Outside, bells were ringing.

"Happy New Year."

The ceiling stared back at him.

The mad sound of people crazed for the moment, shouting, echoed the bells.

"Happy New Year!"

He turned his head to one side.

"Happy New Year!"

And again ... and again ... and again.

THE AMBa.s.sADOR.

By Sam Merwin, Jr.

All Earth needed was a good stiff dose of common sense, but its rulers preferred to depend on the highly fallible computers instead. As a consequence, interplanetary diplomatic relations were somewhat strained--until a nimble-witted young man from Mars came up with the answer to the "sixty-four dollar" question.

Zalen Lindsay stood on the rostrum in the huge new United Worlds auditorium on the sh.o.r.e of Lake Pontchartrain and looked out at an ocean of eye-gla.s.ses. Individually they ranged in hue from the rose-tinted spectacles of the Americans to the dark brown of the Soviet bloc. Their shapes and adornments were legion: round, harlequin, diamond, rhomboid, octagonal, square, oval; rimless, gem-studded, horn-rimmed, floral-rimmed, rimmed in the cases of some of the lady representatives with immense artificial eyelashes.

The total effect, to Lindsay, was of looking at an immense page of printed matter composed entirely of punctuation marks. Unspectacled, he felt like a man from Mars. He was a man from Mars--first Martian Amba.s.sador Plenipotentiary to the Second United Worlds Congress.

He wished he could see some of the eyes behind the protective goggles, for he knew he was making them blink.

He glanced down at the teleprompter in front of him--purely to add effect to a pause, for he had memorized his speech and was delivering it without notes. On it was printed: HEY, BOSS--DON'T FORGET YOU GOT A DINNER DATE WITH THE SEC-GEN TONIGHT.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Lindsay suppressed a smile and said, "In conclusion, I am qualified by the governors of Mars to promise that if we receive another s.h.i.+pment of British hunting boots we shall destroy them immediately upon unloading--and refuse categorically to s.h.i.+p further beryllium to Earth.

"On Mars we raise animals for food, not for sport--we consider human beings as the only fit athletic compet.i.tion for other humans--and we see small purpose in expending our resources mining beryllium or other metals for payment that is worse than worthless. In short, we will not be a dumping ground for Earth's surplus goods. I thank you."

The faint echo of his words came back to him as he stepped down from the rostrum and walked slowly to his solitary seat in the otherwise empty section allotted to representatives of alien planets. Otherwise there was no sound in the huge a.s.semblage.

He felt a tremendous lift of tension, the joyousness of a man who has satisfied a lifelong yearning to toss a brick through a plate-gla.s.s window and knows he will be arrested for it and doesn't care.

There was going to be h.e.l.l to pay--and Lindsay was honestly looking forward to it. While Secretary General Carlo Bergozza, his dark-green spectacles resembling parenthesis marks on either side of his thin eagle beak, went through the motions of adjourning the Congress for forty-eight hours, Lindsay considered his mission and its purpose.

Earth--a planet whose age-old feuds had been largely vitiated by the increasing rule of computer-judgment--and Mars, the one settled alien planet on which no computer had ever been built, were drifting dangerously apart.

It was, Lindsay thought with a trace of grimness, the same ancient story of the mother country and her overseas colonies, the same basic and seemingly inevitable trend, social and economic, that had led to the revolt of North America against England, three hundred years earlier.

On a far vaster and costlier scale, of course.

Lindsay had been sent to Earth, as his planet's first representative at the new United Worlds Congress, to see that this trend was halted before it led to irrevocable division. And not by allowing Mars to become a mere feeder and dumping ground for the parent planet.

Well, he had tossed a monkey wrench into the machinery of interplanetary sweetness and light, he thought. Making his way slowly out with the rest of the Congress, he felt like the proverbial bull in the china shop. The others, eyeing him inscrutably through their eye-gla.s.ses and over their harness humps, drew aside to let him walk through.

But all around him, in countless national tongues, he heard the whispers, the mutterings--"sending a gladiator" ... "looks like a vidar star" ... "too young for such grave responsibility" ... "no understanding of the basic sensitivities"....

Obviously, he had not won a crus.h.i.+ng vote of confidence.

To h.e.l.l with them, all of them, he thought as someone tapped him on a shoulder. He turned to find du Fresne, the North American Minister of Computation, peering up at him through spectacles that resembled twin scoops of strawberry ice-cream mounted in heavy white-metal rims.

"I'd like a word with you," he said, speaking English rather than Esperanto. Lindsay nodded politely, thinking that du Fresne looked rather like a Daumier judge with his fas.h.i.+onable humped back and long official robe of office.

Over a table in the twilight bar du Fresne leaned toward him, nearly upsetting his colafizz with a sleeve of his robe.

"M-mind you," he said, "this is strictly unofficial, Lindsay, but I have your interests at heart. You're following trend X."

"Got me all nicely plotted out on your machine?" said Lindsay.

Du Fresne's sallow face went white at this pleasantry. As Minister of Computation his entire being was wrapped up in the immensely intricate calculators that forecast all decisions for the huge North American republic. Obviously battling anger, he said, "Don't laugh at Elsac, Lindsay. It has never been wrong--it can't be wrong."

"I'm not laughing," said Lindsay quietly. "But no one has ever fed me to a computer. So how can you know...?"

"We have fed it every possible combination of circ.u.mstances based upon all the facts of Terro-Martian interhistory," the Minister of Computation stated firmly. His nose wrinkled and seemed to turn visibly pink at the nostril-edges. He said, "d.a.m.n! I'm allergic to computer-ridicule." He reached for an evapochief, blew his nose.

"Sorry," said Lindsay, feeling the mild amazement that seemed to accompany all his dealings with Earthfolk. "I wasn't--"

"I doe you weren'd," du Fresne said thickly. "Bud de vurry zuggedgeshun of ridicule dudz id." He removed his strawberry spectacles, produced an eye-cup, removed and dried the contact lenses beneath. After he had replaced them his condition seemed improved.

Lindsay offered him a cigarette, which was refused, and selected one for himself. He said, "What happens if I pursue trend X?"

"You'll be a.s.sa.s.sinated," du Fresne told him nervously. "And the results of such a.s.sa.s.sination will be disastrous for both planets. Earth will have to go to war."

"Then why not s.h.i.+p us goods we can use?" Lindsay asked quietly.

Du Fresne looked at him as despairingly as his gla.s.ses would permit. He said, "You just don't understand. Why didn't your people send someone better attuned to our problems?"

"Perhaps because they felt Mars would be better represented by someone attuned to its own problems," Lindsay told him. "Don't tell me your precious computers recommend murder and war."

"They don't recommend anything," said du Fresne. "They merely advise what will happen under given sets of conditions."

"Perhaps if you used sensible judgment instead of machines to make your decisions you could prevent my a.s.sa.s.sination," said Lindsay, finis.h.i.+ng his scotch on the rocks. "Who knows?" he added. "You might even be able to prevent an interplanetary war!"

When he left, du Fresne's nose was again growing red and the Minister of Computation was fumbling for another evapochief.

Riding the escaramp to his office on the one-twentieth floor of the UW building, Lindsay pondered the strange people of the mother planet among whom his a.s.signment was causing him to live. One inch over six feet, he was not outstandingly tall--but he felt tall among them, with their slump harnesses and disfiguring spectacles and the women so hidden beneath their shapeless coveralls and harmopan makeup.

He was not unprepared for the appearance of Earthfolk, of course, but he had not yet adjusted to seeing them constantly around him in such large numbers. To him their deliberate distortion was as shocking as, he supposed wryly, his own unaltered naturalness was to them.

There was still something illogical about the cult of everyday ugliness that had overtaken the mother planet in the last two generations, under the guise of social harmony. It dated back, of course, to the great Dr. Ludmilla Hartwig, psychiatric synthesizer of the final decades of the twentieth century.

It was she who had correctly interpreted the growing distrust of the handsome and the beautiful among the great bulk of the less favored, the intense feelings of inferiority such comely persons aroused. It was from her computer-psychiatry that the answer employed had come: since everyone cannot be beautiful, let all be ugly.

This slogan had sparked the ma.s.s use of unneeded spectacles, the distortion harnesses, the harmopan makeup. Now, outside of emergencies, it was as socially unacceptable for a man or woman to reveal a face uncovered in public as it had been, centuries earlier, for a Moslem odalisque to appear unveiled in the bazaar.

There were exceptions, of course--aside from those who were naturally ugly to begin with. Vidar-screen actors and actresses were permitted to reveal beauty when their parts demanded it--which was usually only in villains' roles. And among men, professional athletes were expected to show their faces and bodies au naturel as a mark of their profession. Among women the professional courtesans--the "models", not the two-credit wh.o.r.es--displayed their charms on all occasions. Beauty was bad business for lower-caste prost.i.tutes--it made such clients they could promote feel too inferior.

These specialists, the models and gladiators, were something of a race apart, computer-picked in infancy and raised for their professions like j.a.panese sumo wrestlers. They were scarcely expected to enter the more sensitive realms of the arts, business affairs or government.

It was, Lindsay decided, a h.e.l.l of a state of affairs.

Nina Beckwith, Lindsay's Earth-a.s.signed personal secretary, was leaning far back in her tilt-chair with her feet on the desk. Her eyes were squinted behind chartreuse-tinted flat-oval lenses to avoid fumes from a cigarette stuck in a corner of her wide mouth. She had shut off the air-conditioner, opened the picture window and pulled the pants of her coverall far up above her knees to let the warm New Orleans September air wash over her skin.

Lindsay looked at her legs with surprise--it had not occurred to him that Nina owned such a long and shapely pair. He whistled softly through his teeth.

Nina removed her smoke, sighed and made a move to stand up and let her coverall fall back over the exposed limbs. Lindsay said, "Not on my account--please! Those are the first good looking legs I've seen since leaving Mars."

"Watch yourself, boss," said Nina and indulged in a slow half-smile. Then, putting her feet back on the floor, "You certainly lost a lot of friends and disinfluenced a lot of people down there today. If you'd prepared your speech on the machine I'd have fixed it up for you."

"Which is exactly why I prepared it in my hot little head," Lindsay told her. "I wanted to knock some sense into them."

Nina got out of her chair and snuffed out her cigarette in the disposal tray, then sat on the edge of the desk and poked at the untidy dark-blonde hair she wore in a knot on top of her head. She said, "Night soil! You'll never knock any sense into that mob."

Lindsay, who had been thinking wistfully that if Nina would only do something about that hair, the thickness of her middle, and her bilious complexion, she might be fairly good looking, blinked. He said, "Why in h.e.l.l do you work for them then?"

She shrugged disinterested shoulders, told him, "It's a job." She yawned, unabashed, added irrelevantly, "You know, boss, the trouble with you is you look like a gladiator. They won't take you seriously unless you wear specs and a harness."

"Over my dead body," he told her. "What's wrong with athletes anyway? I play d.a.m.ned good tennis when I get time to practice."

"Athletes are lousy lovers," she said. "Your correspondence is on your desk." She nodded toward it. "Get it signed, will you? I've got a dinner date."

Lindsay restrained an impulse to ask her with what and signed the letters dutifully.

Nina was a spy, of course, or she wouldn't have the job. In view of his own a.s.signment and the delicacy of Terro-Martian relations at the moment, she must be a good one.

He handed her the letters, noted the slight sway of her thick body as she walked toward the dispatch-chute. A pity, he thought, that the rest of her failed to match the long perfect legs she had so unexpectedly put on display.

"Oh, Miss Beckwith'" he called after her. "You don't have to list my appointments on the teleprompter when I'm making a speech after this."

She stopped, cast him an oblique glance over one shoulder and said without much interest, "I didn't know whether you'd get back here or not--and it wouldn't do to forget the Secretary General."

"All right," he said in resignation. When she had gone he wondered if he should have told her what du Fresne had said about his possible a.s.sa.s.sination, decided it was just as well he had kept mum. He went up on the roof for a copter.

The dinner was informal. Lindsay and Fernando Anderson, the flamboyant junior senator from New Mexico, were the only guests. They were four at the charming ante bellum mahogany table of the Secretary General's Natchez mansion. Carlo Bergozza, the Secretary General himself--courteous, with natural as well as harness-stooped shoulders, a trifle vague--and his daughter and official hostess, Maria--vividly brunette and dynamic despite the twist given her body by her harness and the mask of huge triangular spectacles--made up the rest of the party.

The meal was simple, automatically served, well prepared. It consisted of plankton soup with chives in chilled bowls, noisettes of lamb with yeast-truffles and bamboo-gra.s.s and, in deference to Lindsay, a dessert of Martian lichenberries. Conversation consisted of routine gambits and responses until the dessert.

Then Senator Anderson removed his diamond-shaped raspberry gla.s.ses and said, "You'll pardon me, but I want to see what our distinguished visitor really looks like. After all, he can see us as we are."

Secretary General Bergozza looked briefly shocked. Then his overpowering courtesy came to his rescue and he laid aside his own dark green spectacles. He said, "You know, Lindsay, you remind me a little of an American amba.s.sador to the Court of Saint James a hundred and fifty years ago--I believe his name was Harvey. He refused to wear knee-britches to his own reception. Other times, other customs."

"I'm sorry if my appearance is bothering people," said Lindsay, noting that Maria, without her gla.s.ses, came close to being a truly pretty young woman. "I'm not trying to disturb them--I merely want them to see me as a true representative of my own world."

Maria said impulsively, "It isn't that you bother us--not really. It's just that you're a little too good looking. Almost like a gladiator. People aren't used to it in a statesman."

"Too good looking--with this busted beak of mine?" Lindsay pressed a finger against his nose, which had been broken in youth by a wild pitch.

Senator Anderson said, "The slight irregularity of your nose is just enough to keep you from being too pretty, Lindsay." He smiled and added, "You certainly stirred up a cyclotron with your speech this afternoon. The British are planning a white paper."

"I merely stated facts as I know them," said Lindsay.

"They aren't used to facts--not unless they have been computer-processed," said the senator. He seemed pleased for some reason, added, "You may have broken some real ice, Lindsay. I've been trying for years to work out a way to tell people computers are robbing them of all powers of decision."

"All they have to do is confine them to mathematical problems and let people decide human ones," said Lindsay.

The Secretary General cleared his throat. He said, "Without the computers there would be no United Worlds. There would be no world at all, probably."

It was a rebuke. Carlo Bergozza redonned his spectacles and rose from the table. He said, "If you'll excuse me I have some business to attend to. I'm sure my daughter will see that you are properly entertained." He left the room with slow, old-man steps.

Maria said fondly, "Poor darling, he gets so upset. He'll take a pill and go to sleep. Let's go to the bathroom, shall we?"

Though outwardly the Secretary General's mansion was hyper-gingerbread steamboat Gothic, inwardly it was entirely modern in plan. There was a living room, of course, for formal receptions, but as in all normal Earth-dwellings of the period the bathroom was the lived-in chamber.