Introduction

“There are those who say the public is an idiot.

That they are right is irrelevant; they are still dangerous.”

­RTS Zheng

Michael Blackstone: removes a pipe from his mouth. My father [Gen. A.W. Blackstone] had invited Zheng to stay with us for a week or two in Corona. They did the usual things, went to the planetarium, the conservatory, the war academy, all the usual places for men of letters and of leisure. Zheng, of course, was not really the latter, and my father was only marginally the former. Nevertheless, they did as was expected.

Interviewer: Why do you suppose your father, by this point, wanted anything to do with Zheng at all?

Blackstone: Zheng had been an old Academy friend of my father’s, and although their lives diverged significantly over the years—my father, for example, would rather have died than spend seven years in a cave by himself; he grew impatient after more than a month anywhere—I suppose my father still felt it was his duty to maintain the old ties.

Interviewer: I believe General Traske once commented that your father was the most traditionally-minded ‘Clast he’d ever met. School spirit fits his character pretty well. But do you suppose that was the only reason?

B: Oh, no, of course not. We’ll get to that.

I: Very well. So. Your father and Zheng spent the week at intellectual pursuits?

B: Yes, well, there was a bit of a play-acting in that, I suspect, as my father was clearly trying to work up his nerve to say something, and Zheng knew it. That something, of course, was Father’s run for the Senate.

I: That didn’t go well at all, as I recall.

B: No, it certainly didn’t. [laughs] My father always blamed Zheng for that, I’m sorry to say.

I: Blamed Zheng?

B: Well, yes. The reason my father had invited Zheng to stay with us in the first place was so he could ask for Zheng’s support. Zheng, of course, was somewhat in vogue in the capital that year—

I: Because of his Interludes?

B: [nods] The brilliance of the Interludes, of course, was that they could be read on one level, as an optimistic endorsement of the new regime, which is how nearly everyone in the capital read it, and on another level as exactly the opposite, a disillusionment with and subtle mockery of politics in general.

I: So your father thought Zheng could help him win a seat on the Senate because people read his poems?

B: And he was correct, as far as that goes. Certainly Zheng was a major reason he didn’t win the election.

I: As every schoolboy knows, Zheng not only refused to endorse your father but began stridently denouncing him in the public forums. Several dozen books have been written trying to determine why Zheng would do that, the most recent being—

B: The Poet and the Warrior, yes. Horribly trite title, doesn’t bode well for the rest of the book. I was given a copy by the wife of the Head Senator, actually. I confess I haven’t yet had time to read it. It’ll get it wrong anyway.

I: So what did happen that weekend to make up Zheng’s mind?

B: One off-hand remark, I’m afraid, spoiled the whole thing for my father. One evening, towards the end of his stay, Zheng was in the study, reading Brooks’ Commentaries in a high-backed chair. Now, everyone who was anyone owned a copy of the Commentaries as a matter of course; Brooks was the accepted voice of the Iconoclasts during the Revision Wars, and of course my father was a ‘Clast to the bone. Zheng, I suspect, to the extent that he involved himself at all, was more interested in what the ‘Clasts and Trads had to say for themselves than in aligning himself with one side or another. It was only the atrocities committed by the Trads that made him associate with the ‘Clasts as much as he did.

I: nods. The bombing of Tenorah, for example?

B: Precisely. Zheng was nothing if not a pacifist. Anyway. Zheng was reading the Commentaries, and my father was sitting in his favourite chair reading the news (and smoking his pipe, of course), and I was playing with my toy soldiers on the rug by the fire. My father looked up from his paper (and I’ve never figured out what prompted this), and barked “It’s a good job the public’s got us to think for them, or they’d not get a G-ddamn thing done!” Zheng looked up from his Commentaries, looked my father in the eye, and said nothing. After a few seconds he went back to reading his book. He never really trusted my father after that, I’m afraid.

Conclude Interview