Part One: Lost

Chapter 1

PETER ULDANOV had been waiting half an hour.

He walked to the window and looked down to the streets thirty stories below, and then his glance wandered higher to the drab buildings opposite, and out over the city, until everything melted into a misty horizon.

It was a picture of unrelieved shabbiness.

So this was Moscow! This was the capital of Wonworld!

This building itself was new, towering and shiny black. He had caught a moment's outside glimpse of it when he had entered from the taxi. But from his present point of outlook he could see nothing with the slightest charm or interest, nothing even clean and fresh-looking.

It was Peter's first day in Moscow since early childhood.

Since the age of eight he had spent his years, isolated with his mother and a handful of servants and instructors, on a small island in the Bermudas. A vivid picture of the white house with its white roof, and of the incredibly blue sea just beyond his garden, now came between him and the sordid actuality below.

Why had his father sent for him? He had not seen him since childhood. He remembered only a dark, towering man from whom he had shrunk in terror.

His father was Dictator of Wonworld, ruler of all the peoples of the earth.

The fact would have given Peter himself a tremendous distinction if it had ever been a matter of common knowledge. He took a secret pride in it, overlaid by the hatred and fear which he had caught from his mother. It was a fact, also, that threatened the chief desire of his life-to be let alone, and to work in peace at his music.

What could his father want of him now, after ten long years of silence?

He turned and looked idly at the room in which he stood waiting. The single object on the wall was a large day calendar. Leninsday, April 30, 282 A.M.

A.M: After Marx. Marx was born, under the old, bourgeois calendar, in 1818. If no change had been made in the calendar it would now be the bourgeois year 2100. It had never occurred to Peter to make the calculation. No one was interested in the old, poisonous capitalist world that had been wiped out more than a century ago.

Stalenin's private secretary, Sergei, entered at last: "His Supremacy will see you now."

Peter followed through an office which he assumed to be the private secretary's own, and then into an immense paneled room.

Behind a great desk in the far left-hand corner sat Stalenin, Dictator of Wonworld. It now occurred only as a second thought to Peter that this was his father.

The secretary bowed himself out.

The Dictator stood up, and came forward. He was grayer and more tired-looking than in his pictures, which had not been changed for as long as Peter could remember. But he had the same massive strength. His frame was big; his hair cropped close; his head, shoulders and chest solid and square as if hewn out of granite.

He put his hands on his son's shoulders, gazing at him appraisingly. Peter was surprised to discover, at this nearness, that his father was no taller than he. Peter himself was a little over six feet, but he now realized that he had unconsciously come to think of his father as being of much more than human dimensions. The enormous posters had no doubt contributed to this impression. It was almost a shock to realize that Stalenin was only another man like himself. Their eyes met on the same level. Stalenin's expression, which had been grim, softened a little. "You are handsome," he said. "Even impressive. That's good. Important, too." He looked at Peter again. "They tell me that you are a first-rate pianist and composer. I'm glad to hear it. If a man shows talent even in trivialities, he is apt to show it in important things also."

Peter flushed. Music a triviality? And how did his father come to know anything about Peter's music? They had never written to each other. Nor had his mother, up to her death last year, exchanged a single letter with his father since she left him ten years ago. Who had been his father's informant?

Stalenin smiled enigmatically. "You are wondering why I sent for you?"

Peter was silent.

"For one thing," Stalenin continued, "I have decided at last to give you an education. You may not know it, but you are the most ignorant man in Wonworld."

"But, Your Supremacy, I was told I had the very best tutors-"

"I know all about your tutors. Their function was to protect you from any real knowledge of the modern world."

He went back to his desk and filled his pipe. "I lived with your mother until you were eight years old. After I became Dictator in 268-you were only five-your mother became a problem. She objected vehemently to the Great Purge of 271, which carried away her brother. That purge was absolutely necessary to the security of Wonworld. But she said she hated me and everything I stood for. She even thought you were being 'corrupted' by getting the same communist education as everyone else in Wonworld! She defied me. No doubt she expected me to torture her, make her confess treachery, have her beheaded-"

He paused. "I asked her to tell me exactly what it was she wanted. She said she wanted to go off somewhere -- on an island -- anyway, some place isolated from Wonworld, where she could have her son back and where she could bring him up without ever hearing about me or about the ideology or so-called glories of Wonworld .... I agreed to this madness. I sent her off with you to that little island in the Bermudas-how big is it?"

"About three hectares."

Stalenin nodded. "I stipulated that no one was to be allowed on the island except servants to bring supplies. These supplies, as you know, were carried regularly from the main island in a small launch. Your mother wanted your place preserved, she said, as a sort of oasis in Wonworld. She asked that you be taught only the subjects selected by her. I agreed to supply the best tutors. So you were taught music, mathematics -- I understand you know as much mathematics as a first-class engineer. Let's see -- what else were you taught?"

"Physics, chemistry, astronomy, physiology, biology, horticulture, meteorology -- "

"And sports, of course," put in Stalenin. "I'm told you swim like a professional. And that you're a first-class chess player. That impresses me most of all. It shows a sense of strategy ....

"Nevertheless" -- he was looking at a dossier in front of him -- "it's time you were told how ignorant you are of everything a modern man should know. I notice, for instance, that you are completely ignorant of history, politics, sociology and economics. Your acquaintance with our great propaganda literature is negligible. You have never been taught Marxist logic ... therefore you cannot begin to understand Dialectical Materialism .... There is a tremendous lot to be done on you."

He looked at Peter closely. "So unless you can convince me that you can be taught to think right, that you can be made into a useful member of society . . ."

He left the sentence unfinished.

"You are entirely free for the next two weeks," he continued. "You will go around, see this great city, give yourself an education. You have been well supplied with ration books?"

Peter rummaged through his pockets. He pulled out ration books of all colors and sizes.

"Learn what they are all for," said Stalenin. His voice became more kindly. "What do you know about that gray uniform you have on?"

"I was told to put it on this morning before I left the hotel."

"It is the uniform of the Proletarians," said Stalenin gravely. "A very honorable status. The Proletarians make up three-quarters of our whole population. It is, of course, they who really dictate. Wonworld is a dictatorship of the Proletariat. I am merely their instrument, their spokesman."

He smiled grimly. "But you must recognize the other uniforms too, so that you will know how to deal with them-and how you can expect to be dealt with. First and foremost, you must recognize the Protectors. Their uniforms are black-unless they are army officers, in which case they wear a bright red jacket. The Protectors, our top-level comrades, are about 1 per cent of all the people. Next come the Deputies. Uniform-navy blue. About one in ten of the population. They are the intellectuals, technicians, submanagers -- anybody whom we consider capable of eventually becoming a Protector. Protectors and Deputies together constitute what we sometimes call the Steel Frame. They are like the commissioned and noncommissioned officers of the Army .... At the bottom are the Social Unreliables. Unfortunately, they are still about 20 per cent of the population. They have either committed crimes against the Steel Frame, or have shown themselves incapable of becoming good Proletarians. They are assigned to labor camps ... or left to starve. They wear brown uniforms-wherever you can still recognize the color. In any case, you will pretend never to see them. But toward the Deputies, of course, you will maintain proper deference. And to the Protectors you will give reverence and love, as well as absolute obedience .... Any questions?"

"Where am I to stay, Your Supremacy?"

"You'll find an address among your cards. You will have a room to yourself -- a privilege granted to few Proletarians .... One more thing. At least for the present you are not to tell anyone that you are my son."

"But what about my name, Your Supremacy?"

"Oh, give your real name when asked. Outside of the Politburo, probably no one remembers that my own real name is Uldanov; and anyone who did would probably regard your name simply as a coincidence. Anyway, a Proletarian hasn't much use for a name. Most of the time you will simply be called by your license number. Tomorrow you will apply for one. Any further questions?"

"When do you want to see me again, Your Supremacy?"

"I will let you know. By the way, tomorrow is the May Day parade. Of course you will go to see it."

Chapter 2

THE wind was blowing up swirls of dust, cigarette butts and tattered newspapers. Peter bent forward against it, constantly turning his head to protect his eyes and throat from the grit.

If Moscow looked shabby from thirty stories up, it was squalid from the pavement. The buildings were in every stage of disrepair and decay. The only relief to this drabness -- if it was relief -- was the omnipresent posters, displaying either enormous faces of Stalenin or exhortations to Work! Production! Loyalty! and warnings against Wreckers and Spies.

The people, too, were drab. The typical face was as devoid of expression as the back of a baby's head. The women wore precisely the same shabby gray proletarian uniforms as the men. Why had he expected anything else? Then he remembered. His mother had always worn something she called skirts. It was the first time it had ever occurred to him that she might have been in any way affected or eccentric.

What he was seeing now was the real world. His previous life on his Bermuda island suddenly struck him as a strangely insulated, even sterilized, existence. He was beginning to feel like a freak.

He found himself in front of what appeared to be a small public library. His interest quickened. Could he go in? He decided to chance it.

It was restful inside. He browsed among the shelves.

"Is there anything special I can get you?"

A pretty, smiling blonde stood at his elbow. She was a Deputy, in a neat blue uniform. She had a soft, sympathetic face, and the deepest blue eyes he had ever seen.

She would understand me, he thought immediately.

"I'm the librarian," she offered.

There must be something special he wanted. Ah yes. "Where is your music department? I'd like to see the Mozart scores."

"The Mozart scores? Why, they're in the Old World Department ... they're on the Special Privilege list!"

"What do you mean -- Old World Department?"

She looked at him incredulously. Oh well, he was only a Proletarian.

"The Mozart scores," she said, as if talking to a child, "are among the small list of books held out from the Great Liberating Bonfires when the old poisoned capitalist civilization was destroyed. No book on that list can be read by anybody who does not hold a Special Privilege card. I'm not allowed to read them myself. They are in a special room behind two locked iron doors. My key opens only the first."

"Where do I get a Special Privilege card?" Peter asked.

She looked pointedly at his proletarian uniform. "Personally I never heard of anybody's holding a Special Privilege card who wasn't a member of the Protectorate, and even a Party member."

"But why shouldn't anybody be allowed to read any book there is?"

This time she looked at him more sharply. Suspicion came into her eyes. Nobody, even from a collective farm, could be as ignorant as this. Was she dealing with a member of the secret police?

"It would be a pretty state of affairs," she said mechanically, "if everybody were allowed to read the books kept over from the old poisoned capitalist civilization. Putting all sorts of subversive notions into people's heads! Only a small trained class can be allowed to read those books -- only people whose minds are so disciplined that they will not be upset by every scrap of the old bourgeois ideology that they come across. Even this small class is only allowed to read these books so that they will be prepared to answer the lies that may be brought forward by malicious wreckers."

"But Mozart," Peter insisted. "What possible harm can there be in the liquid gold of Mozart?"

Surely a member of the secret police! This was a tricky question. Her livelihood might depend upon the answer.

"What possible harm? It isn't for me to say. But still, it's safer to confine every book of whatever kind carried over from the old poisoned civilization to a Special Privilege list. A very wise decision."

She was watching his eyes closely, apparently to see how he was taking this answer.

"Don't worry too much," she went on, now in a kindly tone, "about not having a Special Privilege card. We have many wonderful books." She led him along the shelves. "Here, for example, are our books giving the life story of our Great Dictator, Stalenin."

"Why is there no one in the library but myself?" asked Peter.

Her glance once more became suspicious and fearful. "The library does everything possible," she said, "to induce people to read these books. We always recommend them first. Some of them doubtless do not praise Stalenin in sufficiently high terms to satisfy readers. And then I think there is a moral laxity in the people. We need to get after that."

That answer is self-contradictory, thought Peter. What is she saying -- that the books are not good enough for the readers, or that the readers are not good enough for the books?

He felt beaten. The books looked hopelessly dull. He sensed, moreover, that he was being too inquisitive. And he wanted her to like him.

"Well, these are very wonderful books," he said, "but it just occurs to me that I am going out with friends tonight, and I may mislay a book if I take it now. I'll be back tomorrow."

"The library's closed tomorrow. May Day."

"Oh yes, of course. Will you be watching the parade?"

"Naturally."'

"So will I. I may see you then."

She smiled at the improbability. Suddenly she understood. Of course he would see her. He had been assigned to see her. She stared at him in open fright. Her eyes fell on his left lapel, where his number badge should have been. There was none. Triumphantly: "I'll have to see your identity card, please."

His identity card! It might give him away. But his father had assured him ... He produced the card.

"Peter Uldanov;' she read expressionlessly. She wrote down the name in a card file along with the date and the hour he had been there. "Number?"

So the name didn't mean anything to her.

"I haven't got a local number yet. This is my first day in Moscow. I'm sorry about my stupid questions. But I'd like to drop in again -- often -- and look at your books."

Chapter 3

IT was growing dark. He found himself in a workers' section. From up the street came the sound of marching in cadence. A column of men and women approached, four abreast. Every once in a while it would halt at a command, then start again. It came almost opposite. A hardfaced woman was in charge. "Halt! ... Numbers T349, T350, and L 184!" The column stopped; two men and a woman stepped forth, saluted, and marched past him into neighboring houses. The column moved again.

Peter stopped a passer-by. "Is this a parade, comrade?"

"Parade?" The man looked puzzled, then suspicious. "That is part of the workers' army being marched home, just as on any other day! "

Peter mumbled his apologies.

He was getting hungry. Time to look for a good restaurant. He trudged endless blocks, occasionally coming on a dingy little eating place from which nauseating cooking odors oozed out.

Just as he was giving up hope, he found himself in front of a restaurant better lighted and cleaner than the others.

He was challenged immediately inside the entrance. "What are you doing here?" The waiter looked pointedly at Peter's proletarian uniform.

"Why, I thought—" Peter looked around. The tables were occupied solely by Deputies in navy blue.

He went into the next proletarian eating place that he found. It was noisy, crowded and dirty. In spite of his hunger, the stench of cooking made him feel faint. But he took his place on line -- as he was told. In time he came up opposite the desk of the registry clerk.

"Why aren't you at your regular restaurant?" asked the clerk.

"I'm new in Moscow."

At last a large registration book was shoved in front of him and he was told to fill in the blanks under the headings: Name; Address; Time of Entrance; Purpose of Visit ....

"Purpose of visit?" asked Peter. "Does anybody ever come for any other purpose than to eat?"

"They might come to conspire against the government by spreading false rumors," said the man at the desk.

"Would they put that down in the registry book?"

"Probably not. But then the government could get them on the additional crime of perjury."

Peter was led to a table for four. It was already occupied by three others. None of them spoke to him.

"What have you got tonight?" he asked the waiter with cheerful anticipation.

The waiter stared at him as if he had been guilty of some piece of impudence, and walked away. He came back in fifteen minutes with a dish containing some dark-gray mashed potatoes, brussels sprouts and mashed turnips covered with grease.

Was this, Peter suddenly wondered, the usual food of Wonworld? Had he been pampered up to now?

The grease on the handles of the cutlery came off on his fingers. The tablecloth was covered with coffee stains and cigarette ashes.

At intervals the waiter came over and looked at Peter's plate. "Not finished even yet?" he asked. Peter gently pushed the plate toward him. "Wasting good proletarian food?" asked the waiter. Peter nodded. He was impatient for his coffee. it would take the taste of the food out of his mouth.

The coffee was lukewarm and tasted like mud.

Peter looked about. At a nearby table a big man with bushy eyebrows seemed disturbingly familiar. Then he remembered. It was the same man he had noticed, standing on the opposite side of the street, when he came out of the library. Odd coincidence that he should be here!

He took out his ration books and began to study them. They were bewilderingly complex. He didn't know which to offer the waiter, so he pushed all of them at him.

The waiter tore out coupons from three of the books and turned them back to Peter with a new look of respect. "You are very well supplied, comrade. I see you even have entertainment coupons. You must be a Stakhanovite!"

Peter had not the slightest idea what the waiter meant, but gave a vague nod of confirmation. An idea occurred to him.

"Anything interesting to see or hear tonight?"

"What sort of thing do you like?"

"Music."

"Ah, then you should certainly hear Eliena Bolshekov sing."

"Who's she?"

The waiter stared incredulously. "You must certainly be new to Moscow. She's No. 2's daughter."

"No. 2?"

"Bolshekov! Bolshekov's daughter!"

After standing on a long queue, presenting his ration coupons and identity card, and signing in, Peter got a good seat in the balcony.

He looked around. There was only a handful of proletarian uniforms. Most of the seat holders up here were Deputies. The boxes and the first dozen rows in the orchestra were filled with Protectors and army officers.

The opera was based on an historic story set in the Dark Ages, just prior to the birth of Marx. It represented a struggle between the capitalists and the rising proletariat. The proletarians, when they arrived late to work on the railroad, or fell down from the fatigue of stoking the engine, were repeatedly flogged. Bolshekov's daughter, the heroine, took the part of a ticket seller on the privately owned railroad and was constantly flogged when she failed to sell her quota of tickets, which the railroad kept marking up in price. Her voice was only a little above mediocre, but she had wonderfully shapely thighs and wore red silk tights throughout the opera.

The music was mainly noise.

Eliena Bolshekov got tremendous applause and repeated curtain calls.

On his way out through the lobby Peter caught another glimpse of the big man with the bushy eyebrows.

He found that he had been assigned to a dreary little hotel room. His baggage was already there.

Chapter 4

HE was awakened by a reveille bugle blast coming from a radio speaker built into the wall. There was no way of turning it off.

The strains of the International followed. Then a throaty voice began shouting commands for setting-up exercises. Five minutes later a more suave voice broadcast the news. Production of paper boxes was now running 16 per cent higher than in the preceding year. In the output of straw mattresses there had been evidence of sabotage, but the guilty ones would soon be rounded UP ....

At breakfast Peter had to wait on another long queue.

He hurried to the Red Square. At the Gate of Communist Salvation people were already pouring in from all directions. Impressed, he stopped to watch them.

Suddenly and miraculously, he caught sight of the girl from the library! He elbowed his way over to her, fighting the human torrent.

"What a coincidence!" He grabbed her arm.

She was startled. "Is it?"

"Oh come now," he protested. "Do you think I've been following you?"

She gazed at him steadily. His naivete half melted her suspicions and she broke into a smile. They were being jostled along by the crowd.

"May we see the parade together?" he asked.

"How can I avoid it?" she said; but her tone had changed to a good-natured banter.

They were lucky enough to get a place near Lenin's Tomb.

Ten o'clock. A great cheer came from the crowd, and a band struck up the International.

The ranking members of the Army and Party, marching in single file, began to fill up the temporary reviewing stand on top of the tomb. Rear rows were filled first. Army officers and Party members of increasingly high rank began to fill the rows in front.

"Watch the line-up carefully when the first row comes in," said the girl. "That's how we find out about changes in the Politburo."

"You already know my name is Peter," he replied irrelevantly, "but you haven't told me yours."

She pointed to her badge: L -- 92-05.

"Yes, but -- " he persisted.

"Comrade Maxwell."

"You have a first name?"

She hesitated. "Edith."

The first row was filling up. A hush fell on the crowd. Politburo, members ranged themselves on one side, the heads of the Army, Navy and Air Force on the other. They left a vacant place in the exact center.

"No change in the rankings," announced Edith in Peter's ear. "Bolshekov, on Stalenin's left, is still No. 2, Adams No- 3- - -"

The music stopped, followed by a burst of drums. Then amid complete silence Stalenin, in a pure white uniform, marched to the center position, turned to face the crowd, raised his clenched fist, held it for a dramatic moment, and then dropped it smartly.

The crowd roared. The band burst into "Wonworld Forever!" The parade was on.

First came the infantry, then the tanks, and then a cloud of planes roared overhead. This took an hour.

"The parade is to be very short today," said Edith again in Peter's ear. "Stalenin has an important speech to make at the end.

"Where do you learn all this?"

"Don't you read the New Truth?"

A fresh burst of cheers. A barelegged majorette was leading a brilliantly uniformed band. Then came row on row of male gymnasts and athletes, barrel-chested, big-muscled, faceless, each carrying a basketball, football, tennis racquet, or other symbol of his sport. Then came the women athletes, heavy and hardlooking.

Next the professions: bureaucrats with briefcases, doctors with kits, painters with palettes, journalists with notebooks and pencils.

Each group carried a banner proclaiming Stalenin not only the world's greatest citizen but the greatest in their particular line. He was the doctor who watched over all; he epitomized the scientific spirit; he knew the news before the newspapers; he was the architect of socialism, of industry, of the State; the supreme engineer; the poet of progress; he created the poetry that others could only record.

Next came the workers: bricklayers with their trowels, carpenters with their saws, plumbers with their wrenches. Rows of railroad workers with blacksmiths' hammers alternated with rows of farm workers with sickles. They swung these in reverse unison. At the top of each swing, hammers crossed sickles to bursts of applause.

Next came the floats, dedicated to the Spirit of Work, of Efficiency, of Production. Some carried enormous charts, showing the output of guns, tanks, steel, wheat, pigs, education, music and poetry. All charts showed sharply ascending curves.

But to Peter the most interesting floats were two that came at the end. The first consisted of a great steel cage. Inside was a peasant family consisting of a father, his wife, and two children -- one a girl of nine or so and the other a boy of about five. They cowered in terror and shame. The float immediately behind was strewn with flowers. In the center was a raised throne on which sat a boy of about twelve, smiling, laughing and bowing from side to side. The first float was greeted by the crowd with hissing and imprecations, the second with wild cheers.

"Who are they?" asked Peter.

"Those are kulaks in the cage," answered Edith.

"Kulaks?"

"Yes; people with a capitalist mentality."

"What have they done?"

"Held back grain."

"All of them?"

"The father, anyhow. The rest ate more than their quota of potatoes from their collective farm."

"How do the authorities know?"

"He confessed."

"Voluntarily?"

"Not till the boy in the back float reported everything to the security police. That is why everyone is cheering the boy."

"Who is he?"

"He's the kulak's oldest son."

A pause.

"What will happen to the family?"

"They are to be guillotined at three this afternoon -- like that other family after last year's parade."

"All of them?"

"Of course."

"What did the wife and children do?"

"They ate the potatoes. Besides, they didn't report him .... Didn't you read all about it in the New Truth?"

Next came row upon row of marching children, mainly about eight or nine years old, carrying huge bouquets of pink and blue flowers.

"The Young Pioneers!" shouted Edith. "The most honored youngsters of Moscow!"

"What did they do to distinguish themselves?"

"Most of them also reported treachery by their parents -- but the kulak family you just saw must have been the worst case."

"That's why the boy was selected for chief honors?"

Edith nodded.

The parade was at an end. The bands stopped, and silence fell.

Stalenin arose. He stood for a time motionless, amid deafening bravos from the crowd. Then he raised his hand for silence, and began to speak.

He spoke of the glories of Wonworld, of the incredible progress made, of the launching of the new Five-Year Plan. He cited statistics, statistics of everything, revealing the magnificent progress made in the past twelve months over the twelve months preceding. But -- and here he paused significantly -- he deeply regretted to have to report that one or two lines of production had not met their quotas; and that in one or two others, quality was defective. To what could this be attributed? Only to one thing: to saboteurs, to traitors, to still uneradicated traces of capitalist mentality.

(Denunciations of the traitors from the crowd.)

They were a very small percentage, these traitors, Stalenin continued, but the future of Wonworld could not be secure until they were utterly stamped out. (Cheers.) And (with a smile) he thought he knew how to stamp them out. (Cheers and laughter.) The comrades must have noticed, by a float in the parade, how a few of them had been uncovered and were going to be dealt with as an example at three o'clock that afternoon. (More cheers and laughter.)

But then Stalenin paused a moment, and his expression assumed a more serious cast. He had a very important announcement to make. The cares and responsibilities of his office had been mounting; the demands on his time were staggering; to meet them he had to make still further sacrifices. The people must have noted that his public appearances had become rarer. This had been simply the result of increasing demands on his energies in more important directions. He had to make a decision, and he had now made it. This would probably be his last public appearance. He would not preside hereafter even at the May Day exercises.

Shouts of "No, no!"

Stalenin raised his hand. He was not deserting them. he had made this decision only in order that he might serve them still more intensely in other ways. He must hereafter leave the laying of cornerstones and the making of speeches to others. And there were others who, acting as his deputies, could do that very well -- Bolshekov, Adams -- he turned to look at them -- need he mention every member of the Politburo? (Great cheers.)

Hereafter Comrade Bolshekov, acting as his deputy, would preside at the May Day parades and other functions, while Comrade Adams would have to assume some of Bolshekov's former powers and administrative duties. In fact -- and here he assumed a jovial, bantering expression-instead of Bolshekov being No. 2 and Adams No- 3, as heretofore, it might almost be more accurate hereafter to call Bolshekov No. 1 ½ and Adams No. 2 ½. (Much good-natured laughter. A sick smile from Bolshekov.) And here Stalenin must take his public farewell, but only so far as public appearances were concerned, for the people would know that, silently, often alone, late into the nights, he would be working for them with the last grain of his vitality and the last drop of his blood. "Work! Work! Work!" he cried. "And Wonworld forever!"

The applause, the shouting, the crying, rose to a height never before reached. People became hysterical. Some fell on their knees. Soon the whole crowd was on its knees.

Stalenin strode off, followed by the members of the Politburo.

In a few minutes the reviewing stand was empty.

Chapter 5

WHEN they had got up and brushed the dust from their trousers, Peter turned to Edith. "What are you doing now?"

"I join my ORP, of course."

"ORP? "

"My Organized Recreation Platoon. Ours forms in ten minutes at Engels Square."

"May I walk over with you?"

"If you wish. But haven't you been assigned to any ORP of your own?"

"No -- that is -- not yet."

At Engels Square a number of platoons were already forming. "How long will this take?" asked Peter.

"Till four o'clock."

"Does the platoon come back here?"

"Yes."

"May I see you then?"

"I'm taking my father out. He's just recovering from pneumonia. I have a permit to take him out for an hour a day for the next week. See!" She pulled out a card.

"May I walk with you and your father?"

She hesitated. All over the square platoon leaders were shouting the command, "Fall in!" She ran toward her platoon and waved a quick good-by to him.

"All right!" she said finally. He watched her fall into line.

The platoons marched off until the square was almost deserted. But not quite. Peter looked around. Behind him was the man with the bushy eyebrows. And somewhat further away was a new figure -- a short, gorillalike man with extraordinarily long arms.

"Did you have a good time?" asked Peter. Edith's ORP had returned to the square and been dismissed. He himself had put in four dreary hours.

"Oh, wonderful!" she answered. "We had lunch; then settingup exercises; then we played organized softball; and then we were taken to see the kulak family guillotined."

They walked through blocks of drab tenements. Edith stopped in front of one. "Here we are!" she exclaimed.

She led him up three flights of stairs and opened the door to a dark room looking on a tiny courtyard. "Isn't it nice?" she asked.

Peter looked around. It was a medium-sized room into which had been crowded four beds, a number of chairs, and a couple of packing cases apparently used as bureaus. Two of the beds were in complete disorder.

"This is our part of the room," said Edith proudly, pointing to the two neatly made-up beds.

The only occupant of the room as they entered was a whitehaired man, distinguished and intelligent looking. He was sitting in an invalid's chair.

"Father," said Edith, "this is Comrade Uldanov."

Her father glanced suspiciously at Peter's empty lapel.

"He just got into Moscow yesterday, father, but he expects to get his license number tomorrow."

"Uldanov . . ." said the old gentleman. "That sounds familiar." He held out his hand. "I'm glad to know you, comrade. My number is EN-57."

Peter shook hands. "My full name is Peter Uldanov."

Her father shot a questioning glance toward Edith, who gave him a reassuring one in return. "My name is John Maxwell," he said.

"Oh -- you are English?"

"Yes, an engineer."

"Father was one of the chief designers of the new Lenin super-dam!"

"Where is that?" asked Peter.

"Why," said Edith, "it will be the biggest dam ever built -- "

"It's still in the blueprint stage," cut in Maxwell. "The old story -- shortage of labor, shortage of raw materials, and above all, shortage of ration tickets."

Peter looked around. "Do you have to share this room with other families?"

"Only with the O'Gradys," said Edith. "A nice quiet family. They have a little boy of three and a nine-month-old baby girl.

"How about privacy?" The question was out before Peter had decided whether it was tactful.

Father and daughter exchanged distressed glances. "I'm surprised that you should mention such a bourgeois concept," said Edith. "We have all the privacy that a socialist society needs. See!" She pointed to wires near the ceiling that intersected the room. There were curtains, or rather sleazy sheets, hanging from them. They had been pushed up against the walls, and she pulled them out straight. They divided the father's from the daughter's bed and both from the rest of the room.

"Snug, isn't it?" she asked.

Peter became indignant. "Couldn't they give you anything better than this?"

Another distressed glance between father and daughter. Edith looked appealingly at Peter, put her finger to her lips and shook her head, as if they were being overheard by someone not present. "How could you ever get anything better than this?" she said loudly and distinctly, as if speaking for an audience. "All of us will indeed get still better living quarters if we work longer hours and tighten our belts. And now let's go out for our walk!"

They helped Maxwell out of his chair and handed him his cane. "Father has just recovered from a bad case of pneumonia," said Edith, still very loudly and distinctly. "The doctor prescribes walking, and I have a permit to take him out at this hour."

There was something abnormal about the conduct of these two that made Peter uneasy. When they were in the street and well past the house, Edith asked coldly: "What made you say things like that, when you knew we might be listened to?"

"But by whom?"

"You know that every room in Moscow is wired for sound reception and that the secret police may be listening at any time."

"Can we be overheard now?" asked Peter.

"Not unless we're being followed," said Edith. "That's why I waited for the privacy of the street to tell you this."

Edith's remark reminded Peter. He looked back. There was the inevitable man with the bushy eyebrows, and behind him in turn the man with the long arms.

"Well, we are being followed," Peter laughed. "I've been followed ever since I got to Moscow yesterday. And by the same handsome pair."

Edith and her father glanced back. Their faces became livid. Edith turned on him. "You knew you were being followed?"

"Yes."

"And yet you did not hesitate to lead these people to me, to my house, to put them on the track of myself and my father?"

"But they aren't following you; they're following me!"

"Don't you know that whenever the secret police suspect anyone of disloyalty, everybody he associates with is under suspicion?" Tears came into her eyes. "The least you can do now is to leave us immediately, and take your spies with you!"

Maxwell faced him with a menacing expression, but said in a low tone, "You must establish yourself as our enemy."

"What can I do?" asked Peter, bewildered.

"Anything -- You are forcing yourself on my daughter, and she and I resent it -- "

Peter grabbed Edith, pulled her to him, and kissed her vehemently. He suddenly realized that he had been wanting to do it all along.

He felt Edith's hands on his chest pushing and Maxwell's hands on his shoulders pulling him away. At arm's length Edith gave him a stinging slap on the face. Maxwell shook his fist at him.

He turned and ran. When he had run half a block he glanced back. He was relieved to find that both his followers were running after him. At least, he thought, they won't bother the Maxwells.

He walked directly to his hotel.

When he had got to his room he closed the door (it was illegal, he had found, for Proletarians to lock their doors) and examined the room from base to ceiling to see whether it was wired for sound reception.

He found two tiny microphones built into the walls at diagonally opposite corners.

He sank onto the bed.

Chapter 6

STALENIN, pipe in hand, walked slowly back and forth, "I'm going to tell you something, Peter, that is known to nobody on earth except my personal physician and my private secretary .... About six weeks ago I had a stroke..."

"Oh!"

"I recovered in four days. It seemed to leave no mark. But my doctor warns me that I may have another, more serious. It may affect my heart, my brain -- paralyze me -- carry me off. That's primarily why I brought you from Bermuda two weeks ago .... I don't know whether your mother ever made clear to you the real reason for our breakup."

"You said, Your Supremacy, that she objected to the Great Purge that carried away her brother -- "

"Yes, yes. But our real split came earlier. It was ideological, like all real splits. She accused me of betraying the revolution! Me! She insisted that the kind of communism I had put into effect was not Marxian-Leninism! It was, of course, the essence of Marxism and Leninism. If I had had her liquidated then and there, as I first thought of doing, she would have gone to her death convinced that she was right. I was determined to force her to change her mind, and really change it, before she died. And that was why I kept her alive, guarded and isolated, on that island. I was going to show her, when the job was done, the great classless society that I could bring into being. I was going to lead her through a world flowing with milk and honey. Her accusation was a monstrous lie! I was going to prove even to her that it was a lie! So far from betraying the revolution, it has been my supreme mission to carry the revolution to its destined fulfillment!"

His pace quickened and his excitement grew as he spoke. Suddenly he put his hand to his heart, and Peter saw that he was making a deliberate effort to calm himself. After a pause he went on:

"Time was not on my side .... She died too soon. And now, perhaps, I am going to die too soon .... And that is why I sent for you.

He walked slowly to his desk and shook the ashes out of his pipe.

"Since your mother insisted that I was not creating true communism, maybe you can. I'm going to let you try."

Peter was staggered. "But, Your Supremacy, I know nothing-"

"If you know nothing, it's because you were taught nothing. You were educated precisely in accordance with your mother's views. I chose the best teachers in Wonworld to teach you the subjects that she wanted you taught. And she didn't want you to be taught anything about politics or economics or history because, she claimed, you would only be indoctrinated with corrupted views. Well, let's see what you can do with the views she taught you!"

"But, Your Supremacy, I wouldn't have the remotest idea of where to begin! You wouldn't want me to wreck Wonworld, but that is precisely what I would probably do. I don't even know what my mother's principal objection was to your regime. She never spoke to me about it."

Stalenin looked astonished. "She never spoke to you about it?"

"She seldom talked about the world outside. She seldom mentioned your name."

Stalenin was taken aback. He walked up and down as if trying to absorb this.

An intercom buzzed on his desk. "Yes. I'll see him right away."

He turned to Peter. "It's Bolshekov. Go out through this back door. The guard at the end of the corridor will show you the way down. Be back here promptly at ten o’clock tomorrow."

The next day Peter found his father in an altered mood.

"Even if nothing had happened to your mother, I would soon have faced a decision about you. Obviously you couldn't have been kept isolated on that island all your life. As soon as I passed on, you would have been automatically assassinated."

"Why?"

"First, for being my son. And second for being miseducated, and hence an ideological menace .... Your life is in the greatest danger."

He sank into a chair. "I can trust no one,"

Peter was amazed. "Not even Bolshekov?" He remembered how many times Stalenin had publicly lauded the "loyalty" and "devotion" of Bolshekov. Hadn't he given a renewed expression of his confidence, on May Day?

"I trust Bolshekov least of all," said Stalenin. "He is the greatest menace to my regime, to my life. And to yours."

"But why?"

"There was a time when I did trust Bolshekov completely. Perhaps his own ambition had not yet become overvaulting. He is tremendously able, shrewd, fearless -- and a complete fanatic. There was a time when, though I was known as No. 1, the twelve members of the Politburo had no numbers. Bolshekov exposed a plot within the Politburo to assassinate me. He extorted confessions from the three members involved, and they were liquidated. I should have known that those confessions were meaningless. You can make anybody confess to anything. But I was away addressing the Wonworld Congress of Scientists at Paris when all this occurred. When I got back there was no version but Bolshekov's for me to hear. He convinced me that this plot was the result of the absence of any clear line of succession to my power. Such plots were apt to recur, he pointed out, so long as anybody in the Politburo thought he could seize power with me out of the way. I asked his suggestion for the cure. He recommended that everybody in the Politburo be given a public number so that the resort to violent methods for succession to power would be impossible. I agreed to this. And, still more unfortunately, out of gratitude I named him No. 2. Not till I had done this did I realize what should have been obvious to me from the first -- that in naming him No. 2, 1 had in effect publicly named him as my titular successor. Now all he had to do was to get rid of me. And that, I have found, is precisely what he is planning to do."

"But wouldn't it be a simple matter, Your Supremacy, to give him a lower number?"

Stalenin waved his pipe impatiently. "A man in Bolshekov's position cannot be demoted. Suppose I named him No. 3 or 4 or 5? This public evidence of my distrust would mean that no one would ever know whether to obey him or not. Everyone would shun him. He could not hold even minor power. He himself would know that he was doomed, and have me killed, if he had the chance, before I had him killed. No, the only thing is to arrest him, force a confession out of him, and then kill him."

"But -- "

"You are wondering," continued Stalenin, "why I could not simply have him shot and then blame the shooting on enemies of the State. I have thought of that. There are one or two things to be said in its favor. For example, I could accuse others, whom I suspect of being ambitious, of having engineered the assassination. I could have confessions wrung from them, so diverting all suspicion from myself and killing several birds with one stone. You may be sure that Bolshekov has thought of doing the same thing in my case -- having me assassinated, staging simultaneously a fake attempt on his own life, having other members of the Politburo -- especially Adams -- arrested, extorting confessions from them, and so on."

His pipe had gone out again. He walked over to his desk and refilled it.

"These things take considerable arranging," he went on. "I have increased my own bodyguard, and have agents watching Bolshekov. No doubt he has taken similar measures in my case. He must already know about your presence in Moscow. The bushy-browed comrade who has been following you around for the last two weeks, by the way, is one of my own agents -- to protect you. He has sent me daily reports. The long-armed fellow is undoubtedly a spy for Bolshekov. But I shall pretend to know nothing about the matter. Bolshekov and I must act against each other without rousing each other's suspicions. Action on either side may come any day."

Everybody in Wonworld lived in fear. Peter now realized that the Dictator himself lived in as great fear as anyone else. He had to rule by fear because he was himself ruled by fear.

"As to my public expressions of trust in Bolshekov, which seem to be puzzling you," Stalenin continued, "you must understand that these are, of course, necessary for my own protection. The more faith I show in Bolshekov in public, the more impossible it is for him to plot against me openly -- and the harder it would go with him if it were ever found out that he was acting against me in secret. I keep promoting him, as you know. This not only conceals my own suspicions from him; it also encourages him to think that he can gain his ambitions without violence or treachery. My May Day speech had still another purpose. I may have a paralyzing stroke at any moment and then it would be impossible for me to show myself in public, and Bolshekov would either finish me off or take power without even bothering to finish me off. So why not announce, while I still seem to be in the prime of health, that I am making no more public appearances? Then if I make no public appearances, no ugly rumors will start -- or if they start, they will not be believed. Further, I have removed at least one source of the drain on my energies and postponed a second stroke by just that much .... And remember, though I seemed to be placing a lot of power in Bolshekov's hands, I made it clear that he holds all this power only as my deputy, and that nothing can be done except in my name."

He smoked for a while in silence, and once more walked about the room. "You are probably wondering where you fit into all this. I don't mind telling you that your mother's accusation has rankled in me all these years. You may have gathered as much from what I said yesterday. She charged that I betrayed the revolution! She said that this, this Wonworld, is not real communism, not what Marx and Lenin and the great Stalin intended! But it is exactly that! It is the consummation of all that they worked for .... Or at least it would be, if it were not for the lazy and the slovenly and the wreckers and the spies! But she blamed me for all that! She said that Marx called for a classless society and promised that when socialism had been perfected the State would 'wither away.' Haven't I brought a classless society? There are no differences in classes; there are only differences in functions. Somebody has to direct. But how can the State wither away? Under socialism, and by the very concept of socialism, the State owns everything, controls everything, plans everything. How the hell can it wither away?" His questions were directed challengingly at Peter, as if it were he who had made the accusation against him. "Or maybe it could wither away, when we have killed off all the traitors. But there is no end to treason; there is no end -- "

Peter saw that his father was making another conscious effort, as on the day before, to get control of himself.

"You are probably wondering," Stalenin now resumed very calmly, "as I said before, where you fit into all this .... During these years, as your mother's accusation has festered in me, I have thought that my life might be terminated before I could prove to her that she was wrong. And it has occurred to me that it might be at least some satisfaction to select you as my successor, you who have been brought up according to her ideas of what an education should be, and defy you to try to create true communism -- since I wasn't supposed to be doing it."

"But, Your Supremacy, as I told you yesterday, I am completely unequipped -- "

"Of course you are. The idea, as I originally conceived it, had no sense. It was merely an emotional daydream of revenge. It began to evaporate, in fact, the moment I first saw you two weeks ago. "

"I realize, Your Supremacy, that I am quite untrained for politics; but that doesn't mean that I am not equipped for other -- "

"That has nothing to do with why I changed my mind. I had always thought of you as her son. But at my first glance at you as a man instead of a child, I suddenly realized that you are my son. And now I want you to succeed me, when I pass on, for a better reason, a real reason. And that is why, if you prove equal to it, I'm going to give you a chance to become the next Dictator. I'd like to think of the flesh and blood of Stalenin carrying on. I can understand how the old kings felt-"

"Your Supremacy—"

"When we are alone you may call me 'father.'"

"Father .... I don't want to succeed you as Wonworld Dictator. I know that sounds amazing, but ... I have no reason to suppose that I would have any particular aptitude for it. I have no training for it .... I have no heart for it. I'd like to devote myself to music -- "

Stalenin cut in with another impatient wave of his pipe. "Music may be all right as a hobby, but it's not a full-time occupation for a serious man. Besides, I've already told you -- your life is in imminent danger. Do you imagine for a moment that, if anything happened to me, whoever took my place would let you live? Let you become a potential rallying point for a plot against him? You have only one choice: succeed me as Dictator or be annihilated."

Peter was silent. He said at last: "What do you want me to do, father?"

"The first thing I intend to do is to introduce you to the Politburo at tomorrow's meeting. Your presence in Moscow is bound to be known soon. Bolshekov already knows of it, though he still may not know just who you are. The best way to lull suspicion is to appear to be perfectly frank and introduce you as my son .... But I shall treat you with a certain contempt. That is one reason why I have given you the status of a Proletarian. Anyway, you ought to know what it's like to be a Proletarian. The next thing for me to do is to see that you get a real communist education. You shall get the best. I will put your education directly in charge of Bolshekov himself."

"Wouldn't that give him even more opportunity -- ?"

"It will lull his suspicions. He has already been spying on you. Now it will not be necessary. But you can watch him, with a perfect excuse. By the way, I had almost forgotten to tell you: every member of the Politburo must be addressed as 'Your Highness.' ... Any further questions?"

Peter had none.

"The meeting of the Politburo is at four o'clock. You will be here ten minutes before then."

At five minutes after four the next day Peter followed Stalenin through a short corridor leading from his office to another room of the same size -- and found himself in the presence of the Politburo.

Eleven men in black, and one in the red coat of an army officer, were seated along a large oblong table, half a dozen on each side. At the moment of Stalenin's appearance they stood up.

"Comrades," said Stalenin, "I have a surprise for you. Let me introduce my son, Peter Uldanov!"

He took Peter around the table and introduced him to each member individually, beginning with His Highness No. 2, Bolshekov. It was only the second time that Peter had even seen Bolshekov. He was tall and gaunt -- about two inches taller than Peter himself. Even more striking than his high cheekbones and prominent nose were his eyes. They were a distinct green.

Next came His Highness No. 3, Adams, a shrewd-looking Yankee below average height, thin and wispy. But there were humor and good-nature in his wizened face, and Peter liked him immediately. There was also something vaguely reminiscent about Adams that Peter could not quite identify.

He followed his father around the table .... No. 4, Marshal Zakachetsky, head of the Army .... No. 5, Andre Giraud, Commissar of Provinces .... No. 6, Ivan Orlov, Commissar of Propaganda and editor of the New Truth .... No. 7, Nickolas Petrov, "our oldest member." ... No. 8, Vladimir Kilashov, Commissar of State Security, and head of the secret police .... Peter began to lose track of the names.

He did keep track of the Soviet Republic from which each member originated. Adding his father's identifications, he counted eight Russians, one American, one Frenchman, one German, one Englishman and one Argentinian.

Stalenin took his seat at the top of the table, and waved Peter to a chair at the bottom. All sat down.

The Dictator filled his pipe and began to tell the Politburo the story of his son's life. He concealed few outward facts, but his tone was now heavily derisive.

"And so," he concluded, "when his mother died a year ago, I had to decide his fate. Should he be kept on the island for the remainder of his life, a burden to himself and an ideological menace to Wonworld? Or should he be exterminated? Or should we try, belatedly, to turn him into a Marx-fearing Communist and a useful member of society?"

A dozen pairs of eyes turned on Peter as if he were some strange, newly discovered kind of animal.

"I decided on the last, and have brought him here. I am wondering, Your Highness" -- Stalenin was addressing Bolshekov -- "whether I can place him in your care? Would you be able to give him a little of your own time for a while, to make sure that he gets started right? Later we could hand him over to the right teachers and have him report to both of us regularly, so that we can watch his progress -- or lack of progress."

"When do you want me to begin, Your Supremacy? "

"As soon as possible."

Bolshekov turned to Peter. "Report to my office at ten o'clock tomorrow morning."

"One thing more," continued Stalenin. "I don't want this young man to get any favors whatever simply because he happens to be my son. Whatever he gets or doesn't get is to depend solely on himself. You will notice that I have given him simply the status of a Proletarian. However, it might be embarrassing, during the period of his education, to have a Proletarian wandering in and out of the Kremlin offices, where he would be constantly stopped by the guards. So beginning tomorrow morning, No. 2, before he gets to your office I will see that he gets the temporary status and uniform of a Deputy."

He looked sternly at Peter. "It will depend on how rapidly you learn, whether you will be allowed to keep that status."

Chapter 7

"SO!" said Bolshekov. He looked Peter up and down. "You know absolutely no history, absolutely none?"

Peter nodded.

"Well, that can only be made up by giving you a list of books to read. But I will sketch in the general outlines, so that you can get your bearings. Our histories, like our calendar, are divided roughly into two parts: B.M. and A.M. -- Before Marx and After Marx. This, for example," -- pointing to a day calendar on the wall—"is the Year of Our Marx 282, which means 282 years after His birth. Certainly you learned at least that in the Communist schools before you were eight!"

Peter nodded again.

"But this is the older division. Our recent writers divide history into three great periods: Ancient History, the Dark Ages, and Modern History. Ancient History is all that period, of which practically nothing is now known, that came before what was amusingly called in the Dark Ages the Industrial Revolution. Of course it wasn’t a revolution at all; it was a counterrevolution. The Dark Ages begin with the birth of capitalism. There is still some difference among historians as to the exact year in which the Dark Ages began. Some of them place it at 95 B.M., which was the year in which a bourgeois named Adam Smith was born; others place it at 42 B.M., which was the year in which a book appeared by this Adam Smith. This book gave birth to, and presented an elaborate system of apologetics for, the capitalist ideology."

"What was the name of the book?"

"That is no longer known; but I will come to all that in a moment. The Dark Ages represents the whole period from the birth of capitalism until its final overthrow in the series of cold and shooting wars between about 150 A.M. and the final triumph of communism in 184 A.M."

"So modern history, Your Highness -- history since the complete and final triumph of communism -- is now just a couple of years less than a century old?"

"Correct. Now I won't go into the details of the long and complicated series of wars that led to the final overthrow of capitalism. Soviet Russia, of course, led the forces of communism. The forces of capitalism mainly centered around what we now know as the Disunited States, which kept losing allies, both without and within. But you will get all of that from your history books, of which I will give you a list before you leave."

He made a note on a small pad in front of him.

"Yet I must impress upon you," he continued, "the one central reason for communism’s success. We began with apparently every possible disadvantage. The enemy started with better arms, more technical advancement, more production, more resources. And yet we beat them in the end because we had the one tremendous weapon that they lacked. We had Faith! Faith in our own Cause! Faith that never for a moment wavered or faltered! We knew that we were right! Right in everything! We knew that they were wrong! Wrong in everything!"

Bolshekov was shouting. He stopped for a moment as if to let this sink in.

"The enemy never had any real faith in capitalism," he went on. "They started out with little, and began rapidly to lose what they had. Those who had once embraced the gospel of communism were willing to die for it; but nobody was willing to die for capitalism. That would have been considered a sort of joke. Finally, the best thing our enemies could think of saying for capitalism was that it wasn't communism! Even they didn't seem to think that capitalism had any positive virtues of its own. And so they simply denounced communism. But their idea of meeting the challenge of communism was to imitate it. They gave lip service to capitalism and to something that they called private enterprise or free enterprise -- nobody any longer knows what these old phrases meant -- but every 'reform' they put into effect as an 'answer' to communism was another step in the direction of adopting communism. For every reform they adopted left the individual with less power and the State with more. Step by step the control of individuals over resources and goods was taken away; step by step that control was taken over by the State. It was at first not 'ownership' but merely the power of decision that was turned over to the State. But the fools who were trying to 'reform' capitalism did not see that the power of decision, the power of disposal, was the essence of 'ownership.' So they took away from private individuals, step by step, the power to set their own prices, or to decide what to produce or how much of it, or to hire or discharge labor at will, or to set the terms of employment. Gradually their governments themselves fixed all these things, but piecemeal, instead of in one grand logical swoop. It was amusing to see them slavishly imitate the Communist Five-Year Plans by their own Four-Year Plans! These were, of course, like ours, all State plans. Incredible as it now seems, these people actually seemed to believe that calling them Four-Year Plans instead of Five-Year Plans would prevent everybody from recognizing the imitation. In fact, some of them were too stupid even to know at first that they were imitating."

He stopped to pour himself a glass of water.

"In brief, step by step the capitalistic world accepted the basic premise of communism -- that the individual, left to himself, is greedy, callous, stupid and irresponsible; that 'individualism' and 'liberty' are simply euphemisms for dog-eat-dog, the law-of-the jungle, the-devil-take-the-hindmost -- in short, euphemisms for anarchy -- and that only the State has responsibility, only the State has wisdom, only the State can be just, only the State can be trusted with power. They accepted this premise, but they lacked the courage or the clarity to follow it to its logical end. They lacked the courage to see that the individual, because he is responsible to nobody, must be deprived of all power, and that the State, the State representing all the people, must be the sole depositor of all the power, the sole maker of decisions, the sole judge of its own --

He pulled himself up. "I hadn't meant to get into all of this just now. But is it any surprise that the capitalist world was defeated? Is it any surprise that it kept losing supporters both from the outside and from the inside? Do you know what the American political leaders did at one time? They threw huge sums of money around the world to try to bribe the rest of the world not to go communist! They thought they could buy off faith by dollars!"

"And what happened?"

"What would you expect to happen? The other bourgeois countries found that the easiest way to get money out of the Disunited States was to hint that they might go communist if they didn't get it. Soon they began to believe themselves that their chief reason for not going communist was as a favor to the Disunited States, and that their chief reason for arming against us was not for their own preservation but again as a favor to the Disunited States! If bourgeois America wanted them to arm, they felt, it could jolly well pay for it! And they used most of the other American funds, anyway, to finance socialist programs -- in other words, to move in the direction of communism!"

He grinned, then turned suddenly serious again. "Should there be any surprise that while they could bribe only a few spies among us, we had swarms of voluntary spies among them -- people who gave us information gladly, of their own will; people whom we did not have to pay; people who 'betrayed their countries,' to use the phrase of condemnation that the capitalist nations tried to adopt -- people who betrayed their countries exultantly, from a sense of duty, because their countries were wrong, and because they were serving a higher cause, the cause of humanity!"

Peter was deeply impressed by the passion and conviction of this man.

"Well, I hope you'll forgive me," said Bolshekov, "if I keep getting carried away from my point."

"No, no," said Peter; "all this is precisely what I need to learn. But may I ask one question? Why did the bourgeois countries fight against communism at all?"

"They fought against communism because they were 'against' communism. That was the only point on which they could agree. But they didn't know what they were for. Everybody was for something different. Nobody had the courage to defend a capitalism that was true to the basic premises of capitalism. Each had his own little plan for a 'reformed' capitalism. They could stave off communism, they thought, only by 'correcting abuses'; but all their plans for correcting abuses were steps toward socialism and communism. They quarreled among themselves as to how far they wanted to go toward communism in order to 'defeat' communism, as to how far they should embrace communist ideas in order to destroy communist ideas. I know all this sounds incredible, but I assure you it is true."

"But didn't anybody have faith in capitalism?"

"Not in the sense in which everybody on our side had faith and has faith in communism. The strongest among our enemies were halfhearted. They merely apologized for capitalism. They would say that capitalism, with all its faults -- and then they would compete against each other in seeing who could admit the most faults -- that capitalism with all its faults was probably as good as reasonable men could expect -- and so forth and so on. And so we wiped them out."

Bolshekov made a quick movement with the flat of his hand to symbolize heads being cut off.

"But we will have to get on with our history. Having utterly defeated them, having exterminated not only their leaders but everybody who could be remotely suspected of believing in capitalism, we decided that the job would not be complete, and that we might at a later time face the same struggle all over again, unless we stamped out the whole rotten capitalist civilization, so that the very memory of it would disappear from the minds of men! "

"You mean that our ancestors stamped out everything? Didn't they try to separate the good from the bad?"

"The good? Separate? What could be good in a thoroughly rotten civilization? What could be good that was built on a lie? What could be good that was based on injustice, on the exploitation of class by class? What could be good in a bourgeois ideology? And as for separating -- When the plague of 261 broke out in Moscow we had to shoot everybody who had it to keep him from contaminating the rest of us. Could we separate the 'good' people who had it from the 'bad' people who had it? They had the plague! Whoever or whatever carried the microbes of the plague was a menace to all the rest of us! And so it was with whoever or whatever carried the microbes of capitalism!

"And so we began the work of stamping out every sign and memory of the rotten capitalist civilization. We leveled all the churches. You may not believe it, but there were people who dared to question that step. They called the churches 'things of beauty,' 'architectural monuments,' 'frozen music.' You have no idea of the nonsense they talked. Architectural monuments! Monuments to superstition! Monuments to lull and drug and enslave the people! As if anything could have beauty, except a poisonous and dangerous pseudo-beauty, that was built on a lie! Then of course we slashed and burned all the religious paintings, and shattered all the religious images and statuary. Wait till you read about the ridiculous fuss that was raised in the Italian Soviet, for example, about that!"

He laughed sardonically. "Well, then of course we burned all the other paintings, which were simply dripping with bourgeois ideology and capitalist apologetics. We did save a few paintings portraits of Karl Marx, of Lenin, of Stalin, and a few paintings by a Mexican called Orozco depicting the proletariat rising against their masters. But we didn't save much, fortunately.

"And then we got to the books! ... Our ancestors thought it was more fun not to burn them all at once. Cat-and-mouse tactics, you know. Assurances of moderation, so as not to raise opposition even within our own camp at the start. The leaders of our ancestors decided to begin merely on all the capitalist economic books. No one could object to that! So on one fine May Day we burned the whole of capitalist economics, the whole rotten system of direct apologetics .... I don't think we have yet begun to realize the progress the world made on that day! Naturally we had to burn most of the answers to capitalist apologetics, too, so that nobody would be able to reconstruct from them an idea of what capitalist economics was like.

"Well then, of course, we started on what they called their literature! And here too our ancestral leaders were very clever. About two weeks after the burning of capitalist economics, they announced that the whole of religious literature would have to be destroyed, but that this would end the program for the present. So on May 17-another great day-they burned every extant copy of a book called the Bible, perhaps the book that had done more than any other to hold up the spread of communism and dialectical materialism. Of course all other religious literature, including prayer books and mountains of sermons that probably no one read anyhow -- but our ancestors had to play safe -- was burned along with the Bibles.

"A few months later our ancestors announced that the new Wonworld regime was unfortunately not yet safe, and would not be so long as bourgeois philosophy and ethical theories and logic were allowed to exist. So these were consigned to the flames."

"Did that mean, Your Highness, all the then existing philosophy ? "

"Certainly -- all of it except Marxist philosophy, for whatever was not Marxist was of course either unnecessary or pernicious.

"Well, then our ancestors burned all the books on politics and sociology. These of course were the worst of all. They used the words 'liberty' and 'democracy' in the capitalist and bourgeois sense instead of in the communist and proletarian sense, and created endless confusion. By liberty they meant liberty to starve, liberty even to criticize the State -- can you imagine? And by democracy they meant secret elections, in which you couldn't even tell who or what a man had voted for. How could you ever detect disloyalty under such a system? By democracy, in fact, they even meant the power openly to organize a recognized opposition to the existing government! Well, thank Marx, our ancestors took care of that!

"The next big bonfire was that of history and biography. All these bonfires took place at intervals of a few months, and of course the next step was never announced until the Protectors got to it. The one thing to be said in favor of 'gradualism' is that it lulls and divides the opposition. You tell them always that the step you are taking completes your program, that it isn't a precedent for anything else; that they are foolish to talk of the 'principle' involved in a new step when every step is taken purely on its individual merits; and that they are downright hysterical to oppose what hasn't even yet been suggested.

"Well, bourgeois history, of course, was the worst of all. It would sometimes openly contradict dialectical materialism. It would even try to twist facts so as to lead people to think, for example, that every struggle had not been a class struggle. These historians not only pretended that the world had actually grown richer under capitalism; they talked as if the poor themselves, in America, for example, had constantly become better off whereas, in fact, they were dying off miserably like flies."

"But how," Peter began, "did the population grow to be -- ?"

Bolshekov rebuked him. "You'd better keep your questions until after I've finished .... Well, next our ancestors burned the essays and encyclopedias -- they only needed to declare a half holiday for that -- and then they made mighty bonfires of all the poetry and drama and fiction -- all of it, of course, riddled throughout with bourgeois ideology -- "

"Didn't they have any great poets or dramatists, like ourselves?"

"How could they have had, when these poets and dramatists either understood nothing, or were hired lickspittles trying to curry favor with the rich and powerful?"

"But didn't any of their fiction attack capitalism?"

"Oh, most of it did -- but incompetently. In any case, it had served its purpose. It had divided, confused, undermined and disintegrated the opposition to communism. But now that the opposition was totally destroyed, what further need was there for such literature? Moreover, though most of these novelists ridiculed and hammered away at some cornerstone, or one or two of the pillars supporting capitalism, they always seemed to want to preserve some other pillar, some bourgeois or capitalist value, like 'liberty,’ ‘freedom of speech,’ ‘freedom of conscience,’ or some other pernicious doctrine. They hadn't the slightest realization of how or why the capitalist values hung together.

"Then our ancestral leaders turned to music, and ordered all existing score sheets burned -- with, of course, the exception of the International, and a few revolutionary compositions -- "

"But what was wrong, Your Highness, with the existing music?"

"What was wrong with it? Ask me what was right about it! Of course there were not lacking people -- and one or two of them were on the Politburo itself -- who argued that bourgeois music was harmless. They thought that with the exception of an enormous number of bourgeois love songs, full of claptrap about sexual faithfulness, and songs about mother and home and liberty, and patriotic songs -- and all this trash of course nobody defended -- they thought that with these exceptions the rest might be left, on the ground that it didn't actually say anything. Fortunately they were overruled, on the solid ground that bourgeois music necessarily reflected and might perpetuate all sorts of sticky bourgeois sentiments and emotions and ways of feeling -- "

"But what harm," Peter broke in, "could a pure pattern of sound—"

"What harm? Look at a music scale! The very symbol of bourgeois inequality, with some notes higher than other notes -- "

"But don't we have inequality in our own social system? Don't we divide people into Protectors, Proletarians -- "

"That is not inequality; that is merely difference in function. Let's not bring up these matters until we get to them. In any case, there is no resemblance whatever between the bourgeois inequality and class divisions reflected in the musical scale -- they even had 'major' keys for the employers' songs and 'minor' keys for the workers' songs -- and the necessary differences of function in a communist society. Do you know that bourgeois music even had self-confessed dissonances? Proletarian music can contain only the purest harmony, to reflect the unadulterated and uninterrupted harmony of the communist society!"

Peter felt that on this point, at least, he ought to be the instructor and Bolshekov the pupil. He suspected that Bolshekov did not know the difference between a dominant seventh and a hole in the ground. He longed to tell him how necessary discords and their resolution were to harmony. Instead, he asked mildly: "Is Mozart a communist composer?"

"Mozart? Great Marx, no! He was the worst type of bourgeois! He composed all that rubbish on commission from archbishops and emperors and such, and even from the church! So you can imagine what kind of trash it must have been." Bolshekov suddenly looked at him shrewdly. "How do you know about Mozart? Do you play Mozart?"

Peter admitted that he had. Bolshekov threw up his hands in a gesture of resignation and despair.

"Well, this proves that my feeling about it has always been right. I've always contended that on this point of music our ancestral communist leaders weakened in their resolution, that they failed to be thorough, and we are suffering from that mistake to this day.

"Here is what happened. They ordered all the music of the Dark Ages burned; and it was burned. But there was one thing they didn't count on -- people's memories."

"Memories of the bonfires?"

"No! Memories of the music! The musicians remembered the music! They remembered nearly all of it! Do you know that there were orchestra conductors who remembered whole symphonies, even when these were written for scores of instruments? It was found that among them the living musicians carried in their memories the whole of bourgeois composers like Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, Haydn! And of course the pianists remembered all the piano music; and so on."

"I am not surprised to learn that," said Peter; "but what could have been done about it?"

"They could have wiped out the melodies by wiping out everyone who remembered the melodies! They could at least have forbidden anyone to play or sing or hum them, on penalty of death, and gradually the memory would have died out .... But on this one point our communist ancestors were lax and weak. They compromised. They allowed people to rewrite the old scores, and even the tunes of the old songs, provided the words were left out or proletarian words substituted. They provided merely that none of these things could ever be played except by chosen members of the Steel Frame in the hearing only of other members of the Steel Frame."

"Oh, that's why His Supremacy allowed me to learn Mozart! And that's why I couldn't get at the scores in the library without a special card and key!"

"His Supremacy can never do anything wrong." Bolshekov made the sign of the S on his breast, and then looked significantly into space.

"Well, to continue. The biggest split in the Politburo itself came on the question of science. Bourgeois biology was nonsense. Bourgeois astronomy was unnecessary, except for navigation. But bourgeois medicine had cured even communists .... And bourgeois physics and chemistry and mathematics had helped to direct artillery fire and were necessary for the industry and engineering that are necessary for wars... Moreover, all the important discoveries of so-called bourgeois science or mathematics had in any case been made by Russians -- "

"I've often wondered," said Peter, "who discovered the differential calculus."

"I've forgotten myself," said Bolshekov, "whether it was Tchaikovsky or Lenin .... In any case, there was lengthy debate about the whole matter, and our ancestors finally decided on a selective purge of the sciences. They burned all the old books, but not until they had copied what they wanted out of them and rewritten them from a Marxist point of view."

"Supposing somebody did not turn in all his books for the bonfires when they were demanded?"

"Our ancestors simply prescribed the death penalty for anyone in whose possession any of these books was found. If they were found in any house, every member of the family in that house -- and everybody in the house on either side of it -- was sentenced to death. This naturally made everyone alert to see that all the books were destroyed."

"People were encouraged to spy on each other and to betray each other?"

"How else could a really thorough job have been done?"

Peter was silent. His thoughts went back to the peasant family in the May Day parade. "But what happened," he resumed, "when people had memorized poetry as they had music -- or parts in plays -- or stories or novels or old sayings?"

"Ah," answered Bolshekov, "here we come to the most brilliant stroke of our communist ancestors -- the invention of Marxanto!"

"Didn't people always speak Marxanto?"*

[*All the conversations in this book are, of course, translations from the Marxanto. Wherever Marxanto terms are literally untranslatable, I have used what seemed to me to be the nearest English equivalent. -- The Translator.]

"Not until after the former capitalist world had been wholly conquered! Our ancestors saw precisely the problem you have just raised. They saw that people might remember these stories and verses and pass them down from generation to generation by word of mouth. And then they thought of a device that solved not one, but nearly all of their problems at a single stroke!"

Bolshekov paused dramatically.

"They invented a new language -- Marxanto, and forced everybody to learn it!

"Can't you see how many problems that solved?" he went on, smiling. "The language we think in determines the very way we think. The words we use come already loaded with the meanings that decide our conclusions. Now all the ancient languages -- all of them now dead and fortunately irrecoverable -- were loaded almost from the beginning of time with bourgeois and capitalistic connotations, implications, emotions, sentiments, attitudes. We had already seen how much could be done to change all these by describing everything in a new vocabulary. This was the great discovery and the great triumph of our Prophet and Redeemer, Karl Marx. When he had finally maneuvered his opponents into talking in his vocabulary they were already in the linguistic trap. For everyone who used the Marxist terms capitalism, finance capitalism, bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie, proletariat, the masses, the class struggle, class antagonism, capitalist imperialism, historical determinism, dialectic materialism, utopianism, capitalist exploitation -- whoever used these terms accepted along with them the concepts that must inevitably lead him to the Marxist conclusions. Why not, then, complete and nail down the intellectual triumph by eradicating every word embodying a bourgeois concept and substituting for it words embodying the Marxist concepts?

"That is what our revolutionary ancestors did. They called together an assembly of their greatest Marxist dialecticians, linguists, lexicographers, semanticists and propagandists, and ordered them to create an entirely new language. They made a new dictionary, consisting not only of new words, but of new, precise Marxist definitions of each of those words. They replaced the bourgeois grammar of the old languages with a new proletarian grammar for the new language!"

"But how did they get people to learn the new language and to forget their own?"

"Ah! They were forced to issue new bilingual dictionaries in each of the scores of existing national languages. The new equivalents were given with the new definitions. Each of these dictionaries was numbered and allowed to be held for only three years. Henceforth only Marxanto, was allowed to be taught in the schools. Children and adults both were given three years to learn and use the new language. Then they were forced to turn in all bilingual dictionaries, and all of these were burned. Meanwhile everything that was worth preserving was rewritten and translated into the new language. And thereafter no one could use anything but Marxanto on penalty of death!

"Now look at all that was accomplished at a single stroke! The old bourgeois languages, words, meanings and connotations were totally destroyed. People were prohibited, on penalty of death, from speaking any poetry or phrase that they remembered from the old languages -- and their grandchildren wouldn't have been able to understand them anyway. Wonworld was cemented together by a single international language! And this language itself was so constructed, and its words so defined, that nobody could henceforth arrive at any but Marxist conclusions!

"We constructed a new poetry, a new science, a new logic! It meant at last a clean slate, a fresh start, a new dawn in the history of man!"

An exalted light came into Bolshekov's eyes.

"Well, I have talked too long. You are so ignorant, there is so much to tell you, and the excitement of having for the first time a grown man to whom all this wonderful history can be communicated, has carried me far beyond the hour I had set aside. Here: I must give you a list of books."

He wrote down some names rapidly on a pad and handed a slip to Peter. "Here are the three best histories -- though if you begin with the three volumes of Ordanov you won't need the other two small volumes: they are merely popular condensations.

"Get these from a State bookstore today. Be here again at ten tomorrow."

"Have you time now, Your Highness, to answer one question?" Peter asked, getting up.

"What is it?"

"If all the old histories of the ancient world and the Dark Ages were destroyed, in order to wipe out the very memory of these so-called civilizations, how is it that you yourself know so much about them?"

"You don't seem to understand. What I have given you is the present official history of that dead world. It is the history that the Protectors of Wonworld have voted to teach. When they wiped out all the old books, they had to decide what history to put in its place. What I have told you is the agreed-upon history."

"But did things actually happen that way? Was it actually so?"

"I will explain all that when we get to neo-Marxian logic. The only question to be raised about a statement is not, Is it so? but What good will it do?"

"You mean you don't actually know whether the history you have just recited is true or not?"

"What do you mean by 'true'? Truth, as you will see by the Marxanto dictionary, is just an instrument; it is simply whatever belief works satisfactorily. Truth is whatever is good for Communism. But that opens up the whole subject of neo-Marxian logic, and we can't go into that today. Be here tomorrow at ten."

Chapter 8

STALENIN took up a pad of paper and signed his name on it. He shoved it toward Peter.

"Imitate that."

Peter did his best.

"Try again."

Peter tried.

"That's a little better."

Stalenin took a clean sheet and signed his name half a dozen times.

"Take this. Don't let anyone know you have it. But keep perfecting my signature."

"But what's the purpose of -- "

Stalenin pointed significantly to his heart, and then rather vaguely to his brain. "We may have less time than I thought."

He looked appraisingly at Peter's new but ill-fitting Deputy uniform.

"That's more becoming .... Here is the address of my personal tailor." He handed Peter a card. "He will measure you for Protectors' uniforms, but you are not to wear them until the time is right. And now" -- -his tone was unexpectedly soft -- "is there anything else you want?"

Peter got up his courage: "Would it be possible, father, for me to have a piano?"

"In this emergency you can't afford to waste your time drumming -- "

"But only for an hour a day, in the evening? Even your organized recreation platoons recognize -- "

"I'll think about it."

At the government book store Peter found that he needed special ration coupons to get the history volumes Bolshekoy had recommended. It would take at least a week to get these, he learned. It suddenly occurred to him that he might borrow the books at Edith's little branch library.

He had not dared to see her since the kiss and the slap. But his new Deputy uniform, it struck him, gave him an excuse to patch things up ....

Her glance was hostile.

"I don't know how to apologize for kissing you -- " he began.

"Oh, it isn't that. But when you knew you were being followed by the secret police, and you led them to our house -- "

"But I found I was being followed, not because I was under suspicion, but because they were thinking of promoting me. Notice?" He looked down proudly at his new Deputy uniform.

He was surprised himself to hear how plausible his explanation sounded. And, he thought, it's even close to the truth.

He not only got his history books, but before he left had persuaded her to let him call the following evening.

He spent the night in his hotel room assiduously practicing forgeries of his father's signature.

Chapter 9

BOLSHEKOV motioned Peter to a chair.

"There is something," he began, "that I perhaps failed to explain yesterday. You asked how I happened to know so much about the history of the Ancients and the Dark Ages when all the records had been destroyed. I told you that what I knew was the agreed-upon history of those times, the history we had decided to teach. But I should have made it clear that a few specialists among the Protectors are permitted to know more about the past than the rest of Wonworld. If you think about the matter a moment it will be easy to understand why this is so. The old fallacies, the old errors, the old vicious and dangerous doctrines held before and during the Dark Ages are liable to recur. They might recur through the discovery of some old book though that doesn't seem likely -- or by a sort of spontaneous combustion. In any case we must be prepared with the answers. So a small group of scholars among the Protectors are permitted access to some things that it would be too dangerous to allow everyone to have access to. That's how you—prematurely -- happen to know about Mozart's music, for example."

"You mean, Your Highness, that this is withheld from the masses?"

"You'd better not be caught playing it in their hearing! I might give you a better illustration from economics. The version of Karl Marx's Capital that is available in the State bookstores is, of course, an abridged and expurgated volume. It is not a mere translation into the Marxanto of Marx's original book."

"Why not?"

"Because if our communist ancestors had retained all the passages in which Marx denounced capitalism it might have been possible for someone to reconstruct from them what capitalism was actually like, and to try to restore it. It would be obviously foolish to allow any such idea to get into anyone's head. The people, left to themselves, are capable of any sort of perverse idea."

"But might not the same idea occur to a Protector?"

"There we have powerful safeguards. In the first place, the Protectors comprise less than one in a hundred out of the whole population. You will gradually come to realize how enormous are the power and prestige which that confers. No Protector risks his position lightly. In the second place, our communist ancestors were not so foolish as to permit even the Protectors complete access to Marx's Capital and the other sacred writings in the original. Even the special editions for the Protectors have been edited in translation -- abridged and expurgated -- but not as much as the editions for the masses. We must give the scholars of the Protectorate just enough knowledge to be ready with answers should any old errors reappear."

"But isn't all this, Your Highness, a class system?"

"Nothing of the kind! Nobody gets any higher income than anybody else! Nobody exploits anybody else! Never confuse a difference in function with a difference in class."

"What about all these differences in uniforms?"

"They simply mark differences in function. I assumed you had been told about that. The Protectors include less than 1 per cent of the population, and the Deputies only about 10 per cent. As their names imply, they are merely the instruments of the Ruling Proletariat -- their spokesmen, their representatives. They act only in the name of the Proletariat, which constitutes three-fourths of the whole population."

"If the Proletariat constitutes 75 per cent of the population, the Deputies 10 per cent and the Protectors 1 per cent," said Peter, "that still leaves 14 per cent unaccounted for."

Bolshekov gave him a sharp glance. "You are an excellent mathematician," he said drily. "But the 14 per cent may be disregarded. They're lucky to be alive. They are in our Correction Camps. We shall visit one some time .... Today I am taking you to our new workers' dormitories. They are my own project."

A limousine guarded by sentries was waiting for them, with a chauffeur and an armed guard in the front seat. They drove to the outskirts of the city and pulled up before a row of drab new one-story wooden structures with tar-paper roofs and siding.

An obsequious commissar came out to welcome them.

"Male quarters first," ordered Bolshekov.

The first building they entered consisted of a long narrow room lined with regularly spaced single iron beds on each side, as in a hospital or an army barracks. The beds were made up haphazardly, and the room was deserted except for a few attendants.

The three-man inspection party marched through. The floor was unswept, the windows dirty.

They went through still another barracks of the same sort, then through a smaller building with washstands, toilets and urinals, then through a mess hall with long tables in the center and backless benches on each side. A kitchen was at one end. The kitchen was filled with cooks, helpers, and the odor of garbage, sweat and boiling cabbage soup.

"The lunch period will begin in an hour," explained the commissar.

"Female quarters," ordered Bolshekov.

The only difference Peter noticed between the men's and women's sleeping quarters was a crisscross of overhead wires, like those he had seen in the room occupied by Edith and her father, supporting pulled-back curtains.

A woman commissar joined the party to conduct them through.

"All these are just temporary quarters, I presume?" said Peter.

"Everything on earth -- except communism -- is temporary," was Bolshekov's tart reply. "I think these buildings excellent for their purpose. Of course we would like to have them bigger and better -- made of steel and glass. But we simply can't get the labor and materials for all the tasks to be done. I will give you the statistics showing the enormous number of square feet of living space we have added in the last two years!"

Perhaps if you talked of it simply in terms of square feet, thought Peter, it might sound good.

"This is only for single men and women, I suppose," he asked. "When a man and a woman register permanently with each other, I assume they are assigned to quarters by themselves, where they can raise their children?"

Bolshekov gave him a glance of mingled pity and contempt. "This so-called family life you speak of is merely a relic of an ancient capitalistic institution called marriage. Such relics, unfortunately, still exist, because our communist ancestors lacked the courage to follow their new vision to its logical end. I'm making it my business to rectify this. Marx and Engels unequivocally demanded the abolition of the bourgeois family. They pointed out that it was based on capital, on private gain. They denounced the disgusting bourgeois claptrap about the family and 'the hallowed correlation of parent and child.' I have full authority by the Politburo to stamp out the last vestige of the bourgeois family -- at least among the Proletarians, in all cities of 50,000 population and over. When I get through, nobody -- at least among the Proletarians -- is going to be anybody's property! Nobody is going to belong to anybody!"

"But, Your High-"

"In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels pointed out that 'bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common.' All that the communists at most could be accused of wanting to do, they said, was 'to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalized communization of women."'

"The collective use of women now means the liberation of women," explained the woman commissar.

"Exactly," said Bolshekov. "Commissar, will you tell Comrade Uldanov how the system works?"

"Proletarian men and women," she said to Peter, as if talking to a child, "are permitted to have sexual relations on Marxday and Stalinsday nights. All that is necessary is for a male and female to come together to the license bureau, not less than twenty-four hours in advance, and take out a license, good for the date stamped. The female is then permitted to close the curtains around her bed for an hour -- "

"Still a concession to the old bourgeois fetish of privacy," admitted Bolshekov, "but we move by stages."

"No single couple," continued the woman commissar, "may receive licenses for more than a single month without change of partners. Prolonged registration together would lead to a tendency on the part of each partner to believe that he or she belonged to the other. This would lead to jealousy."

"And even keep alive concepts of private property," added Bolshekov.

"What about children resulting from -- " Peter asked.

"These are taken to the public nurseries," said the woman commissar, "and brought up and educated in public institutions."

"You'll see all this some other day," Bolshekov promised him.

"The children are assigned license numbers," continued the woman commissar, "that have no relation to the license numbers of their parents. No mother is allowed to know the number of her child. That again might breed ideas of belonging, of private property."

"In short," said Bolshekov, "we can't afford to tolerate any 'family' loyalties in danger of being put ahead of loyalty to the communist state."

"Your Highness," said the woman commissar, "'may I ask a question?"

Bolshekov nodded curtly.

"One of our histories -- Valik's," she continued, " -- says that the idea of separating children immediately from their parents actually originated with a bourgeois named Plato, and that all that Marx and Engels asked for at first was free love and free cohabitation; and there have been some disputes among us regarding the present official party line."

"That history is being withdrawn," said Bolshekov. "There was nobody named Plato. And there is nobody named Valik." He looked at her icily.

"That's precisely what I've been saying, Your Highness," said the woman commissar.

They inspected another female dormitory. In this a girl of about eighteen was just getting up from one of the beds. The woman commissar smilingly introduced her as SL-649, a Stakhanovite worker who had broken a production record one day last week. As a special reward she had been allowed this morning to stay in bed till noon.

As they talked with her the girl proceeded to change her clothes. She took off her pajama top. Peter's heart beat faster. No one else was embarrassed. The girl unbuttoned her pajama trousers and let them slip to the floor. The blood rushed to Peter's face.

Bolshekov gave her a friendly pinch on the buttocks. She smiled proudly, and leisurely put on her gray blouse and slacks.

When they were outside, the woman commissar was dismissed. Bolshekov took the man commissar aside.

"The floors and windows in the men's dormitories were filthy. Who's fault?"

"I can't say, Your Highness, I—"

"Somebody must be sent to a Correction Camp for that within the next twenty-four hours. We must have an example!"

"Yes, Your Highness."

Chapter 10

WHEREVER he accompanied Bolshekov, Peter detected the same terror in the eyes of the officials and workers, and found the same fawning servility.

For everything that went wrong, Bolshekov demanded an immediate scapegoat. He rarely allowed a day to pass without accusing someone of slackness, sabotage or treason. A few weeks afterwards Peter was always sure to read in the New Truth the same self-abasing "confession." It was always couched in the same stilted, stereotyped language.

The accused would then disappear.

Bolshekov took Peter through nurseries and schools. The children were taught to repeat endlessly that Stalenin was omniscient, that their parents had no claim on them, that their only loyalty was to the State, that private property was theft, that hell meant capitalism and heaven socialism.

"Do they understand what all these phrases mean?" asked Peter.

"They will when they grow up," answered Bolshekov, "and then they will be incapable of believing anything else."

At the visits to the government publishing bureau Peter learned how books were written and selected. The bureau was divided into many divisions: political propaganda, economics, engineering, the sciences, art, history, drama, fiction, and so forth. Usually the publishers decided themselves what kind of book was needed, what the correct party line and conclusions should be, and who should be ordered to write it. The principal qualification demanded of a writer was fervor for the existing regime. If he also had the necessary technical knowledge, the government publishers considered themselves fortunate.

Peter thumbed through many volumes. They were all dedicated to Stalenin -- who it appeared, depending on the particular subject matter of the book, was the greatest political genius, economist, engineer, mathematician, chemist, architect, chess player, of them all.

Each writer in every field insisted that his book was written from a completely orthodox Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist-Staleninist point of view. He often contended that his predecessor had been a deviationist. Peter learned that in these cases the predecessor had already been shot for coming to the wrong conclusions.

He tried the fiction, but could not read it. It was always designed to point some moral, such as the precedence of love for the State over that of mere sexual attraction or the accident of family relationship, the need of reporting to the secret police the slightest transgression on the part of one's closest friend or sexual companion, or the duty of long hours of work.

"Reports are coming in, Peter, of another serious famine in Kansas," said Stalenin. "I'm sending Bolshekov right out there."

In the first day of Bolshekov's absence, Peter was promoted to membership in the Protectors.

"I'm turning your education meanwhile over to Adams," Stalenin said. "He is to teach you everything that an Inner Circle Protector should know."

Peter had felt drawn to Adams even from his first meeting. He had not known exactly why. Adams was far from handsome or imposing. But a probable reason suddenly occurred to him. Adams' thin, wizened face, so full of shrewdness and intelligence, strikingly resembled a small bust of Voltaire that had stood, as far back as Peter could remember, in the library of his home in Bermuda. It was this resemblance, he now saw, that had made Adams seem vaguely familiar to him. Peter was constantly reminded afresh of the resemblance by Adams' strongly anachronistic habit of taking snuff.

Adams was remarkably frank. No doubt this was partly because Peter was now to be treated as part of the "inner circle"; but it seemed to spring, also, from a certain open cynicism in Adams' nature.

"What are some of the things that have been puzzling you?" Adams asked.

Peter hardly knew where to begin.

"One thing I would like to know is just how much progress Wonworld has made since the beginning."

"Since the overthrow of capitalism?"

"Yes."

"There are two answers. One is the answer for the Proletarians -- the public answer. The other is the answer for the Central Committee of the Party -- what we sometimes call the entre-nous answer. These two answers exist for most questions in Wonworld."

"But only the second answer, the entre-nous answer, is the truth?"

"We do not ask in Wonworld whether a statement is 'true' or not. We only ask: What good will it do? And what good or harm a statement does depends on whom you are talking to. It is obviously important, for example, that the Proletarians should believe that Wonworld has made tremendous progress; but it is also important that the Central Committee should know exactly how much progress it has made."

It is important, thought Peter to himself, that at least the Central Committee should really know the truth. He said aloud: "I should like to know both answers."

"The only thing it does any good to tell the Proletarians, of course," said Adams, "is that our technological progress has been so great since capitalism that any comparison would be absurd. 'How could there have been any progress under capitalism?' we ask them. 'Nobody then sought anything but profit; and everybody maximized profits by selling the public shoddier and shoddier goods."'

"Is that true?" asked Peter. "I'm sorry; I mean, what is the entre-nous answer?"

"The records kept by the Central Committee for its own guidance, as far as I can interpret them," said Adams, "indicate that the present state of technological progress in Wonworld is the same as it was from about 100 to 120 A.M."

"Under the old calendar," Peter figured quickly, "that would have been in what the bourgeoisie called the years from 1918 to 1938? "

"Yes. In some things -- in airplanes, say, and in most direct war weapons, we are probably a little ahead of that period, and in other things a little behind."

"But how could that have happened? After all, the bourgeois world was not finally annihilated until -- "

"You are about to say," Adams cut in, "that the bourgeois world continued for several decades even beyond 1938?"

"Yes. "

"And may have made technological progress in that period?"

"Yes. And if it did—"

"And if it did -- Why did the world's knowledge and technological state actually go backward after that? Well," continued Adams, "what with civil wars, physical destruction, the necessary burning of books saturated with capitalistic thinking, the suppression of some kinds of knowledge in order to prevent dangerous insurrections, and so on, a good deal of theoretical knowledge was lost. Though people were able to make some things simply by copying the old ones, we lost some secrets. It is probably just as well that we did, for some of these were terribly destructive. '

"But hasn't there been any progress in more than a century of Wonworld?"

"Entre-nous, practically none."

"Why not?"

"That, Comrade Uldanov, is a question I have never been able to answer."

One of Peter's first visits with Adams was to the offices of the New Truth. There were two newspapers published in Moscow -- the New Truth, in the morning, and the Evening Revelation in the afternoon. The Revelation contained almost nothing but cartoons and comic strips. Its existence was necessary, Adams explained, to interest the Proletarians, who almost never bought the New Truth.

Though nominally only the morning newspaper of Moscow, the New Truth was in fact the master newspaper of Wonworld. While other cities had a morning and an evening newspaper of their own, each with its own title, every newspaper in Wonworld carried the same editorials every day, all telegraphed out from the offices of the New Truth. This applied also to about two-thirds of the news items. The other news items referred to local events. Peter found even here, however, by making comparisons of his own in the files, that the identical story would be repeated in, say, the Moscow New Truth, the Berlin Tageblatt, the London Times, the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune under local date lines. (Most of these names and newspapers had originally been bourgeois in origin; the Wonworld government had simply expropriated and continued them as communist publications.) The names and addresses of the persons involved would be changed, as well as the locale, but the story otherwise would be exactly the same.

Peter asked about this, and Adams referred the answer to Orlov. Orlov was a round-faced, bland little man. In addition to being editor of the New Truth, he was a member of the Politburo and head of the entire Wonworld Press Department.

"Naturally," said Orlov, "readers are most interested in what is happening to people in their own localities."

"But precisely the same thing," protested Peter, "couldn't have happened on the same day to different people with different names in different places."

Orlov and Adams laughed.

"Are these stories deliberately invented?" asked Peter.

"If you stop to think, Comrade Uldanov," said Orlov, "you will see that, for propaganda purposes, invented stories have every advantage over real ones. There is no objection to basing a story on a real incident, but even in that case it will almost always be found to require processing. It will have to be changed from the real event to make it more dramatic, or to point a clearer moral. Suppose nothing real happens on a given day, for example, to point a good communist moral? What would you do then, comrade, if you were editor?"

"But what about these stories of workers whose output is five or ten times as great as that of the average worker?" asked Peter. "These are true, aren't they? You show their pictures, and I have even heard some of them make speeches about their work, and urge their fellow workers on."

Orlov and Adams laughed again.

"Stop and think a minute, comrade," said Orlov. "Do you really think it would be possible for a bricklayer, say, to lay ten times as many bricks in a day as the average bricklayer?"

"But why -- ?" Peter began.

"To point out that some worker laid 35 per cent more bricks than the average would be interesting," Orlov went on, "but hardly inspiring. Our idea is to make the workers thoroughly ashamed of their present production rate. This is precisely what our system of creating special prodigies does. Stakhanovite heroes, worker giants, we call them. And we also accomplish another purpose. Workers are not likely to think they have a right to express any dissatisfaction with their lot when you make them feel that they are turning out only 10 or 20 per cent of their potential output."

"But what about B-42? You made a motion picture of him laying bricks. I saw that. It was amazing."

"B-42 is a professional motion picture actor," Orlov said. "He never laid a brick in his life."

"An actor?"

"Of course," said Orlov. "You don't suppose that we could get a bricklayer to make as eloquent a production speech as that."

"But he seemed to know what he was talking about -- "

"The whole dialogue was written by professional writers."

"But I actually saw him laying bricks."

"Are you sure? When the bricks were actually being laid all you saw was a picture of a man up to the chest. Those pictures were taken of a professional bricklayer dressed up exactly the same. They alternated with pictures of the actor from the chest up. As his voice was going on all the time you thought it must be he laying the bricks."

"But the bricks were certainly being laid fast."

"Of course they were. Do you know how long you actually saw bricks being laid in that picture? In three separated takes of less than one minute each. No bricklayer on earth could keep up that speed for more than a few minutes. You don't really think that he could keep it up for the full ten-hour day?"

"The final thing you ought to tell him," Adams added, "is that the bricklaying camera shots were taken in fast motion."

"That picture has had a tremendous effect," said Orlov solemnly. "Tremendous!"

He explained in detail to Peter how the editorials and news items in the New Truth were printed simultaneously in hundreds of cities and towns throughout Wonworld.

"It is a wonderful and inspiring thing," he said, "when one thinks that everybody in the world is simultaneously reading the same editorial, imbibing the same views, reaching precisely the same conclusions. What harmony!"

"But why is there, in effect," Peter asked, "only one newspaper in Wonworld?"

"If there were any other newspaper," explained Orlov patiently, "and it agreed with the New Truth, it would be unnecessary and superfluous, while if it disagreed, it would be pernicious. Under capitalism, as I understand, there were many competing newspapers. What was the result? Wherever they said substantially the same thing, they were hiring many reporters or editors where they only needed one. That illustrates the enormous wastefulness of competition. Socialism has achieved enormous overhead newspaper economies under unification and mass production."

"But suppose," said Peter, "that the old capitalist newspapers reported different things from each other, or expressed different views of them?"

"When they did," Orlov replied, "the results were even worse. The public became confused and ended by believing none of them."

Peter was troubled by this logic but could not put his finger on the flaw.

"I think we should impress upon Comrade Uldanov," said Adams, "the vital co-ordinating function of the New Truth."

"Yes," said Orlov, "the New Truth is the mouthpiece of Wonworld. It is here that the Party members, the Protectors and the people everywhere learn each day what to do and what to think. Of course the major policies are laid down by the Politburo as a whole; I merely carry them out. It is for the Politburo to decide, for example, whether we shall say that the production record is very bad, in order to exhort and sting everyone to greater output; or whether we shall say that it is very good, in order to show how well the regime is doing and to emphasize the blessings of living under it."

"These decisions are sometimes very difficult," Adams put in. "We often find that a zigzag course is best. For example, if goods are shoddy and fall apart, or if too many size nine shoes are made and not enough size eight, or if people cannot get enough to eat, there may be grumbling and complaints -- or silent dissatisfaction. We must make sure that this unrest does not turn against the regime itself."

"Therefore," said Orlov, "we must lead the complaints. We must ourselves pick scapegoats to denounce and punish."

"This is known," added Adams, "as communist self-criticism."

"It is in the columns of the New Truth," Orlov resumed, "that everyone learns what to think of every new book or play."

"One thing I do not understand, Your Highness," said Peter. "The government publishes all the books, and would not publish any book that it did not approve. And it puts on all the plays. Yet I sometimes see a very unfavorable review of a book or a play."

"That might happen for all sorts of reasons," Orlov explained. "Most high officials do not see a play, for example, until after it has been put on. They may then find it unamusing, or even deviationist. And if the public does not go to see it, we must decide whether we shall denounce the play or denounce the public. And with books, again, the party line may have changed between the time the book was ordered and the day of publication. Or a reviewer -- provided he outranks the author or the publisher's reader who passed on the book -- may detect some deviation that escaped the publisher's eye. All of which," Orlov concluded, smiling, "explains why we have to change the head of our publishing house so often."

"Publishing is the most hazardous occupation in Wonworld," Adams explained.

"Another important function of the New Truth," continued Orlov, "is to decide who are the heroes and who are the villains. There must be heroes to inspire the people to greater achievement, greater conformity to the party line, and greater relentlessness in tracking down deviationists; and there must be villains as scapegoats and as examples to be shunned. We on the newspaper decide who they are."

"But when you decide, for example," asked Peter, "whether to say that the production of shoes, say, is very good or very bad, or who is responsible for it, why don't you just find out the real facts and say whatever happens to be the truth?"

Orlov looked bewildered.

Adams came to the rescue. "Comrade Uldanov," he explained, "has still not yet learned to make the neo-Marxian logic an integral part of his thinking. As I have already pointed out to you" -- he turned to Peter -- -"the truth is whatever belief works successfully; it is whatever statement has the best results. The truth is whatever is good for communism."

Chapter 11

PETER moved quickly into the Inner Circle. While Bolshekov was still away, he was made a member of the Party. Only about one in every ten Protectors, he learned, was so honored.

"I must act quickly," was the only explanation Stalenin gave him.

A week later he became one of the 140 members of the Central Committee of the Party. His promotion was the fastest in the annals of Wonworld. Articles about him appeared in the New Truth and were reprinted everywhere. He was credited with all sorts of prodigies he had never performed. Nowhere did he find it once mentioned that he was Stalenin's son.

With Adams he inspected innumerable government bureaus. His principal impression was of mountains of paper work. "Every pin produced in Wonworld is recorded," he was proudly told. It certainly was. At least in triplicate, and sometimes through endless carbon copies. Peter wondered whether the time and expense of recording the pins weren't greater than that of making them.

At the headquarters of the Bureau of State Security -- the secret police -- Peter walked past miles of steel cabinets. A complete dossier, he found, was kept about every person in Wonworld. There was a vast amount of cross-filing. In addition to every person's serial number, name if any, annual photograph, finger prints, biography, family connections if any, occupation, friends and acquaintances, there was also a notation of what he could be accused of in an emergency.

"Just to keep everybody in line," explained Kilashov. Kilashov was head of the secret police and a member of the Politburo. "This emergency accusation," he said, "isn't necessarily the one used when an accusation has to be made. But it's often a great time saver."

"What evidence have you," Peter asked, "that these accusations are true?"

Kilashov smiled grimly. "There is no better evidence than a man's own confession, and we know how to get that."

Adams took Peter on an inspection tour of shops and stores. There were not many. People often had to come long distances to get to them. "This means a great economy in distribution costs," he was told. He invariably found fewer and poorer goods for sale in the shops themselves than in the shop windows. The latter were mainly samples, he learned, not yet turned out in quantity -- things scheduled for the next Five-Year Plan.

No item could be bought, moreover, except with a specific ration coupon for that particular kind of item. There were no proletarian ration tickets for specialties. There were merely bread ration tickets for bread, chicken ration tickets for chicken, shoe ration tickets for shoes ....

"Suppose a man breaks a shoelace?" Peter asked.

"Each pair of shoes," Adams explained, "is sold with an extra pair of laces."

"And if he breaks even this second pair -- ?"

"He can get a third pair of laces by applying for a special coupon and swearing out an affidavit that the breakage was an accident. His application for this special coupon, however, is recorded against him on his passport, his labor book, and in the secret police dossiers."

"Doesn't that procedure rather discourage applications for special shoelace coupons?"

"It certainly does. And it discourages the breaking of shoelaces, dishes, or anything else."

With his eyes sharpened by experience and by Adams' dry comments, Peter became increasingly appalled by the carelessness, waste and chaos in production. The output of one item never seemed to match that of any other. There would be too many suits of one size and too little of another. Whole housing projects would be held up because of a shortage of tar paper. But in the Moscow district there were far more window frames than could be used in the planned new housing because the window-frame makers had proudly exceeded their quota.

"Bolshekov must have read of your promotion in the newspapers, Peter," said Stalenin. "In his last report from Kansas he adds casually that it would contribute to your education to go out there and see conditions at first hand. Of course all he really wants is to have you under his eye. But you should go."

"What does he say about Kansas?"

"A million peasants have already died there this year from starvation and typhoid. At least another million will die before the year end."

"What does he say caused the food shortage?"

"The drought. The worst in history."

"Can't food be brought in from other sections?"

"Into Kansas? Which is supposed to feed other sections?"

"But -- "

"We simply haven't the transport," said Stalenin. "Practically all the bread being consumed in Moscow now is from wheat from the Argentine. Of course Russia must get priority in everything; and there just isn't any more wheat to be had from the Argentine -- But you can get all that from Bolshekov."

"When do you want me to start?"

"Tomorrow. Bolshekov is at Wichita. You are to meet him there. Sergci is making all the arrangements for your trip."

Great Bend, Kansas. Peter was at breakfast in his private car. He gazed out the train window. The station platform was crowded with begging peasants. They stared at him, and at the food still on his table, with hollow eyes. Women held up infants for him to see-deformed little monsters with big heads, horribly swollen bellies, and skeleton limbs dangling from them.

He got up and went to the train kitchen. "Something must be done for these people!"

"We have only enough for ourselves, Comrade Uldanov," said the chief cook. "And I am under absolute orders not to give -- "

"Then at least let the rest of my own breakfast be given to them!"

"We are under absolute orders from Moscow not to permit that either, Comrade Uldanov. Whatever you leave untouched is eaten by members of the train crew."

Beaten, Peter returned to his seat. He was ashamed to look out again until the train started to move. At the edge of the platform men and women were lying prone, staring up out of expressionless eyes. A mass funeral procession went by.

The whole trip had been a nightmare. He had taken off from Moscow on a large bomber. He could not now remember the number of dreary stops for refueling and repairs-in Siberia, Alaska, Canada, CVA. They had had to land first at a forced labor camp in Siberia, where Peter had seen hundreds of scarcely human creatures, mostly women, filthy and in rags, working in complete silence, many of them up to their knees in muddy water. Armed guards watched their every movement.

The plane had come down twice in Alaska, in clearings in the wilderness.

Because of Peter's curiosity, they had flown relatively low when they got to the remote district of CVA. A guide had pointed out to him, every now and then, a herd of elk or bison roaming the prairie states; but there were few signs of human habitation.

The original plan had been to fly direct to Wichita, but the plane had had to make a forced landing at a place that had once been the site of the proud capitalist city of Denver. For a whole day Peter, accompanied by a member of the plane's crew, had wandered among the crumbling and deserted ruins. Peter tried to imagine what Denver must have been like in the days of its glory, when the barbarian capitalist chiefs held court. The only sign of life he found now was a lizard.

It had finally been discovered that the plane would have to wait for new parts from Moscow, and Peter had been forced to finish the journey to Wichita on this single-track railroad.

They passed one more station -- Hutchinson -- without stopping. He was grateful for that.

At Wichita he was conducted to Bolshekov's waiting automobile. Bolshekov stood just outside, looking taller, gaunter, more green-complexioned than ever. He looked Peter up and down. "Congratulations on your amazing promotion!" His tone was bitingly sarcastic.

A crowd of starving peasants and workers stonily watched them drive off.

About fifteen minutes later, in the open country, the chauffeur had to stop to change a tire. Everyone got out. Peter noticed thick weeds along the roads and vacant fields full of wild sunflowers. All the seeds had been picked out of the blossoms.

They started off again.

A light rain began to fall. Peter felt his first wave of hope, almost of elation. "Rain!" he shouted.

Bolshekov stared at him as if he had said something stupid.

"But doesn't this break the drought?" Peter asked. "Won't this mean relief?"

"It's nothing."

"But I thought your whole trouble was caused by the greatest drought on record?"

"True."

"But what has the comparison actually been? How much rainfall did Kansas have in the last six months or so? How does that compare with the second worse year?"

"Am I being cross-examined?" asked Bolshekov coldly.

Peter dropped the subject. What was really wrong? Was this the greatest drought on record, or wasn't it? Or -- it occurred to him suddenly -- was it a drought at all? Was it merely government propaganda -- the "official" explanation of the famine?

They arrived at a collectivized farm, the first Peter had seen. Broken-down tractors were rusting in the rain. Not a single tractor was in working order.

Bolshekov sent for the director. "The last mechanic on our state farm who knew how to fix tractors died of starvation last month Your Highness," explained the director. "We filed an application through the regular channels for a replacement, but so far not a word from Moscow. We have also filed applications for the replacement of broken tractor parts."

"How long ago?"

"Two months."

"And nothing has happened?"

"Yes Your Highness. Yesterday we received a reply saying that our application had been made on form S-27-Q, which has been obsolete for three months, and that we must obtain new forms from the Central Printing Office."

"And have you acted?"

"We have been searching, Your Highness, for the proper form on which to apply for forms to the Central Printing Office. The central office doesn't seem to have furnished -- "

"Arrest that man," ordered Bolshekov.

"You see," Bolshekov said to Peter as they drove off, "how hopeless the whole problem is. The same story everywhere. The collectivized farm directors blame the tractor parts makers for delays in deliveries. The parts makers blame their suppliers in turn, or tell us that the state farms are careless in handling the machinery .... "

After inspecting three more collectivized farms, with much the same results, Bolshekov called it a day. They drove back to the hotel Broadview in Wichita.

"Dinner will be brought up to your room at six," Bolshekov told Peter. "Come to my suite at eight."

Peter decided to go for a walk, but the moment he stepped out of his hotel he was besieged by starving beggars. Men and women, more dead than alive, were lying on the sidewalks. He had nothing to offer but nontransferable ration coupons. He bought the local newspaper, Humanity, and immediately returned to his hotel room to read about the famine.

On the front page was a prominent story about a young coal miner who during his six-hour shift had cut one hundred and two tons of coal instead of the usual seven tons. The story sounded vaguely familiar, even to the figures, but the name and place were new to him. There was also a picture of two well-fed, laughing young peasant girls carrying a banner. The leading editorial denied that there was any distinction between Marxism and Leninism.

He went carefully through the whole paper.

There was not a word about the existence of a famine.

In the evening, Bolshekov explained to Peter the economic system under which the state farms operated.

"Just before I was put in charge, the system was for the State to take everything that each collective farm produced over and above what was necessary for the sustenance of the workers on the collectives. That system broke down. The collectives would raise only enough for their own sustenance, and leave little or nothing for the State. So I reversed the rule. My system was to set up first a minimum quota of grain, vegetables or livestock for each collective to turn over to the government. Only when that was filled was the collective allowed to retain the quota for its own sustenance."

"But suppose," Peter asked, "that the quota you took away from a collective left its workers without enough to live on?"

"They starved, of course. And though they probably deserved to, we were later forced to change the formula again, to our present formula .... Our government investigators now figure first what ought to be the normal production of grain, livestock, and so forth, of each State farm. This assumed 'normal' yield isn't the maximum possible, but it is better than the expected average, for it assumes good weather, good growing conditions, good management and hard work. Then we deduct from this total 'normal' yield the amount needed for the sustenance of the workers and managers of the collective itself. This is called the Sustenance Quota, and the balance is called the Government Quota."

"Suppose, Your Highness, that the total yield of a collective farm in a year is only 75 per cent of its calculated 'normal' yield?"

"Then the government only gets 75 per cent of its normal quota, and the collective gets only 75 per cent of its Sustenance Quota. Nothing could be fairer than that, could it?"

"Can the workers on a collective live on only 75 per cent of their Sustenance Quota?"

"Barely. But that is why they will try to make sure of reaching their full quota the following year."

"How do you know, Your Highness, that the quotas have been fairly assigned to each collective?"

"A government investigator who assigns too small a quota is simply liquidated."

"And if he assigns too large a quota -- too big a quota for the collective to be fairly expected to reach?"

"Oh, that is what the collectives are always contending! That's their stock excuse for every failure."

Peter thought it wise not to press this particular question further. "But suppose," he continued, "that a collective farm exceeds its set normal production quota?"

"The surplus above the Sustenance Quota all goes to the government, of course."

"Why, Your Highness, doesn't the government apply the same rule in reverse? That is, if the collective produces 110 per cent of its total quota, why not increase the State's share only 10 per cent and allow the collective's own share to increase 10 per cent?"

"But what would the collectives do, in a socialist society, with a surplus above their own needs? Withhold it? Waste it? Wonworld needs every bushel of grain it can get."

"But if you allowed the collectives to keep the surplus above the quota to be set aside for the State, or even a proportional percentage of the surplus," said Peter, thinking out loud, "wouldn't that give them an incentive to produce more?"

"Merely for themselves? In an equalitarian society?" asked Bolshekov. "And just what do you mean by incentive? That sounds to me like the language of capitalism. Are you talking of private profit?"

Peter confusedly apologized for the suggestion.

Chapter 12

PETER kept his own notes on the Kansas trip. On the day of their return Bolshekov reported his findings to a special meeting of the Politburo. That evening Peter was called in to give an independent account to his father.

"There are a lot of things in your report," said Stalenin, "that Bolshekov did not tell us. I like your thoroughness. Perhaps you weren't completely miseducated after all."

He started to wander off into reminiscences, and talked of the weekly reports he used to receive about Peter from Bermuda. For the first time Peter saw clearly what until now he had sensed only vaguely. At each meeting his father was a little less brutal, a little more human, a little less sure of himself. This was a symptom, Peter now concluded, of the old man's physical deterioration.

Stalenin suddenly broke off his reverie. "How are you coming on with my handwriting?" he asked.

Peter wrote several Stalenin signatures.

"They are still not perfect," said his father, "but they'll do as a start. Here!" He pushed several legal decrees at Peter: "Sign these with my signature ....

"We'll begin now," Stalenin continued as Peter was signing, "to alternate the imitation with the real thing. After a while I'll have you sign my name to all decrees. Then if anything happens to me your forgery will already have established its authenticity." He grinned.

He got up and closed and locked the door which, like all the doors in his office, consisted really of two doors with an air space between, to prevent eavesdropping. Then he led Peter over to the safe, turned the combination, and opened the heavy steel door. He took a key from his breast pocket, opened a little steel drawer in the upper left-hand corner of the safe, and carefully drew out two phonograph records. He carried one over to a phonograph by the wall, and turned it on.

It was Stalenin's voice.

"Comrades and citizens of Wonworld," it began. "I told you on my last public appearance on May Day that the mounting pressure of work upon me would prevent me from making any further public appearances. This pressure has now grown to a point where I am forced to deputize more work than ever. I have therefore asked my son, Peter Uldanov, to sit as my deputy in meetings of the Politburo and on other occasions, and to make public announcements in my name of whatever new policies or decrees I find necessary. I shall, of course, be more active than ever as your leader."

The record went on for about fifteen minutes. It ended in a rousing appeal for more work, more loyalty, more austerity, and more sacrifices.

"I have marked this Record X," Stalenin said. "It is to be broadcast immediately on the entire Wonworld network ... if I should get a stroke that incapacitates, me. Here is the announcement to precede it." He handed Peter a script. It began by declaring that His Supremacy, Comrade Stalenin, No. 1 Citizen and Leader and Dictator of Wonworld, had a most important announcement to make ....

"And here," said Stalenin, more solemnly, "is Record Z. It is to be broadcast immediately ... in the event of my death. You would have to act quickly, before Bolshekov got the news."

He put it on. It announced that his doctors had warned Stalenin that a continuation of his work would destroy his health; that he was therefore resigning as Wonworld Dictator, and that he had appointed Peter Uldanov to succeed him, under the title of Stalenin II. He urged all his supporters and every citizen of Wonworld, including every member of the Politburo, to rally round Stalenin II. He was glad to announce, he continued, that he had the loyal support of Bolshekov in this plan, and that it was, in fact, Bolshekov who had originally suggested to him that Peter Uldanov would be the ideal successor. "The next voice you hear," concluded the record, "will be that of your new Dictator. The Dictator has abdicated; long live the Dictator!"

"Did Bolshekov really suggest that?" Peter asked, astonished.

Stalenin stared at him incredulously. "Of course not. That was put in to forestall any effort by him to unseat you."

Peter looked at him admiringly. "You think of everything."

Stalenin put the records back carefully in the drawer, locked it, and locked the safe. "Burn this combination into your memory," he said to Peter. "You will be the only one to know it besides myself: 8-2-7-5 . . ." He made Peter try it three times, first repeating the numbers to him as Peter turned the knob, then making Peter open the safe twice from memory. "Here is a duplicate key for the small safe drawer. Guard it with your life. I have left orders with Sergei that you are the first one, and the only one, to be notified in case either of these things happens to me. I think Sergei is trustworthy: I saved his mother from one of Bolshekov's firing squads.

"And now," he continued, "about your living quarters. The only safe place for you to live is right in this building. I have had the apartment below mine prepared for your occupancy. One room is being soundproofed, like this one, and in that you may have a piano."

"That is wonderful of you, father -- "

Stalenin cut him short. "You are never to use it for more than an hour a day. The room will be ready within a week."

He took his pipe from his desk and began leisurely to fill it. "Tomorrow we have a hurdle to take. I am going to arrange your election to the Politburo. It may not be easy. The Politburo has to vote on it. You remember No. 7-Petrov? He is sixty-nine; his health hasn't been too good. I have persuaded him to hand in his resignation tomorrow on the promise that he can retire in grand style in the country. He is to propose you as his substitute. Of course he will vote for you. I will recommend that you be admitted only at the bottom-as No. 13. That means that everybody below Petrov would automatically be promoted one number. Counting mine, that ought to mean eight votes for you. And we can certainly count on Adams. Even Bolshekov may not think it good politics to vote against you ....

Chapter 13

HIS election to the Politburo had a mixed effect on Peter. Though he felt guilty about it because he had done nothing to earn it, the deference now paid to him increased his confidence, even in his talks with Bolshekov. He became bolder in his questions.

"Though I have now inspected any number of factories and collective farms," he said at their next meeting, "I am still not clear how our economic system as a whole works. For example, how do you decide -- "

"Very simply, No. 13," cut in Bolshekov. There was heavily sarcastic emphasis on the No. .13 -- "We decide everything on communist principles. These principles were laid down by Karl Marx. The chief one is: From each according to his abilities; to each according to his needs."

"Does everybody in Wonworld have what he needs?"

"Is that a hostile question?" asked Bolshekov sharply.

"But from what I've seen -- "

"You're interpreting Marx too literally. Of course everybody can't have everything he needs unless we first collectively produce enough for everybody's needs. That's why we have to send so many Social Unreliables to concentration camps and shoot the rest -- to force them to produce up to their abilities. Unless people produce up to their full ability they can't have everything they need. But until then, of course, we try to distribute equally what there is. The great principle is that of no economic class differences. The great principle is that of equal distribution."

"How do you get equal distribution?"

"Simple. First of all, the Commissar of Production -- that's me -- determines how many calories people need to live on, how many yards of clothing they need, how many square feet of shelter, and how much and what kind of amusement. Then he gives orders for all that to be produced. His subordinates assign quotas of production to particular industries. Their subordinates assign quotas to particular factories. Their subordinates assign quotas to particular workmen. And then each industry, factory, manager and workman, down the line, is held responsible for producing its or his quota."

"Suppose these quotas happen to be assigned unfairly?"

"Remember, I am in charge. That never happens."

"But suppose your subordinates make mistakes? Suppose they try to be fair, but just don't know what a particular industry, factory, or workman is capable of producing?"

"Of course we can't entirely eliminate mistakes. But if a subordinate makes a serious mistake, he is sent to a concentration camp -- or shot. That reduces mistakes to a minimum."

Peter had seen this system in operation. He was still not convinced of its efficiency.

"Are you always sure," he persisted, "that you are shooting the right man? For example, suppose one factory-not maliciously, or intentionally, but because somebody has made an honest mistake -- is assigned twice as big a quota as it can possibly fulfill, and a second factory only half as much as it could easily fulfill? Even if you shoot the workers in the first factory for falling below their production quota, the workers in the second factory will still be producing less than their best. Or, if they exceed a quota which has been fixed too low, they will be applauded when they do not deserve applause."

"Even if you are a member of the Politburo, No. 13 -- in fact, precisely because you are how a responsible member of the Politburo -- you will have to guard your tongue. Such things do not happen under our system."

"My questions are purely hypothetical," Peter hastened to say. "I'm just asking them to learn how you meet these problems. I must know how to answer subversive critics."

There was just a touch of sarcasm in Peter's voice. He smiled slyly. He was learning how to handle himself with Bolshekov.

"We have several ways of dealing with this problem," said Bolshekov, less hostilely. "The quotas are usually based on the previous production record of each industry or factory or workman -- "

"But that might mean, No. 2, that some factories and workmen were penalized for their own good production record in the past while other factories and workmen were rewarded for their bad past production records -- "

"We are also guided by averages in assigning the production quotas. For example, if nail factories on the average turn out a thousand nails per man per -- "

"But suppose one factory, with old machinery, turns out only 500 nails per man per -- whatever period -- while another factory, with new machinery, turns out 1500 nails per man in the same period? Then the average rate of the two factories is, say, 1000 nails per man. But it isn't the individual worker's or the individual manager's fault in the old factory -- "

"All these are questions of detail," said Bolshekov impatiently. "My subordinates have mathematical formulae to deal with all these problems."

Peter was not convinced, but decided to shift the subject. "Let's assume, then, that you solve your production problem. How do you solve your distribution problem?"

"Simplicity itself. We issue ration tickets for everything we produce. People apply to the RTB -- Ration Ticket Bureau-for ration books or individual coupons. And that's that."

"But suppose -- "

"Suppose it's suits or shoes. Each number is entitled to a new suit of clothes or a new pair of shoes every three years. He applies for and presents his ration ticket and gets outfitted."

"But suppose a person -- a number -- tears or wears out his suit before the end of three years?"

"That's his lookout. But in shoes he is entitled to one resoling a year -- provided he can prove that the soles were worn out in the course of his regular work and not by abuse."

"Why is proof necessary?"

"Why? The resoling is done for him at public expense; it's a drain on collective resources. The shoes are merely a form of public property that he holds in trust, and-"

"What about food?"

"Food is handled the same way. In the ration books there are bread coupons, margarine coupons, potato coupons, bean coupons, and lamb or chicken coupons. In spite of Wonworld crop conditions, due to the worst drought in history, every number in Moscow still gets either lamb or chicken once a week." There was a touch of pride in this announcement.

"What about coffee? Or cigarettes?" asked Peter.

"Coffee or cigarette coupons have to be applied for separately. Every proletarian adult is entitled to a package of cigarettes a month."

"And if he doesn't smoke?"

"He doesn't apply."

"If he doesn't smoke cigarettes, can he get something else instead?"

"Why should he? He's entitled to the cigarettes. If he doesn't apply for them, Wonworld saves just that much diversion of productive resources."

"What's to prevent him from applying for cigarette coupons and exchanging these for, say, somebody else's lamb coupons?"

"Only the concentration camp." Bolshekov smiled grimly. "I'm astonished to learn that you didn't know this. Every ration coupon has stamped upon it not only the number of the coupon itself but the number of the male or female to whom it is issued. Undetected exchanges are impossible."

"But what would be the harm, say, in allowing one man to exchange his cigarette coupons for another's margarine coupons?"

"All sorts of harm. One number would consume double the number of cigarettes he really needed. The other would consume twice as much margarine as he really needed. It would force us to increase production both of cigarettes and of margarine. It would create speculation in ration tickets. It would throw all our productive plans out of kilter. As it is, if X doesn't smoke cigarettes, he doesn't apply for ration tickets and we don't have to make cigarettes for him. But if those tickets had an exchange value he would apply for them. We would have to make the additional cigarettes. And then he would exchange his cigarette ticket for a ticket for the coffee that Y didn't drink. So we would have to make more coffee too and-"

"How do you decide how many cigarette coupons to print?"

"We base it on the last five years' demand."

"Suppose you make more cigarettes or grow more beans than are applied for?"

"That seldom happens. First of all, we usually issue just a few more ration coupons than the amount of goods we produce."

"But then some persons must find that their ration coupons are no good!"

"True -- but it's better than having an unused surplus of something, which is sheer waste. However, the real problem is not surpluses; the real problem is always not having enough to go round. If we are to be able to give 'to each according to his needs,' there must be enough to go round. We can't produce enough to go round unless each produces according to his ability."

"What's your system, No. 2, for insuring that each person does that ?"

"First of all, he is taught from his earliest childhood that it's his duty to do it. Every year, month, week, day—one might almost say every hour of his life -- he has dinned into his ears this one message: Work! Work! WORK! Production! Production! PRODUCTION! He hears it in every speech. He hears it on every radio program. He reads it in every issue of the New Truth. He finds it in every novel and play. And he sees it on every billboard. WORK! THIS MEANS YOU! PRODUCTION DEPENDS UPON YOU! And there is a picture of Stalenin -- or me or even a picture of a pretty girl worker -- with his, my or her finger pointing right at himl"

"And the net result?"

"Appallingly disappointing!" confessed Bolshekov. "No, we cannot depend upon exhortation alone. That is why we have to use threats and force. That is why we have to have enormous concentration camps, and why I have to have so many people hung, guillotined or shot. You don't think I like to order people shot, do you?"

Peter was eloquently silent.

"And yet I can't understand it," Bolshekov went on. "I don't know which baffles me most -- the masses' lack of mass consciousness or their lack of intelligence. With all the conditioning our people get from their earliest years, with all the exhortation, all the propaganda, you would think everybody without exception would want to produce to the peak of his ability. They no longer have any capitalist masters! The fruits of their labor are no longer expropriated by somebody else! They now collectively own everything! Wonworld and everything in it is their collective property! You would think they would want to increase this property. Everybody is now working, for everybody else! And yet everybody complains about the bad quality of goods and about how little he gets! Why can't he understand that it's his shoddy work that makes goods bad, that it's his lack of production that leaves so few goods to go around? Why can't everybody understand that whether or not there is a great aggregate production to be distributed depends upon his contribution to that aggregate?"

"Maybe because it isn't so," Peter suggested.

"What!"

Bolshekov's eyes seemed to flash green fire.

"Well, of course," Peter continued, "everything you say is perfectly true when you look at the problem collectively, as you do. But it isn't true for the individual (if I may coin a word), when he looks at it from his point of view. You say that everybody is now working for everybody else. Isn't that just the trouble -- that nobody is now working for himself?"

"For daring to express one tenth of such heresy, any other man would be sent to a concentration camp," warned Bolshekov. "Does No. 1 know that you hold such views?"

"Just bear with me a moment. I am trying to help you solve a problem that you admit baffles you," said Peter with conscious courage. "The individual is told that if he increases his output he will, other things being equal, increase total output. Mathematically, of course, he must recognize that this is so. But mathematically he senses, also, that his own contribution can have only an infinitesimal relationship to his own welfare. He knows that even if he personally worked like a galley slave, and nobody else worked, he would still starve. And he knows also, on the other hand, that if everybody else worked like a galley slave, and he did nothing, or only made the motions of working when somebody was watching him, he would live like a commissar -- I mean, like a king .... I have been reading about kings in the histories you recommended."

"But he knows, No. 13, that if everybody stopped working he would starve. He knows that if everybody only made the motions of working, and then only when being watched, there would be universal starvation, while if everybody worked, even when no one was egging him on, there would be plenty to be shared among all."

"I know all that, No. 2," persisted Peter. "And he knows all that -- as an abstract proposition, or when he looks at it from your standpoint as Commissar of Production -- or when he looks at it collectively. And apparently some people do. But not, I fear -- from what I have observed -- the majority. When we consider the majority, I'm afraid, each person tends to look at the matter most of the time from his own standpoint. Maybe he can make occasional sacrifices for the good of the whole for brief intervals. But year in and year out? Well, let's figure it. What is the population of Wonworld?"

"About a billion."

"A billion. Then say I am a worker and by backbreaking work I double my production. If my previous production was average, I have increased Wonworld's total production by only one billionth. This means that I personally, assuming equal distribution, get only one billionth more to eat, in spite of my terrific effort. I could never even notice such an increase. On the other hand, suppose, without getting caught, I don't work at all. Then I get only one billionth less to eat. The deprivation is so infinitesimal that again I would be unable to notice it. But think of all the work I would save!"

A tiny cloud of doubt seemed to drift across Bolshekov's brow.

"This talk of billionths is unreal," he said finally. "It assumes that we could make a mathematically exact distribution of goods throughout Wonworld."

"Then let's reduce it to a smaller scale," said Peter. "Suppose you had an isolated collective farm with 100 workers. You assigned each worker a particular segment of land to work on, and they raised an average of 100 potatoes per man per year. They would then collectively produce 10,000 potatoes a year, and each worker would receive a ration of 100 potatoes a year regardless of his particular production. That wouldn't be enough to live on; so they would all urge each other to work twice as hard and raise twice as much. Now suppose conditions are such that there is no constant or effective way of supervising a particular man's work or measuring his particular contribution to the total output. And suppose each man knows that his particular contribution cannot be calculated or checked by a supervisor? Yet suppose one worker -- let's call him A -- because of his social conscience doubles his number of hours or intensity of work and increases his own production from the 100 potatoes previously raised to 200 potatoes. The others, however, let us say, raise the same 100 potatoes as before. At the end of the year there are now 10,000 potatoes to distribute -- equally, according to need. So instead of getting 100 potatoes, A, as a result of doubling his own output, now gets 101 potatoes -- just one more potato."

"You assume an impossible situation in which only one man in a hundred has any mass consciousness."

"All right. Let's reverse the situation. Suppose everybody else, through mass consciousness, doubles his output of potatoes but that A, realizing that the others are going to do this, can loaf undetected and produce no potatoes at all. Then the total number of potatoes produced on the farm is 19,800. And when these are equally distributed, 'according to need,' A -- who has now produced nothing -- none the less gets 198 potatoes, or almost twice as many as when he was working."

"And your conclusion?"

"My conclusion is that under these conditions a man's output, or the intensity of his effort, will be determined not by some abstract, overall, collectivist consideration but mainly by his assumption regarding what everybody else is doing or is going to do. He will be willing 'to do his share'; but he'll be hanged before hell break his back to produce while others are loafing, because he knows it will get him nowhere. And he is prone to be a little generous in measuring how hard he himself is working and a little cynical in estimating how hard everybody else is working. He is apt to cite the very worst among his co-workers as typical of what 'others' do while he slaves. All this may be why your exhortations based on collectivist considerations are so ineffective."

Bolshekov looked troubled. He seemed to have no immediate answer. Peter pursued his advantage: "Let's say I'm an unusual person, a sort of worker genius, and that if I strained all my faculties I could actually turn out ten times as much production as the average worker. But I turn out only 50 per cent more than the average, and yet get praised for doing it -- because I am above average. Why should I be so foolish as to show the authorities what I could really do? I wouldn't live any better. I wouldn't get any more ration tickets than the next man. But once I had shown my capacity, my superiors would hold me up to its continuation -- on the principle of 'from each according to his ability.' Therefore I find it wiser never to reveal my ability. Therefore nobody ever discovers that I am not producing according to my ability. Never having put it to a strain, in fact, I never even find out myself what my real ability is."

"This is heresy," said Bolshekov. "I shall turn over as a fulltime assignment to one of my subordinates the task of drafting an answer to it. The answer will be, of course, for my and your eyes alone."

"Why such secrecy?"

"We are never foolish enough to answer criticisms that no one has yet thought of. We merely prepare such answers ready for use."

"But what of the problem that's worrying you?" persisted Peter. "Maybe my criticism goes deeper than we started by supposing. Perhaps -- perhaps the aim 'to each according to his needs' is the very thing that prevents us from ever getting 'from each according to his abilities?"'

"But everyone, No. 13, ought to work to the peak of his abilities! It's his duty to work to the peak of his abilities! Why shouldn't he? He's no longer being exploited by a master class!"

"But what he really fears under our present system, No. 2, is that he is being exploited by the slackness or malingering of his fellow workers. And perhaps his suspicions of others arise from his knowledge that he himself is secretly trying to exploit them by his own slackness or malingering -- ?"

"Your subversive arguments prove what I have always contended," said Bolshekov; "that unless everyone is conditioned to communism from infancy, such skepticism and heresies are bound to arise. It was a dangerous thing No. 1 did when he allowed you to get this miseducation!"

Peter felt it wise to shift the subject again. "There is something that puzzles me about your description of our system of distribution," he resumed. "You speak of equal distribution. But I haven't noticed this equality. The Protectorate, for example, to which I now have the honor to belong, gets more -- "

"I did speak of equal distribution," said Bolshekov, "but I also spoke of 'to each according to his needs.' Now wherever there isn't enough of something to go around, it's this second principle that governs. We can only turn out a few automobiles, for example, and all of these are needed for the commissars and other members of the Protectorate. They need these to get around; they need these to do their work properly -- to fulfill their functions. We may think of these as capital goods rather than consumption goods. They are the tools that we members of the Protectorate need to carry out our functions properly."

"But since I have been a Protector," said Peter, "not to speak of conditions since I have been a member of the Politburo -- I haven't been getting just the food stamped on these ration cards. I have been getting much better bread and beans, incomparably better coffee, and-"

"Except when there is a very severe shortage," said Bolshekov, "we can try to distribute equally in quantity. But it's impossible to have equal distribution in quality. Some beans or chickens or what-not will inevitably have a better flavor than others. The Protectors may as well get them."

"But the Protectors get broccoli and beef and caviar," said Peter, "and the masses, the Proletarians, never get them at all."

"We simply can't produce enough broccoli and beef and caviar for everybody. We can only produce a limited amount. And that amount necessarily has to go just to a small group. We can't distribute one cubic inch of beef or a single tiny caviar pellet to everybody just to make a fetish of equal distribution. So why not reserve it for the Protectors, who need to be kept in full health and vigor and whose morale needs especially to be kept up, so that they can carry out their especially arduous directive functions? For the same reason the Protectors get the best living quarters and more and better suits, of a distinctive color. We must encourage people to want to get into the Protectorate. We must provide .... "

"Incentives?" asked Peter shrewdly. "But that's just what I'm trying to say. Why can't we provide incentives for everybody? Why can't we provide graded incentives, so that each man within his own abilities, however high or low in the scale those abilities might be, would have a direct incentive for putting forth his best efforts? Suppose his abilities were such that he could never hope to be a Protector, but that he could hope to be just a little better off if he put forth his best efforts-"

"I think, No. 13," interrupted Bolshekov sarcastically, "that before suggesting all these reforms of our system you might wait until you have at least learned how the system works. After all, it is the product of our best minds. All our arrangements are passed upon by the Central Plannning Board and by the Supreme Economic Council, both of which I head, and by the Congress of Co-ordinators, over which I also preside. And yet you, who did not even know what the system was a few short months ago -- "

Bolshekov's words were much milder than the threat in his voice.

"I'm sorry," said Peter humbly. "I will strive to learn."

Chapter 14

THE pounding on the door grew louder.

Edith woke up, her heart racing. She pulled on her slacks in the darkness, then turned on the light. The pounding was repeated, this time apparently with the butt of a revolver. She opened the door.

Three members of the Security Police stood outside.

"L-92?" asked the officer.

Edith nodded.

"You're under arrest."

Maxwell had come to the door.

"EN-57? You're under arrest."

Neither asked why. No one ever asked why.

"Have I time to shave?" asked Maxwell.

"You have five minutes to dress."

From behind the curtain on the other side of the room, Edith noticed the white frightened face of the three-year-old boy.

As she put on her one luxury, a wrist watch, she noticed the time: quarter of three.

They were led down the dark stairs to the street. A Black Maria stood waiting. As they sat on its hard benches they were blindfolded with black kerchiefs. It started off.

They could not see each other; they dared not speak. But each knew what the other was thinking.

They were thinking of Edith's mother, Helen. She had been a teacher in a nursery. One day, two years ago, she had not come home. No one at the nursery would tell them anything; no one could even remember whether she had been there that day or not. The police told them nothing, and marked it against them that they had asked.

After the first few days they had never spoken to each other about Edith's mother. Speculation about her fate, if she was still alive, was more self-torturing than the assumption that she was dead.

The Black Maria stopped. Edith was led out, still blindfolded. She heard the Black Maria start off again. She was led up some steps, and apparently through two doors. She was aware of light underneath her blindfold. The blindfold was taken off.

She found herself in a woman's jail.

She was registered, fingerprinted, and taken to a cell. It was about six feet by nine, with a single narrow bed. There were five women in the cell, three of them crowded on the bed, the other two lying on the floor. Several wakened when the light was switched on, and looked sleepily and angrily at the new prisoner who was going to crowd them up still more. The matron pushed Edith in, locked the iron grating door, and switched off the light again.

As Edith's eyes grew accustomed to the darkness she could notice that her five cell mates had gone back to sleep. Cautiously she felt her way to the floor, and tried to stretch out and join them. She stared into the darkness.

Chapter 15

IN another five minutes the Black Maria stopped again, and this time Maxwell was led out. When his blindfold was removed, he found himself in a sort of reception hall before a desk. On the wall in front of him was a sign: RUTHLESS EXTERMINATION OF WRECKERS. The man behind the desk ordered him to empty out his pockets. Maxwell took out his ration books, passport, workbook, pencil, watch, and laid them on the desk. They were all he had. A guard felt his pockets.

He was registered, fingerprinted, blindfolded again, taken on an elevator, and pushed out. His blindfold was removed.

He found himself in a large white cell, with not a single piece of furniture in it but a stool. The whole ceiling was covered with blindingly bright electric lights. A steel cell door clanked behind him.

There were no windows -- no way of telling whether it was night or daylight outside.

When he had been sitting on the backless stool, as he judged, half an hour, he tried to lie on the white stone floor and get some sleep. The floor was cold. The light, reflected from all sides and from the floor itself, was inescapable.

After a while he got up again and paced around, then tried to lie down again. How long this went on -- three, seven, ten hours -- he could not have said. At last two silent guards opened his cell door and motioned him to come along with them. He was so tired mentally that he found it difficult to concentrate. With an effort he told himself that what he was going to need most now was courage, fortitude, strength.

He was led before a police captain at the same desk where he had been registered.

"You know what you're charged with, of course?" asked the captain.

"I have no idea," said Maxwell. "I've done nothing against the laws."

He had no sooner said this than he realized it was not strictly true. The laws were so drawn, so numerous and so all-embracing, that it was virtually impossible for any denizen of Wonworld to avoid technical violations every day.

"I may as well warn you now," continued the captain, "that you will save yourself considerable trouble by confessing immediately."

"I have nothing to confess. I do not even know what I am charged with."

The captain turned to a uniformed clerk next to him. "Read it to him."

"The charge, or the confession?" asked the clerk.

"Oh, the charge."

The clerk read the charge in a rapid, slovenly monotone. Maxwell had difficulty in following, but it appeared to accuse him of deliberately misdesigning the proposed new Lenin super-dam -- designing it in such a way that it would break in a crisis -- and specifying materials, such as types of steel, types of concrete, and types of electrical machinery that he, Maxwell, knew to be in short supply and unobtainable, though they were no better than other materials that he knew to be in ample supply. The charge also accused him of conspiring with other people, yet unknown, to insist on these specifications, to follow bourgeois engineering formulae, and to demand unobtainable skills on the part of workers.

"Well?" asked the captain.

"All this is untrue," said Maxwell. "Of course I had to specify materials that would be sure to stand up under the maximum stresses and strains -- "

"You refuse, then, to sign the confession?"

"What confession?"

The captain turned wearily to the clerk. "Read the confession."

The clerk began to read in the same rapid and unintelligible monotone.

Maxwell broke in. "I can't even understand what he's saying!"

With an air of weary patience, the captain turned to the clerk. "Hand him the confession."

Maxwell read it. "I, EN-57, sometimes known under the name of John Maxwell," it began, "being of sound mind and body, have been driven by my conscience to make a clean breast of . . ."

It went on to say that the charge didn't begin to measure the real scope and degradation of Maxwell's crime. It described the careful cunning with which he had begun to lay his plans. It told of the bourgeois ideology that had corrupted him. In the confession he repeatedly debased himself, repeatedly insisted on how low he had sunk, repeatedly emphasized the greatness and goodness of Stalenin, and especially the greatness and goodness of Bolshekov, one sight of whose glorious face had once made him hesitate in his determination to carry through his dark scheme.

"It's my duty to inform you," said the captain, "that if you confess there will be considerable mitigation of your punishment. You will be sent to a concentration camp, no doubt, but for a maximum of eight years. And nothing will happen to your daughter."

Maxwell turned pale. "What will happen to my daughter if I don't confess?"

"I'll leave that to your own imagination .... Well?"

Maxwell stood silent.

The captain prompted him. "You hear about a lot of people who confess, don't you?"

Maxwell nodded. He read these "confessions" every day in the New Truth.

"Ever hear of anybody who didn't confess?" The captain was smiling grimly.

Maxwell never had. He knew of many people who simply disappeared, without explanation from anyone. These must have been the people who refused to "confess."

A new key to the system suddenly opened something in his mind. There were terrible consequences for weakness, but still more terrible consequences, and no corresponding reward, for strength. If you "confessed" to crimes that you did not commit, you were disgraced, shunned, despised, condemned to a life of utter wretchedness and horror. But if you stood up with superhuman courage against all threats to yourself or even to those you loved, nobody ever heard of your courage, nobody ever learned of what you had withstood. You had not even the satisfaction of setting an example to inspire others. A known martyrdom was one thing: a known martyrdom was something for which a man might gladly give up his life, allow himself to be put to torture -- yes, even sacrifice those he loved more than himself for the greater final good of humanity. But an unknown martyrdom? ... A meaningless martyrdom? . . .

"Well?" asked the captain.

Maxwell stood silent.

The captain wearily pressed a button on his desk. Two guards entered.

"Take him to the Second Degree Room."

He was led down a corridor into a chamber that might once have been a big cell. It was illuminated only by three giant spotlights. Behind them as he entered, Maxwell could dimly make out a police official behind a desk, another on a chair to the left.

He was led so that he faced into the three spotlights at the exact point on which they were concentrated. They were blinding.

The questioning came from a voice behind the desk. "Number? ... Name, if any? ... Address? ... Occupation? ... You are charged with ... What have you to say in answer to? Do you deny that . . ?"

He heard himself answering mechanically. He could think of nothing but the blinding lights. The questioning went on and on. His legs and back became like lead ....

His questioner stopped. Maxwell heard him get up and say something in a low voice to someone who had just come in. How long had Maxwell been standing there? Two hours? All morning? Was it morning?

He heard footsteps behind the desk again. His interrogator, he supposed. But the voice that began to question him now was a new voice. Maxwell dimly realized that his first interrogator had been relieved. The second took up where the first had begun. Had no attention been paid to Maxwell's answers?

The questions rolled on.

His voice became husky and his throat unbelievably dry. He pleaded for a drink of water. He explained that he had phlebitis and asked to be allowed to sit down. These requests were treated as if they had never been made.

The second interrogator was relieved by another, and he in turn by a fourth. The questions were barked at him, mounting in savagery of tone.

The room began to spin ....

He fainted.

He was at last brought back to consciousness by violent slaps on the face, and finally pulled to his feet again.

"Before we resume," said his examiner, "we should tell you that your daughter Edith, in another prison, is undergoing the same sort of examination that you are. She has already confessed, but they are asking for more details. They will keep at it until you also confess .... "

The questioning began again. But he was not thinking now either of the questions or of his answers. He was thinking of Edith ....

The lights began to spin again. He was retching. There was an excruciating pain in his bladder. He was overcome with a longing to have everything over with, to learn the full extent of his punishment, to begin serving it. He sank to the floor.

"Bring me the confession," he said. "I'll sign it."

As he signed, he thought, Now they will let me have peace.

How many hours had passed? How many days?

He heard an order: "Take him to the Third Degree Room."

The cell-like chamber to which he was now brought was much like the former one. Again they stood him before a battery of dazzling lights. Two inquisitors took part in questioning him.

"We can get the rest of this over with quickly now, Maxwell." The voice came from the questioner on the right. "You would like that, wouldn't you?"

"I have already confessed. They promised me that if I confessed they would tell me my punishment and let me sleep!"

"You have merely confessed your own part in this treason. Now we want to know exactly who was involved with you. Tell us the whole plot. We want the names of everybody involved in it. Who gave you your orders? To whom did you report?"

"I have signed the confession you asked me to sign," said Maxwell. "I am willing to take my punishment. Let me go."

The reply was several sharp blows on his face.

He was ordered to stand facing the wall, just far enough so that he could touch it at arms' length with the longest finger of each hand. Then he was ordered to move his feet back about twelve inches, keep his heels touching the floor, and maintain his balance only with the contact of one finger of each hand.

"Now tell us. To whom did you report?"

"I've already confessed. I'm ready for my punishment. Send me to a concentration camp. Shoot me! But don't force me to accuse innocent people!"

The questioning went on relentlessly. For the first few minutes his two fingers could support the leaning weight of his body. But the area around the two fingernails soon became flaming red; the area below them was yellowish-white. He tried to substitute his index fingers. He was slapped violently for doing so. His two long fingers bent more and more beneath his weight. The upper part of his arm, then his shoulders and legs began to tremble. He was drenched in sweat. His head began to swim.

"I can't talk this way," he gasped. "I can't think. I can't hear your questions. I don't know what I'm saying!"

They let him stand straight on his feet for a few minutes and then took him again before the brilliant lights. "All right. Tell us now. There were others, weren't there?"

"Yes. There were others."

"Who were they?"

Maxwell did not answer. His arm was twisted until he shrieked out in pain. The questioning continued. "No generalities. We want details!"

He mentioned a couple of invented names and numbers, and was forced to admit that they were invented. He pleaded with them again: "Kill me! But don't force me to accuse innocent people. Let me die with some vestige of self-respect!"

Tired and dulled as his mind was, he had a nauseating realization that this was precisely what they were out to destroy -- his self-respect. They did not care about his body. They were torturing that only enough to torture his mind. They were even eager to keep his body alive until they had destroyed his last trace of dignity as a human being.

They forced him to stand again in the same position against the wall, resting on his finger tips until he cried out in agony.

His whole frame was quivering ....

Chapter 16

"YOU'VE come to arrest us?"

The O'Gradys seemed not only resigned but relieved. "We'll pack immediately."

It had been Peter's first opportunity to call on the Maxwells since his election to the Politburo. He gathered finally from this couple, with whom the Maxwells had shared the room, the appalling news that Edith and her father had been arrested in the middle of the night two weeks before.

That was all they knew. Ever since that night they had expected to be arrested themselves -- for the crime of not having reported to the police the "treachery" of the Maxwells (whatever it may have been) before the police themselves suspected it. In Wonworld the guilt of any man disloyal to the state was shared not only by his family, but by anybody billetted with him who had failed to betray him in advance.

Through some oversight the O'Gradys had not yet been arrested.

Peter returned to his limousine. "To Security Police Headquarters," he ordered.

The files at Security Police Headquarters revealed nothing. They did not even record the fact that Maxwell or Edith had been arrested. The arrest, Peter concluded, could only have been ordered secretly by Bolshekov.

He told the chauffeur to drive to his father's office. When he got there he found the secretary pale and grave.

"I've been trying desperately to reach you," said Sergei. "His Supremacy has just had a stroke. The doctor is with him now."

Peter was led into the bedroom. His father was in bed. His eyes were closed, his cheeks puffed out, his face flushed; there was froth around his lips.

The doctor was bending over him.

"How serious is it, doctor?" Peter asked.

Very.

"What do you think will happen?"

"In a few hours he may come out of this. But even if he does, he may remain paralyzed on his right side. I'm not sure he will have control of his tongue muscles -- or, in fact, that he will be able to speak at all."

The dreaded moment had arrived. Peter must act, and now.

Bolshekov, he knew, had spies everywhere. Perhaps he had already learned of the situation.

Whom could Peter trust?

The sense of his immense responsibility fell on him like a ten ton weight. Blessed are they without responsibilities. Blessed are they who do not have to make decisions, who have all their decisions made for them. No wonder so many were content to have no liberties. Liberty meant responsibilty. It compelled decisions. Liberty was compulsion. To be free to decide meant that you had to decide. And you had no one to blame for the result of bad decisions but yourself.

He turned slowly and heavily to Sergei.

"Find Adams," he ordered. "Get him over here immediately. Tell him it's urgent -- but don't tell him why."

The record!

That was his first duty. If he lost time on that, he would lose everything. He must postpone even the effort to discover and release Edith and her father until the record had been broadcast.

He ran back from the bedroom to his father's office. His hands were trembling slightly as he turned the combination of the safe. He took the closely guarded key from an inside pocket, opened the small inside steel door, and carefully drew out the record marked X.

Sergei entered. "His Highness Comrade Adams is on his way over."

Peter told Sergei about the arrest of Edith and Maxwell. "Find where they are, who is holding them, and who ordered their arrest. And send a message down for my car to stand by."

He paced nervously up and down. The wait seemed interminable. At last Adams arrived. Peter rushed him immediately down to the car.

"To the Central Radio Station," he called to the chauffeur.

He had the record and the script in his brief case. On the way over he told Adams what had happened.

Adams looked stunned. "Yet I had noticed something wrong with No. 1's health," he said.

"I am trusting you completely," said Peter. "I'm lost without your help."

"You can count on it. You know I'm an American anyway, and haven't a ghost of a chance of ever becoming Dictator of Wonworld myself. That job is a Russian monopoly. The real danger is Bolshekov. If he becomes Dictator his first act will be to slit my throat. You can count on me absolutely."

They mapped out what their procedure would be when they got to the radio station.

Once inside the building Peter had double cause to congratulate himself on his decision to take Adams. Everyone recognized Adams immediately, but in spite of the worldwide publicity attending Peter's promotion to the Politburo, very few seemed to recognize Peter or know who he was.

"Interrupt the program," Adams ordered the announcer. "Introduce me."

Adams was brief: "I am speaking to you from the Central Radio Station of Moscow. With me in the studio are His Supremacy, Comrade Stalenin; and his son Peter Uldanov. His Highness Comrade Uldanov, as you know, was elected a member of the Politburo three weeks ago. His brilliance, and the consequent speed of his advancement since his return from America, have created a Wonworld sensation. And now you are about to hear a message of the utmost importance from His Supremacy, Comrade Stalenin, No. 1 citizen and Leader and Dictator of Wonworld .... His Supremacy!"

Record X was turned on:

"Comrades and citizens of Wonworld," it began. I told you on my last public appearance on May Day that the mounting pressure of work upon me would prevent me from making any further public appearances. This pressure has now grown to a point where I am forced to deputize more work than ever. I have therefore asked my trusted son, Peter Uldanov, to sit as my deputy in meetings of the Politburo and on other occasions, and to make public announcements in my name of whatever new policies or decrees I find necessary. I shall, of course, be more active than ever as your leader, working silently, often alone, late into the nights, working for you, the proletariat, working as one of you, as your vicar, as your spokesman, as your servant, working for you, the dictators of Wonworld. For the security of Wonworld depends upon the dictatorship of the proletariat, which must be maintained at all hazards, and I, as your vicar, as your deputy, representing you, mean to maintain it.

"But I cannot do this without your help, without the help and support of every man and woman in Wonworld. Comrades, the future depends on you. We must work harder than ever before. We must all work longer hours. We must all tighten our belts one more notch. The Era of Abundance is before us. But this abundance will be possible in the future only by our further sacrifices in the present. The land of socialist plenty, as you have been told for more than a century, is to be reached only by the path of socialist austerity. There are only a few steps more along that path. We cannot risk or throw away all that we have won by refusal to take those steps now! And through my son, my deputy Peter Uldanov, I will from time to time announce those steps. Meanwhile I can only urge all of you once more to put your shoulders to the wheel. And tonight I ask you, around your tables, in your homes, to drink with me a toast to the Global Union of Soviet Socialist Republics -- to Wonworld Foreverl"

When the record had finished, Peter stepped up to the microphone:

"Thank you, Your Supremacy. Thank you, my father. I promise you solemnly and faithfully, to the utmost of my ability, to carry out your instructions as your deputy. Every act I take will be in your name and at your command, and I will need the loyal and unquestioning support of every comrade in fulfilling the great trust and responsibility you have placed in my hands."

A recording was put on of the music of "Marx Save the Dictator."

Adams stepped before the microphone once more: "A recording of this entire program will be put on a Wonworld hookup at eight o'clock this evening. At the time when His Supremacy's speech is being rebroadcast, I urge all of you, in your homes, in offices, in factories, in barracks, on farms, in correction camps wherever you may be -- to join me in a solemn toast to Our Great Leader and to his newly appointed Deputy."

The program was over. Some recorded music was put on. Adams turned to the announcer and the technicians in the recording room.

"We have carried out this program at the orders of His Supremacy. A critical situation came up at the last moment which required his urgent presence elsewhere, so he made this recording. You are all to observe the strictest secrecy about the fact that he was not personally present. This is the beginning of the policy which he laid down in his May Day announcement. You will announce tonight's forthcoming rebroadcast at half-hour intervals. For the eight o'clock Wonworld hookup, you will order all the direct-wired loud speakers throughout the Global Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to be turned on full blast."

On Adams' advice, Peter called an immediate special meeting of the Politburo, in Stalenin's name. As customary on such occasions, Sergei did the telephoning. This time the members were called in the reverse order of their priority. Bolshekov was notified last, and late. Each member as he arrived was asked whether he had heard the afternoon's Stalenin broadcast. Giraud, who, Adams knew, disliked Bolshekov, arrived early. Adams took him aside for a few moments.

Adams and Peter declared that they had just spoken with Stalenin and that he would be in at any moment. But when everyone but Bolshekov had arrived, Sergei by prearrangement came in and said that Stalenin had been detained and had asked that Peter conduct the meeting in his absence.

Adams proposed a resolution endorsing the new arrangement. It was seconded by Giraud, and passed just a few minutes before Bolshekov arrived.

Peter excused himself, turned the meeting over to Bolshekov, and said that the only other business His Supremacy had wanted conducted was a reading of the report of a special commission on the causes of the new famine in the Argentine. Adams read the report.

It had all come off perfectly. Peter felt a new admiration for Adams' shrewdness. The meeting, as Adams had pointed out in advance, would validate the new arrangement before there was time for anyone to plot to overthrow it. It incidentally kept every member of the Politburo, and especially Bolshekov, under Adams' eye while Peter and Sergei, in the next room, confirmed the new situation over the telephone with the heads of the Security Police and the armed forces, apart from Kilashov and Marshal Zakachetsky themselves, who were both at the meeting.

"Where are the Maxwells?" Peter asked, the moment the most essential telephoning had been done.

Sergei shook his head. "I've been able to learn nothing."

Peter went in again to his father's bedroom. The doctor was still there. His father's condition had not changed.

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