Los Angeles

by Philip Wylie

  Would this “culture” be mandatory in some end of time that was not so near ecological extinction? Could man even have survived without some absolutist government? Would man, even assuming, as Glenn did, he had the innate ability? Would he order his genetics, voluntarily, when the necessity became clear? (But it was, in my time!) Could man be led somehow to his requisite deeds, shedding his numberless ideas of God, the gods, his dogmas that were icily fixed against the plain face of truth? And, supposing that inspired leadership managed to gain a majority assent, could such a new culture succeed, and yet retain its self, its individual identity? He believed it to be thinkable. It just hadn’t happened. This had. This zombie state breeding better—what? Zombies, what else. He thought of the new world bitterly. What it demanded:

  Conformity to the altered and horrible laws, he thought, horrible in their use to keep the populace busy, breeding better people and to remove all the Useless—those people who couldn’t produce a service worth their upkeep. But Glenn never could decide whether or not there was any rightness in this matter, ever. It was very easy, however, to see where the Big Lie went beyond belief and beneath contempt, here. Particularly, in the current, largest example, Glenn felt.

  Earth’s air regenerated, the surface habitable, but that was suppressed to keep the troglydites in their pits and so completely subject to the corporate will, to the Stalin-like, Hitler-like, communist-and-fascist system of domination by propaganda or else by removal. Sex is fun. Babies must be bred. We live in cities underground because there is no other way to live. Our cities are growing and our population, as are our living standards. No foreign nation can threaten us because we have a store of weapons of anihilation that will not harm us with radioactive residues, even if used. Secret weapons, to maintain the power of USA, Inc., if it is ever challenged, which is unlikely. Make love, not war; love is great, war unthinkable; and not now even possible. Obey the rules and enjoy being—but disobey—and YOU KNOW!…

  The police. Glenn did know.

  Guns were out of date. The force now had sidearms that ejected, almost soundlessly, an “A” shot which merely brought instant unconsciousness to a person hit—anywhere. A “B” shot killed in an hour, unless medical reversal of its effect was ordered and came in time. A “C” load killed instanter. And for mobs they had the “Subson,” that incredible gadget on fast trucks—a grim gadget Glenn had seen in the tape scenes he’d been shown that first day. One he now understood.

  The machine on the truck made sound. The sound began as a low roar and descended as its volume rose. In seconds, it was subaudible, not heard by human ears, but, now, a killer. Lethal sound was known in Glenn’s “period.” But it had short range and couldn’t be aimed. Now, a sound-chamber formed a parabolic reflector for the subsonic blast, aiming it to the degree selected and, at a mile, and thirty degrees, this blast of sound could set every person in its beam shaking, to death, in seconds.

  The police could preset their sidearms as desired. They were on A, normally. They would knock the target person out. But they could be shifted to B in a split second, and as swiftly, to C. Pistols and revolvers were obsolete, here. So was tear gas; so were machine guns and grenades and cannon—they now had better weapons. Adjustable arms and armament for one, or a mob.

  All “painless.” Civilized, they called that improvement. But, the propaganda was backed up by those arms and their painlessness was not any less coercive.

  And Glenn, in his executive suite, as Director of Media, now understood the propaganda very well. “Carrot and stick” in modern guise. You ate the carrot here, though, ate it any time you saw an opposite-sexed person who would share it and had the right grade. The stick was used rarely, and in three different degrees of violence: knock out, knock out to die, unless the judgment was soon reversed (and medically implemented); and kill. Finally, the blandness of the public was more a matter of conditioning than fear of force. Aphron kept sexual desires high and potency great. There was nothing else—such as Soma, Huxley’s routine chemical pacifier. Nothing needed, evidently. Just sex—and knowing about the menacing weapons—presented by what his “empire” now supplied in all media as news, as fiction, as informative articles, as scientific findings in appropriate journals—and as such, translated into lay terms, when and if the findings corresponded to the corporate program and policies …

  Glenn had looked forward to his trip to Washington. He knew he would go by plane. He could then, he’d believed, look at the continent from whatever the altitude and perhaps see something of its condition: uninhabited, yes, but perhaps showing life, forests, something?

  He went by night.

  He saw nothing. His plane took off vertically, climbed to a fantastic height, leveled off and sped like a rocket, with two men shut away on the flight deck and no steward or stewardess. It landed twice, in darkness, though Glenn had realized before his take-off that the L.A. field was small and dark so the guidance system was either a “black light” sort or an equivalent. Airlocks or chambers all the way to the plane. Two Board Members were picked up en route: a Dr. Boyd Evans who headed the Biological Division of USA, Inc. and a Rogeman Tuttle, Commissioner for Transportation. Both men had the same “command look” Glenn had noticed (so long ago! so recently in seeming!) common to the industrialists gathered at Boiling Wells. Both welcomed Glenn with heartiness and with shrewd, cunningly veiled observations; and both, soon, went to work on portfolios of papers—getting set for the Board, tomorrow.

  The Washington landing was soft and the airport, in darkness. They were ushered through an airtight corridor to small, underground cars and let out beneath the New Sherhilt Hotel, the best in the world, Glenn had heard. The three men went upstairs into a lobby that was much like hotel lobbies a half century ago, and they signed a register, while other Board members waited to greet them or waited for their luggage or for an elevator.

  As Glenn sighed, his back was slapped. “Hello, pal!”

  Glenn turned, a little baffled, and more so, when he saw a face he half-recognized, a handsome face, an intelligent face, two deep-set eyes, nearly black, and a smile he clearly recalled. Before the other had finished some sort of “glad you’re aboard” thing, Glenn first thought he looked like the father of a once-known young man. Then it clicked and no gap was left after the other man’s trite welcome.

  “Good God!” Glenn half-shouted, “Kingman Mossmaker!”

  “Good for you! Glenn Howard! Great! Yes! Come and have a drink!”

  Dazed, Glenn followed the elderly but vigorous-looking friend to an old-fashioned bar. Dazed, because Glenn knew Kingman. Had known him for some years, back then!

  Kingman Mossmaker, onetime “infant prodigy,” had entered Harvard at fifteen, graduated in three years and in those same years made a fortune estimated at twenty millions by brilliant financial coups in the Market, by small-business purchases, and from money invested in new processes and inventions that “wiser” financiers wouldn’t sponsor but which soon proved enormously profitable. At twenty-two, when Glenn had first met this young genius, he was a tycoon. Glenn and Kingman had become friendly, then, soon fond of one another, and for the next four years, they Were good friends, though they didn’t meet often, as their interests were different, their home offices on opposite coasts, and partly because Kingman loathed southern California.

  Now they sat face to face over drinks—which, in this superhotel, were available for all. But their ages were reversed—an occasion for kidding, to start with.

  “Crazy!” Kingman said, delighted with this matter. “You’re in the forties—right? And I’m—”

  “Seventy-two.” Glenn had already calculated that. “But looking fifty.”

  “No need to flatter, son!”

  They chortled.

  And, as that evening passed, as Kingman introduced “Young Glenn” to on-hand and arriving Board members, Glenn felt a surge of exultation and hope. This once-youthful billionaire had owned a reputation for integrity surpassed by none. He�
�d had a wife and two kids, twins, and loved them. No playboy. His patriotism, like his huge charitable donations, were two of his trade marks. So, Glenn reasoned, here was an ally—in Glenn’s covert aims.

  He was mistaken. A merry evening. Bed. Girls offered but rejected. Breakfast.

  The Board Meeting, chaired by the President, opened at ten the next morning.

  George, the President, called it to order.

  “We will,” he began, “have time for any other urgent business, later on. I know some of you have pressing problems. But the emergency matter comes first.” He braced and made a “solemn-oracle” pose. “Gentlemen, I have positive evidence that a conspiracy is being launched in several major cities and some minor ones. Let me say—and please don’t interrupt with those astonished noises!—its extent is apparently great, hundreds may be involved, already, including some pretty highly placed people. These—and here’s the point—have heard ‘rumors’ that the air on the earth has regenerated to a point which makes surface living possible for people.”

  Somebody broke in, “Rumors, Mr.—ah—George?”

  The President waved the man for silence and looked squarely at Glenn. “Have you heard any such thing, Glenn?”

  “How could I have? After all, I get the reports of the scientists and those include the ‘outside’ data. Nobody has suggested so wild an idea—and if they did—I’d think such a person was—misinformed—or nutty.”

  “Nutty? Oh! Insane. Well, Glenn. You’re on the Board, now. And you’re about to see what that means and demands, too. The air—the surface is livable! Safe. Has been, for two years.”

  Glenn knew all eyes were on him, boring into him, seeking, with the special expertise of all top and able executives, to discover (and to leap on) any sign of cover-up. This, then, was his ultimate test. None would be harder—none could be. But Glenn had prepared for it and prepared well. He expected the fact to be disclosed, guessed this special meeting probably related to it, and now he reacted as he would have, being “himself,” and with such limited experience of the new USA as he’d had.

  “But if that’s the case,” he said at once, “why do we—?”

  The Board smiled as one, and the President grinned. He spoke for all. “Why do we stay underground, Glenn? Good question! Because—”

  And Glenn heard why, which he knew, already. But as the President explained, he nodded occasionally, seriously, and in due time, he put a question or two. When the President had finished an account well-known to the others, and answered Glenn’s queries, he was still facing Glenn! addressing the new member who, manifestly, had now accepted the Board policy unreservedly and was giving it deep thought.

  Glenn was first to offer a positive idea—and that, too, was expected.

  “I think, Mr.—George”—a titter—“the problem falls in my Division. Offhand, I might suggest two approaches. The media take notice of the rumor and massively reject it as idiocy.” Voices murmured negatives. “Or we set up a series of all-media events, with examples, of the fact—we will call it—that the atmosphere is improving slightly. Words and pictures, tapes with sound. I mean”—he thought briefly—“we start with some statement, real and accurate if available, about the toxicity of the planet’s air at the moment of the Death Winds. A rabbit, just as an example, would then perish in a tenth of a second. Now, as we would show, a rabbit can live for two seconds. I mean—this would be a two-thousand-per-cent improvement and yet it would mean that human life support was very, very far from us. We could broadcast and project several such experiments, with enthusiasm over our showing of slight improvement, yet, by clear inference, show life on the surface to be—oh—plainly—centuries, thousands of years—away, still.”

  The idea was as nearly applauded as are good thoughts at such conclaves.

  Attention was turned to the subject of searching out the “traitors.”

  Some suggestions sickened Glenn who had thought himself proof against the Corporate inhumanity.

  Any known or suspected conspirators, the Commissioner of Finance felt, should at once be put in the electronic seat and forced to name their associates.

  Another Board member suggested the silent, unexplained destruction of suspects—as a way of mysteriously stopping, by fear, any further plotting.

  “Public evisceration” was another idea. This, Glenn learned, having so far missed it in his “catch-up” reading, had been a legal means of trying to keep order, used in the “last era.” It consisted, simply, in public execution, by disembowelment, of suspect or guilty people, all who opposed current laws and rules or spoke against them. The sentenced victims were sliced open enough to die slowly, in the utmost agony, where masses of people were forced to gather and watch.

  There were more and more vicious ideas.

  Glenn knew they had to be set aside if his now-multitudes of fellow-rebels were to have any chance of success.

  He addressed the Board after much listening:

  “May I suggest,” he began, “though I’m a freshman, here, a perhaps subtler and even more effective plan? Suppose that my already-adopted idea is allowed to be put in effect for—oh—four weeks, maybe? The result? Most Americans will be convinced the air isn’t breathable. All these—traitors—meantime, will be alerted to the suspicion that our media-program indicates we know, or suspect something—about them, their plot, who they are, perhaps, and so on. That is a panic state, one we make, but not openly, not surely, for them.

  “Up to now, these—treacherous people—must feel pretty safe. Why?” He shot that word in, to halt evident efforts at dispute. “Why, gentlemen? Because our sum of information about them amounts to a few fairly certainly known traitors, a few more suspects, but we have no data that shows even the extent of the plot. With the use of all our surveillance methods—of which I’ve had experience—!” That brought laughter. “With that ability, meanwhile, we can uncover many more individuals, whole groups, and their plans, up to that time. After all, they will hardly be so numerous as to cause us real alarm, or so well organized as to have any feasible plans for revolt or whatever. We can assume, being shrewd men, they’re at the start of some sort of planning. We can know, from that, it will take months, even years, for their scheme to become a real threat.

  “Now!” Glenn said it with force as his listeners were restless. There was more to hear. They waited.

  “We must note next that the Corporation relies, must rely, on numbers of rather—shall I say, emotionally perverse and reluctant?—personnel? Scientists, especially. People essential for our rate of progress. I refer to hypothetical specialists who sometimes openly resent the—mandatory, high-minded, selfless rules of the Corporation. But they are rare types, education-wise, and thus are not erased owing to special value. This I assumed—correctly, I see. We would not want to lose all or any such men and women, and thus slow our national will and purposes, if we could avoid it. Right? Right! Any gross or hasty effort to—ah—unzip this underground effort might well end in a deliberate, or wanton, perhaps accidental or some other sort of needless erasure, with consequent technical and scientific losses we could ill sustain. As media chief, I am sure I can erase any creeping suspicions, rumors, of the sort we are concerned with—at least, in the minds of the vast majority. Given time, that way, as well as the rumor-quelling effects I’ve promised I can deliver. And we can certainly manage to pinpoint all guilty persons and, that done, determine who among them must and can be erased and who, if there be any, might well be preserved, confined and electronic-chair-directed, if need be, so as to go on working at their specialist projects for the general good. Given time, indeed, and some honorable citizen may well expose the whole cabala!”

  It was thought to be a brilliant set of suggestions.…

  Three weeks later, Glenn went, by a series of dodges, all, alibied ingeniously, to the final meeting.

  This was held, as prior gatherings had been, in an “Old L.A.” end of a huge storm drain, a vast sewer into which a secret opening
had been dug from underground L.A.—a roofless canal when it came near the sea. It was a long-ago engineering triumph that had sluiced Los Angeles’s sometimes heavy rains into the sea—at a volume that prevented earlier and common disasters of flooding, mud-slides and canyon avalanches. The superdrain was open for a final mile, with one excepted stretch. Across some two hundred and fifty yards of the deep, concrete-paved, high-walled vent, a plastic, hydroponic-food-raising “hangar” had been carried, by a high wind, long ago.

  This material roofed over the storm drain and, as leaves, mud and dust collected, it became opaque, its transparency spoiled by the debris. But that fact was either unsuspected or disregarded by the authorities. There was no reason for any close inspection; the overhung drain did not connect with the new L.A.; and the stuff on the plastic swags acted as camouflage from any plane-surveying party.

  No human being would have found it or, surely, used it, who did not first know the air was safe, outside. The Freedom Fellowship—named by Glenn—gathered there, the L.A. chapter and visitor delegates. Glenn was head of the national group. In public, members used those initials “F.F.” as signs and recognition symbols, but with many shifts.

  Glenn presided at the final meeting.

  It was strange, stagey. The heads of the L.A. groups were present when Glenn stepped out of the starlight into the covered, concrete oblong. There were lights, but only of candles, as ushers seated the last arrivals. Glenn rose from his chair in front and spoke in total darkness.

  “We are holding this last meeting before we’d like to,” he began, “but my connections make it clear we have little time left. Next week, as the L.A. brass meets at the big studio in my building to celebrate the reappointment of the President and also my own addition to the Board, I shall make a short speech of thanks. I will end it with a military salute, not usual but still seen, sometimes, and with the motto, “Service!” said in that way. These will be your signals to break out and lead out all persons possible. A lot of us will fail. Those who get out will go to the prepared hiding areas, as they have been instructed. Search will be swift and thorough but—as you know—our mere exit and the fact that we are being hunted, hence alive, will tell the nation—the world, hopefully—that life outside is possible. Further, I have rigged an automatic tape-program source, that will not be readily found or stopped, to rebroadcast the news on every channel and in all media possible. We believe, we can be sure, that news of our revolt and of the survival of many, will cause rebellion and an end to the special, massive, but typical lie that has, for two and more years, condemned us to underground living, to our past slavery. But the broadcasts will merely reaffirm our act. I see no other hope for the end of the long-lasting, world-wide tyranny, by lies and by every infamy. Farewell! And on to Freedom!”