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got twenty-five kilometers before there's anything near enough to the road to
run into or fall off of. Keep treads parallel on levels, splay for uphill,
snowplow coming down or for a very fast stop."
I started with a lurch, but no one commented. I thought maybe Aimeric would
talk more about his father, but he stayed silent, and clipping along at just
over 150 km/hr, I
was busy doing what Bruce told me to. By the time I gained any idea of
what I was doing, we were halfway up Sodom Gap, and the scenery
was so spectacular that conversation was reserved for exclaiming over
it not that I saw much other than the road on that trip. A half hour later
we topped the Gap and headed from there down the
Gouge in the winding journey into Utilitopia.
The Council of Rationalizers met in a small room with no Windows or
decoration.
There was a large interactive screen up front and a small terminal at each of
the fifty or so seats. My chair seemed to be deliberately a little
uncomfortable, either digging into my back or pressing my thighs annoyingly.
The dingy colors suggested that the room ought to have a nasty sour smell to
it, but it had only the faint, sterile scent of soap, disinfectant, and
hard cold surfaces.
They began with a prayer that sounded like a contract. "Our Father,
acknowledging that it is only reasonable that... as beings created
with the capacity for rationality therefore ... thus assuming ... it
follows from the observed portion of Your Law therefore that..." and so forth,
winding down eventually to "... for it is demonstrable that no person in the
sense-accessible realm is, or can be, or ever can have been, in any statable
way, greater than You."
They ran through some routine business, ratifying a wide range of
price changes
(plainly, market here did not have anything to do with "market
forces") and an interminable set of reports demonstrating, I think, that
they had gotten immorality down to the lowest possible level.
Finally, they came to New Business, which was us. They were visibly
uncomfortable about Aimeric's insistence on his Occitan name, but they
sat politely while he made graphs spin and leap on the screen for them. I
had settled on a position in which the chair slowly ate my coccyx and my
thighs gradually creased, but neither happened too quickly.
A three-hour debate followed, none of which I could follow and all of which I
had to appear to be following with intense interest. After a lot of arguments
that were, I think, about principle versus expediency, they decided that maybe
the markets they had now would not be able to handle the adjustments all by
themselves, and appointed Aimeric, Bieris, and me to be advisors to the Pastor
for Market Function. I realized at once that since the Pastor for Market
Function was a dumpy-looking woman named Clarity
Peterborough, the job was obviously ceremonial. We were told our job
would be to assist her in drawing up proposals for dealing with the expected
changes.
As the meeting broke up, Chairman Carruthers said he wanted to talk with us
and with the Pastor for Market Function, so we stuck around. No one bothered
to speak with any of us before they left, but they didn't speak with each
other either they just stood up and walked out after the closing prayer so I
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didn't feel particularly insulted.
When they had gone, Aimeric turned to his father and said, "It's a pleasure to
see you looking so well, sir. I hope this will work out to our mutual
benefit."
Old Carruthers's head bounced once, hard. "I appreciate your
courtesy. We have much business to do. Have you been pleased with your new
life?"
"Yes, quite." Aimeric's voice, utterly expressionless, sounded as if he had
spent years developing this tone.
Carruthers never looked at him. He said, very softly, almost
inaudibly, "Then no doubt your decision to emigrate must have been based on
a strong rational grasp of the intangible factors in the situation. You have
my congratulations."
"I appreciate that very much."
It was like watching people make love by semaphore.
The two of them bowed, deeply and formally. Aimeric showed a very slight trace
of a grin, or perhaps it was just tension.
Then, just as if nothing at all had happened and still without touching the
son he had not seen in a quarter of a century the old Chairman got down to
business.
"Sit, everyone. Now that we're out of that silly meeting we can
dispense with
ceremony. Aimeric am I pronouncing that correctly? accent on the
first syllable?
good I believe you met the Highly Reverend Clarity Peterborough while
you were here."
We all bowed, since that seemed to be the local custom. "Highly Reverend"
sounded like a real title, and now that I thought of it half the Council of
Rationalizers had been female in fact I'd thought at first they had all
brought their wives, but the women were clearly voting. I was still a bit
shocked to find a woman in a job that no Occitan woman would have stooped to,
but I obviously needed to get used to local customs, so I tried to look at her
with calm neutrality.
Clarity Peterborough was a slim woman, short, perhaps forty years old, who
blinked constantly, as if her eyes were sensitive to the light. Like most
of the more religious
Caledons, her hair was cut close to her head, but she had gone
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