6.8 What have we found

(Glehe, neighbour) My dear, what is this I found among the books you gave? Is thet possible
(Litha) What are you thinking of?
- I think of the unbelievable and educational story of the smoking wars. Let us understand each other, I know tha the wars are inseparable from the history of humankind, but it was all so long ago, while we were all within one parshan from each other.
A longer rest. We look at each other. I don't know what to tell him. He seems as if [he was] completely ignorant, as if his twenty odd generations were enough to forget all the ugly [stuff] from our common ancientness... or maybe they were not. He looks at me as if he knows everything, or knows nothing because it is all clear to him. I gather the best sincerity I can.
- The smoker wars were no [real] wars. The writers overdo it a little, to sound more important. There were no dead nor wounded, [there was] no shooting.
- But what [was] all that for?
- How can I explain "selling fog" to you. It's such an oldterran thing.
- I will try hard to understand.

Teacher's patience. Every honor to him. If I didn't know that almost all [of them] are like this, I would have thought they have really staged a "planet-sized Potrebkin's vilage". Should remember who of us said that and why. They are so sickly polite and understanding, I think I would kiss the first [one] who would call me names.

- Does by you exist a [manner of] speech, in which one [thing] is told, and all the [time the] intention is to not mention something else... actual intention is to divert the attention, to remove the prying eyes from the main subject, by making big noise about something on the side?
- Just like waving a big bone at a puppy so it won't see the meat?
- Works. Something like that, just raise it to... the size of the known universe.
- In smoker wars, who was waving and who was a puppy?
- The powers were waving, and simple people were the puppy. Many did see through the game, but whenever it went about the lunch, almost all, oh well, puppies, barked a lot about the bone, and just a few were looking for the meat. Long, unfathomable long it took the puppies to start seeing.
-The picture is clear to me, but I fear that our symvol systems are not congruent enough, so to prevent me from getting it wrong, forgive the old man, what was it really about?
- Big deals [make you] dirty. Can't have scrambled eggs unless you break the eggs. If it wasn't me, it would be someone else. Megs over megs of pretexts like that for destroying planet after planet. They were not actually destroyed, but by the time the business enterprises fully blossomed there, they didn't look too much like their own selves either. Same things were sold everywhere, even not specially necessary ones, and the people were cunningly persuaded to buy them. The same roads, posts were built everywhere, the same language and script were introduced over the domestic [one], because it's cheaper that way, and all in all the better part of known worlds was empoverished for the sake of big firms' benefit.
- What the smokers have [to do] here?
- They were the powers' best hit. The power was under the public fire because of things seen - dirtying and destroying the nature. The culprits were known, and what is it all about, whose trash poisons the water and the soil, and who is making money on it, and who was signing permits for each of the poison shops to be erected. But, the culprits were too powerful, and too close to the authorities. When the real culprits are intouchable...

A flash of sudden understanding in his eyes. Does not hint to [anything] nice, as if I have given away some tiny slimy secret of mine, and he didn't imagine me capable of such things. Will we remain good neighbours after this?
- ...a scapegoat is sought. I don't know what a goat is, and probably neither do you. The saying must be holding for kilos now, if we both know it in spite of that.
- I wouldn't be amazed if you were right. The smokers fit the role best. First, since [their] childhood they know smoking is no good - they are brought up that way. Thus, they are ready themselves to play the role. Their environment, in turn, seeks such a victim. It is accustomed to have one. Through the early history of humankind various sorts of victims drag - slaves, kmets, entertainers, servants, Gebreii (ghe-breh-ee), Zhipshans, sebars, all the possible minorities - which were abusable, unpunishedly, by anyone in their own times. There were not just a few of such times - there were more centuries when such was possible, than those when [it was] not. There still is no generation which never knew the rules of that game. As the modern democracies were established and the politics was in many ways forced to play softer, things like that were gradually removed, equal rights were set up and the sacrifiable layers vanished, were revoked. Under pressure, the powers offer such a victim again, again denigrating a minority and the calling the majority to take aim. This time it was smokers who were to blame for everything. The crowd, eager to avenge all of its troubles, and aware in some dim corner of its submind that the real culprits stand out of reach, is hardly waiting to spill its bitterness on someone. The governments pass various laws, forbid smoking at various places, until they finally bring things to an edge when "being a smoker" becomes a sufficient reason to get bounced out of a bar, to lose advantage you gained otherwise fairly, to be blamed in a divorce, to have them break into your house and check if you're smoking in a room with unsmokers present... they can do anything to you. The crowd, miraculously, even in places where law was never spelled with a capital letter, abides to it, and neatly reports the violators. The only thing left to you is to change sides, or planets. On some planets, the laws were... milder.
- You smoke?
- Yes, when I want to. But, the air is so clean here, and life so calm, that the wish rarely appears. No, I am not from a smoker planet, but my grandpa is.
This has vividly surprised him. Maybe Ajthat could have been a proto-pattern for whatever was happening on such worlds, or was it all a replayed mutiny on "Blighty", with paradise on a deserted island.
- Smoker planet?
- Ah, I see you didn't read it all!
- I was so upset already around the half [of it], I expected you would calm me down. Until then I wished not to read further.
- Two or three things happened in parallel. Pressed by the laws against smoking, many people gathered on the worlds where smoking was tolerated. Not gathered - moved. And united. Ancestry societies, legislature pressure groups, research.
- What was researched?
- Ah, well I did say they had a feeling they were somehow doing something wrong. The smoke did contain some harmful ingredients. [Put] aside how accurate were the stories of the actual harmful effect - they all exaggerated there, each to his own side, and independent inquiry could not even be. Everyone was suspected of working for, or taking one of the sides. The smokers moved toward creating a harmless smoke.
- And that solved the dispute?
- No, it was dissolved before that. They set forth a goal to create such a smoke which will satisfy both sides. "Satisfy" meant that a committee of twenty most zealous smokers and unsmokers sit in the same smoky room, and that neither side grumbles. They did make it in the end, when the tempers cooled down a little, when tolerance was praised again, and when better part of those laws were retracted.
- Retracted?
How are our lives tangled with laws. Each time I stumble over that misunderstanding of theirs over our legal catches. Is it possible they succeeded forgetting thousands of years of precedent cases and previous rulings, and make something so short and clear that all can know and doesn't even need to be written down? Each of our laws required a lengthy explanation, and not just at first reference.
- Yes. Just as [much as] a law can be invented, so changing it can too. It was achieved several ways - as first, the smokers had it over their heads to be lied about so much, so they found a way to cast [those] lies into their authors' face, with all the world watching. Then, they brought up the hidden to visible - whose gains were the biggest, whose damages the worst by these laws. Worst of all, they published the names of the smokers who were the most warmongering against the smokers, by keeping the right to be abstained from the laws they were passing, being powerful enough to prevent it being known. They found this all out aided by many unsmokers who were on their side from the beginning. And that's about all the story. The first ecological legislature followed. There were tugs here or there about that as well, but the example of the "smoking war" has brought a good part of the humankind to its senses. Sinse then it is hard to...
- ..."sell a horn as a candle"?
- Well you will really learn all sorts from us. Or is it you picking what you will learn?
- Unfortunately, my child, pick I must. This book will remain locked our place. I beg you best [I can] not to give it to anyone; why, we can not stop you from trying, but better don't [do that]. We can surround you with silence wall quite easily, and we are not glad to treat guests like that. Things like this, which happened by you just two or three generations ago, speak of the danger of letting you in here. The five of you are clean, keep your [things] in order and mind the surrounding, but how many of such of you [people] are there on your worlds? Even smaller things take as much as thirty generations to be forgotten, and what about the age old habit to start prosecuting so easily, or to tread the age old rights in the name of some doubtful new ones.
- It is all clear to me. I am often ashamed of my kin. I am born there, no good running away [from it]. Wherever [may] I go, [what is] mine will [follow] after me. I'll rather stay, and better as much as I can.
- And then it is written that you volunteered... even that fits. Let's go to dinner, and get me to understand after it what are those "laws" if you can't live without them.
I felt stumped. By the way, how much have those smoking wars created me? I took no part in them, [I was] born late enough. I was as much connected with that, when I found an archive where I had dug up the evidence that the Gondvan natives did not die off from smoking, but from the illnesses brought by new masters' messengers of good will. And from the bullet and axe, of course. After all, they were smoking a few centuries before the rest of the world heard about it, and were still numbering enough to receive those people when they came to rob them.