Chapter III

Commissioner Crawford had gone to a desk in one corner of the conference room and was rummaging in one of the drawers. "Better hunt up my guest permit for restaurants," he began, when a two-tone chime sounded and the screen of a large vizor against the wall lit up. "Excuse me," he said, sitting down in the desk chair facing the video. "Crawford speaking," he said distinctly.

A young man with a narrow pimply countenance and sparse lightish hair appeared on the screen. "Sub-commissioner Torrin of Highways and Vehicles," he identified himself.

"Yes, Mr. Torrin?"

"I have here a set of application papers with your request for special rapid clearance," Torrin said accusingly, holding up the sheaf of papers which Herl recognized, although it was now much thinner than when he had relinquished it to Miss Haulwell.

"That is correct. Don't tell me something's been omitted. This is urgent, Torrin."

"Nothing has been omitted, Commissioner; but your note calls only for clearance on papers for a Captain Herl Hofner," Torrin said curtly.

"Still correct. So?"

"There is also an application for driver's license here for a Miss Agnes Haulwell ... and I've leafed down through the rest of the forms and there are several more in her name: cooking fats and oils; crimp yarn textile clothing; limited individual rental housing ... and then there are others of the same type as requested for Captain Hofner. Did you mean to authorize these also? Is she accompanying Captain Hofner in his temporary stay here? If so, I hardly see why she should need a number of these."

Crawford groaned and replied ruefully, "Haulwell's my receptionist and secretary. Obviously going Eyefer and near-criminal as well. Very discerning of you to have caught it." He sighed. "She was a good secretary, though. Wonder where I'll get another."

Torrin requested coldly, "What shall I do with the applications?"

"Approve Captain Hofner's and send the rest of his on through. I'll get Haulwell's fraudulent forms from you tomorrow and put through her Eyefer status officially then. I'm too busy now."

"Thank you, Commissioner." The screen went black.

Crawford's face when he turned back to Herl was tired and disgruntled. "That's the third girl in a couple of years. They just have no consideration for their jobs. She was the best of the three, too." He riffled some more papers in the drawer and came up with a small green card.

"Why didn't you tell him you meant to add her name to your note?" Herl asked curiously. "You could have given her a scolding or something, couldn't you?"

"Oh no. You don't understand. She might have married and had children and I wouldn't have been able to say a thing, or I'd have been an accessory after the fact." He pressed a button on his desk. "Being Chief Commissioner of Delight is a responsible and tough job, Captain. But we owe it to our children's children to make them a hundred times as responsible and tough."

The door opened and Agnes Haulwell advanced a few steps into the room. "You wanted me, Commissioner?"

"Yes, Miss Haulwell. You may leave now and go home and pack your things. I'll phone Placement to get an assignment for you so you can go right there to turn in your permits when you've packed."

"P-placement, Commissioner?"

"Eyefer placement, Miss Haulwell. Sub-commissioner Torrin has just informed me about your having added a number of your personal applications to the rush approvals for Captain Hofner."

Agnes Haulwell turned pale, then began to tremble and burst into tears. "Oh, no, Commissioner. I ... I couldn't. None ... well almost none of those permits has really lapsed ... I'm engaged ... I just can't," she sobbed, "I mustn't ... you can't ... oh, I'll go to detention or ... or ... temporary curtailment of privileges or anything, but you can't make me go Eyefer!" she wound up defiantly.

Crawford was seemingly regretful, gentle. "Had the housing permit lapsed? and the cooking fats? and the winter clothes?"

"Yes, but that was all. I forgot just those three. The others all had hours to run yet."

"'I forgot, I forgot.' Miss Haulwell, there's one thing you can't forget and that's that an adequate memory and constant attention is the mark of those fitted to survive. Now I'm very disappointed in you," his voice became more gentle as she sobbed anew, "but I would consider it a personal favor if you'd come in in the morning to show your successor how to operate the switchboard and doors and where the supplies are."

"OH!..." Miss Haulwell fairly shrieked and ran blubbering from the room.

Crawford said sadly to Hofner. "They never do come in tomorrow morning. It just shows they were Eyefer stuff from the beginning. I only wish we had some way of weeding them out before they reached adulthood, but we don't. Now let's go and eat. By the time we get back, your permits should be here."

* * * * *

The restaurant was in the basement. Progress between tables had been slow as Commissioner Crawford acknowledged greetings from numerous small groups and introduced Captain Hofner. Finally, however, they were seated at a table for two at a corner of the yellow-brick walled room.

A brown-overalled waiter approached them.

"My guest permit," Crawford explained in loud clear tones, "is for cereal foods and fruit. But you're probably in the mood for breakfast anyway." He spoke to the waiter. "Bring him," he nodded at Herl, "one of your regular breakfasts. I'll have steak and mushrooms and mashed wathros ... and how's the bean puree to start with? and enchil salad and thollet pudding for dessert. We'll both drink morgen."

To Herl he added, "Do you want your cereal hot or cold?"

"Hot, I guess, for this weather," replied the ravenous captain.

"Very wise. Hot cereal for my guest. Here's the card."

The waiter took the card and scanned it carefully. "Cereal card. Very good, Commissioner." He departed on a zig-zag course among the tables.

Herl was hungry and tired and furious at the commissioner for ordering a full and appetizing-sounding dinner, but he smiled a well-trained smile and got back to his business.

"This might be a good time for you to tell me about the Eyefers, Commissioner. According to Miss Haulwell, it doesn't seem a very desirable condition to be in; and yet you don't want them to leave the planet. What's the story?"

"I'll have to start at the beginning and rush through eighty Delight years of history to tell you ... that's about two hundred earth years.

"As you probably know, our people came here from Madrilune as volunteers to prevent overpopulation there. They were a picked group of urbanites accustomed to the benefits of social control and convinced that lack of sound economic policy integrated with the daily life of every citizen had been at the root of Madrilune's troubles. The shortages of basic necessities to be found on any raw planet were little greater here than they had been on crowded Madrilune ... rationing was very strict and justice heavily enforced so that all might have their chance to survive.

"Delightites are hard workers; and in about twenty of our years there was an abundance of foodstuff, textiles, and housing; and, as Guildris told you, we're really most enviably situated."

"What about all this rationing now?" Herl looked distastefully at the green card still lying on the table.

Crawford pocketed the card. "I'm coming to that," he replied.

"The Chief Commissioner at that time was a Buford Finchley and the great experiment Guildris talked about was his idea. From the beginning here, there had been a certain small proportion of the population which consistently seemed unable to cope with the regulation of life which was necessary to a pioneer planet. Some of them starved when their private holdings failed; some of them became criminals when their families were exposed to want, leaving themselves and their families to be supported by the remainder of the population. When there was finally plenty of food and clothing and shelter for everybody and an end to the rationing system was proposed, the wise Commissioner Buford saw that such an end would put the weaker citizens at the mercy of the acquisitiveness of the stronger and threaten the stronger by the latent criminality of the weaker. He reasoned that no one needs more than enough of the necessities of life and that submission to socially beneficial regimentation was the mark of the socially adapted, the fitted to survive in a civilized age. So he began the present program of the most extensive control of the necessities and luxuries of life and the Eyefers were part of the natural result. They are the unfitted.

"They forget to apply for many of their types of rations: they forget the special ordinances for seasons and parts of the cities: they forget to re-register for all permits when they change their addresses: some of them even forget to earn enough to pay for both permits and food, and let the food go and get all the permits and have to be hospitalized for malnutrition ... they're Eyefers, too. They have a thousand excuses, but they all boil down to, 'I fergot.'"

Herl objected, "But you don't segregate them as you would criminals."

"No, of course not. They haven't committed any crime, usually; and we have no intention of punishing them. They are simply recognized as incompetent to manage their own affairs, sterilized, and guardians appointed to look after and support them. We realize that we have no right to interfere between an individual and his personal goals unless that individual threatens the liberty of other individuals." Crawford spoke self-confidently but without any show of self-righteousness.

The waiter approached with a loaded tray and began to place the food on the table.

* * * * *

Herl kept his gaze from the bowl of steaming gruel before him and the tremendous steak before his companion. "You don't interfere with them ... you just take away their jobs and their motivations to be social and their obligations to be human beings?"

Crawford started to reply: the waiter put the last dishes on the table and departed: Herl continued speaking hurriedly.

"I don't mean to sound critical of your experiment when I don't know the whole story yet ... but I should think that Miss Haulwell's competence to manage her own affairs (since you say that she was the best of your last three secretaries) was hardly to be judged on the basis of one small set of lapses."

"I'll talk about that in a moment," Crawford said, rising. "But first if you'll just change places with me. I haven't been able to eat this sort of thing for years," he waved at the full dinner, "since a job like mine wrecks the digestion early. But I couldn't get the waiter in trouble, you know."

The men changed places, and Herl found his mood of violent opposition to the social system tempered somewhat by the pleasant prospect.

"For a man without a long experience of Eyefers, your reaction is more than justified," Crawford continued, frowning at his bowl of mush.

"But our experience had given us certain data. In the first place, when an individual goes Eyefer, it seems to be a symptom of a decreasing conviction of social responsibility. When the condition was first recognized, Eyefers were merely placed under guardianship and their children's permits stamped to show that they were of Eyefer parentage and so were debarred from breeding with more select stock. However, Eyefers tended to reproduce so rapidly and irresponsibly that there was danger of their becoming a parasitic burden too heavy for our normal population. That irresponsibility spread to other spheres of action as well ... they were careless about the property of their guardians ... if they held jobs still, they had little incentive to improve since they obviously could not manage their own moneys. Most of their children grew up to be twice as irresponsible as their parents, many of them never even applying for permits in the first place but merely sponging on their parents' guardians.

"Obviously this was no way to build a superior race, a socially adapted race. So we accepted the obvious solution. If Eyefers wished to withdraw from social responsibility (as they must subconsciously do or they wouldn't forget), we insist that they go the whole way. Miss Haulwell _wants_ to be an Eyefer, in spite of her surface training, or she wouldn't be one."

Herl nodded, cutting off another bite of the superb steak. The argument was certainly plausible, and he pushed back the uncomfortable thought that he should be quicker to see the flaws in it.

Lifting his gaze from his plate, however, he was confronted by the outline of Crawford against the warm golden radiance of a cloud half concealing the shining body of a man of such splendid proportions and so noble and sympathetic a countenance that Herl remained a moment as if paralyzed, his knife halfway through the steak. The shining man was shaking his head slowly, regretfully, as if to indicate his disagreement with Crawford's last remark.

Then Herl lifted his knife free of the meat and pointed with it over Crawford's shoulder. "Your friend here seems to have another opinion."

Crawford turned in his chair and looked up at the glowing face. "Have I said something wrong?" he asked the figure, conversationally.

The haze swirled around the long-limbed body and the man shook his head again. "You really believe it," said the man in the tones of a great bell. "It is not wrong to tell your belief."

"Will it interfere with my doing business with Captain Hofner?" Crawford wanted to know.

"No."

"Is there anything you want me to tell him? Something I've left unsaid?"

"No."

"Then run along and let us eat in peace, there's a good chap." Crawford's words were patronizing, his tone imploring.

"Wait a minute!" Herl said sharply; but the haze seemed to be dwindling, the figure of the man evaporating before his eyes. More than anything he wanted to re-establish communication with the girl of the lobby chair.

"Want to ask him something?" queried the Commissioner. "I think I can find you another one after we're through eating. It's fairly easy to get them to come but only hard to get rid of them if you want them to go."

"Who are they and what are they?" demanded Herl.

"We call them gods. Not because we worship them, you understand, but because they're so damned beautiful and because they are, for all practical purposes, omniscient, omnipotent, and as omnipresent as they want to be. I said 'for all practical purposes' but they don't serve any practical purposes. They're a by-product of the Eyefers, as far as we know (and they're strangely close-mouthed about that). I'll finish my story and you'll know as much as I do."

* * * * *

Herl drew a deep breath. If the goddess of the lobby were even partly human, he was going to have to know her a great deal better. He visualized her rounded smiling face, its look of utter awareness, her graceful arm. Galaxy women were not like this. It must be for this he'd stayed a bachelor.

Unable to admit aloud his desire and unable to look at Crawford when thinking of her, he went back to carving the steak, half listening to the exposition which Crawford continued.

"When people go Eyefer who already have children," the commissioner went on between sipped spoonfuls of gruel, "we have to institutionalize the kids. Sterilize them too, to protect the rest of us. You may even get the idea that we're a planet of petty puritans because we care more for our race than for particular children and because the 'mortality' among scientists and artists was very high so that there are few such among us these days. However, we've taken care of the latter recently by appointing semi-guardians for the artists and scientists as soon as they announce their professions. The semi-guardians take care of all routines at their wards' expense. The architect of the Civil Center here," he waved a spoon around to indicate their environment, "is that gray-haired man over there. It justifies the change in rules."

"Why couldn't any rich man hire a 'semi-guardian' who would take care of the formalities for him?" Herl asked.

Crawford looked shocked. "That would be grossly unfair to the rest of the population," he insisted. "There is no particular advantage to a society to perpetuate the strain of wealthy individuals; while we do need scientists and artists. But to get back to the story ... shortly after the sterilization program began, a noted psychologist went Eyefer and managed to get himself assigned by placement to the head of one of the children's asylums. He worked with the Eyefer children there and somehow the gods are the result. They have perfect recall, perfect bodies, telepathy, intuitive perception of the nature of matter, teleportation, and some precognition. Occasionally even today, a child disappears from one of the asylums and we have a new god or goddess. And there you are."

"Are they what Commissioner Guildris was talking about? The Galaxy will really be excited," Herl said eagerly.

"Heavens, no!" Crawford laughed heartily. "They wouldn't be any more use to you than they are to us. Their bodies are changed in some way so that they are nearly pure energy."

Herl had a tight sensation of loss, of incipient grief.

"They don't eat, they don't need clothes, they don't even reproduce. As far as we can discover, they have no motivations at all except that they seem to like to watch people doing things ... you could hardly call it curiosity. So ... since they have no motivations there's no way to get them to cooperate with society; they can't be bribed or threatened, paid or deprived. And yet they'd beat any calculator made if we just had some means of getting them to stay around while we put the problems. They answer any questions you can ask correctly; but there's no way we know of to get them to come around when we have the questions. Oh, you can go out and pretend to do some crazy thing when you have a problem with all the factors in your head. Maybe one of them will turn up and you can ask the question before he reads your mind and fades away ... and maybe you can't. So we call them gods and forget about them."

Calculators indeed, was Herl's inner reaction, as he tried to recapture the sensation of being completely understood which he had felt upstairs in the lobby. She had to be a woman, not a supercalculator. "But they're so beautiful, so perfect. There must be a reason for them," he insisted.

"That's the worst thing about them," admitted Crawford. "They make ordinary people look very drab and uninspired. The Eyefers actually have several cults which worship them; and I suppose that's a good thing. Keeps the Eyefers out of trouble. I never heard that they did anything for their worshippers, though."

Herl thought, "We'll see about that. I think I know what to ask, next time I get the chance." Aloud he added, "Don't go out of your way to get one for me to question ... but if one turns up, I am curious about some things."

"I see you're about through," noticed the commissioner. "Let's get back up and see if your papers have come."