The Covenant was the first scientific social document ever drawn up by man, and due credit must be given to its principal author, Dr Micah Novak, the same Novak who served as staff psychologist in the revolution. The revolutionists wished to establish maximum personal liberty. How could they accomplish that to a degree of high mathematical probability? First they junked the concept of 'justice'. Examined semantically 'justice' has no referent-there is no observable phenomenon in the space-time-matter continuum to which one can point, and say, 'This is justice.' Science can deal only with that which can be observed and measured. Justice is not such a matter; therefore it can never have the same meaning to one as to another; any 'noises' said about it will only add to confusion.
But damage, physical or economic, can be pointed to and measured. Citizens were forbidden by the Covenant to damage another. Any act not leading to damage, physical or economic, to some particular person, they declared to be lawful.
Since they had abandoned the concept of 'justice', there could be no rational standards of punishment. Penology took its place with lycanthropy and other forgotten witchcrafts. Yet, since it was not practical to permit a source of danger to remain in the community, social offenders were examined and potential repeaters were given their choice of psychological readjustment, or of having society withdraw itself from them-Coventry.
Early drafts of the Covenant contained the assumption that the socially unsane would naturally be hospitalized and readjusted, particularly since current psychiatry was quite competent to cure all non-lesional psychoses and cure or alleviate lesional psychoses, but Novak set his face against this.
'No!' he protested. 'The government must never again be permitted to tamper with the mind of any citizen without his consent, or else we set up a greater tyranny than we had before. Every man must be free to accept, or reject, the Covenant, even though we think him insane!'
The next time David MacKinnon looked up Persephone he found her in a state of extreme agitation. His own wounded pride was forgotten at once. 'Why, my dear,' he said, 'whatever in the world is the matter?'
Gradually he gathered that she had been present at a conversation between Magee and the Doctor, and had heard, for the first time, of the impending military operation against the United States. He patted her hand. 'So that's all it is,' he observed in a relieved voice. 'I thought something was wrong with you yourself.'
'"That's all-" David MacKinnon, do you mean to stand there and tell me that you knew about this, and don't consider it worth worrying about?'
'Me? Why should I? And for that matter, what could I do?'
'What could you do? You could go outside and warn them-that's what you could do... As to why you should-Dave, you're impossible!' She burst into tears and ran from the room.
He stared after her, mouth open, then borrowed from his remotest ancestor by observing to himself that women are hard to figure out.
Persephone did not appear at lunch. MacKinnon asked the Doctor where she was.
'Had her lunch,' the Doctor told him, between mouthfuls. 'Started for the Gateway.'
'What! Why did you let her do that?'
'Free agent. Wouldn't have obeyed me anyway. She'll be all right.'
Dave did not hear the last, being already out of the room and running out of the house. He found her just backing her little motorcycle runabout out of its shed. 'Persephone!'
'What do you want?' she asked with frozen dignity beyond her years.
'You mustn't do this! That's where the Fader got hurt!'
'I am going. Please stand aside.'
'Then I'm going with you.'
'Why should you?'
'To take care of you.'
She sniffed. 'As if anyone would dare to touch me.'
There was a measure of truth in what she said. The Doctor, and every member of his household, enjoyed a personal immunity unlike that of anyone else in Coventry. As a natural consequence of the set-up, Coventry had almost no competent medical men. The number of physicians who committed social damage was small. The proportion of such who declined psychiatric treatment was negligible, and this negligible remainder were almost sure to be unreliable bunglers in their profession. The Doctor was a natural healer, in voluntary exile in order that he might enjoy the opportunity to practice his art in the richest available field. He cared nothing for dry research; what he wanted was patients, the sicker the better, that he might make them well again.
He was above custom and above law. In the Free State the Liberator depended on him for insulin to hold his own death from diabetes at arm's length. In New America his beneficiaries were equally powerful. Even among the Angels of the Lord the Prophet himself accepted the dicta of the Doctor without question.
But MacKinnon was not satisfied. Some ignorant fool, he was afraid, might do the child some harm without realizing her protected status. He got no further chance to protest; she started the little runabout suddenly, and forced him to jump out of its path. When he had recovered his balance, she was far down the lane. He could not catch her.
She was back in less than four hours. He had expected that; if a person as elusive as Fader had not been able to reach the Gate at night, it was not likely that a young girl could do so in daylight.
His first feeling was one of simple relief, then he eagerly awaited an opportunity to speak to her. During her absence he had been turning over the situation in his mind. It was a foregone conclusion that she would fail; he wished to rehabilitate himself in her eyes; therefore, he would help her in the project nearest her heart-he himself would carry the warning to the Outside!
Perhaps she would ask for such help. In fact, it seemed likely. But the time she returned he had convinced himself that she was certain to ask his help. He would agree-with simple dignity-and off he would go, perhaps to be wounded, or killed, but an heroic figure, even if he failed.
He pictured himself subconsciously as a blend of Sydney Carton, the White Knight, the man who carried the message to Garcia and just a dash of d'Artagnan.
But she did not ask him-she would not even give him a chance to talk with her.
She did not appear at dinner. After dinner she was closeted with the Doctor in his study. When she reappeared she went directly to her room. He finally concluded that he might as well go to bed himself.
To bed, and then to sleep, and take it up again in the morning-But it's not as simple as that. The unfriendly walls stared back at him, and the other, critical half of his mind decided to make a night of it. Fool! She doesn't want your help. Why should she? What have you got that Fader hasn't got?-and better. To her, you are just one of the screwloose multitude you've seen all around you in this place.
But I'm not crazy!-just because I choose not to submit to the dictation of others doesn't make me crazy. Doesn't it, though? All the rest of them in here are lamebrains, what's so fancy about you? Not all of them-how about the Doctor, and-don't kid yourself, chump, the Doctor and Mother Johnston are here for their own reasons; they weren't sentenced. And Persephone was born here.
How about Magee?-He was certainly rational-or seemed so. He found himself resenting, with illogical bitterness, Magee's apparent stability. Why should he be any different from the rest of us?
The rest of us? He had classed himself with the other inhabitants of Coventry. All right, all right, admit it, you fool-you're just like the rest of them; turned out because the decent people won't have you-and too damned stubborn to admit that you need treatment. But the thought of treatment turned him cold, and made him think of his father again. Why should that be? He recalled something the Doctor had said to him a couple of days before:
'What you need, son, is to stand up to your father and tell him off. Pity more children don't tell their parents to go to hell!'