Sci Fiction Classics Volume 4 (75 page)

"Ah, it's nothing. I experience these symptoms, shortness of breath and so
on, whenever I leave my office for any length of time. What say we go up
to my office now, and I'll show you some typical case histories."

Entering Veck's office, the two men were arrested by a throbbing desert
sunset. Dr. Lane sighed. Breaking off in the middle of a discussion of
pattern attrition, he murmured:

"Who captains haughty Nature in her flaming hair
Can ne'er rest
slothy whilst some lesser groom—"

"What was that?" Veck snapped the blinds shut and turned up the decent
office light.

"Nothing, really. I wrote it for a class in Environmental Humanities."

"Good for you! We social engineers can use a smattering of culture around
the place. Gives us new perspective on our problems. Like this one, for
instance." He threw a dusty folder on the desk. "Mr. C. was a Communist,
and he liked being a Communist. We tried damned near everything. Finally
we learned that a fellow party member had seduced C.'s wife. We simply
told him about this, allowed him to escape, and bingo!"

"Bingo?"

"By killing the seducer, C. proved that he thought of his wife as a piece
of property. It was the first beachhead of capitalism in his commie brain.
With our help he became vitally interested in other possessions, in
getting and spending. His socialism fell away like an old scab. Today C.
is a Baptist minister and a Rotarian."

"Amazing!"

"Or take this case, Mr. von J. Von J. was a malcontent, a hater of
authority. Arrested for vandalism, jaywalking, nonpayment of taxes,
contempt of court. Here we used aversive methods to great effect. The
first step was to teach him self-discipline. We made him hold his urine
twenty hours at a time, memorize chapters of Norman Vincent Peale, and so
on. Now, I am given to understand, von J. is more than a model citizen; he
does some work for the FBI.

"Mr. B. was an anarchist. We placed him in a controlled work situation.
Among those who worked around him we removed everyone of competence and
replaced them with indecisive idiots. They looked to B. for guidance; he
became a straw boss, then a real boss. We rewarded his responsibility with
more pay and privileges. He became a trusty.

"Naturally he escaped. On his return, B. learned that R., one of the idiot
workers who had worshipped him, had, left on his own, committed suicide.

"In this way B. was brought to see that running away doesn't bring
liberty, but slavery. He now realized that the truly free aren't rebels
and anarchists, but those who have submitted their will to a Higher
Authority. The way I put it to him in a little talk was: 'Democracy is
like a spaceship. It may seem stuffy inside, but you can't just step out
for a breath of outer space!'"

Dr. Lane saw his cue, and chuckled. "But how did you really arrange it?
What actually happened to R.? A transfer?"

"Oh, dear me, no." Veck laughed. "We had to string him up in his room, for
real. To make it look good. B. was nothing if not skeptical."

Remorse Code Message

O Hank! You have turnt your face to the wall again. Or anyway you've
stopped acknowledging my messages. And you won't talk to the other
retrainees. Sit there then in the common room, silent and obscure as Gun.
²
Trying
perhaps to etch out a certain territory in the room by exposing it to the
acid of your silence. One by one the others move away to far parts of the
room where they can kibbitz at Ping-Pong or pretend to study the paper
autumn leaves pinned to the bulletin board, wishing all a
HAPPY COLUMBUS DAY. Perhaps you can empty the
room itself, even the wing, or the whole of Fort Nixon, driving away all
life and plastering over the crevices with thick hostile silence.

But you just couldn't have such an unconstructive notion. Not to say such
an asocial, dangerous notion. Because whatever they say about there being
no punishments here, extremely uncomfortable things can happen to the
asocial. And your silence can hardly be construed as "making an honest
effort" at retraining, can it?

Your obstinate silence. Suppose they feel it necessary to counter it? To
bring in the Fort Nixon Silver Band to fill the void? And then certain
select retrainees (the "doctors" staying out of it) might hold you to a
chair while the Silver Band marches past, playing "Under the Double Eagle"
and "Them Basses." Certain select retrainees, known somehow to one
another, might hold you to a chair while the Silver Band sharpens up. They
sharpen the edges of the bells of their trumpets and sousaphones. Then
they extend your tongue and hold it while they saw it off with their
shining instruments. Then they pin it to the bulletin board, among the
autumn leaves.

Listen, Hank, you have friends in high places. One phone call and you can
be out of here, long gone before they put you to work on the Great
Project. Just admit that God is pretty first-rate and God's Own Country
is, gosh, not so bad either, when you get right down under it. Or say
anything, say howdy to your friends and neighbors, the other inmates.
Otherwise I hear the Silver Band massing in the anteroom; I see a wet pink
leaf upon the bulletin board, HAPPY COLUMBUTH DAY, end of Message.

Dr. Lane's Secret Journal (I)

… the question of who he thinks he is trying to contact. Veck
claims he was in prison before, tapped out morse code on the water pipes
with other prisoners and just couldn't break the habit. Though no one here
seems to listen to his tapping.

Yesterday, I tried immobilizing Hank with s.p. and restraints. As I
predicted, he keeps messages going even then, by nearly inaudible tongue
clicks.

A challenging case. Hank evidently was some kind of painter and sculptor
at one time. Later he made a series of animated cartoons of which I saw
only one example. It seemed particularly sadistic to me. The main story
seemed to be a quarrel between dogs, cats, and mice. This version differed
from others mainly in that it strove for realistic violence. Thus when an
animal was struck by an enormous wooden mallet, he did not go dizzy with X
X eyes and tweeting birds and a pulsating red lump. Instead he screamed,
staggered, fell, gushed blood, vomited, lay quivering, and died,
defecating. I believe the cartoon was called "Suffering Cats." It was
seditious.

A challenging case. Today we talked.

LANE: Good morning, Hank. Feeling okay today?

HANK: Try a synthesis of that.

LANE: I'd like to try—

HANK: They're out of it. No good. (Indistinct murmur) Pricks! (Or
"bricks")

LANE: I'd like you to look at these cards and tell me what the story is on
each. What they remind you of.

HANK: Listen, I'm the pope around here. I'm the mural man and I'm the
muracle man …

LANE: What does this remind you of, Hank? (Overturned car)

HANK: It's a picture that's supposed to remind me of the next picture. It
reminds me a little of a car accident. And a mural I once did, about
fifteen hundred miles long. Incorporated a white line, nothing nicer.

LANE: Do you think doing murals is nice, Hank? Isn't it more fun building
things up, painting, than tearing them down?

HANK: Why choose? They don't. It's all part of the same thing, the
seduction of the construction. If you're looking for anarchist bombers,
arrest God, eh? There's the destruction of the destruction for you!

Anyway, it's too late. You can't exactly make an omelette, can you? One of
these days, "Up against the wall, robot!" and it's good-bye Mexico. Their
symbol the cockroach, the meek little bastard that inherits the earth.

A Harsh Physic (I)

The roomful of psychologists and police officials paid little attention
when the president entered. Some were gossiping, and those who noticed his
scurrying figure turned away with disgusted expressions: "That slick
bastard … Let's talk about something else …"

It was different when they saw Bissell of the FBI coming straight from the
door to the lectern. The admiration, envy, and affection they felt for the
little guy could not be expressed in ordinary terms—though perhaps
Freemasons had a word for the stirring beneath the apron.

Bissell gave his report on surveillance. On the whole, random search and
arrest techniques had not proved productive of info on subverts. Intensive
infiltration was being tried with more success, but it took time, men and
money.

"We managed to infiltrate one group of anarchist bombers in the Southwest,
for example, only by an indirect method. Our man on the inside is not
actually known to us—we couldn't risk direct contact. Instead he
passes information to the Bureau and receives orders from it through a
neutral man. We call him a 'circuit-breaker,' because he can break contact
in case of trouble.

"Our 'Listening Post' program has been very successful," he continued.
"This means bugging public and private places where we hope dangerous
subverts might meet. Originally we had planned to use computers to sort
through the vast amount of tape we collected this way. The computers would
search for key words like
black, power, liberation, revolution,
and
government,
and select these portions for further study.

"But we have recruited instead a large number of personnel to do this
sorting job for us. These recruits are trustworthy, keen listeners,
naturally suspicious and absolutely loyal. Best of all, they work for
free."

The president raised his hand. "Just who are these dedicated personnel?"

"I was about to explain, sir, that they are elderly people living in
retirement homes. As they have little to do, listening gives them
pleasure. Many are retired military men, only too glad to still be of
service to their country."

That concluded Bissell's report. Flanked by two of his enormous agents,
the little man marched out of the room. The rest realized they had been
holding their breaths. Now the place seemed empty, as though it had lost
some great dynamic presence—some modern Wilhelm Reich.

At the Rocking R

Brad Dexter peered out of his water-cooled window at America Deserta. As
always, hot and quiet. Fifty degrees out there, or so the ranch
authorities said, and a laborious calculation told him that this was "a
hundred and twenty-two real degrees, Irma! Think of that!"

He propped her up so she could see the shimmering desert. "You know, in
the old days, they used to fry an egg on the sidewalk on a day like this.
No, I guess they only pretended to fry it. I found out later it was a
fake, in
Unvarnished Truth
magazine. I got the issue here
someplace."

Much of the small room was taken up with towering stacks of magazines. The
ranch authorities hadn't liked it, but Brad had insisted on not parting
with a single issue of
Unvarnished Truth.
If a man couldn't live in
comfort at a retirement ranch, just where in hell could he relax? Just
tell Brad that, and he would ask no more.

It wasn't much of a ranch. No horses, cattle, barns, corrals, or pastures.
In fact, it wasn't a ranch at all, except for being stuck out here in the
blazing desert. The Rocking R Retirement Ranch consisted of thirteen great
hexagonal towers called "bunkhouses," each named after some forgotten
child star. Brad and Irma resided on the twentieth story of Donald
O'Connor.
³

"Now where is that article?" Brad leafed through tattered, yellowed issues
containing the latest on the Kennedy assassinations, "I Killed Martin
Bormann," "Her Hubby Was a Woman," "Eyeless Sight," "Birth Pills Can
Kill!" and "How Oil Companies Murdered the Car That Runs on Water." "I
know I had that danged thing someplace— What are you looking at,
honey?"

There wasn't much to see outside. Everything was so still it could have
been a hologram. The electric fence that marked the future location of the
Wall made a diagonal across this picture, starting in the lower right
corner and disappearing over a dune at the upper left. Next to it an
endless sausage curl of barbed wire followed the same contour. Somewhere
beyond the dune lay the work camp where they were building the Wall. Once
a week, Brad had been lucky enough to see a great silver airship carrying
equipment and supplies to the camp, and now he hoped Irma had spotted
another. It was funny about Irma. Even though her eyes never moved, Brad
could always tell when she was intent on something.

Now he saw it, a tiny figure trudging along next to the barbed wire coil,
coming this way. From here, Brad couldn't make out much except the gray
uniform.

"Escapee from the work camp, Irma. And there goes the danged lunch bell.
Well, to heck with that—this is worth missing lunch for!" He took
out his teeth for comfort.

The work camp prisoners were all political agitators, commies, anarchists,
and others who had tried to overthrow the government by force. Brad had
got to see some of them closer up when they came to do some work on the
roof of Shirley Temple. They had built an enormous black box up there—something
to do with the security system for the Wall. Brad guessed it was radar.
The prisoners had all looked well fed and contented, probably better off
than a lot of people that had worked hard all their lives, like Brad.

"This should be good," he said, breaking wind with excitement. "That fool
has been slogging along God knows how many miles in this heat, and all for
nothing. They'll get him. Always do, or so they tell me. I figure they
won't even bother looking for him until they've let him bake his brains a
little. They know what they're doing, all right. There, what did I tell
you?"