"Now this fourth line needs some explaining. I winnowed out death
rates by age groups. Their life span is 1.3 times ours, so it had to
be adjusted. I found a strange thing. I took the age group conforming
to our 18 to 24 year group. That green line. Note that by the time
we start getting decent figures, nine thousand years ago, it remains
almost constant, and at a level conforming to our own experience. Now
note what happens when the green line reaches a point eight thousand
years ago. See how it begins to climb? Now steeper, almost vertical. It
remains at a high level for almost a thousand years, way beyond the end
of their history of war, and then descends slowly toward the base line,
leveling out about two thousand years ago."
Lambert clicked off the projector.
"Is that all?" Simpkin asked.
"Isn't it enough? I'm concerned with the future of our own race.
Somehow the Argonauts have found an answer to war, insanity, violence.
We need that answer if we are to survive."
"Come now, Lambert," Simpkin said wearily.
"Don't you see it? Their history parallels ours. They had our same
problems. They saw disaster ahead and did something about it. What did
they do? I have to know that."
"How do you expect to?"
"I want travel orders to go there."
"I'm afraid that's quite impossible. There are no funds for that sort
of jaunt, Lambert. And I think you are worrying over nothing."
"Shall I show you some of our own trends? Shall I show you murder
turning from the most horrid crime into a relative commonplace? Shall I
show you the slow inevitable increase in asylum space?"
"I know all that, man. But look at the Argonauts! Do you want that sort
of stagnation? Do you want a race of fat, pink, sleepy--"
"Maybe they had a choice. A species of stagnation, or the end of their
race. Faced with that choice, which would you pick, Mr. Secretary?"
"There are no funds."
"All I want is authority. I'll pay my own way."
And he did.
* * * * *
Rean was the home planet of the Argonauts, the third from their sun.
When the trade ship flickered into three-dimensional existence, ten
thousand miles above Rean, Lambert stretched the space-ache out of his
long bones and muscles and smiled at Vonk Poogla.
"You could have saved me the trip, you know," Lambert said.
A grin creased the round pink visage. "Nuddink ventured, nuddink
gained. Bezides, only my cousin can speak aboud this thing you vunder
aboud. My cousin is werry important person. He is one picks me to go to
your planet."
Vonk Poogla was transported with delight at being able to show the
wonders of the ancient capital city to Lambert. It had been sacked
and burned over eight thousand Earth years before, and now it was
mellowed by eighty-three centuries of unbroken peace. It rested in the
pastel twilight, and there were laughter and soft singing in the broad
streets. Never had Lambert felt such a warm aura of security and ...
love. No other word but that ultimate one seemed right.
In the morning they went to the squat blue building where Vonk
Soobuknoora, the important person, had his administrative headquarters.
Lambert, knowing enough of Argonaut governmental structure to
understand that Soobuknoora was titular head of the three-planet
government, could not help but compare the lack of protocol with what
he could expect were he to try to take Vonk Poogla for an interview
with President Mize.
Soobuknoora was a smaller, older edition of Poogla, his pink face
wrinkled, his greening hair retaining only a trace of the original
yellow. Soobuknoora spoke no Solian and he was very pleased to find
that Lambert spoke Argonian.
Soobuknoora watched the animated chart with considerable interest.
After it was over, he seemed lost in thought.
"It is something so private with us, Man Lambert, that we seldom speak
of it to each other," Soobuknoora said in Argonian. "It is not written.
Maybe we have shame--a guilt sense. That is hard to say. I have
decided to tell you what took place among us eight thousand years ago."
"I would be grateful."
* * * * *
"We live in contentment. Maybe it is good, maybe it is not so good.
But we continue to live. Where did our trouble come from in the old
days, when we were like your race? Back when we were brash and young
and wickedly cruel? From the individuals, those driven ones who were
motivated to succeed despite all obstacles. They made our paintings,
wrote our music, killed each other, fomented our unrest, our wars. We
live off the bewildering richness of our past."
He sighed. "It was a problem. To understand our solution, you must
think of an analogy, Man Lambert. Think of a factory where machines are
made. We will call the acceptable machines stable, the unacceptable
ones unstable. They are built with a flywheel which must turn at
a certain speed. If it exceeds that speed, it is no good. But a
machine that is stable can, at any time, become unstable. What is the
solution?" He smiled at Lambert.
"I'm a bit confused," Lambert confessed. "You would have to go around
inspecting the machines constantly for stability."
"And use a gauge? No. Too much trouble. An unstable machine can do
damage. So we do this--we put a little governor on the machine. When
the speed passes the safety mark, the machine breaks."
"But this is an analogy, Vonk Soobuknoora!" Lambert protested. "You
can't put a governor on a man!"
"Man is born with a governor, Man Lambert. Look back in both our
histories, when we were not much above the animal level. An unbalanced
man would die. He could not compete for food. He could not organize the
simple things of his life for survival. Man Lambert, did you ever have
a fleeting impulse to kill yourself?"
Lambert smiled. "Of course. You could almost call that impulse a norm
for intelligent species."
"Did it ever go far enough so that you considered a method, a weapon?"
Lambert nodded slowly. "It's hard to remember, but I think I did. Yes,
once I did."
"And what would have happened," the Argonaut asked softly, "if there
had been available to you in that moment a weapon completely painless,
completely final?"
* * * * *
Lambert's mouth went dry. "I would probably have used it. I was very
young. Wait! I'm beginning to see what you mean, but--"
"The governor had to be built into the body," Soobuknoora interrupted,
"and yet so designed that there would be no possibility of accidental
activation. Suppose that on this day I start to think of how great and
powerful I am in this position I have. I get an enormous desire to
become even more powerful. I begin to reason emotionally. Soon I have
a setback. I am depressed. I am out of balance, you could say. I have
become dangerous to myself and to our culture.
"In a moment of depression, I take these two smallest fingers of each
hand. I reach behind me and I press the two fingers, held firmly
together, to a space in the middle of my back. A tiny capsule buried
at the base of my brain is activated and I am dead within a thousandth
part of a second. Vonk Poogla is the same. All of us are the same. The
passing urge for self-destruction happens to be the common denominator
of imbalance. We purged our race of the influence of the neurotic, the
egocentric, the hypersensitive, merely by making self-destruction
very, very easy."
"Then that death rate--?"
"At eighteen the operation is performed. It is very quick and very
simple. We saw destruction ahead. We had to force it through. In the
beginning the deaths were frightening, there were so many of them.
The stable ones survived, bred, reproduced. A lesser but still great
percentage of the next generation went--and so on, until now it is
almost static."
In Argonian Lambert said hotly, "Oh, it sounds fine! But what about
children? What sort of heartless race can plant the seed of death in
its own children?"
* * * * *
Never before had he seen the faintest trace of anger on any Argonaut
face. The single nostril widened and Soobuknoora might have raged
if he had been from Earth. "There are other choices, Man Lambert.
Our children have no expectation of being burned to cinder, blown to
fragments. They are free of that fear. Which is the better love, Man
Lambert?"
"I have two children. I couldn't bear to--"
"Wait!" Soobuknoora said. "Think one moment. Suppose you were to know
that when they reached the age of eighteen, both your children were
to be operated on by our methods. How would that affect your present
relationship to them?"
Lambert was, above all, a realist. He remembered the days of being
"too busy" for the children, of passing off their serious questions
with a joking or curt evasion, of playing with them as though they were
young, pleasing, furry animals.
"I would do a better job, as a parent," Lambert admitted. "I would
try to give them enough emotional stability so that they would
never--have that urge to kill themselves. But Ann is delicate, moody,
unpredictable, artistic."
Poogla and Soobuknoora nodded in unison. "You would probably lose that
one; maybe you would lose both," Soobuknoora agreed. "But it is better
to lose more than half the children of a few generations to save the
race."
Lambert thought some more. He said, "I shall go back and I shall speak
of this plan and what it did for you. But I do not think my race will
like it. I do not want to insult you or your people, but you have
stagnated. You stand still in time."
Vonk Poogla laughed largely. "Not by a damn sight," he said gleefully.
"Next year we stop giving the operation. We stop for good. It was just
eight thousand years to permit us to catch our breath before going on
more safely. And what is eight thousand years of marking time in the
history of a race? Nothing, my friend. Nothing!"
When Lambert went back to Earth, he naturally quit his job.