hiding, one you do not know of. What do you think of that? Does that not worry you? That is how a book with pages can survive, by hiding. By hiding, and by being copied, often by hand, and passed from one reader to another. Such manuscripts are precious. They are carried from place to place, in knapsacks and boots, like contraband.” He slurped some more Heimat, a word which, incidentally, in a once subtle, expressive, beautiful language, now muchly improved, simplified, and functionalized, had meant “Home” or “Homeland.” Indeed, several such languages had been similarly improved by grammar engineers, until their loftiest flights, those incipient twitches in the wing muscles, were now well within the reach of, could now be easily understood by, the most elementary, or most occupied, or most casual or careless mind. Prose inaccessible to, or not easily comprehended by, the mass violated basic principles of egalitarianism. Its discriminatory nature had been proven in various courts of law, in various historic decisions, by suitable, clear-thinking, humane political appointments. Dissenting judges had occasionally been removed from the bench on the basis of judicial incompetence. On the other hand, the important matter was always the majority, and a token opposition, futile and ineffectual, was desirable, guaranteeing, as it did, the openness and objectivity of the judicial process. To be sure, on some worlds collectors of incunabula, of antique manuscripts, were permitted to pursue their eccentric hobby, and in this way, if no other, certain fragments of a pernicious, superseded literature, putatively valued for its historical value, survived. One manuscript, a tattered hand-copied manuscript of a book called Pride and Prejudice by a J. Austen had brought seven thousand, two hundred and twenty-one Commonworld Credits, a standardized economic unit, interestingly indexed to an imaginary economic system on the wilderness of Commonworld, that system itself representing a correlation of more than four hundred common currencies, at a small auction on Naxos. To be sure, at the same auction, a beverage can dating from more than eight centuries ago, had brought more than nine thousand. Interstellar commerce, incidentally, was founded largely on barter, involving a great deal of compromising and bargaining. More than one world’s currency had been subverted through sudden unilateral revisions of its worth, based against the Commonworld Credit. Also, wholesale unilateral abolitions of debts, contract cancellations, expropriations and such, based on perceived internal need or newly discovered moral principles, tended to make interstellar transactions a matter of serious economic risk. It was easier to decide on the value of a weapon-system powerpack or a sack of Bellarian flour, from one’s point of view, as compared to a quantity of ore or a bushel of Velasian grain than on any one of these to a given number of credits, even those of the Commonworld. Speculators in currencies, of course, throve. So, too, did various forms of insurance companies, the professed objective of which was to provide some measure of protection against statistically predictable fluctuations and disasters.
“I would like to read some of your other works,” said Brenner.
“You are better off not knowing about them” said Rodriguez.
“Thank you,” said Brenner.
“They might confuse you,” said Rodriguez. “They might make you think.”
“Thank you,” said Brenner.
“That is a kindness on my part toward you,” said Rodriguez, “indicating I have some concern for your future. Why should I risk you, as I saw fit to risk myself? Too, it is a compliment, as it suggests that I regard you as being capable of thought.”
Brenner was silent.
“Yes,” growled Rodriguez. “You are still young. You are still naive. You are still prizing the rhetoric of inquiry and truth. And you have not yet learned that it is just that, the rhetoric which is to be prized, not the realities, which can be embarrassing, and dangerous.”
Brenner did not understand this.
“I suspect you have not yet learned to dismiss canyons and mountains where none appear on the maps you have been given,” said Rodriguez, looking off toward the end of the room. “I suspect you would be actually troubled to give the map priority over the canyon, to award it precedence over the mountain. You do not yet realize that it is not the canyon and the mountain which are important, but the map. And the map is important not as a representation of reality, which it is not, but as a putative representation of reality, which it is; it is important not because it is true, which it is not, but because it is useful, because of