The Ninth Wave (14 page)

"No," Mike said.
"He's a quiet little guy. He's a good teacher. He doesn't bother
anyone. Why did you say that to him?"
"Why not?" Mike asked.
"Why not? Is that an answer?" Hank asked savagely. "You go in and hurt
someone and I ask you why and you say 'why not.' Even if he is a queer
what's wrong with that?"
"Nothing's wrong with it," Mike said and he was grinning. "And if nothing's
wrong with it why not talk about it? Maybe it's just like having the mumps
or going to the movies. Maybe Moon likes to talk about it."
"Shut up."
"I don't get it. Being queer is all right, we say. Maybe it's better
than being normal. Maybe it's being superior. But we can't talk about
this fine thing. It's very bad to mention to a queer that he possesses
this fine thing."
"That's not why you said it; to be nice and conversational," Hank said
wearily. "You said it to hurt him. You said it for the same reason that
you talk tough to Mardikan and Connie. You want to see if you can break
through and find something that a person is scared of. You like to find
the soft spot and then press it hard, drive your finger into it. O.K.,
forget it. I just don't want to hear it any more."
They came to the end of the Quad. There was a water fountain in one
of the columns and Mike stopped for a drink. When he finished he ran
the stream of water over his face and stood up. The water ran into his
T-shirt, turned the thin cotton a wet gray color. He turned around and
looked down the Quad; almost straight into the sun.
"Sit down, Hank," Mike said. "I want to talk."
They sat down on the hot cement, full in the sun. The smell of hot
asphalt came faintly off the surface of the Quad.
"Go ahead, talk," Hank said.
"You're wrong about me wanting to hurt Moon. I don't care one way or
the other about him. I don't care if he's happy or miserable."
"Well, why did you say it then?"
"It's hard to say it just right. But I didn't do it to hurt him. I
said it to see what he was scared of. I found out he's scared of being
a queer. Maybe it's possible to be a queer and not be scared of it,
but I had to find out. That's why I pushed him. I didn't want to hurt
him though."
"Why did you want to find out what he's scared of?" Hank asked. He looked
sideways at Mike.
Mike was staring down the Quad, his eyes narrowed against the sun.
"I'm not sure," Mike said slowly. "To test a theory, I guess. To see
if there are any exceptions; to find if there are any guys that aren't
afraid of something. It's like an itch, Hank. I see a guy like Moon or
one of the rich kids on the Row. Or even some bright little character
in class who seems to have it made. I just start to itch with curiosity
when I see a guy with a perfect little world, everything consistent,
everything balanced . . . the guy happy in the middle of the world. I
don't believe in it. I have to see if it's real."
"And is it?"
"No. It never is. Everybody is always scared of something. After a while
you get good at finding out what it is. Sometimes I can find out what it
is without pushing very hard. Sometimes the guy doesn't even know what
I'm doing. Sometimes you have to push harder . . . like with Moon. But
I don't do it to make the guy miserable. That's not it."
Hank felt something relax inside of him. He knew Mike was telling the
truth. They sat quietly in the sun for a while. The heat made black dots
crawl before their eyes and the sharp lines of the buildings quivered,
broke, slowly reshaped. A dog trotted into the far end of the Quad,
stood black and perfect and diminished, swung its head to study the
emptiness and quiet. The dog's tongue dripped. After a few seconds it
trotted back into the shade and disappeared.
"Why do you want to know something like that, Mike?" Hank asked." What
difference does it make if people are scared?"
"I don't know. It's just important to me. That's all," Mike said. Behind
his eyes his skull felt empty; filled only with the crawling black
dots and a sort of warm redness. He did not know where his words were
coming from. They seemed to come just from his lungs and lips; as if
his mind were being short-circuited. "You're interested 'in one thing,
I'm interested in another. You're brain-clever, Hank. It's part of
being a Jew. You're reasonable and logical and calm. Like something
was chilled out of you. I think a different way."
Mike looked away from the Quad. Between his feet he could see the asphalt
surface of the Quad. Little bright pieces of stone embedded in old soft
asphalt. The little pieces of stone seemed very far away and Mike put his
hand down; reached for what seemed an endless distance until his knuckle
rested against one of the stones. He pushed against it until he felt a
slight pain and he once again felt anchored to the earth; released from
the heat and brilliance of the sun.
"In six weeks we'll graduate, Hank, and I've only learned two things and
one of them I knew before I got here," Mike said. "At first I thought
there was a lot more and I kept reading all the books, listening to
the lectures, trying to find out what the other things were. I really
got confused. Even when I was getting A's in all my courses I was
confused. They didn't make sense. Neither did the books. It was all
crazy. You couldn't add up all the books and get agreement. I soaked
it all in and coughed it back up for the examinations, but it didn't
make sense. But if I just stuck to two things, then the whole thing
made sense."
"They must be pretty terrific things," Hank said. "What are they?"
"They're kind of like principles," Mike said slowly. "Like things I
know are true . . . or at least I haven't seen anything that proves them
wrong. Maybe I'm wrong and I don't care if you believe me or not, but
I'll tell you what they are. The two principles are the only things that
make sense out of all the lousy lectures in economics and politics and
philosophy and history. The first principle is that everyone is scared."
"We can call that the Principle of Fear, eh?" Hank said.
"I don't care what you call it. That's as good a name as any: The Fear
Principle. The second principle is that everyone hates. Call it the Hate
Principle if you want. I've never given them a name."
"Fear and hate sound pretty much the same thing to me," Hank said.
"But they're not," Mike said. He felt excited, as if he were at the
edge of a discovery. "Take a family. A kid might hate his mother, but he
doesn't fear her. Or take a big businessman. He might hate his workers,
but he might not fear them. Or the workers might fear him and think he
is a pretty good guy, even like him."
"It doesn't explain anything, Mike," Hank said. "It sounds impressive,
but what does it mean?"
"Well, take something like a revolution. Take the French Revolution. All
of a sudden the streets of Paris are full of a bunch of people who are
willing to kill the king, slaughter one another, change everything. Marx
takes a look at it and says it was just one economic class trying to
overthrow another. A regular historian looks at it and says it was a
fight for power between the Jacobins and the Royalists and the Babouvists
and a lot of other groups. Someone else looks at it and says it was
the triumph of the Enlightenment, the inevitable result of the spread of
rationality. Christ, there are thousands of books on it. Each one giving a
slightly different reason. But they don't add up; they don't make sense."
"And your two principles do make sense?" Hank asked.
"Maybe they do. I'm not sure. But just take a look at the heads that were
being carried around on the tips of pikes during the Revolution. At first
they were the princes and the landlords and the mayors. The mob chopped
their heads off and put them on pikes because everyone hates the people in
charge. I don't know why, but they do. Then after this has gone on for a
while the people who made the revolution, the real revolutionaries, decide
that things have gone far enough and tell the people to stop. Then a
strange thing happens. They discover that the people hate them, too. They
find out that overnight the people can transfer their hate from the old
regime to the new regime. That's what they mean when they say that old
revolutionaries always die first. The successful revolutionaries are the
ones that are able to make the people transform their hatred into direct
action. But then orders; execute opposition; pass edicts; take over. They
wind up with a guy like Napoleon . . . the most precise contradiction of
the revolution. And they love him. Because now they're looking for a way
to escape their fear. The hate is pushed below the surface; now they're
scared. And because Napoleon will take over, because he'll ease their
fears, they rush to die in his armies, freeze in Russia, burn in Africa,
starve alongside of every road in Europe . . . with a great big glow of
pride and love in their eyes as they stare at the Little Corporal riding
off without them. Jesus!"
Mike stopped. He pressed his knuckle against the sharp stone. He looked
sideways at Hank.
A bell rang, sharp and glasslike clear, peculiarly distinct in the
hot air. People came from classes and moved slowly down the covered
passageways. Two nuns stepped into the Quad, hesitated and then scurried
across the hot cement. Their small black shoes twinkled in the sun,
their heavy black habits swayed provocatively. Hank waited until the
Quad was still again.
"What about the Russian Revolution?" he asked. "They didn't kill the
revolutionaries there."
"That was different," Mike said. "They hated the Czar and the Germans
and their landowners and just about everyone else. Christ, at first
they didn't even know who to kill. They went around shooting everybody;
they discover that hate is indiscriminate. The people just hate. And so
for a few days the heads of the revolutionaries appear on the pikes."
"Of course, there are some people who revolt on rational grounds," Hank
said. "Tom Paine and Jefferson and . . . "
"Sure they do. And they are the ones that are always knocked off
first. They start the revolution and then they are either killed or
pushed aside and someone else takes over."
"Nice situation," Hank said. "What stops everyone from killing everyone
else until just one guy is left?"
"Fear. The second principle. The Fear Principle," Mike said. "They've
even got a name for it. The 'thermidor': the revolutionary July. After
a while fear sets in. Then everyone starts looking around for some way
to end the fighting. Not because they're tired of it or feel ashamed
or the hate is gone. But because they're fearful. Fearful that they
won't get food, fearful that they might be invaded, fearful that their
property might be taken away, fearful that they might be the next ones
to get the guillotine. It happens in every revolution. In, a spasm of
fear they strangle the revolutionaries and then they start to look
desperately for authority. They turn to someone like Robespierre or
Babeuf. Exactly the sort of tough, dominant guys that they thought
they were getting rid of when they made the revolution. Guys that are
willing to act tough; Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, soldiers, sailors, mayors,
policemen, everybody. But then a guy came along with a spike beard and
hard gray eyes and he knew how to hate and to fear. And they turned the
revolution over to him. Not because they loved him, Hank, but because
he could control the fear and the hatred. One day he would tell them who
to hate . . . work out a nice slogan for it. The next day he would give
them something to fear . . . the Cheka or the army. So he sat on top
of the situation; opening the spill-gates of fear one day and hate the
next. Hank, make no mistake about it. There is one thing that the masses
know: real authority. And a real authority is someone who can satisfy
their desire to hate and their fear. A good authority works the two of
them together. He plays on 'em like they're an organ. He pulls out the
stop labeled Hate and they run screaming through the street shooting
up landlords and shopkeepers. Then the next day he pulls out the Fear
stop and lets them see that if they're not careful he'll have the Cheka
or the GPU chewing their ass. He sits at the console and gives 'em what
he thinks they need; a little fear today, a little hate tomorrow. Some
days he gives 'em both. And they stand together and shiver and think
he's the greatest guy in the world and love him."
"But they don't like that crap, Mike," Hank said. "They hate it. The
Russians hate it."
"The hell they do," Mike said. "They love it. We'd like to believe
all that stuff they write about loving Lenin and adoring Stalin is
written by a bunch of frauds in Moscow. But we're wrong. The Russians
love it. One day they get the 'hate' theme and they all start sending
in secret letters on the manager of their collective. The next day they
get the 'fear' theme and they start looking over their shoulder scared
pissless that the manager might have a brother in the Cheka. But the
big thing is that they like it; it gives a kind of crazy tension and
shape to each day. The fear and the hate complement one another; fold
into one another. They feel complete, filled up, whole."
"Sometimes people go along for a long time without seeming to me
to be very fearful or very hateful," Hank said. "Like right here in
America. Right now."
"Take another look, Hank," Mike said. "Sometimes it's hard to see. Sometimes
because everyone is well fed and no one is too high above anyone else the
hate and fear come into balance. But they're there. Do you think Roosevelt
talks about Wall Street bankers because he really believes they want to
dominate the country? Of course not. He does it because they're easy to
hate. Same with the businessmen. They don't really think Roosevelt is
trying to socialize the country or that he's a Commie. They just sense
that people are scared of socialism or communism. So that's what they say:
Roosevelt is a socialist or communist or both."
"It's just not enough to explain everything that happens, Mike," Hank
said. "I wouldn't get excited about it."
"I'm not excited," Mike said. "I'm just trying to find things out. Maybe
there's a pattern to things. Look at politics. You can see the hate
principle working out. If you have the best ruler in the world, doing
the best possible job for everyone, he still gets kicked out after a
while. Not because he's bad or evil or inefficient, but because the
hatred just starts welling up."