Happiness: A Planet by Sam Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

days.”
    “But,” Tulla gazed up incredulously at him, “you could’ve had a ship down there in two days.”
    “Yes , I could, if I’d had a ship. But the Inspector’s been on Torc the last four weeks, and I can’t override standing police orders. The other ship went out on patrol before it became a Priority. It’s due back,” he glanced to the clock, “in one hour. It’ll be sent to Happiness straightaway.”
    “But you’ve got a Departmental ship at your disposal. Why didn’t you go?”
    “A Director leave his station?!”
    “You could’ve sent your Sub.”
    “You telling me how to do my job?”
    Munred had considered sending one of his sub-departmental Directors. To the interviewing board, however, he knew that overreacting was a worse sin than inaction. The profligate dispatch of the Departmental ship to Happiness would, therefore, not have impressed them.
    “Do you know how many caveats there are about interfering in the life of a planet?” he asked Tulla, “I can sum them all up in one neat phrase — By Request Only. And no-one has requested that I interfere.”
    Below her spiky yellow hair Tulla was now a burning shade of crimson. As before, whenever she had encountered officialdom, it had failed to see the obvious, had stood in her way with its proper procedures, had been so busy passing the buck that it had done nothing. A conglomerate of thin-skinned careerists regarding the universe only in how it applied to themselves; careerists who took no chances, made no advances, just covered their tactical retreats. Now she said,
    “Interfere? That planet at this moment may be uninhabitable. They don’t have a stable life-support system down there. They have a climate. And extreme climatic effects produce suicides, homicides. Weather! Haven’t you heard of it? Certain winds alone can create harmful emotional states, can exaggerate emotional states. A simple climatic change has been known to send a peaceful people to war! What effect will a missing moon have on the climate, what effect will the climate have on the people? The simple answer is that we don’t know. And that is why, down there, we have people monitoring machines, machines monitoring people. We trust to nothing. All is fallible. And those machines two weeks ago, correct me if I’m wrong, asked you to investigate.” She made an effort to calm herself, “A whole planet loses communication Munred.... it seems logical to send a ship.”
    “Seems logical I’d have found out about a missing moon before now.”
    “Certainly. If I had been asked to check that particular planet, then most certainly you would have found out about the missing moon earlier. As it is I merely happened to chance upon it in the course of my survey.”
    “How was I to know its moon was missing?”
    “You weren’t. But you knew that there was something amiss with the planet. Ask any technician, Munred, why he is better than his machines; and he will tell you that it is his intuition, his ability to arrive at valid decisions on insufficient data. Do something Munred.”
    “I am dammit. I am.”
    “What?”
    They went over old ground — the police ship, his not having sent the Departmental ship, his not being told about the moon, her not being told of the loss of communication. Back and forth went the accusations, until Tulla thought the squabble both pointless and unseemly.
    Although the deliberately cultivated inactivity of Service personnel is often held up to ridicule, it has to be said that, generally, such inactivity is beneficial to our civilisation. Too often in the past humankind has created administrative systems which have worked, but which have subsequently been undermined by those employed within them. In an attempt to justify their salaries and their position those employees unnecessarily interfered with the system’s workings. In self-justification they felt that they had to do something, and so they conjured up, for instance, a new indexing