if not downright embarrassing, over the years it will have assigned some of its best men there, and they’ll have applied every trick and device and maneuver they could think of. All of them failed, so now IPR is giving the job to a Cultural Survey officer. If we rule out insanity it still seems like a rather desperate measure.”
“Supreme Headquarters is desperate,” Wheeler agreed. “The Federation boundary can’t be drawn in loops and curlicues. Neither can there be a forbidden hunk of space inside the boundary. A world like Gurnil can hold up the admission of a whole sector of worlds and bring Federation expansion to a dead stop.”
“If Kurr is so tough, how does it happen that Larnor was a pushover?”
“Larnor is a poor continent, and it had an immensely stupid king. Its resources had been neglected. The people lived in dire poverty, and it didn’t take much to incite them to revolt. The king was encouraged to impose more and more taxes, and the people were encouraged to do something about them.”
“All without outside interference, of course.”
“Without apparent outside interference. It’s not quite the same thing.”
“What about Kurr?”
“An immensely wealthy continent, and its rulers have been nothing short of brilliant. They’re tyrants, with the usual evil vices of tyrants, but they’ve known to a hair just how far they can go without ruffling their subjects. Some refined instinct seems to keep a check on their natural greed, and they can acquire as much wealth as they think they need without oppressive taxation because their realm is so wealthy. They’re even shrewd enough to temper their acts of cruelty. The king may summarily seize a girl who takes his fancy, but he always rewards her father or husband, and when he tires of her he rewards the girl. What should be an intolerable act of oppression becomes a highly profitable honor. If a subject offends him the king may have his left arm severed at the elbow—a favorite practice of the present King Rovva—but the victim will be pensioned off, and it’s usually a court hanger-on about whom the people aren’t likely to be concerned anyway. And naturally the people have had respect for the monarch bred into them for generations.”
“What about relations between Kurr and Larnor?”
“There haven’t been any formal relations since the Larnorian revolt. The kings of Kurr were shrewd enough to see that Larnorian ideas were dangerous. Informally, the Larnorians used to send out missionaries to spread both their religion and democracy, but they always disappeared without a trace. Probably they ended up in the king’s one-hand villages. Both continents are at technological level twenty, and ocean travel is brutally primitive. It wasn’t difficult for Kurr to cut off virtually all contact.”
“You said that IPR works in a terrible complex of regulations. What are they?”
Wheeler gestured at IPR Field Manual 1048K.
Forzon pulled it toward him and flipped the pages. Emblazoned on the frontispiece and at the head of every chapter was the Bureau’s first law: DEMOCRACY IMPOSED FROM WITHOUT IS THE SEVEREST FORM OF TYRANNY. Capsules of what the Bureau obviously considered distilled wisdom leaped out in bold, black capitals as Forzon turned the pages. THE BUREAU DOES NOT CREATE REVOLUTION, IT CREATES THE NECESSITY FOR REVOLUTION, GIVEN THAT NECESSITY, THE NATIVE POPULATIONS ARE PERFECTLY CAPABLE OF HANDLING THE REVOLUTION. DEMOCRACY IS NOT A FORM OF GOVERNMENT; IT IS A STATE OF MIND. PEOPLE CANNOT BE ARBITRARILY PLACED IN A STATE OF MIND. THE RULE OF ONE WAS A MASTERFUL CONCESSION BECAUSE IT CONCEDED NOTHING. INCOMPETENT FIELD WORKERS AGITATED FOR THE SUBSTITUTION OF TECHNOLOGY FOR INTELLIGENCE. THEY WERE GIVEN TECHNOLOGY—IN A WAY THAT LEFT THEM ABSOLUTELY DEPENDENT UPON INTELLIGENCE. ONE MEASURE OF THE URGENCY OF REVOLUTION IS THE FREEDOM THE PEOPLE HAVE, COMPARED WITH THE FREEDOM THEY WANT.
Forzon snapped the book shut. “Catch,” he said, arid lofted it to Wheeler, who clutched it awkwardly, his face contorted with bewilderment. He was the tragedian whose most telling pathos had inexplicably drawn a laugh. “What—what are you going to do?”
“How long does it take a Bureau man to work his way through that morass of fine print?”
“Three years.”
“Surely it wasn’t the intention of your superiors that I spend three years mastering Field Manual 1048K.” He got to his feet and strode to a window. Each time he saw it the blighted base area irritated him more. He wondered if the IPR personnel never looked beyond the conditioned confines of their building, never noticed this corrosion of the crater’s grandeur. A Cultural Survey base would have been surrounded by as much beauty as devoted hands and obedient machines could coax from the environment.
He turned. “Those paintings in the reception room. Are they from Kurr?”
Wheeler hesitated. “I’m sure most of them are. I never thought to inquire.”
Forzon said caustically, “If some of them are, then all of them are. Widely separated continents with few contacts don’t develop identical artistic styles and techniques.”
He hadn’t needed to ask. The girl with the torru was from Team B, meaning that she was from Kurr, and the torru was a miniature version of the elaborate instrument in the painting. “And the natives don’t know you’re here,” Forzon mused. “No wonder the coordinator flipped when I told him to bring in some musicians and artists. But how can you guide the people toward democracy if you have no contact with them?”
“But we do!” Wheeler protested indignantly. “Every agent of a field team has a native role. You’ll have to have one, too, before you can assume your command.”
“I see. Some kind of disguise, in other words.”
“Not a disguise. An identity.”
“If that’s what you want to call it. I’m beginning to see a glimmer of light. The Bureau has a long-standing problem in Kurr. Kurr obviously has a fantastic level of cultural achievement. After four hundred years someone in the Bureau has finally noticed this and got to wondering if perhaps a Cultural Survey officer might be of some assistance. Very well. I’ve been placed in command of Team B. I’ll go to Kurr, and I’ll use Team B to set up a cultural survey.”
“Cultural—” Wheeler took a deep breath and finished on a falsetto, “—survey?”
“That’s what I’m trained to do. It’d be silly for me to begin with the IPR Field Manual. The only potential I’d have there is that in three years I might become as competent as a newly graduated IPR cadet—if I study diligently. In the absence of specific orders to the contrary, I can only assume that IPR wishes to fill in those gaps in its knowledge that occur in my area of specialization, and that I was requisitioned to perform this task. Have you a better explanation for my assignment?”
Wheeler did not answer.
“I’ll need a blitz language course,” Forzon said.
“Certainly. I’ll send up the equipment. I’ll also check into the matter of an identity for you.”
“I’d like to meet some of the members of Team B,” Forzon said, thinking of the girl with the torru.
Wheeler frowned. “If you like. It’d be a little awkward, though. They’re all established in Kurr, and they can’t always break away at a moment’s notice. They have to maintain their positions, or a lot of good work is wasted. We could bring back one or two at a time, but it would take forever for you to meet very many of them. It’d
