Chapter II

Her voice was muffled coming from the jon. But I knew she was reading from a document she kept framed there, and I knew well what it said.

The Edict

Be it enacted by the unanimous voice of these United Nations of
America, Europe, Africa and Free Asia, in congress this 14th day of
April, 1997 that, henceforth:

No person, group of persons, organization, or governing body of any
town, city, state or nation existing under the articles of this
federation, shall print, or cause to be printed, or knowingly
permit to be printed, or disseminate or knowingly permit to be
disseminated any word, phrase or work, excepting only certain
scientific treaties of explicit speculative nature as hereinafter
defined by statute, that is not both wholly and in part
demonstrably true.

"Great Judah," I heard Sara say. "What a disaster!"

"Stop muttering and come out here," I shouted. "You said food."

"I'll be with you in a minute. I'm almost finished undressing." Since we weren't expecting company I had already hung up my coverall--a new though serviceable one of diaphragm-weave thermoplast, bought especially for Vermont and warranted for 30 degrees below.

With or without the chiton and hose she favored over coveralls, Sara was a handsome woman. Strong, straight and, I knew, a fit mother for our children. But right at the moment, she was angry at me all over again.

She strode to the foodbar. "You!" she said, chucking a handful of steakpaks into the infra, twisting the dial. "You and your Edict!" she said, hurling potatopaks into a pan of hot water and yelping when the water splashed on her thigh. "You and your stupid, buzzing, clicking, inhuman WPA!" she said, filling milkpaks with water, cramming them into holders and slapping them sloshing down on the table.

"You talk about type and belief and truth. Truth! You have the gall to keep on parroting those same old defenses about that electronic scrap heap you have the effrontery to call a--a Greeley! Elias Witherill thought Horace Greeley was a rotten newspaperman, but rotten or not, he was still too good to have that whining junkpile named after him.

"What does a tangle of wires know about newspapering. What does WPA know about writing a story? What do _you_ know about news?"

"Now, Sara," I said.

"Don't now-sara me, dammit. You still fail utterly to realize that news is more than just what happened, when, where, to whom, how and why. It's what might still happen, even what might have happened otherwise or never did happen, if that's part of the story.

"The Edict forbids every bit of it!

"But most important, news is expressed--and this you simply cannot see--expressed in basic human terms, designed to arouse the basic human curiosity or sympathy that makes an abstract description palatable _to people_. If you like, it _tricks_ people into informing themselves. The _Sun_, your wonderful _Sun_, sticks to facts and statistics, and make a _hurricane_ dull. It doesn't tell about people, it lists numbers!

"Real news has, by God, Heart! Without it, a newspaper is just a list, a long, long list that ... nobody ... will ... READ!"

"Okay," I said. "Okay! This is better?" I tramped over to a framed _Argus_ front page down the wall from Vol. 1, No. 1, that was dated April 17, 1904. She started to protest, but I overrode her. "Listen to this," I said. And read from a story given prominent play on the page:

NEAR-DEATH ... AND TRAGEDY

"WHERE'S TINKLE?"

HER FIRST QUESTION

Death's clammy hand brushed a golden-haired moppet Tuesday
afternoon.

Gentlewomen swooned in the crowd that quickly gathered at the
corner of South Main and Elm Streets, so near had tragedy come to
that little girl, Irma Littlefield, aged four, daughter of Mr. and
Mrs. Adoniram Littlefield of 324 Elm Street, that afternoon. Men
wept unashamedly when little Irma, lying crumpled in the dust,
stirred her tiny limbs and opened eyes of deepest blue, even as her
shrieking mother flew to the side of her baby.

Death had passed by Irma, yes. Yet the uncaring runaway freight
wagon that had so nearly snuffed out her brief existence had dealt
the child a blow even as cruel, more savage; perhaps as grievous a
hurt as would have been the sweet baby's death to her stricken
parent, sobbing now with the child's golden head in her lap.

For from Irma's ashen lips, cold still with the awful nearness of
the Grim Reaper, the first faltering words were,

"Where's Tinkle, my little doggie?"

Tinkle, a curly-haired mongrel to the unseeing world, nothing to
the insensible, crushing wheels of the now-distant freight wagon.
Tinkle, more than a dog, more than a pet, more than it is given us
in our wisdom to know, to that little child. A friend, confidante,
companion in all her infant games and journey of the imagination.

"Where's Tinkle?" Alas, Irma....

"That's plenty of that," I told Sara. "Is that what you mean by Heart? Is that what you mean by 'news'?

"It wouldn't even rate two lines in your own _Argus_ today.

"But don't try to tell me that the major newspapers changed from that mawkish, overblown sentimentality about unimportant or nonexistent things. They just printed the same sort of drivel using governments and countries instead of people. They cluttered themselves up with portentous speculation and conflicting interpretation until the actual relation of real events was crowded off the page--because plain facts weren't exciting enough to sell newspapers!

"Granted, country people are curious about their neighbors, and have activities too small and numerous to make the _Sun_. That's why semi-controlled monthlies like the _Argus_ exist. But for the important stuff, only the exact truth will do."

* * * * *

I thought a minute before going on. Why can't a civilization that will some day land on the moon, calm an angry woman? I started by pulling Sara, struggling, onto my lap.

"You think--hold still!--a Reporter doesn't have to know much," I told her. She nodded violent assent. "You think all he has to do, all day long, is sit by the Scoop and keep Flacks and psychos away. You think I just sit there while news goes in the Scoop and comes out the Fotofax slot.

"To some extent, you're right. WPA doesn't encourage heavy thought on the job--just that I be big enough and quick enough to keep some fool from hollering fake advertising plugs or obscenities or nonsense into the mouthpiece, or maybe smashing the Scoop the way some try to do.

"But I _think_. I take pleasure in thinking, in figuring things out. Sure, I keep it quiet, permanent Civil Service status or not. If I didn't keep my mouth shut I'd never have been promoted from Inaplis to WPA Center Nork.

"Sara, I am in charge of the No. One Scoop in the Northeast Region for the Greeley--all right, the Groves-Rudermann Eidetic Integrator. Top spot in the Guild, Sara! Because I keep my eyes open and my mouth shut, and I tend my Scoop."

"But all the while you're faithfully guarding that hole-in-the-wall, you're thinking big fat thoughts," she snarled. But she had nestled into a comfortable position in my lap.

"Faith and fat, your favorite shock words," I said. "Yes, I do think. I think the Edict was a good thing. I think the WPA is a good and necessary organization. And I think that Cybernetic Democracy is the best form of government that men have figured out yet."

"Speak for yourself," Sara muttered. "I don't like being told how to live by a pinball machine."

* * * * *

Don't hurl antiquities at me, I told her. Cybernetic Democracy and WPA are root and branch of the same tree. The Edict set up WPA, and WPA worked, and Congris came as a logical development, and it works. The voice came before the brain (Sara mumbled something about a Cheshire Cat, whatever that is) but the point is, now we have both.

Look, it surely wasn't good the way government was before. Stands to reason as long as men are making the laws, a lot of those laws are bound to be stupid, or unfair, or just plain corrupt--like the men that made them.

But electrons don't lie, and they can't be bought, and they don't make mistakes.

So in every community room throughout the UN, there are Senators. Microphones linked direct by microwave to Congris, the biggest cybernetic machine in the world, buried deep in rock somewhere in the Midwest. All you or any other citizen has to do is clear your ID with the Page, there protecting his Senator just like I do my Scoop, and speak your mind.

That complaint, or suggestion or whatever it is, goes straight to Congris, and Congris tallies it. If enough people have said the same thing, maybe that call of yours is the one that tips the balance: a new general law may be made, an old one changed.

Why, don't you realize that if enough people asked Congris to abolish itself and bring back representative human government, it would? That directive was the first one programmed, even before the civil codes of a hundred thousand big and little governments were fed in, compiled and codified. But it'll never happen.

And if Congris sees it's got just a local matter, it passes your call down to the district level, and the same computer that settles everything from tax bills to traffic violations to murder may publish an ordinance--and that's that.

It's incorruptible, not like man-made law. It's impartial, it's just and impersonal. It's the greatest good for the greatest number, and as sure as 51 beats 49, there never was democracy purer than we've got now.

Sara! Wake up!

* * * * *

She sat up yawning, and stretched. "I, and my father before me, have been writing editorials against Congris for forty-two years. Since 2005," Sara informed me drowsily. "Why don't you tell me all about it?"

Then she sat up, eyes wide with interest. "You are blushing with anger clear down to your navel," she exclaimed. "I never knew you did that!"

"And you are flat clear down to yours," I snapped. The words I regretted immediately. They were atavistic, impulsive, and even untrue; a violation of ethics and my Reporter's code.

"I am not," she said with composure. "But I won't be petty again, so go on, I guess."

"Well," I mumbled, "all I was going to say is that if it works for government it works for news too."

She sat up very straight in my lap and sing-songed like a schoolgirl: "Where the objective of Cybernetic Democracy is justice impartially rendered, the objective of cybernetic journalism and of the World Press Association is truth impartially told. 'For you will be told the truth, and the truth will keep you secure.' Foof."

"Well, it's--it's true, dammit," I said. "You aren't, you of all people aren't, going to tell me that news isn't just as important as government!

"Without that Fotofax printer in every home and public cubeo set, how are people going to know what's going on, and what laws have been passed? And how well those laws are obeyed? Why, without the _Sun_ we wouldn't have an informed public. We wouldn't have democracy at all!"

* * * * *

"You," she said crisply, "are confusing news with the _Sun_. News is a description of events, presented with human intelligence in a manner to interest and stimulate other human intelligence. The _Sun_ is whatever that monstrous washing-machine decides is proper to have happened, presented in a manner to interest no one except other washing-machines."

"Very glib," I replied. "But at least you will admit that news is important. Then doesn't it seem sensible to give it the same protection that government has? Protection from error and stupidity and corruption?"

"Protection?" she wailed. "It's so protected nobody sees it--nobody sees it--nobody cares!

"That hairy old item you read off the wall. You're right, I wouldn't use it today any more than the _Sun_ would. But suppose Little Irma there had been killed by the runaway. We'd both print it.... I'd tell the story, a story that might make just one more parent careful that day and save one more child. The _Sun_ would put it in a list, something like:

DEATHS, Accidental
MILBRY--Littlefield
Irma: 4 dau/ M&M
Adoniram L-, 324 Elm,
struck by wagon Elm at S. Main.

"... and that would be that for a little blonde-haired, blue-eyed, four-year-old statistic! Why, suppose...."

"Supposition!" I interrupted. "You can't waste time with supposition! People are entitled to facts. They get facts in the _Sun_. They know that every item in that sheet is written, checked and checked again by the special media circuits of Congris we call WPA. Those same cybernetic banks that make the laws, trace the lawbreakers, do the thousands of things that make our civilization possible, they filter, sift and sort the news as it comes in from the Scoops.

"A Fireman reports on a fire, a Policeman reports on a crime, a Doctor a death or a citizen any important event. Every bit goes to the Greeley and if it's important enough, comes out in the next regional, national or world _Sun_. All the Fireman or citizen or whatever has to do, is press his ID tag to the sensor, for identity, veracity and authority audit, and have a Second there for corroboration.

"It's the news, straight news, all the news that's important enough to print, and written so it can be understood...."

"By a washing-machine," Sara broke in. "Sterilized, deodorized, dehumanized news--and still it stinks."

"Dehumanized! Certainly it's dehumanized! There's none," I said emphatically, "of that so-called 'human element' about it! Why, the whole point is to eliminate human error, human prejudice, human partiality, human ignorance!"

Sara sat up suddenly, driving her rump right into the pit of my stomach. "Oh," she said, "I almost completely forgot. What do you want for Christmas?"

Torn between pain and exasperation, I believe I kept myself in check admirably. From clenched teeth I informed her I was intelligent enough not to exchange unwanted gifts of equal value, moral enough to abhor Crimmus. All I could ever want, I said, was not to be bludgeoned in the belly with a butt.

I asked her to please get up, and she did, cheerfully.