its social utility, its political value. You have not yet learned to dismiss these unmapped canyons, these unrecorded mountains, to keep them to yourself, to publicly deny them. They are there, of course, in all their formidable height, in all their quantitative massiveness, however ignored, and in all their terrifying widths and depths, dark and unsounded, however denied, however neglected, Perhaps it is as though, in a sense, they are really on the maps, but in invisible ink, and have been for centuries, at least in the works of some cartographers, some explorers, and that they await only the proper social reagent to suddenly emerge, then appearing openly on the map, as they have in the reality. To be sure, some of these mountains lie in remote regions, in the mind; some of these canyons are in dark places, in the heart. But perhaps this will never occur. Surely reality is more hazardous than the map. How many have been injured falling off a map, or tumbling into one? We can control the map; it can be done with a formula, a compass, a straight edge, a little care; the reality is more recalcitrant.”
“I have understood nothing of what you have been saying,” said Brenner.
“Good,” said Rodriguez, blowing out a dark cloud of smoke.
Brenner watched the smoke disappear through the filtering system. He was pleased that the lounge was equipped with this device.
“Do you have any of your other works with you?” asked Brenner.
“No,” said Rodriguez. “I am not stupid.”
Brenner nodded. It might have been difficult to bring certain materials through customs.
“They have been published here and there?” asked Brenner.
“Yes,” said Rodriguez, “here and there.”
“Anonymously?” asked Brenner.
“Sometimes,” said Rodriguez.
“And under various pseudonyms?” asked Brenner.
“Sometimes,” said Rodriguez.
“And under your own name?”
“But not number,” said Rodriguez.
“I see,” said Brenner.
“It depends on the world,” said Rodriguez.
“Of courser” said Brenner. Here and there, of course, there were open worlds, quite different from most worlds, which had almost uniformly discovered the perils of openness. To be sure, almost every world claimed to be an open world. But there were in the galaxy few Hollands, so to speak.
“The sheep,” said Rodriguez, “are told they are gods and with tears in their eyes they yield themselves up to be sheared by their own kind.”
“What?” asked Brenner.
“Nothing,” said Rodriguez.
Brenner was silent.
“Better they were sheared without apology,” said Rodriguez, “as what they are, as what they were born to be, as what they should be, as what more than which they can never be, should never be, and will never be. Better not to lie to them. That truly demeans them. Let them joyously yield up their wool without lies. The hypocrisy is what I most object to. Rather let them joyously yield up their wool as what they are, the givers of wool.”
“You are quite drunk,” said Brenner.
“On so many worlds there are the shearers and the shorn,” said Rodriguez.
“And which are you?” asked Brenner.
“Neither,” said Rodriguez, gloomily. “I am one who stands outside the fence, one who observes, one who laughs, and cries.”
“I see,” said Brenner.
“And there are masters and slaves,” said Rodriguez.
Brenner was silent. Too often had he himself been troubled by such thoughts.
“Should those who should be servants not be servants?” asked Rodriguez. “Should those who should be slaves not be slaves?”
“All are the same,” said Brenner.
“It is not so on the strong worlds,” said Rodriguez, moodily.
“The strong worlds?” said Brenner. Rodriguez had used that expression before, he recalled.
“Yes,” said Rodriguez.
“Openly stratified worlds?” asked Brenner.
“For the most part,” said Rodriguez.
Brenner shuddered. He had little doubt that Rodriguez had in mind, at least for the most part, the numerous worlds, tending muchly to keep to themselves, in which social structures were explicitly stratified, as opposed to being implicitly, or covertly, stratified. Rodriguez would like that. He would like the honesty of that. He was the sort of fellow who found intellectual dishonesty distasteful, however expedient. He might even regard it as undignified. Such worlds tended to be characterized by rank, distance, and hierarchy, expressed in a variety of forms, or structures. There were, for example, familial structures, clan and subclan structures, class structures, merit structures, hereditary structures, feudal structures, caste structures, and such. In such worlds, in one fashion or another, the aristocracy of nature tended to be revealed in civilization, rather than distorted and concealed, or, as the case might be, subverted by those whose talents and self-interest lay largely in the corridors of subterfuge, prevarication, and manipulation.
“I refer, of course,” said Rodriguez, “to stratification