Nobody was as harmless and vapid as John Edward Yancy. He was just too damn good to be true.
Sweating, Taverner left the main reference room and poked his way toward the rear offices, where busy yance-men worked away at their desks and assembly tables. Activity whirred on all sides. The expression on the faces around him was benign, harmless, almost bored. The same friendly, trivial expression that Yancy himself displayed.
Harmless—and in its harmlessness, diabolical. And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do. If people liked to listen to John Edward Yancy, if they wanted to model themselves after him—what could the Niplan Police do about it?
What crime was being committed?
No wonder Babson didn’t care if the police prowled around. No wonder the authorities had freely admitted them. There weren’t any political jails of labor gangs or concentration camps … there didn’t have to be.
Torture chambers and extermination camps were needed only when persuasion failed. And persuasion was working perfectly. A police state, rule by terror, came about when the totalitarian apparatus began to break down. The earlier totalitarian societies had been incomplete; the authorities hadn’t really gotten into every sphere of life. But techniques of communication had improved.
The first really successful totalitarian state was being realized before his eyes: harmless and trivial, it emerged. And the last stage—nightmarish, but perfectly logical—was when all the newborn boys were happily and voluntarily named John Edward.
Why not? They already lived, acted, and thought like John Edward. And there was Mrs. Margaret Ellen Yancy, for the women. She had her full range of opinions, too; she had her kitchen, her taste in clothes, her little recipes and advice, for all the women to imitate.
There were even Yancy children for the youth of the planet to imitate. The authorities hadn’t overlooked anything.
Babson strolled over, a genial expression on his face. “How’s it going, officer?” he chuckled wetly, putting his hand on Taverner’s shoulder.
“Fine,” Taverner managed to answer; he evaded the hand.
“You like our little establishment?” There was genuine pride in Babson’s thick voice. “We do a good job. An artistic job—we have real standards of excellence.”
Shaking with helpless anger, Taverner plunged out of the office and into the hall. The elevator took too long; furiously, he turned toward the stairs. He had to get out of the Yancy Building; he had to get away.
From the shadows of the hall a man appeared, face pale and taut. “Wait. Can I talk to you?”
Taverner pushed past him. “What do you want?”
“You’re from the Terran Niplan Police? I—” The man’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “I work here. My name’s Sipling, Leon Sipling. I have to do something—I can’t stand it anymore.”
“Nothing can be done,” Taverner told him. “If they want to be like Yancy—”
“But there isn’t any Yancy,” Sipling broke in, his thin face twitching spasmodically. “We made him up … we invented him.”
Taverner halted. “You what?”
“I’ve decided.” Voice quavering excitedly, Sipling rushed on: “I’m going to do something—and I know exactly what.” Catching hold of Taverner’s sleeve he grated: “You’ve got to help me. I can stop all this, but I can’t do it alone.”
In Leon Sipling’s attractive, well-furnished living room, the two of them sat drinking coffee and watching their children scramble around on the floor, playing games. Sipling’s wife and Ruth Taverner were in the kitchen, drying the dishes.
“Yancy is a synthesis,” Sipling explained. “A sort of composite person. No such individual actually exists. We drew on basic prototypes from sociological records; we based the gestalt on various typical persons. So it’s true to life. But we stripped off what we didn’t want, and intensified what we did want.”
Broodingly, he added: “There could be a Yancy. There are a lot of Yancy-like people. In fact, that’s the problem.”
“You deliberately set out with the idea of remolding people along Yancy’s line?” Taverner inquired.
“I can’t precisely say what the idea is, at top level. I was an ad writer for a mouthwash company. The Callisto authorities hired me and outlined what they wanted me to do. I’ve had to guess as to the purpose of the project.”
“By authorities, you mean the governing council?”
Sipling laughed sharply. “I mean the trading syndicates that own this moon: lock, stock, and barrel. But we’re not supposed to call it a moon. It’s a planet.” His lips twitched bitterly. “Apparently, the authorities have a big program built up. It involves absorbing their trade rivals on Ganymede—when that’s done, they’ll have the out-planets sewed up tight.”
“They can’t get at Ganymede without open war,” Taverner protested. “The Medean companies have their own population behind them.” And then it dawned. “I see,” he said softly. “They’d actually start a war. It would be worth a war, to them.”
“You’re damn right it would. And to start a war, they have to get the public lined up. Actually, the people here have nothing to gain. A war would wipe out all the small operators—it would concentrate power in fewer hands—and they’re few enough already. To get the eighty million people here behind the war, they need an indifferent, sheep-like public. And they’re getting that. When this Yancy campaign is finished, the people here on Callisto will accept anything. Yancy does all their thinking for them. He tells them how to wear their hair. What games to play. He tells the jokes the men repeat in their back rooms. His wife whips up the meal they all have for dinner. All over this little world—millions of duplicates of Yancy’s day. Whatever he does, whatever he believes. We’ve been conditioning the public for eleven straight years. The important thing is the unvarying monotony of it. A whole generation is growing up looking to Yancy for an answer to everything.”
“It’s a big business, then,” Taverner observed. “This project of creating and maintaining Yancy.”
“Thousands of people are involved in just writing the material. You only saw the first stage—and it goes into every city. Tapes, films, books, magazines, posters, pamphlets, dramatic visual and audio shows, plants in the newspapers, sound trucks, kids’ comic strips, word-of-mouth report, elaborate ads … the works. A steady stream of Yancy.” Picking up a magazine from the coffee table he indicated the lead article. “ ‘How is John Yancy’s Heart?’ Raises the question of what would we do without Yancy? Next week, an article on Yancy’s stomach.” Acidly, Sipling finished: “We know a million approaches. We turn it out of every pore. We’re called yance-men; it’s a new art-form.”
“How do you—the corps, feel about Yancy?”
“He’s a big sack of hot air.”
“None of you is convinced?”
“Even Babson has to laugh. And Babson is at the top; after him come the boys who sign the checks. God, if we ever started believing in Yancy … if we got started thinking that trash meant something—” An expression of acute agony settled over Sipling’s face. “That’s it. That’s why I can’t stand it.”
“Why?” Taverner asked, deeply curious. His throat-mike was taking it all in, relaying it back to the home office at Washington. “I’m interested in finding out why you broke away.”
Sipling bent down and called his son. “Mike, stop playing and come on over here.” To Taverner he explained: “Mike’s nine years old. Yancy’s been around as long as he’s been alive.”
Mike came dully over. “Yes, sir?”
“What kind of marks do you get in school?” his father asked.
The boy’s chest stuck out proudly; he was a clear-eyed little miniature of Leon Sipling. “All A’s and B’s.”
“He’s a smart kid,” Sipling said to Taverner. “Good in arithmetic, geography, history, all that stuff.” Turning to the boy he said: “I’m going to ask you some questions; I want this gentleman to hear your answers. Okay?”
“Yes, sir,” the bo
y said obediently.
His thin face grim, Sipling said to his son: “I want to know what you think about war. You’ve been told about war in school; you know about all the famous wars in history. Right?”
“Yes, sir. We learned about the American Revolution, and the First Global War, and then the Second Global War, and then the First Hydrogen War, and the War between the colonists on Mars and Jupiter.”
“To the schools,” Sipling explained tightly to Taverner, “we distribute Yancy material—educational subsidies in packet form. Yancy takes children through history, explains the meaning of it all. Yancy explains natural science. Yancy explains good posture and astronomy and every other thing in the universe. But I never thought my own son …” His voice trailed off unhappily, then picked up life. “So you know all about war. Okay, what do you think of war?”
Promptly, the boy answered: “War is bad. War is the most terrible thing there is. It almost destroyed mankind.”
Eying his son intently, Sipling demanded: “Did anybody tell you to say that?”
The boy faltered uncertainly. “No, sir.”
“You really believe those things?”
“Yes, sir. It’s true, isn’t it? Isn’t war bad?”
Sipling nodded. “War is bad. But what about just wars?”
Without hesitation the boy answered: “We have to fight just wars, of course.”
“Why?”
“Well, we have to protect our way of life.”
“Why?”
Again, there was no hesitation in the boy’s reedy answer. “We can’t let them walk over us, sir. That would encourage aggressive war. We can’t permit a world of brute power. We have to have a world of—” He searched for the exact word. “A world of law.”
Wearily, half to himself, Sipling commented: “I wrote those meaningless, contradictory words myself, eight years ago.” Pulling himself together with a violent effort he asked: “So war is bad. But we have to fight just wars. Well, maybe this planet, Callisto, will get into a war with … let’s pick Ganymede, at random.” He was unable to keep the harsh irony from his voice. “Just at random. Now, we’re at war with Ganymede. Is it a just war? Or only a war?”
This time, there was no answer. The boy’s smooth face was screwed up in a bewildered, struggling frown.
“No answer?” Sipling inquired icily.
“Why, uh,” the boy faltered. “I mean…” He glanced up hopefully. “When the time comes won’t somebody say?”
“Sure,” Sipling choked. “Somebody will say. Maybe even Mr. Yancy.”
Relief flooded the boy’s face. “Yes, sir. Mr. Yancy will say.” He retreated back toward the other children. “Can I go now?”
As the boy scampered back to his game, Sipling turned miserably to Taverner. “You know what game they’re playing? It’s called Hippo-Hoppo. Guess whose grandson just loves it. Guess who invented the game.”
There was silence.
“What do you suggest?” Taverner asked. “You said you thought something could be done.”
A cold expression appeared on Sipling’s face, a flash of deeply-felt cunning. “I know the project… I know how it can be pried apart. But somebody has to stand with a gun at the head of the authorities. In nine years I’ve come to see the essential key to the Yancy character … the key to the new type of person we’re growing, here. It’s simple. It’s the element that makes that person malleable enough to be led around.”
“I’ll bite,” Taverner said patiently, hoping the line to Washington was good and clear.
“All Yancy’s beliefs are insipid. The key is thinness. Every part of his ideology is diluted: nothing excessive. We’ve come as close as possible to no beliefs … you’ve noticed that. Wherever possible we’ve cancelled attitudes out, left the person apolitical. Without a viewpoint.”
“Sure,” Taverner agreed. “But with the illusion of a viewpoint.”
“All aspects of personality have to be controlled; we want the total person. So a specific attitude has to exist for each concrete question. In every respect, our rule is: Yancy believes the least troublesome possibility. The most shallow. The simple, effortless view, the view that fails to go deep enough to stir any real thought.”
Taverner got the drift. “Good solid lulling views.” Excitedly he hurried on, “But if an extreme original view got in, one that took real effort to work out, something that was hard to live …”
“Yancy plays croquet. So everybody fools around with a mallet.” Sipling’s eyes gleamed. “But suppose Yancy had a preference for—Kriegspiel.”
“For what?”
“Chess played on two boards. Each player has his own board, with a complete set of men. He never sees the other board. A moderator sees both; he tells each player when he’s taken a piece, or lost a piece, or moved into an occupied square, or made an impossible move, or checked, or is in check himself.”
“I see,” Taverner said quickly. “Each player tries to infer his opponent’s location on the board. He plays blind. Lord, it would take every mental faculty possible.”
“The Prussians taught their officers military strategy that way. It’s more than a game: it’s a cosmic wrestling match. What if Yancy sat down in the evening with his wife and grandson, and played a nice lively six-hour game of Kriegspiel? Suppose his favorite books—instead of being western gun-toting anachronisms—were Greek tragedy? Suppose his favorite piece of music was Bach’s Art of the Fugue, not My Old Kentucky Home?”
“I’m beginning to get the picture,” Taverner said, as calmly as possible. “I think we can help.”
Babson squeaked once. “But this is—illegal!”
“Absolutely,” Taverner acknowledged. “That’s why we’re here.” He waved the squad of Niplan secret-servicemen into the offices of the Yancy Building, ignoring the stunned workers sitting bolt-upright at their desks. Into his throat-mike he said, “How’s it coming with the big-shots?”
“Medium,” Kellman’s faint voice came, strengthened by the relay system between Callisto and Earth. “Some slipped out of bounds to their various holdings, of course. But the majority never thought we’d taken action.”
“You can’t!” Babson bleated, his great face hanging down in wattles of white dough. “What have we done? What law—”
“I think,” Taverner interrupted, “we can get you on purely commercial grounds alone. You’ve used the name Yancy to endorse various manufactured products. There’s no such person. That’s a violation of statutes governing ethical presentation of advertising.”
Babson’s mouth closed with a snap, then slid feebly open. “No—such—person? But everybody knows John Yancy. Why, he’s—” Stammering, gesturing, he finished, “He’s everywhere.”
Suddenly a wretched little pistol appeared in his pulpy hand; he was waving it wildly as Dorser stepped up and quietly knocked it skidding across the floor. Babson collapsed into fumbling hysterics.
Disgusted, Dorser clamped handgrapples around him. “Act like a man,” he ordered. But there was no response; Babson was too far gone to hear him.
Satisfied, Taverner plunged off, past the knot of stunned officials and workers, into the inner offices of the project. Nodding curtly, Taverner made his way up to the desk where Leon Sipling sat surrounded by his work.
The first of the altered gestalts was already flickering through the scanner. Together, the two men stood watching it.
“Well?” Taverner said, when it was done. “You’re the judge.”
“I believe it’ll do,” Sipling answered nervously. “I hope we don’t stir up too much … it’s taken eleven years to build it up; we want to tear it down by degrees.”
“Once the first crack is made, it should start swaying.” Taverner moved toward the door. “Will you be all right on your own?”
Sipling glanced at Eckmund who lounged at the end of the office, eyes fixed on the uneasily working yance-men. “I suppose so. Where are you going?”
“I want to watch this as it�
��s released. I want to be around when the public gets its first look at it.” At the door, Taverner lingered. “It’s going to be a big job for you, putting out the gestalt on your own. You may not get much help, for a while.”
Sipling indicated his co-workers; they were already beginning to pick up their tempo where they had left off. “They’ll stay on the job,” he disagreed. “As long as they get full salaries.”
Taverner walked thoughtfully across the hall to the elevator. A moment later he was on his way downstairs.
At a nearby street corner, a group of people had collected around a public vid-screen. Anticipating the late-afternoon TV cast of John Edward Yancy.
The gestalt began in the regular way. There was no doubt about it: when Sipling wanted to, he could put together a good slice. And in this case he had done practically the whole pie.
In rolled-up shirt sleeves and dirt-stained trousers, Yancy crouched in his garden, a trowel in one hand, straw hat pulled down over his eyes, grinning into the warm glare of the sun. It was so real that Taverner could hardly believe no such person existed. But he had watched Sipling’s sub-crews laboriously and expertly constructing the thing from the ground up.
“Afternoon,” Yancy rumbled genially. He wiped perspiration from his steaming, florid face and got stiffly to his feet. “Man,” he admitted, “it’s a hot day.” He indicated a flat of primroses. “I was setting them out. Quite a job.”
So far so good. The crowd watched impassively, taking their ideological nourishment without particular resistance. All over the moon, in every house, schoolroom, office, on each street corner, the same gestalt was showing. And it would be shown again.
“Yes,” Yancy repeated, “it’s really hot. Too hot for those primroses—they like shade.” A fast pan-up showed he had carefully planted his primroses in the shadows at the base of his garage. “On the other hand,” Yancy continued, in his smooth, good-natured, over-the-back-fence conversational voice, “my dahlias need lots of sun.”
The Minority Report and Other Classic Stories Page 10