Loob opened the door of the cubicle and walked out, pompously, serenely. Sidothi stared after him. The idiotic assurance of the man—that once the process of complete control by hypnotic technique was discovered, it would be given to Loob!
Sidothi had begun to reach the answer three years ago. He had immediately covered up, letting his work take a superficially different line. Then, when he had the technique perfected, he’d used it on Loob himself. Naturally.
At first he’d been shocked, almost sickened, when he found out how Loob controlled Moddo, how Moddo controlled Garomma, the Servant of All. But after a while, he’d adjusted to the situation well enough. After all, ever since the primary grades, the only reality he and his contemporaries had accepted completely was the reality of power. Power in each class, in each club, in each and every gathering of human beings, was the only thing worth fighting for. And you chose an occupation not only because you were most fitted for it, but because it gave the greatest promise of power to a person of your particular interests and aptitudes.
But he’d never dreamed of, never imagined, this much power! Well, he had it. That was reality, and reality was to be respected above all else. Now the problem was what to do with his power.
And that was a very hard question to answer. But the answer would come in time. Meanwhile, there was the wonderful chance to make certain that everyone did his job right, that bad people were punished. He intended to stay in his menial job until the proper time came for promotion. There was no need at the moment to have a big title. If Garomma could rule as the Servant of All, he could rule Garomma at third or fourth hand as a simple Psychological Technician Fifth Class.
But in what way exactly did he want to rule Garomma? What important things did he want to make Garomma do?
A bell rang. A voice called out of a loudspeaker set high in the wall. “Attention! attention, all personnel! The Servant of All will be leaving the Center in a few minutes. Everyone to the main corridor to beg for his continued service to mankind. Everyone—”
Sidothi joined the mob of technicians pouring out of the huge laboratory room. People were coming out of offices on both sides of them. He was swept up with a crowd constantly enlarging from the elevators and stairways to the main corridor where the Service of Education guards prodded them and jammed them against the walls.
He smiled. If they only knew whom they were pushing! Their ruler, who could have any one of them executed. The only man in the world who could do anything he wanted to do. Anything.
There was sudden swirling movement and a cheer at the far distant end of the corridor. Everyone began to shuffle about nervously, everyone tried to stand on tip-toe in order to see better. Even the guards began to breathe faster.
The Servant of All was coming.
The cries grew more numerous, more loud. People in front of them were heaving about madly. And suddenly Sidothi saw him!
His arms went up and out in a flashing paroxysm of muscles. Something tremendous and delighted seemed to press on his chest and his voice screamed, “Serve us, Garomma! Serve us! Serve us! Serve us!” He was suffused with heaving waves of love, love such as he never knew anywhere else, love for Garomma, love for Garomma’s parents, love for Garomma’s children, love for anything and everything connected with Garomma. His body writhed, almost without coordination, delicious flames licked up his thighs and out from his armpits, he twisted and turned, danced and hopped, his very stomach seeming to strain against his diaphragm in an attempt to express its devotion. None of which was very strange, considering that these phenomena had been conditioned in him since early childhood.
“Serve us, Garomma!” he shrieked, bubbles of saliva growing out of one corner of his mouth. “Serve us! Serve us! Serve us!”
He fell forward, between two guards, and his out-stretched fingertips touched a rustling flapping rag just as the Servant of All strode by. His mind abruptly roared off into the furthest, most hidden places of ecstasy. He fainted, still babbling. “Serve us, O Garomma.”
When it was all over, his fellow-technicians helped him back to the Bureau of Healing Research. They looked at him with awe. It wasn’t every day you managed to touch one of Garomma’s rags. What it must do to a person!
It took Sidothi almost half an hour to recover.
THIS WAS THE DAY OF COMPLETE CONTROL.