Free Planet in Peril by John Christopher

There is no reason to assume they were, and if they weren’t, some of the apparent confusion in leaving Sara Koupal for a fortnight after Humayun’s apparent death is removed. Now, is there anything that still strikes you as odd?”
    Charles hesitated. Then: “The lab wasn’t particularly well protected. All Humayun’s reports were on file there. I admit I was a bit confused at first, but as soon as Sara explained what Humayun had been after, the pieces clicked together. Now these people who are showing such an interest in the whole business—I take it they must know what it is they are interested in. So in that case, why not simply pick up the reports? Why grab me?”
    “That,” Dinkuhl said, “is, of course, the crux of the matter. Why are you important—important enough to be treated with such circumspection by your own managerial, to be offered substantial aid and comfort by my own little group of subversives, and now to find yourself benevolently but firmly held as a prisoner by Interplanetary? The answer is: Your mind and its skills.”
    “I’m afraid that’s nonsense. Sixteen years of a routine lab job don’t make for indispensability. And it isn’t as though the problem is a particularly stiff one. I can’t see it offering insurmountable difficulties to anyone.”
    “Point one,” Dinkuhl said. “The sixteen years were an error. I’ll come back to that in a minute. Point two. I could show you a neat little problem in mike and camera handling which would leave you blank and wondering. It’s not an exceptionally difficult problem, but you wouldn’t get to first base on it, because you haven’t got the basic orientation. Problems look easy to those who can see a way of cracking them; if you haven’t the right kind of mind and the right kind of background, they’re insuperable.”
    Charles said tolerantly: “And I’m the blue-eyed boy— the only one who can crack the nut? An odd coincidence that there should have been three of us linked together— Humayun and Sara and myself.”
    “ Humayun and Sara Koupal ,” Dinkuhl said, “were Siraqis . In a way it was a coincidence that you should have been sent to take Humayun’s place, but the coincidence was a limited one only. Now we come back to the question of those sixteen years in routine research at Saginaw. The coincidence was that after P and M had made their blunder and routed you into D Squad at graduation—what a lot we all know about you, Charlie! —you should have been shoved, entirely by chance, into work on the substance, diamond, that Humayun was going to do big things with fifteen years later.”
    Dinkuhl glanced at him speculatively. “I wonder why you didn’t do anything big yourself?”
    Charles said: “My procedure was mapped out for me. As far as I can see, Humayun was given a free hand. It’s the only way you can hope to get anything valuable done.”
    “And, apart from Humayun , do you know of anyone who has been given a free hand in research?”
    “I only know Saginaw. There were no free hands there.”
    “There are no free hands anywhere, Charlie. But it wouldn’t matter a nickel if they were free, because they would not do anything. Yes, you might have done, but you were the exception—you were P and M’s prize error. If your psychoplan had been properly prepared you wouldn’t have been in research in the first place. You would have been fulfilling your rightful duties as an administrator. Along with Ledbetter and the rest of the boys.”
    Charles said: “I suppose so. You mean—”
    “I’ve been trying to tell you for a long time,” Dinkuhl said. “The managerial state is dead. And to a certain extent, killed by its merits. It evolved a neat system for picking out its better brains and giving them the plum jobs, but it broke its neck on a minor anomaly—that the plum jobs, whatever form of society you base your ideas on, are going to be the administrative jobs, the jobs involving power of men over men.