"There must," he said, "out of those forty million people, be a few who want to return. But the TV and 'pape reports say they're all ecstatically happy. You've seen the endless TV shows, life at Newcolonizedland. It's — "
"Too perfect, Rachmael?"
"Statistically, malcontents must exist. Why do we never hear of them? And we can't go and take a look." Because, if you went by Telpor to Whale's Mouth and saw, you were there, as they were, to stay. So if you did find malcontents — what could you do for them? Because you could not take them back; you could only join them. And he had the intuition that somehow this just wouldn't be of much use. Even the UN left Newcolonizedland alone, the countless UN welfare agencies, the personnel and bureaus newly set up by the present Secretary General Horst Bertold, from New Whole Germany: the largest political entity in Europe — even they stopped at the Telpor gates. Neues Einige Deutschland... N.E.D. Far more powerful than the mangy, dwindling French Empire or the U.K. — they were pale remnants of the past.
And New Whole Germany — as the election to UN Secretary General of Horst Bertold showed — was the Wave of the Future... as the Germans themselves liked to phrase it.
"So in other words," Freya said, "you'd take an empty passenger liner to the Fomalhaut system, spend eighteen years in transit, you, the sole unteleported man, among the seven billion citizens of Terra, with the idea — or should I say, the hope? — that when you arrive finally at Whale's Mouth, in the year 2032, you'll find a passenger complement, five hundred or so unhappy souls who want out? And so you then can resume commercial operations... von Einem takes them there in fifteen minutes and then eighteen years later you return them to Terra, back home to the Sol system."
"Yes," he said fiercely.