[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

 What ethnic consciousness? Everyone speaks English now.
 That doesn t stop ethnic consciousness, said Devers.  If you play the old
national anthem of France, they ll all drip nostalgia. It s a battle-hymn, you
Page 42
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
know, and battle-hymns always stir the blood, especially now that there aren t
any wars.
Hopkins said,  But the words don t mean anything any more. Do you remember
them?
 Yes, said Devers.  Some--

Allons, enfants de la patrie, 
La jour de gloire est arrive.

Contre nous de la tyrannie,  L Etendard sanglant est leve.
He sang them in a clear tenor voice.
Hopkins said,  Not one Martian in a thousand will know what that means.
Devers said,  Who cares? Play it anyway. Even if they don t understand the
words they will know it s the old battle hymn of France and that will stir
them up. Besides, the tune is a winner. Infinitely better than that silly
music-hall thing about  No, no. I m telling you, the battle hymn will settle
into every mind and wipe out the no-no.
 Maybe you have something there, said Hopkins.  And if we accompany it with
some strong slogan in different changes,  Humanity to the stars!,  Reach out
for a star,  Faster than light is the slowest we can go. And always with
that tune.
Colodny said,  You know,  la jour de gloire
means  the day of glory, I think. We can use that phrase,  the glory day when
we reach the stars. If we say  glory day often enough, maybe the Martians
will vote,  Yes. 
 It sounds too good to be true, said Hopkins, gloomily,  but I really don t
see that there s any other choice we have right now. We can try it and see if
it does any good.
That was the beginning of the great voting battle of the tunes. In everyone of
the domed settlements on
Mars, from Olympus all along the Valles Marineris and far into the cratered
areas, there rang out on one side,  No, no, a thousand times, no-- and on the
other side, 
Allons, enfants de la patrie--
There was no question that the stirring rhythm of the battle-hymn was having
its effect. It roared back at the simple negation sing-song and Hopkins had to
admit that from zero chance, the  yes vote was becoming a possibility; from
sure defeat, it was beginning to have just a chance.
Hopkins said,  The trouble is, though, we have nothing direct. Their song,
silly though it is, has the advantage of saying,  No--No!--No! Ours is just a
tune which is catchy and is filling the minds of many, but with what?
La jour de gloire?
Devers smiled and said,  Why not wait for the election?  After all, it was
his idea.
They did.
challenge to the reader
What happened on election day? Did the negative vote win or the positive? And,
in either case, why?
The best reason counts. You can win if you have the vote come out negative or
positive.
On the evening of election day, Hopkins found himself almost unable to talk.
The vote had been running a steady 90 percent in favor of  Yes and there was
simply no question about it.
The colonists of Mars were voting to allow their planet to be used for the
work that would eventually send human beings to the stars.
Hopkins said, finally,  What happened? What did we do right? 
 It was the tune, said Devers, smiling his satisfaction.  I had it figured
right, but I didn t want to explain my notion because I didn t want it to get
Page 43
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
out to the other side somehow. Not that I don t trust everyone here, but I
didn t want the tune neutralized in some clever way.
 What was there about the tune that made so much difference? demanded
Hopkins.
 Well, it did have a subliminal message. Maybe the colonists no longer knew
enough French to get the meaning of the words, but they had to know the name
of the battle-hymn. That name rang through their minds each time they heard
the tune; each time they hummed it.
 So what?
 So this, said Devers, grinning,  The name is  Mars say yes! 
FEGHOOT AND THE COURTS
THE PLANET OF LOCKMANIA, INHABITED
though it was by intelligent beings that looked like large wombats, had
adopted the American legal system, and Ferdinand Feghoot had been sent there
by the Earth Confederation to study the results.
Feghoot watched with interest as a husband and wife were brought in, charged
with disturbing the peace.
During a religious observation, when for twenty minutes the congregation was
supposed to maintain silence, while concentrating on their sins and
visualizing them as melting away, the woman had suddenly risen from her
squatting position and screamed loudly. When someone rose to object, the man
had pushed him forcefully.
The judges listened solemnly, fined the woman a silver dollar, and the man a
twenty-dollar gold-piece.
Almost immediately afterward, seventeen men and women were brought in. They
had been ringleaders of a crowd that had demonstrated for better quality meat
at a supermarket. They had torn the supermarket apart and inflicted various
bruises and lacerations on eight of the employees of the establishment.
Again the judges listened solemnly, and fined the seventeen a silver dollar
apiece.
Afterward, Feghoot said to the chief judge.  I approved of your handling of
the man and woman who disturbed the peace.
 It was a simple case, said the judge.  We have a legal maxim that goes,
 Screech is silver, but violence is golden. 
 In that case, said Feghoot,  why did you fine the group of seventeen a
silver dollar apiece when they had committed far worse violence?
 Oh, that s another legal maxim, said the judge.  Every crowd has a silver
fining.
FAULT-INTOLERANT
9 january
I, Abram Ivanov, finally have a home computer; a word processor, to be exact.
I fought it as long as I could. I argued it out with myself. I am America s
most prolific writer and I do fine on a typewriter. Last year I published over
thirty books. Some of them were small books for kids. Some were anthologies.
But there were also novels, short story collections, essay collections,
nonfiction books. Nothing to be ashamed of.
So why do I need a word processor? I can t go any faster. But, you know,
there s such a thing as neatness.
Typing my stuff means I have to introduce pen-and-ink items to correct typos,
and nobody does that anymore. I don t want my manuscripts to stick out like a
sore thumb. I don t want editors to think my stuff is second rate, just
because it is corrected.
The difficulty was finding a machine that wouldn t take two years to learn to
use. Deft, I m not--as I ve frequently mentioned in this diary. And I want one
that doesn t break down every other day. Mechanical failures just throw me. So
I got one that s  fault-tolerant.  That means if some component goes wrong,
Page 44
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
the machine keeps right on working, tests the malfunctioning component,
corrects it if it can, reports it if it can t, and replacements can be carried
through by anybody. It doesn t take an expert hacker. Sounds like my kind of
thing.
5 february
I haven t been mentioning my word processor lately, because I ve been
struggling to learn how it works. I ve managed. For a while, I had a lot of
trouble, because although I have a high IQ, it s a very specialized high IQ. I
can write, but coping with mechanical objects throws me.
But I learned quickly, once I gained sufficient confidence. What did it was
this. The manufacturer s representative assured me that the machine would
develop flaws only rarely, and would be unable to correct its own flaws only
exceedingly rarely. He said I wouldn t be likely to need a new component
oftener than once in five years.
And if I did need one, they would hear exactly what was needed from the
machine. The computer would then replace the part itself, do all the wiring [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]