At that moment I understood for the first time that in any organization, whether there are two members or a thousand, there is more to the distribution of power than meets the eye, even the eye of a member. The outward and visible system of ranks may offer no clue to the invisible system of power. I was right about that in general, I think, but I was wrong in supposing that I understood the specific invisible system of power within the Tars organization. (Sometimes, when I bring my young self to mind this way and see the little guy brightening because he’s concocted a half-baked idea, I wish I could reach out across time and tap him on the shoulder and say, “That’s good, Peter, but there’s more to it. Wait and see.”)
I had decided, reasoning from my insight into the nature of power, that whether I wound up carrying the rank of Commodore or Bayman wouldn’t have mattered, so long as I had become—as I had—Scribe. That was, it seemed to me, where the real power lay. I had it, and I was going to use it.
“All right, guys,” Robby called out. “Line up.”
“No, no, no,” I called out. I waved my arms and shook my head and strode to a position in front of Robby. “That’s not the way you do it. Everybody back into the bleachers,” I said. “We’ve got to do this right. We’ve got to do it by the Manual. A Tar does things by the manual.” As soon as I said it, I knew that it belonged in the manual, as one of the traits, say number three.
To the Tars in the bleachers, I said, “Now go back to doing what you were doing just before Robby—just before Commodore of the First Water Haskins—told you to line up.”
There followed some shuffling about, some discussion, and some disagreement among groups of Tars about what they had been doing just before Robby told them to line up, but finally everyone—even the parents who had come to watch—assumed exaggerated versions of the positions they had been in and engaged one another in exaggerated versions of the conversations they had been having.
To Robby, I whispered, “Now you say, ‘All right, me Swabbies, hit the deck!’”
“All right, me Swabbies,” bellowed Robby, “hit the deck!”
“Okay,” I called out to the Tars, “all you Swabbies run onto the floor and line up facing us.”
To Robby, I whispered, “Now you say, ‘All right, me Baymen, hit the deck!’”
“All right, me Baymen,” bellowed Robby, “hit the deck!”
“Baymen,” I called out, “run onto the floor and line up in front of the Swabbies.”
We continued in that fashion, moving up through the ranks, until all the Tars were lined up in front of us, each Tar standing in front of a Tar of the next lower rank. Something struck me. The Tars were also lined up by height and weight. The shortest, fattest Tars were in the front. The tallest, thinnest were in the back, lowly Swabbies. This seemed an odd and amusing coincidence, and I thought of pointing it out to Mr. Summers, but something prevented me. Call it a hunch if you like; it was as if someone had tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Better wait and see, Peter. There may be more to this than you think.”
“All you Tars of the First Water,” called Mr. Summers. “Into the coach’s office.” He pointed toward the door with his toy bazooka. “For a humility session.”
In Topical Guide 217, Mark Dorset considers Power: Distribution of Within an Organization and Frustration Arising from the Impossibility of Traveling Back in Time to Assist One’s Younger Self from this episode.
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🎧 217: At that moment . . .