After he reached Earth several weeks later, Mirni was questioned far longer and more intensively than on Fingal. This was what he had expected and hoped for. The psychographers of Earth were less inclined than those of Fingal to regard him as a possible source of militarily, or politically, useful knowledge, to be wrung from him and reported to the appropriate government branches. They were more inclined to take him at face value as a perhaps unique example of advanced psychometric manipulation, and thus as an unusually interesting research subject.
But their results were as disappointing to Mirni as were those of the earlier questionings. No concealed memories were nudged into consciousness. As test after test yielded nothing, he had to fight a growing sense of depression.
The months of examination produced occasional moments of excitement, though.
One came when a beet-faced security official barged into the Psychomed Center one day, storming angrily over Mirni's "presumptuous interference in Earth-Fingal relations." Mirni had, of course, recounted his interview with the Foerst, and his examiners had sent a transcript of it to Interstellar Affairs, and hence to Diplomatic Security.
"I'm very sorry, sir," Mirni told the angry official. "I didn't mean to interfere, but . . . well, the Foerst had problems, and his people had tried to help me with mine. So I tried to suggest something that might help him. But he didn't consider my idea very plausible—"
"Oh, didn't he!" growled the security man. "Then why has he sent Fingal's worst muck-monger reporter into Central Europe to do a series of exposés on the so-called 'Plight of the Homefolk'?"
"Then he is using my suggestions," said Mirni, feeling cheered by the thought.
"He is," the official snapped. "And now, since you were so helpful to the Foerst of Fingal," he went on with heavy sarcasm, "perhaps you will also be so kind as to suggest a way for your home planet to get out of the mess you've put us in!"
"I'll be glad to help any way I can," Mirni replied earnestly, "but I don't think you should worry about the discontent being stirred up in Europe. It will blow over soon—after the most dissatisfied people have left for Fingal. The easing of population pressure will have a soothing effect."
"You're saying we should stand still for these insulting lies!" exploded the official. "These aspersions on the fairness of the government of Earth! And from a planet that keeps most of its people in serfdom!"
"You can't win an argument by calling a liar a liar," said Mirni. "But, if Earth needs to strike back at Fingal, maybe the best way would be with jokes. The Foerst is a grim, humorless man, and he wouldn't take jokes at all well. And jokes would imply that the whole Central European business was too trivial to be viewed seriously."
The security official stared at Mirni as if wondering about his sanity. "Jokes, huh? Could you suggest one to start with?"
Mirni shook his head. "I'm afraid I can't . . . I'm not feeling very funny these days."
"This beats all!" yelled the official, spinning and stalking ferociously out of the lab.
One of the researchers, who had stood by taking all this in, said to Mirni, "That's the first time I've ever seen you meet somebody and not win his friendship."
"Oh, he likes me all right," Mirni replied distractedly. "He just enjoys being angry."
Several days later he was called in to see the Psychomed Center's research chief. She regarded him with soft, motherly eyes and fingered a report on her desk.
"This is only a preliminary summary of our examination of you, Dalton," she said. "The full analysis will take six or seven weeks yet. So don't take this as the last word."
Mirni nodded glumly. She was trying to let him down easy.
"Our two basic findings are these," she continued. "First, your memories are accurate, so far as they go. Our random cross checks indicate a consistency that could not be produced by any conceivable means of artificial memory-planting. You actually spent twenty years among extraterrestrials, with the companionship of the play-people. And you were being trained.
"Second, your lost memory of that training is, I'm afraid, total. It is not waiting in some corner of your brain to spring out when appropriately keyed."
Mirni nodded. He expected this.
"That's about it, Dalton," the research chief concluded. "You can have a copy of this summary which, as I said, is not final. But now I think the best thing for you would be to exteriorize your interests—put these weeks of introspection behind you. Find something to do with yourself, and with your talents. Make a place for yourself in the society of people."
"My place has been erased," Mirni objected dully.
"Then make yourself another," she urged him. "That might be easier than you think. There's a gentleman waiting in the next office who might help you do it. Go in and talk to him."
The man in the next office arose from the chair in which he had been fidgeting when Mirni entered. He was a pink-skinned, vigorous oldster with a shock of white hair and a sunny expression.
"Mirni?" he asked, extending his hand. "I'm Wilbert K. Neff, chairman of the Institute of Governmental Studies, which you've probably never heard of. Get your jacket and we'll get out of this sick-room smell. Let's hustle!"
Hustle they did, at a pace that left Mirni excited and confused from being rushed into and out of a ground car and on to a noisy pub, where Neff led the way to a corner booth. A loud comic was holding forth on the 3V, and Mirni caught a snatch of a gag that ended with " . . . flipped by the flexible finger of the Fourth Foerst of Fingal!" The resulting roar of laughter was cut off as Neff flicked on the booth's sound curtain.
The man chuckled as he punched an order for drinks. "That Fingal affair is funnier than the 3V comics realize," he said. "I hear the squirmings in the President's conference chamber were something to behold when the council members sneered your 'joke' suggestion into oblivion and then 'recreated' it out of their own ingenuity."
"They're doing what I suggested?" asked Mirni.
"Indeed they are! But don't expect credit for it—not from them. What congratulations you get will have to come from such unimposing persons as myself."
"Your title sounds imposing," Mirni commented.
Neff sipped his drink and got down to business. "The Institute of Governmental Studies is not government-connected, nor confined to any one planet. It's a private operation supported by a dozen foundations. It had its beginnings way back in the pre-space era. Our work is described by its name. The IGS collects data and, on request, makes studies of whatever governmental problems anybody cares to drop in our lap. When a study is complete, we pass along the results and our recommendations. I want you to come to work with us."
"Oh. What would my job be?"
Neff shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe to boot me out and take over the whole show! I've learned a good bit about you, Mirni, and you look ideal for our line of activity. That training you got, manipulating your play-people, seems to have given you a rare insight into political ways and means. I'm offering you a chance to develop and use that insight."
"To solve problems, the way I tried to for Fingal?"
"Yes, and the way you did for Captain Devista on the Strahorn. You did better there, I would say, than on Fingal—probably because you had more pertinent information to use."
Mirni nodded guiltily. "I was sloppy in my thinking about Fingal, I guess. I did need more information, and maybe I was too anxious to please. I should have figured out something that wouldn't increase, even for a moment, the hostility between Fingal and Earth. And I shouldn't have left Fingal with a split-population problem in the making."
"But you got the immigrants moving away from Earth en masse again, for the first time this century," gloated Neff. "The unpleasant side effects are trivial compared to that! The people have to keep moving outward, or we'll wind up in a mess that nothing short of interstellar war can end. Conditions are already bad—everybody suspicious of everybody else."
"Yes, I know," Mirni agreed. "Is that the kind of thing IGS is concerned about?"
"Very much so!"
"Then I'll be glad to try to help," Mirni said.
IGS was small, with a staff of some four hundred persons, all of whom seemed to share Neff's inclination to hustle. Mirni hustled, too, although he soon realized the "hurry syndrome" was a response to a feeling of inadequacy. Relations between the human-settled planets were almost unanimously strained, and were worsening steadily. And the Institute, seemingly alone in its effort to find sound, unbiased resolutions to the vast complexity of discords, was indeed inadequate for the task.
So Mirni hustled. One of his first acts was to devise a means of getting IGS into action on urgent issues about which the Institute had not been consulted. This was his "review and insinuate" approach, in which IGS would inform some ex-client planet that a closed study had been reexamined in the light of recently-acquired data, and that additional recommendations were being dispatched. These recommendations would manage to touch upon—at least in passing—the urgent issue IGS wanted a hand in, thus "insinuating" the Institute into the role it desired.
And with the Institute's research facilities at his fingertips, Mirni soon proved his ability for finding useful means of settling troublesome disputes, some of which had lingered stubbornly for centuries. Also, he could phrase recommendations in ways that appealed to their recipients, and made their acceptance likely. This all but eliminated the most aggravating burden of any strictly advisory operation—that of convincing the clients they should heed the offered advice.
The task was endless, but with Mirni's arrival it soon ceased being hopeless. The Institute was making headway, and so were interstellar relations.
"You're a marvel, Mirni, my boy!" Neff enthused one morning. "There's no stopping you! What's your objective—first President of the United Planets?"
Mirni laughed, as he often did since joining the Institute. "Nothing like that, boss. I'm all for a United Planets, but the IGS gives me a better means of getting work done than any government position could. But watch yourself, sir, because I do have my eye on your job—and maybe on your granddaughter!"
"You'll be welcome to both with my blessings, son," Neff grinned, putting his feet on his desk and relaxing. "Any time!"
His work and Patricia Neff had preoccupied Mirni so fully that the letter from the Psychomed Center caught him by surprise. It was a jolting reminder of an unhappy mental state that, while less than two months behind him, had seemed distant and almost forgotten. Unwillingly, he tore open the envelope and scanned the contents, picking out key passages:
"Our preliminary summary is fully supported by further study of the data . . .
"The obvious question is: Why did the 'teachers' choose to erase Mirni's training? Only one tenable answer presents itself, although we have searched diligently for an alternative explanation. To put it bluntly, Mirni flunked out of their 'school.' Presumably the nature of his studies was such that the non-graduates cannot be released with possibly dangerous partial knowledge. At any rate, we conclude that Mirni's performance was not satisfactory.
"This finding is in no way a criticism of Dalton Mirni. We consider him a superior person in every respect. If he flunked out of the 'school,' then the human race itself flunked out. Needless to say, we trust that this finding will not be communicated to the public, as it would be harmfully and pointlessly depressing.
"The detrimental effect on morale . . . has perhaps manifested itself in one researcher, DV, on our staff (See File DV-437). Unable to accept the evidence of humanity's poor rating in the estimation of the 'teacher' race, DV denies that Mirni flunked out. To support this belief, he states that the only knowledge Mirni lost was theoretical, and that Mirni was permitted to keep skills derived from the theoretical training.
"As DV explains the case, Mirni can be compared to persons who are taught the 'theory of science' of some field to aid them in developing special skills which, once acquired, will function without further referral to theory. He cites artists and musicians as typical examples. When confronted by the fact that such persons remember their more academic preparatory work, he admits this is true, but argues that such retention is not essential to skilled performance.
"In Mirni's case, the theoretical training postulated by DV was in 'advanced political science,' from which working and retained skills were developed during the play-people 'lab course.'
"The essential failure of DV's hypothesis is that it offers no satisfactory reason for the removal of Mirni's memory. DV's only suggestion is that the teaching of 'advanced political science' is a role jealously guarded by the 'teachers,' that perhaps it is a role no 'student' could adequately fill. Thus, Mirni's theoretical knowledge was taken from him so that he would engage in no vain attempts to train others.
"This is far too conjectural, and too wishful, a line of thought to be taken seriously."
All this was not easy to take. It stirred a dull echo of that sick emptiness that had hit Mirni, months before, when he had first discovered his loss. Still, he was able to feel a wave of sympathy for the researcher DV, who was finding the situation so difficult to accept.
But of course DV was wrong. He had to be. Mirni's training—whatever it may have been—could hardly have been to prepare him for something as simple as this political work he was doing for IGS. Why, this was just play-people stuff! Satisfying, useful work, certainly, but work that could be done by anyone with the understanding needed to get along with people and to comprehend the mechanisms of society. There was no—no wisdom required. Definitely not a twenty-year accumulation of wisdom.
Still, DV could be right, Mirni mused. There was no actual evidence to prove the man wrong. There was a possibility that Mirni was now engaged in precisely the kind of work for which the teachers had prepared him. It was a tempting idea, anyway, and—
And that was just the trouble with it, Mirni concluded with a feeling of impatience with himself. It was tempting! He, more than DV or anyone else, could fall very easily into the trap of wishful thinking on this subject. If he had learned any lesson well among the play-people, it was not to cling to some cherished notion despite abundant logic and evidence that the notion was wrong. Such clinging was the road to irrationality.
Disappointments had to be accepted, and lived with. And for that matter, he had no time to waste grieving over a lost dream—not with the chore of establishing peace and relative tranquility among a hundred and sixty-two planets on his hands, plus a dinner date with Pat Neff.
Mirni stuffed the report in a bottom drawer and got to work.