Island

  Without waiting for an answer, he walked out through the door that led into that central corridor of the long building. Will picked up his bamboo staff and, accompanied by Vijaya, followed him out of the room.

  "Do you suppose that made any impression on Murugan?" he asked Vijaya when the door had closed behind them.

  Vijaya shrugged his shoulders. "I doubt it."

  "What with his mother," said Will, "and his passion for internal-combustion engines, he's probably impervious to anything you people can say. You should have heard him on the subject of motor scooters!"

  "We have heard him," said Dr. Robert, who had halted in front of a blue door and was waiting for them to come up with him. "Frequently. When he comes of age, scooters are going to become a major political issue."

  Vijaya laughed. "To scoot or not to scoot, that is the question."

  "And it isn't only in Pala that it's the question," Dr. Robert added. "It's the question that every underdeveloped country has to answer one way or the other."

  "And the answer," said Will, "is always the same. Wherever I've been--and I've been almost everywhere--they've opted wholeheartedly for scooting. All of them."

  "Without exception," Vijaya agreed. "Scooting for scooting's sake, and to hell with all considerations of fulfillment, self-knowledge, liberation. Not to mention common or garden health or happiness."

  "Whereas we," said Dr. Robert, "have always chosen to adapt our economy and technology to human beings--not our human beings to somebody else's economy and technology. We import what we can't make; but we make an import only what we can afford. And what we can afford is limited not merely by our supply of pounds and marks and dollars, but also primarily--primarily," he insisted--"by our wish to be happy, our ambition to become fully human. Scooters, we've decided after carefully looking into the matter, are among the things--the very numerous things--we simply can't afford. Which is something poor little Murugan will have to learn the hard way--seeing that he hasn't learned, and doesn't want to learn, the easy way."

  "Which is the easy way?" Will asked.

  "Education and reality-revealers. Murugan has had neither. Or rather he's had the opposite of both. He's had miseducation in Europe--Swiss governesses, English tutors, American movies, everybody's advertisements--and he's had reality eclipsed for him by his mother's brand of spirituality. So it's no wonder he pines for scooters."

  "But his subjects, I gather, do not."

  "Why should they? They've been taught from infancy to be fully aware of the world, and to enjoy their awareness. And, on top of that, they have been shown the world and themselves and other people as these are illumined and transfigured by reality-revealers. Which helps them, of course, to have an intenser awareness and a more understanding enjoyment, so that the most ordinary things, the most trivial events, are seen as jewels and miracles. Jewels and miracles," he repeated emphatically. "So why should we resort to scooters or whisky or television or Billy Graham or any other of your distractions and compensations?"

  "'Nothing short of everything will really do,'" Will quoted. "I see now what the Old Raja was talking about. You can't be a good economist unless you're also a good psychologist. Or a good engineer without being the right kind of metaphysician."

  "And don't forget all the other sciences," said Dr. Robert. "Pharmacology, sociology, physiology, not to mention pure and applied autology, neurotheology, metachemistry, mycomysticism, and the ultimate science," he added, looking away so as to be more alone with his thoughts of Lakshmi in the hospital, "the science that sooner or later we shall all have to be examined in--thanatology." He was silent for a moment; then, in another tone, "Well, let's go and get washed up," he said and, opening the blue door, led the way into a long changing room with a row of showers and wash basins at one end and on the opposite wall, tiers of lockers and a large hanging cupboard.

  Will took a seat and while his companions lathered themselves at the basins, went on with their conversations.

  "Would it be permissible," he asked, "for a miseducated alien to try a truth-and-beauty pill?"

  The answer was another question. "Is your liver in good order?" Dr. Robert enquired.

  "Excellent."

  "And you don't seem to be more than mildly schizophrenic. So I can't see any counterindication."

  "Then I can make the experiment?"

  "Whenever you like."

  He stepped into the nearest shower stall and turned on the water. Vijaya followed suit.

  "Aren't you supposed to be intellectuals?" Will asked when the two men had emerged again and were drying themselves.

  "We do intellectual work," Vijaya answered.

  "Then why all this horrible honest toil?"

  "For a very simple reason: this morning I had some spare time."

  "So did I," said Dr. Robert.

  "So you went out into the fields and did a Tolstoy act."

  Vijaya laughed. "You seem to imagine we do it for ethical reasons."

  "Don't you?"

  "Certainly not. I do muscular work, because I have muscles; and if I don't use my muscles I shall become a bad-tempered sitting-addict."

  "With nothing between the cortex and the buttocks," said Dr. Robert. "Or rather with everything--but in a condition of complete unconsciousness and toxic stagnation. Western intellectuals are all sitting-addicts. That's why most of you are so repulsively unwholesome. In the past even a duke had to do a lot of walking, even a moneylender, even a metaphysician. And when they weren't using their legs, they were jogging about on horses. Whereas now, from the tycoon to his typist, from the logical positivist to the positive thinker, you spend nine tenths of your time on foam rubber. Spongy seats for spongy bottoms--at home, in the office, in cars and bars, in planes and trains and buses. No moving of legs, no struggles with distance and gravity--just lifts and planes and cars, just foam rubber and an eternity of sitting. The life force that used to find an outlet through striped muscle gets turned back on the viscera and the nervous system, and slowly destroys them."

  "So you take to digging and delving as a form of therapy?"

  "As prevention--to make therapy unnecessary. In Pala even a professor, even a government official, generally puts in two hours of digging and delving each day."

  "As part of his duties?"

  "And as part of his pleasure."

  Will made a grimace. "It wouldn't be part of my pleasure."

  "That's because you weren't taught to use your mind-body in the right way," Vijaya explained. "If you'd been shown how to do things with the minimum of strain and the maximum of awareness, you'd enjoy even honest toil."

  "I take it that your children all get this kind of training."

  "From the first moment they start doing for themselves. For example, what's the proper way of handling yourself while you're buttoning your clothes?" And suiting action to words, Vijaya started to button the shirt he had just slipped into. "We answer the question by actually putting their heads and bodies into the physiologically best position. And we encourage them at the same time to notice how it feels to be in the physiologically best position, to be aware of what the process of doing up buttons consists of in terms of touches and pressures and muscular sensations. By the time they're fourteen they've learned how to get the most and the best--objectively and subjectively--out of any activity they may undertake. And that's when we start them working. Ninety minutes a day at some kind of manual job."

  "Back to good old child labor!"

  "Or rather," said Dr. Robert, "forward from bad new child idleness. You don't allow your teen-agers to work; so they have to blow off steam in delinquency or else throttle down steam till they're ready to become domesticated sitting-addicts. And now," he added, "it's time to be going. I'll lead the way."

  In the laboratory, when they entered, Murugan was in the act of locking his briefcase against all prying eyes. "I'm ready," he said and, tucking the thirteen hundred and fifty-eight pages of the Newest Testament under his arm, he followed th
em out into the sunshine. A few minutes later, crammed into an ancient jeep, the four of them were rolling along the road that led, past the paddock of the white bull, past the lotus pool and the huge stone Buddha, out through the gate of the Station Compound to the highway. "I'm sorry we can't provide more comfortable transportation," said Vijaya as they bumped and rattled along.

  Will patted Murugan's knee. "This is the man you should be apologizing to," he said. "The one whose soul yearns for Jaguars and Thunderbirds."

  "It's a yearning, I'm afraid," said Dr. Robert from the back seat, "that will have to remain unsatisfied."

  Murugan made no comment, but smiled the secret contemptuous smile of one who knows better.

  "We can't import toys," Dr. Robert went on. "Only essentials."

  "Such as?"

  "You'll see in a moment." They rounded a curve, and there beneath them were the thatched roofs and tree-shaded gardens of a considerable village. Vijaya pulled up at the side of the road and turned off the motor. "You're looking at New Rothamsted," he said. "Alias Madalia. Rice, vegetables, poultry, fruit. Not to mention two potteries and a furniture factory. Hence those wires." He waved his hand in the direction of the long row of pylons that climbed up the terraced slope behind the village, dipped out of sight over the ridge, and reappeared, far away, marching up from the floor of the next valley towards the green belt of mountain jungle and the cloudy peaks beyond and above. "That's one of the indispensable imports--electrical equipment. And when the waterfalls have been harnessed and you've strung up the transmission lines, here's something else with a high priority." He directed a pointing finger at a windowless block of cement that rose incongruously from among the wooden houses near the upper entrance to the village.

  "What is it?" Will asked. "Some kind of electric oven?"

  "No, the kilns are over on the other side of the village. This is the communal freezer."

  "In the old days," Dr. Robert explained, "we used to lose about half of all the perishables we produced. Now we lose practically nothing. Whatever we grow is for us, not for the circumambient bacteria."

  "So now you have enough to eat."

  "More than enough. We eat better than any other country in Asia, and there's a surplus for export. Lenin used to say that electricity plus socialism equals communism. Our equations are rather different. Electricity minus heavy industry plus birth control equals democracy and plenty. Electricity plus heavy industry minus birth control equals misery, totalitarianism and war."

  "Incidentally," Will asked, "who owns all this? Are you capitalists or state socialists?"

  "Neither. Most of the time we're co-operators. Palanese agriculture has always been an affair of terracing and irrigation. But terracing and irrigation call for pooled efforts and friendly agreements. Cutthroat competition isn't compatible with rice-growing in a mountainous country. Our people found it quite easy to pass from mutual aid in a village community to streamlined cooperative techniques for buying and selling and profit sharing and financing."

  "Even cooperative financing?"

  Dr. Robert nodded. "None of those bloodsucking usurers that you find all over the Indian countryside. And no commercial banks in your Western style. Our borrowing and lending system was modeled on those credit unions that Wilhelm Raiffeisen set up more than a century ago in Germany. Dr. Andrew persuaded the Raja to invite one of Raiffeisen's young men to come here and organize a cooperative banking system. It's still going strong."

  "And what do you use for money?" Will asked.

  Dr. Robert dipped into his trouser pocket and pulled out a handful of silver, gold and copper.

  "In a modest way," he explained, "Pala's a gold-producing country. We mine enough to give our paper a solid metallic backing. And the gold supplements our exports. We can pay spot cash for expensive equipment like those transmission lines and the generators at the other end."

  "You seem to have solved your economic problems pretty successfully."

  "Solving them wasn't difficult. To begin with, we never allowed ourselves to produce more children than we could feed, clothe, house, and educate into something like full humanity. Not being overpopulated, we have plenty. But, although we have plenty, we've managed to resist the temptation that the West has now succumbed to--the temptation to overconsume. We don't give ourselves coronaries by guzzling six times as much saturated fat as we need. We don't hypnotize ourselves into believing that two television sets will make us twice as happy as one television set. And finally we don't spend a quarter of the gross national product preparing for World War III or even World War's baby brother, Local War MMMCCCXXXIII. Armaments, universal debt, and planned obsolescence--those are the three pillars of Western prosperity. If war, waste, and moneylenders were abolished, you'd collapse. And while you people are overconsuming the rest of the world sinks more and more deeply into chronic disaster. Ignorance, militarism and breeding, these three--and the greatest of these is breeding. No hope, not the slightest possibility, of solving the economic problem until that's under control. As population rushes up, prosperity goes down." He traced the descending curve with an outstretched finger. "And as prosperity goes down, discontent and rebellion" (the forefinger moved up again), "political ruthlessness and one-party rule, nationalism and bellicosity begin to rise. Another ten or fifteen years of uninhibited breeding, and the whole world, from China to Peru via Africa and the Middle East, will be fairly crawling with Great Leaders, all dedicated to the suppression of freedom, all armed to the teeth by Russia or America or, better still, by both at once, all waving flags, all screaming for Lebensraum."

  "What about Pala?" Will asked. "Will you be blessed with a Great Leader ten years from now?"

  "Not if we can help it," Dr. Robert answered. "We've always done everything possible to make it very difficult for a Great Leader to arise."

  Out of the corner of his eye Will saw that Murugan was making a face of indignant and contemptuous disgust. In his fancy Antinous evidently saw himself as a Carlylean Hero. Will turned back to Dr. Robert.

  "Tell me how you do it," he said.

  "Well, to begin with we don't fight wars or prepare for them. Consequently, we have no need for conscription, or military hierarchies, or a unified command. Then there's our economic system: it doesn't permit anybody to become more than four or five times as rich as the average. That means that we don't have any captains of industry or omnipotent financiers. Better still, we have no omnipotent politicians or bureaucrats. Pala's a federation of self-governing units, geographical units, professional units, economic units--so there's plenty of scope for small-scale initiative and democratic leaders, but no place for any kind of dictator at the head of a centralized government. Another point: we have no established church, and our religion stresses immediate experience and deplores belief in unverifiable dogmas and the emotions which that belief inspires. So we're preserved from the plagues of popery, on the one hand, and fundamentalist revivalism, on the other. And along with transcendental experience we systematically cultivate skepticism. Discouraging children from taking words too seriously, teaching them to analyze whatever they hear or read--this is an integral part of the school curriculum. Result: the eloquent rabble-rouser, like Hitler or our neighbor across the Strait, Colonel Dipa, just doesn't have a chance here in Pala."

  This was too much for Murugan. Unable to contain himself, "But look at the energy Colonel Dipa generates in his people," he burst out. "Look at all the devotion and self-sacrifice. We don't have anything like that here."

  "Thank God," said Dr. Robert devoutly.

  "Thank God," Vijaya echoed.

  "But these things are good," the boy protested. "I admire them."

  "I admire them too," said Dr. Robert. "Admire them in the same way as I admire a typhoon. Unfortunately that kind of energy and devotion and self-sacrifice happens to be incompatible with liberty, not to mention reason and human decency. But decency, reason and liberty are what Pala has been working for, ever since the time of your name
sake, Murugan the Reformer."

  From under his seat Vijaya pulled out a tin box and, lifting the lid, distributed a first round of cheese and avocado sandwiches. "We'll have to eat as we go." He started the motor and with one hand, the other being busy with his sandwich, swung the little car onto the road. "Tomorrow," he said to Will, "I'll show you the sights of the village, and the still more remarkable sight of my family eating their lunch. Today we have an appointment in the mountains."

  Near the entrance to the village he turned the jeep into a side road that went winding steeply up between terraced fields of rice and vegetables, interspersed with orchards and, here and there, plantations of young trees destined, Dr. Robert explained, to supply the pulp mills of Shivapuram with their raw material.

  "How many papers does Pala support?" Will enquired and was surprised to learn that there was only one. "Who enjoys the monopoly? The government? The party in power? The local Joe Aldehyde?"

  "Nobody enjoys a monopoly," Dr. Robert assured him. "There's a panel of editors representing half a dozen different parties and interests. Each of them gets his allotted space for comment and criticism. The reader's in a position to compare their arguments and make up his own mind. I remember how shocked I was the first time I read one of your big-circulation newspapers. The bias of the headlines, the systematic one-sidedness of the reporting and the commentaries, the catchwords and slogans instead of argument. No serious appeal to reason. Instead, a systematic effort to install conditioned reflexes in the minds of the voters--and, for the rest, crime, divorce, anecdotes, twaddle, anything to keep them distracted, anything to prevent them from thinking."

  The car climbed on and now they were on a ridge between two headlong descents, with a tree-fringed lake down at the bottom of a gorge to their left and to the right a broader valley where, between two tree-shaded villages, like an incongruous piece of pure geometry, sprawled a huge factory.