A Galaxy Of Strangers

by Lloyd Biggle Jr

  “That’s why it’s so popular,” Franklin said. “Do you know anything at all about what the winners are asking? And getting?” “That’s confidential,” Cahill said.

  “Of course. It’s got to be. The winner doesn’t want the world to know that his success is due to a clever public-relations firm backed by unlimited funds from the National Lottery. The current mayor of Kansas City is a PR Board winner. Just another little clerk that always wanted to be a bigshot. Prockly and Brannot—that’s the Lottery’s PR firm—built him up, gave him tutors in political science and public speaking, wrote his speeches, and organized his campaign. Funny thing is, he’s made a pretty good mayor.”

  “So how can we ridicule that?” Jaffner demanded.

  “What would happen if a PR winner decided he wanted to be President? Do the American people want their high officials selected by a lottery by way of a public-relations firm?”

  “Isn’t that what happens now?” Cahill asked dryly.

  “Consider the other winners. There’s a well-known author who’s never written a word. PR winner, didn’t want to write, just wanted to be a famous author. Prockly and Brannot paid a real author—paid him very well—to ghost three novels for the PR winner. Same thing has happened with two would-be artists who won the PR Board. Prockly and Brannot got them the best in private instruction. That didn’t work—neither would-be artist had much talent. So Prockly and Brannot commissioned paintings to be made in their names. As a result, two well-known modern artists never did a stroke of work on the paintings they’re admired for. There was a pig of an amateur soprano who wanted to be a prima donna at Bayreuth. No amount of training would have helped her—she had no talent at all—so Prockly and Brannot hired the auditorium, the orchestra, and the rest of the cast, and even paid audiences to listen and act properly enthused. For an entire Wagner Ring cycle. The audiences earned their money.”

  “How’d you find out?” Jaffner asked.

  Franklin grinned. “It’s confidential, but Prockly and Brannot aren’t above confidentially letting a prospective client know how effective they are in making PR winners anything they’d like to be. I’m compiling a file.”

  “Well, we’ve certainly got to do something,” Cahill said. “People not only squander their savings on lottery tickets, but now they’re going into debt to buy them. Did you see that loan company’s ad? The company will loan you money to buy your lottery tickets. It’ll also scientifically select a spread of tickets for you to invest your borrowed money in. If a rigged PR Board will bring people to their senses then—by the way, who holds the winning ticket?”

  “Man named Alton Smith. Character I’ve known for years. He was janitor in the old building in St. Louis where I had my first office. He’s retired, now. Has a lifelong hatred for gambling, and lotteries are gambling. Wrecking the National Lottery would be the glorious climax of his life. He’ll co-operate fully.”

  The others were regarding Franklin apprehensively. Any leak, any hint of a suspicion that three business and financial leaders were conspiring to wreck the Lottery could ruin them. A mob actually had lynched the chairman of an anti-lottery group in Rhode Island. Jaffner asked, “Does he know about us?”

  “No,” Franklin said. “Neither does his contact. We’re covered perfectly. Smith will wait a couple of weeks before he claims his prize—just for effect. Then he’ll pretend he thought he was buying a ticket on the VR Board and doesn’t want the PR prize. It’ll scare the Lottery people witless. When he finally breaks down and asks for something, they’ll jump at it—and that’ll be the beginning of the end for the National Lottery.”

  The A Board now bore the numbers 63 74 28, and the spangled young lady was fishing for another globe. Edmund Cahill said slowly, “You have things rigged to make this Alton Smith the PR Board winner, which gives him the prize of being anything he wants to be, and that’ll wreck the National Lottery?”

  Franklin nodded confidently. The young lady dipped a globe, fed it into the launcher, and the number one floated over Yosemite Valley.

  “So what’ll he want to be?” Cahill asked. Franklin smiled. “God.”

  Walner Frayne was one of four Prockly and Brannot employees who held the post of Senior Lottery Consultant. They alternated in planning and supervising campaigns to make the monthly PR Board winners what they wanted to be—whatever they wanted to be.

  Frayne was a valued Prockly and Brannot employee, highly respected and well paid for his skill with Lottery winners. He thought the job idiotic, and he hated it, and several times a year—when confronted with new PR Board winners demanding the impossible—he found himself on the verge of resigning. Then he considered his salary, fringe benefits, expense accounts, seniority, and retirement status, and he desisted.

  With this particular drawing, the idiocy had taken on a new guise. A week had passed, and every board except the PR Board had winning names posted under the winning numbers, from the 63 74 28 19 25 of the A Board (own your own apartment building, enjoy a super income for life) to the 21 91 56 38 40 of the Z Board (the zillion-dollar board, the grand sweepstakes, with numbers from all of the boards eligible except those already drawn). This was normal; since names of PR Board winners were protected by an elaborate security system, they could not be posted. As a result, only the Lottery officials and Prockly and Brannot employees knew that the PR Board prize hadn’t been claimed.

  Frayne and his two assistants, Ron Harnon and Naida Ainsley, had kept packed bags with them since the night of the drawing. The moment the PR Board winner checked in, they had to go to him, obtain his signature on a contract that guaranteed Prockly and Brannot’s services in making him whatever he wanted to be (subject to the conditions stated in the Lottery rules), and put their campaign in motion.

  Wherever he was. Lottery winners had checked in from as far away as Bombay and Brisbane. But a week’s delay was unheard of.

  F. Pierpont Prockly, exuding essence of lavender and lime cigarette smoke, waddled into the office where Frayne and his assistants sat regarding each other glumly. “Nothing yet?”

  Frayne shook his head. “We’ve been listing the possibilities.” He picked up a memo pad. “He’s lost his ticket. He’s in some hospital in a coma. He bought two tickets, and they’re stuck together with the winner underneath. He’s on a meditation retreat in the Amazon jungles—he claimed his prize immediately, but the carrier pigeon was blown off course by a hurricane.”

  Prockly glared at them. Unheard-of situations had to be blamed on someone, and he had the air of a man looking for a candidate. “When the Lottery Governors hear about this—” Gloomily he turned on his heel and left them.

  “There are times,” Frayne announced, “when I wish I was working the T Board.”

  Ron Harnon, who had a youthful unconcern for seniority because he possessed so little of it, said with a grin, “You think it’s easy dealing with elderly women who want to climb Mount Everest?”

  “Nothing to it,” Frayne told him. “I have a friend who works the T Board, he’s with Transworld Travel, and he tells me all you have to do is pick a steep hill near the woman’s home and tell her she’ll have to climb it twice a day for practice. After the third day it’s a cinch to switch her to a trip around the world with a stop at the Everest Hilton on the way to Tahiti.”

  “Have any of the boards ever had an unclaimed prize?” Naida Ainsley asked.

  Neither of them knew, and it was the wrong moment to be making inquiries on that particular subject.

  Another two weeks passed, and they were helpless to do anything but wait. Had the missing winner been on any other board, the Lottery Governors would have launched a worldwide publicity campaign to locate him. With the PR Board this was impossible.

  Finally, on the twenty-fifth day, one Alton Smith timidly presented himself at St. Louis L Headquarters. Frayne left at once for St. Louis, with his two assistants.

  The little house was shabby but scrupulously clean, and so was its owner. Alton Smith was
a small, elderly man with thinning white hair, a wistful face, and an oversized Adam’s apple. His bulging contacts occasionally gave his eyes a glint of humor, but more often he seemed to be gazing into the infinite. His voice had the pathetic squeakiness of the aged. He was so obviously a gentle, kindly soul, and he radiated such innocent friendliness, that Frayne liked him at sight—until he remembered why he was there.

  Then he regarded him with horror. This was the winner of the PR Board lottery prize. He had won the right to be whatever he wanted to be, and no one would ever make of Alton Smith anything other than what he was.

  Smith said wistfully, “I don’t suppose there’s any money.”

  It was not a question. Obviously he knew there wasn’t any money.

  Frayne said firmly, “No. No money. Haven’t you read the rules?”

  “I don’t need it myself,” Smith said apologetically, “but it would be nice to be able to help my daughters.”

  “What would you like to be?” Frayne asked him.

  “Nothing, I guess.”

  Frayne stared at him. “You’ve won the PR lottery and you don’t want to be anything? Then why’d you buy the ticket?”

  “I thought the agent said VR,” Smith said. His manner was that of a first-time offender confessing a crime. “I thought it would be nice to own a little vacation resort. When my number wasn’t drawn, I threw the ticket away. One of my grandchildren found it, and yesterday she was playing lottery with it, checking it against the winning numbers, and when she saw it was the same as one of them she asked her mother what she’d won. So I filed just in case there might be a little money. I wouldn’t have bought it if I’d known it was PR.”

  “Come, now,” Frayne said, radiating a confidence he did not feel.

  “A winning PR ticket is a lot better than money or owning a vacation resort. You can be anything you like ” “I’m too old.”

  “Nonsense. What’s your occupation?” “I used to be a floor manager.”

  Harnon caught Frayne’s blank reaction and leaned over to whisper, “He was a building custodian. He was in charge of keeping floors clean.”

  “How about a promotion?” Frayne suggested. “Wouldn’t you like to be head floor manager?”

  Smith shook his head. “It was a small building, and I was the only one. Anyway, I’m retired.”

  “Or a change in rating?” Frayne persisted. “We could send you to school or get tutors for you.”

  “You could get an engineer’s rating,” Harnon put in. “Operate heating and air-conditioning units. Lots of small buildings hire part-time engineers. The money you earned would supplement your pension.”

  Smith shook his head. “I don’t learn too good. Anyway, I’d rather just be retired.”

  “That doesn’t keep you from being what you’d like,” Frayne said desperately. “Politics? Represent your precinct on the neighborhood council?”

  “I wouldn’t like that. I mostly just like to take it easy and do a little gardening. I guess there’s nothing. I told my daughter there wouldn’t be.”

  Frayne felt himself teetering on the brink of an unthinkable disaster: A PR Board winner refusing his prize! “There’s got to be something!” he exclaimed.

  Smith shook his head. “No. I really don’t want to be anything. I could have used a little money, though.”

  Frayne sent appealing side glances at his assistants and received only blank looks in return. When the silence became embarrassing, he said lamely, “We’ll look into your problem and see what we can work out for you.”

  They got to their feet, and Smith followed them to the door. His manner remained apologetic; he seemed to sense their distress and in his kindly way feel sorry for them. He said, “Maybe—”

  They turned eagerly, but he thought for a moment, shook his head, gestured absently. When the three of them reached the tiny front porch, they turned again. Smith said, “Well—” and they waited expectantly until again he shook his head.

  “I’m sure there’ll be something,” Frayne said. “We’ll get up a list of suggestions and call on you tomorrow.”

  Smith’s eyes were focused on infinity. He said softly, “I used to think it’d be nice to have my own religion, but I don’t suppose—”

  Frayne paused. He was not too panicky to examine a straw with care before grasping it. “Your own religion. Do you mean you’d like to be a priest? Or a minister?”

  Smith shook his head. “A priest has to learn ways to do things, and theology, and things like that. He even has to learn what to say. I’m too old to do very much of that, and anyway, I wouldn’t want people telling me what to say and do.”

  “Your … own … religion,” Frayne mused. He studied Smith perplexedly. “A church of your own? There are ministers or priests who establish independent churches. Some of them even devise their own doctrine and ritual. Just what do you mean by your own religion?”

  “So I could decide things myself,” Smith said.

  “What sort of religion?”

  “Any kind I want.”

  “Some variant of Christianity?”

  “Any kind I want. Like the Pope, only with everything mine. Like -well-God.”

  Frayne winced. He said slowly, “Then you want to be the head of a new religion with a doctrine and ritual of your own devising.” “I guess so.”

  “We couldn’t contract to make you God,” Frayne said, smiling faintly, “but I don’t see why we couldn’t establish a religion for you.” Suddenly he grinned. “It might even be fun. Anyway, you won the Lottery, and our commitment is to make you whatever you want to be. I’ll draw up a contract.”

  It wasn’t until Frayne faced F. Pierpont Prockly that he experienced misgivings, but Prockly received the news noncommittally. “If that’s what he wants, that’s what we’ll give him.”

  “He’s going to wind up his affairs, rent his house, and tell his neighbors he’s going to live with a married daughter in Vancouver,” Frayne said. “He’ll come East as soon as he can get away. I figured we might as well locate his church where I can draw on the staff whenever I need it. We’ve started surveying religions and religious leaders, but what we’ve found isn’t very helpful. Founders of religions always have their careers prophesied before their births, they’re born of virgin mothers, they’re mature philosophers at the age of six, they perform miracles, and so on.”

  Prockly waved a hand. “That’s only a mess of mythology concocted by their followers after their deaths. Or maybe it’s theological speculation, but theologians are notorious liars. How much of that mishmash was known or believed during their lifetimes?”

  “Maybe some of the miracles.”

  “We’ll have miracles,” Prockly said confidently. “Problem is to get people to believe. Once they start believing, they’ll believe anything. Look at the testimonials a worthless nostrum can inspire. Mountain spring water or chicken soup can have curative properties if people want to believe it. Make Smith’s religion impressive, make the doctrine make sense, train him to perform the rites effectively, and he’ll develop a following that will experience all kinds of miracles.” Prockly tilted back and folded his hands over his ample paunch. “You’re wasting your time analyzing myths. What you’ve got to do is run a computer analysis on the established religions. Find out what each one has that’s universally appealing. If you combine those elements, you’ll have a universal religion that’ll appeal to everyone.”

  Naida Ainsley and Ron Harnon gazed at Frayne blankly. “How was that again?” Harnon asked.

  “Boss’s instructions,” Frayne told them. “We take each of the established religions and peel away its encrusted traditions. When we get down to the skeleton we’ll find something in its doctrine or ritual that’s universally appealing. That’s what we use to build our religion.”

  Hamon said doubtfully, “You mean—we’re to analyze priests’ costumes and borrow a robe pattern from the Buddhists, and a hat or something from—what’s his name—the Chinaman—”<
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  Naida Ainsley said frostily, “Confucianism isn’t a religion.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Hamon said. “It passes for one. If it’s got anything with universal appeal, let’s use it.”

  “I don’t agree,” Frayne said. “My own hunch is that the success of any religion must be due more to its uniqueness than its universality. The measure of its success is the number of people the uniqueness appeals to. Otherwise, one religion would have crowded out all the others long ago.”

  “But wouldn’t it be possible to base a religion on sound psychological principles?” Harnon asked.

  “Sound psychological principles and theological universals,” Frayne suggested. Harnon nodded eagerly. “Then suppose you tell me what they are.”

  “I guess maybe we’d better get started with that computer analysis,” Harnon said.

  “You do that,” Frayne told him. “We’ll also need Smith’s ideas on religious doctrine. Whatever we decide will have to please him. Naida—can you go to St. Louis today and talk with him?”

  Benjamin Franklin had called a special meeting. He led Cahill and Jaffner into his sumptuous private office and got them seated. “I want you to hear something,” he said.

  “What’s gone wrong?” Cahill demanded gloomily.

  “Everything is going perfectly. That’s why I want you to hear it. Smith is recording his Prockly and Brannot contacts for us. They sent one of their employees, name of Naida Ainsley, to interview him and find out his ideas about theology and doctrine and ritual and so on so they can give him the kind of religion he wants. Here’s the interview.”

  Franklin placed a pockette on the cube beside him and touched a button.

  Naida Ainsley’s voice: “I understand that, Mr. Smith. But most of the great religious leaders came to us as prophets—for gods, or a god, or for some religious principle or other. It was only much later that their followers made them gods. Will your religion have a god?”

  Alton Smith’s voice: “I don’t understand.”