The New York mob, like the Philadelphia mob, was not actuated by noble motives of daring all for freedom. They were rioting because they had been forbidden to smoke in public.
The same four men who had met in Professor Lechon's rooms in the University of Pennsylvania dormitories, so many years ago, met there again. Fred Merrian was tanned and husky, but subdued. The treatment at the Lancaster camp had almost killed him, but ended by hardening him.
He said: "The latest radio news is that the Second Garrison Corps is retreating through Russia."
"Uh—huh," said Dowling. "When they pulled them out of Europe to use against us, Europe went whoosh."
"Isn't it wonderful?" said Merrian. "It'll be a cleaner, finer world when we've gotten rid of them." He looked at his watch. "I've got to run. Everybody I ever knew wants to pinch me to see if I'm real."
When he had gone, Tadeusz Lechon (he was quite old now) said: "I didn't want to disillusion him again. You know how he is. It won't be a cleaner, finer world. It'll be the same old world, with rascals like you two running it."
"If we get rid of them," said Dowling. "They still hold Australia and most of southern Asia. It looks like years of war to me. And if we get rid of the Bozos, a lot of countries will be ruled by watchdogs, who won't be much improvement."
Arthur Hsi asked: "Why did they fold up so easily? One man with machine-gun could have dispersed that mob here last month."
Dowling said: "The Bozos didn't have the guts, and the watchdogs didn't want to. So there wasn't anybody to use the machine-gun. But it still seems goofy. Professor Lechon. Why could they beat us twenty years ago, and we beat them now, when they're at least as strong as they were then and we're very much weaker."
Lechon smiled: "Read your history, gentlemen. The same thing happened to the Spartans, remember, when Epaminondas beat them. Why? They were a warrior race, too. Being such, they were unfitted to live among civilized people. Civilized people are always more or less corrupt. The warrior race has a rigid discipline and an inhumanly high standard of conduct. As long as they keep to themselves they are invincible. When they mix with civilized people, they are corrupted by the contact.
"When a people that has never known a disease are exposed to it, it ravages them fearfully, because they have acquired no immunity to it. We, being slightly corrupt to begin with, have an immunity to corruption, just as if it were a bacterial disease. The Centaurians had no such protection. When exposed to temptation, from being much higher morally than we are, they fell much lower.
"The same thing happened to them as to the Spartans. When their government called on them to go to war to preserve its rule over the earth, most of them were too busy grafting off the civilized people to obey. So the Centaurian government found itself with the most powerful military machine on earth, but only a fraction of the men needed to man it. And many of those they did call home were rotten with dissipation, or were thoroughly unreliable watchdogs whose loyalty to their masters had turned to contempt.
"Aristotle said something on the subject a long time ago, in his Politics. If I remember the quotation rightly, it ran:
'Militaristic states are apt to survive only so long as they remain at war, while they go to ruin as soon as they have finished making their conquests. Peace causes their metal to decay; and the fault lies with a social system which does not teach its soldiers what to make of their lives when they are off duty.'
"All of which will not bring back the people the Centaurians killed, or give eyes back to those they blinded. Aristotle's statement, if true, is no ground for complacency. We have a grim time ahead of us yet.
"But to a historian like me it is interesting, from a long-range point of view. And it is somewhat comforting to know that my species' faults, however deplorable, do in fact afford it a certain protection.
"Read your history, gentlemen. The tune is always different, but the notes, as I once remarked, are always the same."
HYPERPELOSITY
"We all know about the brilliant successes in the arts and sciences, but, if you knew all their stories, you might find that some of the failures were really interesting."
It was Pat Weiss speaking. The beer had given out, and Carl Vandercook had gone out to get some more. Pat, having cornered all the chips in sight, was leaning back and emitting vast clouds of smoke.
"That means," I said, "that you've got a story coming. Okay, spill it. The poker can wait."
"Only don't stop in the middle and say 'That reminds me,' and go off on another story, and from the middle of that to another, and so on," put in Hannibal Snyder.
Pat cocked an eye at Hannibal. "Listen, mug, I haven't digressed once in the last three stories I've told. If you can tell a story better, go to it. Ever hear of J. Roman Oliveira?" he said, not waiting, I noticed, to give Hannibal a chance to take him up. He continued:
Carl's been talking a lot about that new gadget of his, and no doubt it will make him famous if he ever finishes it. And Carl usually finishes what he sets out to do. My friend Oliveira finished what he set out to do, also, and it should have made him famous, but it didn't. Scientifically his work was a success, and deserving of the highest praise, but humanly it was a failure. That's why he's now running a little college down in Texas. He still does good work, and gets articles in the journals, but it's not what he had every reason to suspect that he deserved. Just got a letter from him the other day—it seems he's now a proud grandfather. That reminds me of my grandfather—"
"Hey!" roared Hannibal. Pat said "Huh? Oh, I see. Sorry. I won't do it again." He went on:
I first knew J. Roman when I was a mere student at the Medical Center and he was a professor of virology. The J in his name stands for Haysoos, spelled J-c-s-u-s, which is a perfectly good Mexican name. But he'd been so much kidded about it in the States that he preferred to go by "Roman."
You remember that the Great Change, which is what this story has to do with, started in the winter of 1971, with that awful flu epidemic. Oliveira came down with it. I went around to see him to get an assignment, and found him perched on a pile of pillows and wearing the godawfullest pink and green pajamas. His wife was reading to him in Spanish.
"Leesten, Pat." he said when I came in, "I know you're a worthy esstudent, but I weesh you and the whole damn virology class were roasting on the hottest greedle in Hell. Tell me what you want, and then go away and let me die in peace."
I got my information, and was just going, when his doctor came in—old Fogarty, who used to lecture on sinuses. He'd given up general practice long before, but he was so scared of losing a good virologist that he was handling Oliveira's case himself.
"Stick around, sonny," he said to me when I started to follow Mrs. Oliveira out, "and learn a little practical medicine. I've always thought it a mistake that we haven't a class to train doctors in bedside manners. Now observe how I do it. I smile at Oliveira here, but I don't act so damned cheerful that he'd find death a welcome relief from my company. That's a mistake some young doctors make. Notice that I walk up briskly, and not as if I were afraid my patient was liable to fall in pieces at the slightest jar ..." and so on.
The fun came when he put the end of his stethoscope on Oliveira's chest.
"Can't hear a damn' thing," he snorted. "Or rather, you've got so much hair that all I can hear is the ends of it scraping on the diaphragm. May have to shave it. But say, isn't that rather unusual for a Mexican?"