Forzon stared at him. “A Cultural Survey officer in charge of an Interplanetary Relations Bureau field team? You’d better refile those orders and send another request for confirmation.”
“I already have,” Wheeler said. “I’ve asked for confirmation, I mean, but that’s routine. I don’t think there’s any chance of an error.”
“Then someone in IPR Bureau Supreme Headquarters is crazy.”
For once Wheeler’s smile was merely wistful. “I’ve been contending that for years, but regardless of the mental condition of the person issuing them, orders are inevitably orders. Team B is yours.”
“To do what?”
“Mmm—yes. Some Gurnil history might be helpful to you.”
“Anything would be helpful.”
“To be sure. I was forgetting that you don’t—that you’re not—” He grinned mournfully and paused for a moment’s thought. “As you no doubt know, the Interplanetary Relations Bureau functions chiefly outside the boundaries of the Federation of Independent Worlds. As the Federation grows, IPR moves ahead and prepares the way for it. It charts space and explores and surveys the planets. If it discovers intelligent life a coordinator is appointed, and he establishes an IPR base, conducts a classification study, and sets up the field teams he needs to guide the planet toward membership in the Federation. If there is no intelligent life then various other things happen, none of which need concern us because Gurnil had two flourishing human-type civilizations when it was first surveyed four hundred years ago. Do you know anything about IPR procedures?”
Forzon shook his head. “How could I? You don’t let CS in until you certify a planet non-hostile, and you don’t do that until your work is finished and the planet has actually applied for Federation membership.”
“We can’t take a chance on having our work messed up,” Wheeler observed.
“Thanks,” Forzon said dryly. “In the meantime, you mess up our work.”
Wheeler flashed his tragic grin. “We have one or two-things to think about other than culture. This guiding a planet toward Federation membership can be a touchy thing. There must be a planet-wide democratic government, set up by the people themselves without apparent outside interference. We have to work in a terrible complex of regulations.”
“Democracy imposed from without—” Forzon murmured.
“The Bureau’s first law. We rarely find even a planet-wide government, let alone a democracy. So we guide smaller political units toward democratic government, and then we guide them toward combining into larger units, and eventually we have our planet-wide democracy. And of course it all has to be done without the people knowing we’re around. Sometimes it takes centuries.”
“Which is why the cultures are tainted by the time you let us in.”
“We can’t help that.”
“So what am I doing on Gurnil now?”
“I don’t know,” Wheeler said frankly. “I’m just trying to tell you what IPR is doing here. Gurnil is bicontinental, and at first contact both continents were political entities controlled by absolute monarchies. The Bureau’s classification team estimated our job here at fifty years.”
“That was four hundred years ago?”
Wheeler nodded. “Team A, here in Larnor, was immediately successful. Within a dozen years the monarchy had been replaced by a flourishing democracy. It’s still flourishing. It’s practically a model of its kind. Team B, over in Kurr, had no success at all. After four hundred years Kurr is no closer to democratization than it was when the planet was discovered. The contrary —the situation keeps getting worse. Each succeeding monarch consolidates his power a bit further. And that’s where matters stand now.”
“So I’m to take command of Team B, and my mission is to convert Kurr to a democracy.”
“Without apparent outside interference,” Wheeler added with a grin. “You’ll want to take a look at the Team B file. You should know something about what’s been tried before you start making plans of your own.”
“You said the problem has been going on for four hundred years.”
“Yes-”
“A lot of things can be tried in four hundred years.”
“The Team B file fills a room,” Wheeler said cheerfully.
“Further, since IPR must find the problem of Kurr irritating if not downright embarrassing, over the years it will have assigned some of its best men there, and they’ll have applied every trick and device and maneuver they could think of. All of them failed, so now IPR is giving the job to a Cultural Survey officer. If we rule out insanity it still seems like a rather desperate measure.”
“Supreme Headquarters is desperate,” Wheeler agreed. “The Federation boundary can’t be drawn in loops and curlicues. Neither can there be a forbidden hunk of space inside the boundary. A world like Gurnil can hold up the admission of a whole sector of worlds and bring Federation expansion to a dead stop.”
“If Kurr is so tough, how does it happen that Larnor was a pushover?”
“Larnor is a poor continent, and it had an immensely stupid king. Its resources had been neglected. The people lived in dire poverty, and it didn’t take much to incite them to revolt. The king was encouraged to impose more and more taxes, and the people were encouraged to do something about them.”
“All without outside interference, of course.”
“Without apparent outside interference. It’s not quite the same thing.”
“What about Kurr?”
“An immensely wealthy continent, and its rulers have been nothing short of brilliant. They’re tyrants, with the usual evil vices of tyrants, but they’ve known to a hair just how far they can go without ruffling their subjects. Some refined instinct seems to keep a check on their natural greed, and they can acquire as much wealth as they think they need without oppressive taxation because their realm is so wealthy. They’re even shrewd enough to temper their acts of cruelty. The king may summarily seize a girl who takes his fancy, but he always rewards her father or husband, and when he tires of her he rewards the girl. What should be an intolerable act of oppression becomes a highly profitable honor. If a subject offends him the king may have his left arm severed at the elbow—a favorite practice of the present King Rovva—but the victim will be pensioned off, and it’s usually a court hanger-on about whom the people aren’t likely to be concerned anyway. And naturally the people have had respect for the monarch bred into them for generations.”
“What about relations between Kurr and Larnor?”
“There haven’t been any formal relations since the Larnorian revolt. The kings of Kurr were shrewd enough to see that Larnorian ideas were dangerous. Informally, the Larnorians used to send out missionaries to spread both their religion and democracy, but they always disappeared without a trace. Probably they ended up in the king’s one-hand villages. Both continents are at technological level twenty, and ocean travel is brutally primitive. It wasn’t difficult for Kurr to cut off virtually all contact.”
“You said that IPR works in a terrible complex of regulations. What are they?”
Wheeler gestured at IPR Field Manual 1048K.
Forzon pulled it toward him and flipped the pages. Emblazoned on the frontispiece and at the head of every chapter was the Bureau’s