Los Angeles

by Philip Wylie

  A President’s cabinet, a meeting of a university faculty, could hardly be more urbane. These tycoons were not like the images held by the militant young. They were not ogres, not utterly ruthless, not the ignorant and greedy robber barons who’d fought their way to the top earlier in the century with the one aim of success. They were, instead, and for one thing, far better educated than those present-day, hostile kids even intended to become. Their goal was money, for themselves and their stockholders. But, by and large, their means to that end were neither vicious nor inhuman. These weren’t “merchants of death,” and they did not take the “public be damned” attitude.

  The trouble was that the anti-Establishment kids had never known anybody in “the Establishment.” They had a bloodthirsty image on big business men valid two or three generations ago, when the capitalist robber barons and child-exploiters enraged Karl Marx.

  Rufus Cooper’s first speech as this meeting came to order had amused Glenn for that reason.

  “I haven’t explained why I called this meeting. And I cannot thank all present adequately for the endless sacrifices they’ve made to be here. However, as most of you have doubtless noted, the thirty-seven of us come in three species. Nine of us are major scientists. Twenty-six, industrialists and leaders of big business. Two are military—Admiral Beacon and General Roaral. All of us, in various ways, are aware of the growing concern of Americans, of everybody, over the dangerous state of our environment.

  “The twenty-six of us who represent a singularly large and potent part of business and industry are also aware that the effort to restore our world-habitat, to end pollution, will heavily, expensively and, some of you may fear, fatally involve your enterprises. We in industry have, so far, played it in various ways. A few have made expensive attempts to get off the pollution hook. More have made gestures and then tried to magnify them in the public mind to a degree not real. Others have done nothing, angered at accusations but well aware of the value of their products, whatever they may be, and sure that their industry must be continued, power, mining, and so on—however contaminating it may be. The cost of providing such goods and services without damaging the so-called eco-sphere would be too great for the market to absorb.

  “Nine of us are scientists, as I said, and my thought was this:

  “We, members of the Establishment, and influential ones, need a clearer insight into the precise nature of ecological damage we are doing, or may be. With that, and only with that, we can be able to join in a collective contemplation of the vast, broad and complex realities. These, I suggest, our experts, the scientists, should first set forth, as elaborately as they wish, and until the rest of us understand whatever they explain. After that, and only then, the rest of us will be able, I hope, and this is my purpose for so odd and so covert a meeting, we in business and industry can consider, together, what we must do, what we can do, how quickly and by what means.”

  Cooper had then introduced each of his guests, with a short and, inevitably, impressive sketch of every man’s attainments. Then he had let the scientists start talking—four hours ago.

  Glenn’s first reaction had been astonishment. Whatever he had expected, it was not this. For he had certainly been suspicious. He had tried to imagine what devious power-play this bizarre effort would concern. Some international cartel arrangement, some combined attempt to shift the men and women in the House and Senate—for special ends. Pricefixing on some hidden but consumer-robbing scale. Even, some sort of attempt to organize industry with a view to putting down the violence, leftist, student and young-instructor “revolution” that had wracked America for years. An extra-state effort with its own enforcement agents, say.

  And what was it?

  Did he, too, have a bit of the student mistrust of the Establishment—and did that cause his now-dissolved suspicions? Maybe.

  But here was the Establishment—met, secretly, to try to make sense of the nation-wide, valid and increasing concern over its environmental decay.

  Or, Glenn began to think as the scientists took turns describing real and possible, probable and also “unknown but knowable” horrors man was creating for his future, was the Establishment aim, here, truly that benevolent? The way most of the twenty-five czars of corporations put their questions, entered their comments and tried to argue with scientific fact, suggested to Glenn that perhaps, and just perhaps, the “Boiling Wells Meeting” might, when the scientists finished, be something else.

  A cabal, say, to find ways and means of silencing the statistics of peril and details of imminent woe—a conspiracy of that sort.

  When Cooper called a two-hour break for lunch, Glenn elected the swimming pool instead of the indoor cocktails. There was a bar at the pool, in any case. And more. The “life guard” was a beautiful Amazon, extroverted and willing. The poolside bar tender was brunette and petite and pretty enough for stardom. Two maids in swim suits carried drinks around and also, their selves, lovely, appetizing, pert, sexy to look at, sexier to talk to, and willing, also. Very.

  He took a martini, smilingly didn’t take an offering lass—and no hurt feelings.

  Cooper joined him after a while and beckoned Glenn away from diving, at which he was expert.

  Out of earshot at the poolside, in the greenish tint the plastic dome gave to the sunlight, Cooper said, amiably. “Want to talk to you a sec. What was your reaction to the morning?”

  Glenn chuckled. “Somewhere, I read, that a human being in pain can reach a point at which the agony is so severe, nothing more can increase it.” He saw Cooper didn’t quite relate the idea. “You can also get just so scared—and then, added terrors cannot add to your fright.”

  Cooper laughed. “Right! But, Glenn, look! Short of the apex of your fear, most people, well, panic.”

  “I don’t feel there’s much panic in America, about this environment thing. Rather, the reverse. People regard the crusade for clean environs as a fad, a commie gambit, even, as anti-American, since it suggests industry must be made to reform. My—media—have followed that latter line. Said, as many ways and as often as people could stand the load, that we better reform. Consumer, polluter, cities, all of us.”

  Cooper was silent. He needed to think and Glenn watched the various little acts that gave him time without disclosing he needed time … unless somebody like Glenn observed.

  He wriggled his toes and then, finding a grain or two of sand between them, flicked it out. He pinched the roll of fat that was the only concentrated evidence of the fifteen or so pounds of excess weight, most of it evenly padded over his muscular body. He’d played football at college, Glenn remembered. Then Rufus dropped his feet into the water as if checking its temperature. Next, he followed an ant that somehow had found a way into this green-lidded paradise, pool, bar, dressing rooms, tables, chairs—and girls.

  Finally, he pushed his damp, sandy hair back from his forehead and after that he turned back to Glenn, grinning amiably. “Getting bald. People keep telling me I need a hairpiece. Baldness, though, is a sign of virility, so I am told by my doctor.”

  Encounter, Glenn thought. This guy’s out to get me, somehow, or change my views, something. It was a fact Rufus’ eyes confirmed. They were large eyes and well set, light brown and direct, usually, very direct, as if Rufus Cooper feared no man, owed none, harmed nobody and loved nearly all. But that extremely attractive gaze and its facial emphasis, half smile, a sort of muscle-readiness to react just as any other or others would like, at this next

  This activity was becoming a science: kenisics.

  Some people have perfect eye-control, some, though not as many, add mouth-management; of these, some are handmotion alert. But nobody is able to make every bodily motion fit every intended aim. A man (a woman!) will not need any subconscious and computer like self-management if what he (or she) is doing or saying is completely honest, whole and so, not requiring efforts for false emphasis or diversion. But the most careful attempt at hiding a motive, fact, feeling or aim, will a
lways involve so much, a whole body, that some part of it will give away the apparent sincerity or integrity.

  A twisted foot, a spread hand, a nervous push of elbow—and the performer is revealed. Glenn had time to wonder, watching Rufus Cooper, how and when he had consciously caught on to that great truth about human communication. And it occurred to him, since he had not put the question to himself in the past but merely accepted and enlarged his ability in the affair, that he had noticed it as a teen-ager, even at thirteen, when he began to try to press cute classmates toward more intimate and productive pleasures. By fifteen or sixteen, Glenn had become an expert at the “does-she, doesn’t-she?” puzzle—up to an appropriate level of do-don’t for his age and the times.

  But he had not been aware that the same useful evidence was always supplied by men until after Yale, after

  So, now, Rufus Cooper was going to try to snow him.

  When Cooper finally spoke—and the period of his silence, of Glenn’s reflection and his self-disclosure—had been less than twenty seconds. The subject they’d opened was picked up as if without interruption. Cooper, Glenn knew, wasn’t aware of that lag—another clue.

  “Sure, Glenn. I know you’ve used that big people-pusher you own, to advocate more attention to conservation, to cleaning the dirty environment and all. My statistical staff in my Chicago offices have a run-down on the way all important opinion-molders are acting, in the matter. But, look. You heard the triple-domes and super-brains this morning. You’ll hear more of the same, this afternoon. What’s your net reaction, so far?”

  Glenn realized that Cooper implied the “net reaction” of his media and so, himself, was not one the tycoon approved. but he felt no need to play games. He didn’t try to return a faintly false smile. He knew Rufus pretty well and liked him quite well though he was aware the man put his business above all else.

  Glenn’s reply was calm, straight and easy. “My reaction? I think it must be the same as everybody’s. The more you hear about the numbers and varieties of ecological dangers, the clearer it becomes that we’re in trouble. In the soup. And have to do more, much more, than at present, to get out.”

  Rufus nodded with an excellent attempt at agreement. He didn’t realize he had briefly balled both fists. “Sure, sure. But there’s one thing about these scientific fellows that always bothers me.” He waited to be asked “what” and went ahead when not asked. “They’re never sure. Maybe we’ll be harmed some day if too many species of those sea-things die off and the oxygen-cycle slows down. Maybe the earth will warm up and the seas rise. Maybe the glaciers will return. But when? Or, which? Oh, some day, and maybe which way—hot or cold—is not now known. Maybe—”

  Here, Cooper burlesqued the voice and mannerisms of one of the morning speakers, Dr. Elmer Wintner Eddy, a biologist of great repute and also one of the few who was producing a torrent of scare-material for the public press, radio, TV, and in books and by lecturing. Eddy’s high, near-stutter was mimicked to perfection. His hand-slicing gestures were only slightly exaggerated. His pauses-with-scowling were aped with no need of burlesque.

  “So—gentlemen—we cannot date the future hour of any of the potential calamities I—and my colleagues—have begun to outline.” Lethal scowl. “We have merely touched on some ingredients.” A hand-chop as Eddy’s list followed, one for each. “Thermal pollution. Radioactive pollution. Pesticides. Herbicides. Asbestos. Lead. Selenium. Mercury. Cadmium. Acids. Strong alkalis. Human overcrowding as nine tenths of us move into one per cent of the nation’s space. The hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide and dioxide. Ozone—killing trees to five thousand feet around Los Angeles. Sewage. Phosphates. A-a-a-nd s-s-s-so on.”

  Glenn was close to roaring laughter, just on the honest side of that kind which is overdone. Rufus Cooper was a startingly good mimic—a new thing to learn about the man. An interesting thing. Because all, or nearly all of those who are born to or achieve command are multifaceted people. It is not odd or strange that, Glenn reflected, Elias Gant, now talking to the lovely Amazon lifeguard across the pool, was, also, a tympanist. Good enough to join any symphony orchestra, good enough to play first position in several—if he chose to quit forging steel.

  Rufus Cooper saw Glenn’s glance and winked. He waited with pleasure till the flattering but deserved laughter ebbed. “See what I mean?”

  Glenn’s brown eyes, dark, fixed on the other’s light ones. “That small men go for big women?”

  “They often do—and Elias is a prime example. But, no. About our endangered environment, so-called. I was trying to show you that the men who know the most—and you’ll agree that my collection is superb—haven’t much hard information on anything really cataclysmic.”

  “They’re scientists, is all. Of course they won’t commit themselves to exact prediction. The knowns are ominous, but the unknowns—and they are millions—make it impossible for them to tell you flatly that such-and-such a calamity will happen in fourteen years, three months and two days. So?”

  “So, why should American—or world industry, for that matter—spend billions and billions to try to prevent what are only possible, imaginable, theoretical ‘disasters’ of which not one can be firmly predicted?” He saw Glenn was about to interrupt. “Wait a sec! Suppose we all did what these nine chaps hint we should, and as fast as they—well—hinted? It would wreck the economy. Why, Elias Gant would have to quit turning out cars and trucks and even military vehicles. Hold the works—fifteen-billion-annual-gross—to retool, and that only when and if a way was found to build vehicular power plants that don’t contaminate the air, soil, seas, whatever. Which is, currently, not possible to do or even imagine how to do. If all those horrors were solid not a man, here, could stay in business! Not even you—power plants supply the energy for your radio and TV. Paper-makers are the base of your newspaper chain—and terrible polluters.

  “Of course,” he went on, having seen disagreement rise in Glenn’s eyes, “over the long pull, these messy acts have to be curbed. Grant you that. But slowly, man! Slowly. And on a sounder basis than the ‘perhapses’ of the egg-heads.”

  Glenn let that fall in a silence of his own.

  “Actually,” he finally said in his quiet, deep voice, with its curiously emphatic effect for all its softness, “actually, what we need is a planet-wide survey to find out more facts so as to set up priorities in antipollution efforts. Till we know which risk and risks are most dangerous and most imminent, we can’t do anything that’s sensible. Oh, spend a few hundred federal millions on sewage treatment, smoke-abatement, stream recovery—what congress does, now—is something. But it may not be within a dozen steps of the right thing, supposing we knew the priorities of peril. Knew what to get to work on most and first, because that thing and those things are what is about to hurt us most and soonest.”

  The speech, Glenn saw, was having a peculiar effect on Cooper. His first reaction had been negative but, soon, he had begun to stare at Glenn as if he were uttering some profound and absolute new truth, dictating a new Bible, almost. And when Glenn finished, Cooper’s eyes were direct, admiring, friendly and ablaze.

  “Glenn, you’re a genius! Of course! So why not start plugging that very program on your media?”

  Glenn smiled. “Why not? Probably should … will!”

  “Terrific!” Rufus enthused. “Beautiful!”

  He stood up, eyes now following the steel-maker and the lady lifeguard as they started toward a cabanna. In a moment, he looked down at Glenn with amusement. “Laura’s the economy-size Miss America, all right. And doesn’t she make Gant look like a malnourished tot—pot belly and toothpick legs! But she’s all he could want—as he’ll find out shortly—that is—if she hasn’t already told him.”

  Glenn didn’t understand and showed it.

  “I like all my guests to be happy and not uptight, if, especially, they’re here for something besides fun. I’m not a puritan, Glenn. If a man likes young boys, other men, what-not, let him. We’re a sexu
ally uptight nation. Every one of us with hang-ups. You, even. Unmarried. I’m not just an indulgent host, Glenn! Machiavellian, in a way. You plan to put a group of people, men, as here, or women, or both, through a stressful brainstorming session—like the one we’re in—and what? The present men have been here a day, two, three, longer, for some. You just arrived as did others. But if you stay over the weekend—”

  “Afraid I can’t, as I informed your people. Just, overnight. At most, two nights—”

  “Right. But suppose you intended to stay a week. As some will. Males, all. Pretty soon, the libido gets churning. The more it churns, the less able they are to give their best attention, reason, thinking, judgment, to the subject of the conference. You see that?”

  “Well, in a way. But I don’t believe a week of celibacy would seriously interfere with the mental acuity of your average man. Especially, men like these—over forty, save one or two scientists, and up to eighty, for Cromwell Bussman, right?”

  “Then, Glenn, you haven’t done your sex homework. Because you’re wrong. Easy to discover. Study yourself. How many days and nights of no-women—in your case and it’s the most usual one—do you go—without noticing a rising appetite? And one that keeps rising and begins to invade the rest of your noggin?”

  It was, Glenn thought, something to consider. It might contain more truth than he’d realized. Of course, there was a great deal of generalized theory and discussion on the theme. America was, or had been, the most prudish (hence, dirty-minded) nation in all time, probably. Sex, itself, had been nearly rotted out of genuine being by people who thought they were making it pure. Tabu, silence, shalt-nots, forbiddens—had been reinforced by applied nastiness. Fallen women, whores, branded women, sex is filthiness unless church-sanctified or licensed. Sex is unnatural acts, abnormal, perversions, filth, filth, self-pollution, with disease, hairy-palms, madness the penalty, rot and Hell—that litany had pervaded the history of the nation until sexuality and vileness in USA were so near one that a boy masturbated in terror and shame and a girl didn’t even know she could do it.