Imperial Stars 2-Republic and Empire (29 page)

Support for the
contras
is a first line of defense. For Nicaraguans, a
contra
victory would mean the restoration of the democratic leadership from whom the Sandinistas stole the revolution in the first place, the government that Nicaragua would have had if Cuba had not intervened. For the countries of the Americas, it would mean a halt in the Communist march that threatens their freedoms and their peace.

In conclusion, I would like to say this to my former comrades and successors on the Left: you are self-righteous and blind in your belief that you are part of a movement to advance human progress and liberate mankind. You are in fact in league with the darkest and most reactionary forces of the modern world, whose legacies—as the record attests—are atrocities and oppressions on a scale unknown in the human past. It is no accident that radicals in power have slaughtered so many of their own people. Hatred of self, and by extension one's country, is the root of the radical cause.

As American radicals, the most egregious sin you commit is to betray the privileges and freedoms ordinary people from all over the world have created in this country—privileges and freedoms that ordinary people all over the world would feel blessed to have themselves. But the worst of it is this: you betray all this tangible good that you can see around you for a socialist pie-in-the-sky that has meant horrible deaths and miserable lives for the hundreds of millions who have so far fallen under its sway.

I had to memorize this poem in high school. I suppose I resented that at the time, but I've not regretted it since.

American education goes through many fads. More than forty years ago when I was in the Capleville, Tennessee, public school, with two grades to a room and some 25 pupils per grade,
everyone
in the school not only could read but did read. I still have the reader. In fifth grade we were assigned Macauley's "Horatius," and were required to memorize at least this verse:

 
Then up spake brave Horatius,
The captain of the gate,
'To every man upon this earth,
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better,
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods?'
 

In those days we had no Federal aid to education, and thus couldn't afford fancy books about Dick and Jane and their running dog Spot. We had to read Hiawatha, James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, Huck Finn and Evangeline and the King of the Golden River, Edgar Lee Masters and Stephen Vincent Benet. Of course today's schools have more money, and can buy the improved reading materials written by professors of education. Every pupil gets a textbook. It's probably fortunate for the textbook writers, since few of them publish anywhere else.

Textbooks weren't so common in my time—at least in the less affluent districts. Instead we used the copybook: literally a bound notebook into which one copied materials the teachers thought you ought to learn. The notion was that you'd learn penmanship as well as what you'd copied.

In some cases the material itself wasn't assigned: you'd be given headings, and told to go to the library and copy out something about them. The copybook headings might include history, or poetry, or Proverbs; and sometimes they would include more terrible things. As for instance:

Some say that Darkness was first, and from Darkness sprang Chaos. From a union between Darkness and Chaos sprang Night, Day, Erebrus, and the Air.
From a union between Night and Erebrus sprang Doom, Old Age, Death, Murder, Continence, Sleep, Dreams, Discord, Misery, Vexation, Nemesis, Joy, Friendship, Pity, the Three Fates, and the Three Hesperides.
From a union between Air and Day sprang Mother Earth, Sky, and Sea.
From a union between Air and Mother Earth sprang Terror, Craft, Anger, Strife, Lies, Oaths, Vengeance, Intemperance, Altercation, Treaty, Oblivion, Fear, Pride, Battle; also Oceanus, Metis, and other Titans, Tartarus, and the Three Erinyes, or Furies . . .

—Hesiod
(translated by Robert Graves)

We were supposed to take each of those as a heading. Doubtless it did much for my vocabulary. And to this day I remember that it was the particular task of Nemesis to punish hubris, or overweening pride, by visiting her victim with catastrophe.

 
As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed.
They
never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market-Place;
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch.
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch.
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings.
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
 

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said:
"Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said:
"The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said:
"If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew,
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true.
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four—
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
 

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man—
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began:—
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins,
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

I first met James White at the World Science Fiction Convention held in Brighton. A group of us that included Larry Niven and Alfred Bester had drinks in the delightful club bar of the Old Ship, a hotel that predates the English Regency.

Jim White stands about six foot five. Within minutes of meeting me he had given me a badge that read "S.O.P.O.A.H.W.G.," and asked me to join. I had to confess that I had no clue as to what this meant.

"Society of Persons of Average Height with Glasses."

I stand about six two. I looked up at Jim's bifocal spectacles through mine. "Average height?"

"I am prepared to prove that eighty percent of the human race consists of dwarves."

Of course I'd known Jim White's work for years. His most famous series takes place on Sector General, a huge space colony hospital for humans and aliens alike. White also created strange and fascinating aliens in
All Judgment Fled
, a novel about some of the perils of an interstellar biological survey expedition.

Another member of our party at the Old Ship was Jack Cohen, possibly the world's leading expert on reproductive biology. Jack often creates aliens, and since he doesn't write science fiction, gives them to the first writer who will listen. One of his chance remarks led to the novel,
The Legacy of Heorot
, by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Steve Barnes.

Herewith a story by Jim White, a Person of Average Height with Glasses. It was originally written for Judy-Lynn del Rey, who was a giant.

For many years Hewlitt had been in the habit of spending half an hour sunning himself at the entrance to his shop when the sunlight was available in sufficient strength. The period was determined by the length of time it took for the sun to clear the eaves of the buildings on his side of the street and to move far enough out to necessitate his pulling out the shop's awning so that the cloth on display would not fade. He spent the time watching the passersby—hoping that some of them wouldn't—and anything else of interest. Usually there was nothing interesting to see, but today was an exception.

A large, plain furniture van, preceded by a police car and followed closely by an Electricity Department truck, turned into his street from the main road. The presence of the police vehicle was explained by the fact that the convoy was moving in the wrong direction along a one-way street. When the procession finally halted, the removals van was directly facing him.

For perhaps a minute there was nothing to see except the reflection of himself and his doorway in the dark, glossy flanks of the van. It was the slightly distorted picture of a thin and rather ridiculous figure wearing a black jacket and waistcoat with striped trousers, a small flower in the lapel, and a tape measure—the outward sign of his profession—hanging loosely from his neck. The lettering on the door behind the figure was executed in gold leaf in a bold italic script and said, in reverse:

GEORGE L. HEWLITT,
TAILOR

Suddenly—as if some hypothetical film director had shouted "Action!"—everything happened at once.

Two senior police officers carrying traffic-diversion signs left their vehicle and moved in opposite directions to seal off each end of the street. The Electricity Department truck disgorged a gang of neatly overalled workmen, who quickly began unloading collapsible screening, a night-watchman's hut, and a man wearing a well-tailored suit of dark gray worsted and a tie which was strictly establishment. He also wore a very worried expression as he glanced up and down the street and at the windows overlooking it.

"Good morning, Mr. Hewlitt," the man said, coming forward. "My name is Fox. I'm with the Foreign Office. I, ah, would like to consult you professionally. May I come inside?"

Hewlitt inclined his head politely and followed him into the shop.

For a few minutes nothing else was said because Fox was pacing nervously about the interior, staring at the shelves of neatly rolled cloth lengths, fingering the pattern books which were placed strategically on the polished wooden counters, and examining the paneling and crystal-clear mirrors in the big fitting room. While the Foreign Office official was looking over the premises, Hewlitt was studying Fox with equal attention.

Fox was of medium height, slimly built, with a head-forward tendency and prominent shoulder blades. From the small but noticeable lateral crease behind the jacket collar, it was obvious that he tried to correct the HF and PSB tendency by carrying himself unnaturally erect. Plainly Fox's tailor had had problems, and Hewlitt wondered if he was about to inherit them.

"How may I help you, sir?" Hewlitt said when his visitor had finally come to rest. He used a tone which was friendly but one with that touch of condescension which very plainly said that it would be Hewlitt's decision whether or not he would build a jacket around Fox's prominent shoulder blades.

"I am not the client, Mr. Hewlitt," Fox said impatiently. "
He
is waiting outside. However, this matter must be treated in the strictest confidence—kept absolutely secret, in fact, for the next two weeks. After that you may discuss it with whom you please."

"From our thorough if necessarily hasty inquiries," the Foreign Office official went on, "we know that you live above these premises with your wife, who is also your seamstress and a partial cripple. We also know that your work is competent, if a little old-fashioned as regards styling, and that your stock is remarkably lacking in materials using man-made fibers. For many years your financial position has not been good, and I should say at this juncture that your silence as well as your workmanship will be very highly paid.

"The garment itself should present no difficulty," Fox ended, "since all that is required is a fairly well-fitting horse blanket."

Coldly, Hewlitt said, "I am completely lacking in experience where horse blankets are concerned, Mr. Fox."

"You are being proud and unnecessarily stubborn, Mr. Hewlitt. This is a very important client, and may I remind you that across the street there is a branch of a well-known multiple tailoring company which is also capable of doing the job."

"I agree," said Hewlitt dryly. "That company could do a pretty good job—on a horse blanket."