The Still, Small Voice of Trumpets. Lloyd Biggle jr.
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 be much better if you saw them in Kurr.”
“Aren’t there any Team B personnel here at base?”
“No,” Wheeler said easily. “Team B once maintained a headquarters here, but all we have now is its archives, which are serviced by base personnel. All of Team B is in Kurr. We can fly you there whenever you’re ready.”
He nodded pleasantly and left. Forzon’s first impulse was to hurry over to the women’s quarters, but a sober second thought checked him. The girl may have been concerned with proprieties when she told him not to come back to her room.
Or she may have been giving him a warning.
CHAPTER 3
On one point Forzon had gained some useful information. The Interplanetary Relations Bureau had always been run more like a secret order than a governmental department. Few people outside the Bureau knew what its function was, but anyone who worked and traveled along the space frontier quickly became aware that the Bureau’s power there was absolute. It was said that even an admiral of the space navy asked IPR permission when he wanted to maneuver across a Federation boundary.
Now Forzon understood why. The Bureau’s mission was to guide worlds to Federation membership, and to do so without those worlds being aware of it. Obviously this would be impossible if traders, explorers, scientists, various governmental surveys, and ships in distress—not to mention lost tourists—provided a rain of visitors from outer space. So the IPR Bureau policed the boundaries.
On Gurnil there was a continent, Kurr, still ruled by a monarch. The admission of neighboring, fully qualified worlds to the Federation had long been delayed; the Bureau was embarrassed. Understandably the situation called for drastic action, but someone at the Bureau’s Supreme Headquarters had tripped over a panic button.
A Cultural Survey sector supervisor in charge of the Kurr field team? It was comparable to placing an IPR officer in charge of a Cultural Survey project, and from what Forzon had seen of the way the Bureau handled art he knew what that would lead to.
Since he had no idea what was expected of him, he determined to give the Bureau the one thing he understood: a cultural survey. He prepared specimen survey forms and handed them to Rastadt’s secretary, requesting initial runs of a thousand. A day later the copy still lay untouched on the corner of her desk. Forzon spoke sharply to Wheeler, who shed cheerful tears and promised to duplicate them himself.
Forzon applied himself to the language course, studying constantly because he had nothing else to do, but his thoughts kept turning to the girl with the torru, the member of Team B who, according to Wheeler, did not exist. He wondered if he would ever see her again.
* * * *
She came at night.
Forzon, awakened from a restless sleep by a cool hand and her urgent whisper, sat up quickly and groped for a light.
“No light!” she whispered.
He heard the soft rustling of her gown, her quick breathing, caught the faint scent of an unknown perfume, but he could not see her.
“I fly back tomorrow,” she said.
“In the daytime? I thought the natives weren’t supposed to know that IPR is here.”
“It’ll be night in Kurr.”
“Of course. Did you know that I’m the new Team B commander? Perhaps I should go with you.”
“No!” she said quickly. Then she echoed, with an obvious note of incredulity, “The new—Team B commander?”
“That’s what my orders say.”
“That’s very interesting.”
He