Of course he had seen that human affairs were irrational and unexplainable. This no one could miss. But he realized now that he had been making the assumption that the people who involved themselves in governance were making a good-faith effort to run things in a rational manner, with a view to the long-term well-being of humanity and its biophysical support system. Desmond laughed at him as he tried to express this, and irritably he exclaimed, “But why else take on such compromised work, if not to that end?”

“Power,” Desmond said. “Power and gain.”

“Ah.”

Sax had always been so uninterested in those things that it was hard for him to understand why anyone else would be. What was personal gain but the freedom to do what you wanted to do? And what was power but the freedom to do what you wanted to do? And once you had that freedom, any more wealth or power actually began to restrict one’s options, and reduce one’s freedom. One became a servant of one’s wealth or power, constrained to spend all one’s time protecting it. So that properly seen, the freedom of a scientist with a lab at his command was the highest freedom possible. Any more wealth and power only interfered with that.

Desmond was shaking his head as Sax described this philosophy. “Some people like to tell others what to do. They like that more than freedom. Hierarchy, you know. And their place in the hierarchy. As long as it’s high enough. Everyone bound into their places. It’s safer than freedom. And a lot of people are cowards.”

Sax shook his head. “I think it’s simply an inability to understand the concept of diminishing returns. As if there can never be too much of a good thing. It’s very unrealistic. I mean, there is no process in nature that is a constant irrespective of quantity!”

“Speed of light.”

“Bah. Irrelevant. Physical reality is clearly not a factor in these calculations.”

“Well put.”

Sax shook his head, frustrated. “Religion again. Or ideology. What was it Frank used to say? An imaginary relationship to a real situation?”

“There was a man who loved power.”

“True.”

“But he was very imaginative.”

They stopped at Sax’s apartment and changed clothes, then went up to the top of the mesa, to get breakfast at Antonio’s. Sax was still thinking about their discussion. “The problem is that people with a hypertrophied regard for wealth and power achieve positions that give them these gifts in excess, and then they find that they’re as much slaves to them as masters. And then they become dissatisfied and bitter.”

“Like Frank, you mean.”

“Yes. So the powerful almost always seem to have a dysfunctional aspect to them. Everything from cynicism to full-blown destructiveness. They’re not happy.”

“But they are powerful.”