outer World tourists stay in special hotels, travel in inclosed ground-cars, and have rigid, if unwritten, rules against social intermingling? Are they afraid of pollution? Strange, then, that they are not afraid to eat our food and drink our wine and smoke our tobacco.
'You see, Keilin, there are no psychiatrists on the Outer Worlds. The supermen are, so they say, too well adjusted. But here on Earth, as the proverb goes, there are more psychiatrists than plumbers, and they get lots of practice. So it is we, and not they, who know the truth about this Outer World superiority-complex, who know it to be simply a wild reaction against an overwhelming feeling of guilt.
'Don't you think that can be so? You shake your head as though you disagree. You don't see that a handful of men who clutch a Galaxy while billions starve for lack of room must feel a subconscious guilt, no matter what? And, since they won't share the loot, don't you see that the only way they can justify themselves is to try to convince themselves that Earth-men, after all, are inferior, that they do not deserve the Galaxy, that a new race of men have been created out there and that we here are only the diseased remnants of an old race that should die out like the dinosaur, through the working of inexorable natural laws?
'Ah, if they could only convince themselves of that, they would no longer be guilty, but merely superior. Only, it doesn't work; it never does. It requires constant bolstering; constant repetition, constant reinforcement. And still it doesn't quite convince.
'Best of all, if only they could pretend that Earth and its population do not exist at all. When you visit Earth, therefore, avoid Earthmen; or they might make you uncomfortable by not looking inferior enough. Sometimes they might look miserable instead, and nothing more. Or worse still, they might even seem intelligent - as I did, for instance, on Aurora.
'Occasionally, an Outer Worlder like Moreanu did crop up, and was able to recognize guilt for what it was without being afraid to say so out loud. He spoke of the duty the Outer Worlds owed Earth - and so he was dangerous to us. For if the others listened to him and had offered token assistance to Earth, their guilt might have been assuaged in their own minds; and that without any lasting help to Earth. So Moreanu was removed through our web-weaving, and the way left clear to those who were unbending, who refused to admit guilt, and whose reaction could therefore be predicted and manipulated.
'Send them an arrogant note, for instance, and they automatically strike back with a useless embargo that merely gives us the ideal pretext for war. Then lose a war quickly, and you are sealed off by the annoyed supermen. No communication, no contact. You no longer exist to annoy them. Isn't that simple? Didn't it work out nicely?'
Keilin finally found his voice, because Moreno gave him time by stopping. Hd said: 'You mean that all thjs was planned? You did deliberately instigate the war for the purpose of sealing Earth off from the Galaxy? You sent out the men of the Home Fleet to sure death because you wanted defeat? Why, you're a monster, a… a -'
Moreno frowned: 'Please relax. It was not as simple as you think, and I am not a monster. Do you think the war could simply be - instigated? It had to be nurtured gently in just the right way and to just the right conclusion. If we had made the first move, if we had been the aggressor, if we had in any way put the fault on our side - why, they of the Outer Worlds would have occupied Earth and ground it under. They would no longer feel guilty, you see, if we committed a crime against them. Or, again, if we fought a protracted war, or one in which we inflicted damage, they could succeed in shifting the blame.
'But we didn't. We merely imprisoned Auroran smugglers, and were obviously within our rights. They had to go to war over it because only so could they protect their superiority, which in turn protected them against the horrors of guilt. And we lost quickly. Scarcely an Auroran died. The guilt grew deeper and resulted in exactly the peace treaty our psychiatrists had predicted.
'And as for sending men out to die, that is a commonplace in every war - and a necessity. It was necessary to fight a battle, and, naturally, there were casualties.'
'But why?' interrupted Keilin, wildly. 'Why? Why? Why does all this gibberish seem to make sense to you? What have we gained? What can we possibly gain out of the present situation?'
'Gained, man? You ask what we've gained? Why, we've gained the universe. What has held us back so far? You know what Earth has needed these last centuries. You yourself once outlined it forcefully to Cellioni. We need a positronic robot society and an atomic power technology. We need chemical farming and we need population control. Well, what's prevented that, eh? Only the customs of centuries which said robots were evil since they deprived human beings of jobs, that population control was merely the murder of unborn children, and so on. And worse, there was always the safety valve of emigration either actual or hoped-for.
'But now we cannot emigrate. We're stuck here. Worse than that, we have been humiliatingly defeated by a handful of men out in the stars, and we've had a humiliating treaty of peace forced upon us. What Earthman wouldn't subconsciously burn for revenge? Self-preservation has frequently knuckled under to that tremendous yearning to "get even."