Web of Everywhere by John Brunner Read Free Book Online

so many ways I agree, and in so many I don’t … ’ Satamori also rose, shaking his head; Mustapha could hear the faint brushing of his nape-hairs on the stiff collar of his formal coat.
    ‘What it comes down to,’ Mustapha said, ‘is that mankind from now on must be governed by artists, not by politicians.There is no other conceivable manner in which a survival-prone society can be organized. We must evolve an aesthetic of government, free from ideological trammels; we must commit our fate into the hands of those who derive artistic satisfaction from seeing a well-ordered community, who will crack their skulls into the small hours of the morning over a flaw in their scheme as I may worry myself sleepless over a line in a poem until it suddenly turns head over heels and comes out right.’
    ‘You think those in power don’t worry like that already?’ Satamori countered wryly. ‘Oh, we do – we do! But, since the subject of your work has arisen by implication, and I have an hour to waste before continuing to Chaim’s, I should much enjoy another tour of your ateliers …?’
    ‘It will be my pleasure,’ Mustapha said, bowing.
    So they passed the next hour in walking around that part of Mustapha’s home where his corps of assistants were at work. He had over a hundred now. They were orphans, of both sexes, whom he had recruited as little children – their parents being dead of violence or disease – and taught a trade that would furnish employment for a lifetime. Some worked in the scriptorium, copying out not only his poems but far more ancient texts, chiefly in Arabic though some in European languages for which they used a classic chancellery hand, and illuminated the result with tiny exquisite drawings based on models provided by the chief scribe, Muley Hassan. Others were busy in the paper-mill, converting old rags, straw, corn-husks and a score of miscellaneous vegetable substances into fresh new deckle-edged sheets. Still others worked in the bindery, where the air was pleasantly scented with glue and size, putting the final touches to the volumes which now commanded collector’s prices the world around, irrespective of whether or not the buyer could read the contents.
    Satamori fell instantly in love with a collection of old folk-tales and put down a deposit of five thousand to secure possession of it when it was finished and properly bound.

INTERFACE F
    Once a fool who loved gold
    Killed his rival to possess
    A lovely golden statue of a god.
    Afraid of being caught
    He melted the statue down
    Saying fire could not destroy its worth.
    They found him starved to death
    In a waterless valley
    His bare fingerbones clutching the gold.
    I do not call him foolish
    Because he could not eat gold
    But because beauty is the food of the soul.
    – M USTAPHA S HARIF

Chapter 6

    Hans was shaking as he entered his darkroom. It was always like this when he returned from one of his secret expeditions. He was on edge because he could never tell in advance whether he would have anything to show for the risk he had run.
    It was getting harder and harder to purchase reliable film. The Economics Authority, of course, knew to the last centimeter how much was currently being manufactured, so for a project of this kind he had to depend on recuperated stock which all too often proved to have been fogged by radiation.
    Neo-Polaroid was easier to come by; the available computing capacity was simply not up to determining whether or not a given buyer was telling the truth when he claimed he’d wasted half his last batch because he was drunk, and thrown the failed pictures in the garbage a month ago. But Hans would not have dared switch to it, because it had to be developed as soon as it was exposed. Carrying visual evidence of his surreptitious journeys would have been suicidal. A film could be blurred by springing the cap of its cassette – he had modified several specially, to make thateasier in an emergency – and he always