Worlds Enough and Time by Joe Haldeman Page B

mistakes. The one in New New did, and they had ten times as many people to choose from.
P URCELL :
Granted.
Is there anything I can clear up for you, then? Anything to put your mind at ease about this … unpleasant reality?
O’H ARA :
You could satisfy my curiosity about some things.
     
    Purcell nods almost imperceptibly. O’Hara sits down across from him, stiff.
     
O’H ARA :
Does everyone in the Cabinet know about your little … tradition?
P URCELL :
Not yet. As you just said, we’ve had to draw candidates from a limited pool. Some are still being evaluated.
O’H ARA :
But my husbands do know.
P URCELL :
And have for some time, of course. Both of them have argued your case since well before Launch. I, among others, wanted to see how well you handled that particular stress, first.
O’H ARA :
It’s far from being the most stressful thing that’s ever happened to me.
P URCELL :
Granted. But I wasn’t there for the others.
     
    O’Hara leans back a few degrees, which makes her look even less relaxed. She can’t hide the anger in her voice.
     
O’H ARA :
Sandra’s image couldn’t tell me how long it’s been going on, in New New. It said to ask you.
P URCELL :
I’m not sure, either. One may assume we had rather more of a pure democracy in the beginning.
O’H ARA :
Fewer people.
P URCELL :
And a select crowd. Autoselected. They all decided to live in orbit—to start life over, most of them—and most of them had a more or less passionate interest in their own governance.
The first person born in orbit, by comparison, was an unwilling immigrant. That was five generations ago.
O’H ARA :
So you’re saying we’ve become less competent to govern ourselves? As individuals? Or is it just greater numbers, watering down the democratic process.
P URCELL :
Both. Out of New New’s eighty-one-thousand potential voters, ten or fifteen thousand—conservatively!—weren’t competent to make decisions regarding even their own welfare, let alone the welfare of others—
O’H ARA :
That seems awfully high.
P URCELL :
And perhaps twice that number were either uninterested or so contemptuous of government that they had no positive input into the process.
You think that’s high, too, but it’s not. Together those percentages would say, well, more than half of New New is made up of intelligent, responsible voters. That wasn’t true before the war and it’s less true now.
I know Sandra told you about the plague referendum.
O’H ARA :
Yes. It’s … terrible.
P URCELL :
You would have said “unbelievable” if it had been I who told you. The message was Sandra’s idea. I think she knew you very well.
O’H ARA :
She did.
P URCELL :
I don’t have any great love for groundhogs, either, and I understand the primitive desire to punish them. Let them stew in their own juices, die out. But I don’t
vote
according to what my ductless glands say. Most people do.
O’H ARA :
So the solution is a benign dictatorship by committee?
P URCELL :
It’s not the solution; it’s not even
a
solution. It’s just a way of getting from today to tomorrow without too much excitement. Without disaster.
There’s no safety valve anymore. No other Worlds to emigrate to; no Earth as a last resort. We’re sealed in this can together for a century.
And it’s not a “dictatorship” just because most people are unaware of the details of the decision-making process. It’s still just management.
O’H ARA :
Management? What a euphemism. It’s manipulation, pure and simple. Paternalistic condescension.
P URCELL :
You’re not the best judge of that at this time.
O’H ARA :
What do you mean by that?
P URCELL :
This is a difficult situation for you. It would be for anybody, talking to me under these circumstances.
O’H ARA :
I can manage.
P URCELL :
Your using the word “paternalistic,” for instance, is interesting in this context. You’ve read your profile.
O’H ARA :
Oh, come on. Because I never knew my father—
P URCELL :
Now