No political or military dictatorship ever has been one hundred percent successful in identifying and suppressing the malcontents who, typically, conceal themselves behind a veil of silence and bide their time. By sheer law of averages Jaimec must have its share of such as these. And in addition to the pacifists and quasi-pacifists were the criminal classes whose sole concern in life was to snatch an easy profit while dexterously avoiding involvement in anything deemed unpleasant such as mass antics on a barrack square.
A wasp could make good use of all those who would not heed the bugle-call nor follow the beat of the drum, Indeed, even if it proved impossible to trace any of them and employ them individually he could still exploit the fact of their very existence. All that was necessary was first to satisfy himself that there really was such a minority on Jaimec.
By midnight he was back at the hotel confident that in Pertane there lived an adequate supply of scapegoats. On buses and in bars he’d had fragmentary conversations with about forty citizens and had overheard the talk of a hundred more.
Not one had uttered a word definable as unpatriotic, much less treacherous or subversive. Strong, deep-rooted fear of the Kaitempi was more than enough to deter them from condemning themselves out of their own mouths. But at least a tenth of them had spoken with that vague, elusive air of having more on their minds than they cared to state. In some cases two of this type conversed together and when that happened it was done with a sort of conspiratorial understanding that any onlooker could recognise from fifty yards away but could never produce as evidence before a military court.