Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume One

by Short Story Anthology

  "Of course. I've got Jerome Wiseman following him in a helio-jet. No use getting rough, as yet. We'll keep it quiet ... assuming that meets with your approval."

  "You're in the field, Frank. You make the decisions."

  The phone screen had lighted up and LaVerne's piquant face faded in. "The call Mr. Tracy was expecting from Operative Wiseman."

  "Put him on," the Chief said, lacing his plump fingers over his stomach.

  Jerry's face appeared in the screen. He was obviously parked on the street now. He said, "Subject has disappeared into this office building, Tracy. For the past fifteen minutes he's kinda looked as though the day's work was through and since this dump could hardly be anybody's home, he must be reporting to his higher-up."

  "Let's see the building," Tracy said.

  The portable screen was directed in such manner that a disreputable appearing building, obviously devoted to fourth-rate businesses, was centered.

  "O.K.," Tracy said. "I'll be over. You can knock off, Jerry. Oh, except for one thing. Subject's name is Warren Dickens. Just for luck, get a complete dossier on him. I doubt if he's got a criminal or subversive record, but you never know."

  Jerry said, "Right," and faded.

  Frank Tracy came to his feet and knocked the rest of his pipe out into the gigantic ashtray on his boss' desk. "Well, I suppose the next step's mine."

  "Check back with me as soon as you know anything more," the Chief said. He wheezed a sigh as though sorry the interview was over and that he'd have to go back to his desk chores, but shifted his bulk and took up a sheaf of papers.

  Just as Tracy got to the door, the Chief said, "Oh, yes. Easy on the rough stuff, Tracy. I've been hearing some disquieting reports about some of the overenthusiastic bullyboys on your team. We wouldn't want such material to get in the telly-casts."

  Lard bottom, Tracy growled inwardly as he left. Did the Chief think he liked violence? Did anyone in his right mind like violence?

  ***

  Frank Tracy looked up at the mid-century type office building. He was somewhat surprised that the edifice still remained. Where did the owners ever find profitable tenants? What business could be so small these days that it would be based in such quarters? However, here it was.

  The lobby was shabby. There was no indication on the list of tenants of the firm he was seeking, nor was there a porter. The elevator was out of repair.

  He did it the hard way, going from door to door, entering, hat in hand, apologetically, and saying, "Pardon me. You're the people who sell the soap?" They kept telling him no until he reached the third floor and a door to an office even smaller than usual. It was lettered Freer Enterprises and even as he knocked and entered, the wording rang a bell.

  There was only one desk but it was efficiently equipped with the latest in office gadgetry. The room was quite choked with files and even a Mini-IBM tri-unit. The man behind the desk was old-fashioned enough to wear glasses, but otherwise seemed the average aggressive executive type you expected to meet in these United States of the Americas. He was possibly in his mid-thirties and one of those alert, over-eager characters irritating to those who believe in taking matters less than urgently.

  He looked up and said snappily, "What can I do for you?"

  Tracy dropped into an easy-going characterization. "You're the people who sell the soap?"

  "That is correct. What can I do for you?"

  Tracy said easily, "Why, I'd like to ask you a few questions about the enterprise."

  "To what end, sir? You'd be surprised how busy a man I am."

  Tracy said, "Suppose I'm from the Greater New York News-Times looking for a story?"

  The other tapped a finger on his desk impatiently. "Pardon me, but in that case I would be inclined to think you a liar. The News-Times knows upon which side its bread is spread. Its advertisers include all the soap companies. It does not dispense free advertising through its news columns."

  Tracy chuckled wryly, "All right. Let's start again." He brought forth his wallet, flicked through various identification cards until he found the one he wanted and presented it. "Frank Tracy is the name," he said. "Department of Internal Revenue. There seems to be some question as to your corporation taxes."

  "Oh," the other said, obviously taken aback. "Please have a chair." He read the authentic looking, but spurious credentials. Tracy took the proffered chair and then sat and looked at the other as though it was his turn.

  "My name is Flowers," the Freer Enterprises man told him, nervously. "Frederic Flowers. Frankly, this is my first month at the job and I'm not too well acquainted with all the ramifications of the business." He moistened his lips. "I hope there is nothing illegal—" He let the sentence fade away.

  Tracy reclaimed his false identity papers and put them back into his wallet before saying easily, "I really couldn't say, as yet. Let's have a bit of questions and answers and I'll go further into the matter."

  Flowers regained his confidence. "No reason why not," he said quickly. "So far as I know, all is above board."

  Frank Tracy let his eyes go about the room. "Why are you established, almost secretly, you might say, in this business backwoods of the city?"

  "No secret about it," Flowers demurred. "Merely the cheapest rent we could find. We cut costs to the bone, and then shave the bone."

  "Um-m-m. I've spoken to one of your salesmen, a Warren Dickens, and I suppose he gave me the standard sales talk. I wonder if you could elaborate on your company's policies, its goals, that sort of thing."

  "Goals?"

  "You obviously expect to make money, somehow or other, though I don't see that peddling soap at three cents a bar has much of a future. There must be some further angle."

  Flowers said, "Admittedly, soap is just a beginning. Among other things, it's given us a mailing list of satisfied customers. Consumers who can then be approached for future purchases."

  ***

  Frank Tracy relaxed in his chair, reached for pipe and tobacco and let the other go on. But his eyes had narrowed, coldly.

  Flowers wrapped himself up in his subject. "Mr. Tracy, you probably have no idea of the extent to which the citizens of Greater America are being victimized. Let me use but one example." He came quickly to his feet, crossed to a small toilet which opened off the office and returned with a power-pack electric shaver which he handed to Tracy.

  Tracy looked at it, put it back on the desk and nodded. "It's the brand I have," he said agreeably.

  "Yes, and millions of others. What did you pay for it?"

  Frank Tracy allowed himself a slight smirk. "As a matter of fact, I got mine through a discount outfit, only twenty-five dollars."

  "Only twenty-five dollars, eh, when the retail price is supposedly thirty-five?" Flowers was triumphant. "A great bargain, eh? Well, let me give you a rundown, Mr. Tracy."

  He took a quick breath. "True, they're advertised to retail at thirty-five dollars. And stores that sell them at that rate make a profit of fifty per cent. The regional supply house, before them, knocks down from forty to sixty per cent, on the wholesale price. Then the trade name distributor makes at least fifty per cent on the sales to the regional supply houses."

  "Trade name distributor?" Tracy said, as though ignorant of what the other was talking about. "You mean the manufacturer?"

  "No, sir. That razor you just looked at bears a trade name of a company that owns no factory of its own. It buys the razors from a large electrical appliances manufacturing complex which turns out several other name brand electric razors as well. The trade name company does nothing except market the product. Its budget, by the way, calls for an expenditure of six dollars on every razor for national advertising."

  "Well, what are you getting at?" Tracy said impatiently.

  Frederic Flowers had reached his punch line. "All right, we've traced the razor all the way back to the manufacturing complex which made it. Mr. Tracy, that razor you bought at a discount bargain for twenty-five dollars cost thirty-eight c
ents to produce."

  Tracy pretended to be dumfounded. "I don't believe it."

  "It can be proven."

  Frank Tracy thought about it for a while. "Well, even if true, so what?"

  "It's a crime, that's so-what," Flowers blurted indignantly. "And that's where Freer Enterprises comes in. Very shortly, we're going to enter the market with an electric razor retailing for exactly one dollar. No name brand, no advertising, no nothing except a razor just as good as though selling for from twenty-five to fifty dollars."

  Tracy scoffed his disbelief. "That's where you're wrong. No electric razor manufacturer would sell to you. They'd be cutting their own throats."

  The Freer Enterprises official shook his head, in scorn. "That's where you're wrong. The same electric appliance manufacturer who produced that razor there will make a similar one, slightly different in appearance, for the same price for us. They don't care what happens to their product once they make their profit from it. Business is business. We'll be at least as good a customer as any of the others have ever been. Eventually, better, since we'll be getting electric razors into the hands of people who never felt they could afford one before."

  He shook a finger at Tracy. "Manufacturers have been doing this for a long time. I imagine it was the old mail-order houses that started it. They'd get in touch with a manufacturer of, say, typewriters, or outboard motors, or whatever, and order tens of thousands of these, not an iota different from the manufacturer's standard product except for the nameplate. They'd then sell these for as little as half the ordinary retail price."

  Tracy seemed to think it over for a long moment. Eventually he said, "Even then you're not going to break any records making money. Your distribution costs might be pared to the bone, but you still have some. There'll be darn little profit left on each razor you sell."

  Flowers was triumphant again. "We're not going to stop at razors, once under way. How about automobiles? Have you any idea of the disparity between the cost of production of a car and what they retail for?"

  "Well, no."

  "Here's an example. As far back as about 1930 a barge company transporting some brand-new cars across Lake Erie from Detroit had an accident and lost a couple of hundred. The auto manufacturers sued, trying to get the retail price of each car. Instead, the court awarded them the cost of manufacture. You know what it came to, labor, materials, depreciation on machinery—everything? Seventy-five dollars per car. And that was around 1930. Since then, automation has swept the industry and manufacturing costs per unit have dropped drastically."

  The Freer Enterprises executive was now in full voice. "But even that's not the ultimate. After all, cars were selling for as cheaply as $425 then. Let's take some items such as aspirin. You can, of course, buy small neatly packaged tins of twelve for twenty-five cents but supposedly more intelligent buyers will buy bottles for forty or fifty cents. If the druggist puts out a special for fifteen cents a bottle it will largely be refused since the advertising conditioned customer doesn't want an inferior product. Actually, of course, aspirin is aspirin and you can buy it, in one hundred pound lots in polyethylene film bags, at about fourteen cents a pound, or in carload lots under the chemical name of acetylsalicylic acid, for eleven cents a pound. And any big chemical corporation will sell you U.S.P. grade Milk of Magnesia at about six dollars a ton. Its chemical name, of course, is magnesium hydroxide, or Mg(OH)2, and you'd have one thousand quarts in that ton. Buying it beautifully packaged and fully advertised, you'd pay up to a dollar twenty-five a pint in the druggist section of a modern ultra-market."

  ***

  Tracy had heard enough. He said crisply, "All right, Mr. Flowers, of Freer Enterprises, now let me ask you something: Do you consider this country prosperous?"

  Flowers blinked. Of a sudden, the man across from him seemed to have changed character, added considerable dynamic to his make-up. He flustered, "Yes, I suppose so. But it could be considerably more prosperous if—"

  Tracy was sneering. "If consumer prices were brought down drastically, eh? Mr. Flowers, you're incredibly naïve when it comes to modern economics. Do you realize that one of the most significant developments, economically speaking, took place in the 1950s; something perhaps more significant than the development of atomic power?"

  Flowers blinked again, mesmerized by the other's new domineering personality. "I ... I don't know what you're talking about."

  "The majority of employees in the United States turned from blue collars to white."

  Flowers looked pained. "I don't—"

  "No, of course you don't or you wouldn't be participating in a subversive attack upon our economy, which, if successful, would lead to the collapse of Western prosperity and eventually to the success of the Soviet Complex."

  Mr. Flowers gobbled a bit, then gulped.

  "I'll spell it out for you," Tracy pursued. "In the early days of capitalism, back when Marx and Engels were writing such works as Capital, the overwhelming majority of the working class were employed directly in production. For a long time it was quite accurate when the political cartoonists depicted a working man as wearing overalls and carrying a hammer or wrench. In short, employees who got their hands dirty, outnumbered those who didn't.

  "But with the coming of increased mechanization and eventually automation and the second industrial revolution, more and more employees went into sales, the so-called service industries, advertising and entertainment which has become largely a branch of advertising, distribution, and, above all, government which in this bureaucratic age is largely a matter of regulation of business and property relationships. As automation continued, fewer and fewer of our people were needed to produce all the commodities that the country could assimilate under our present socio-economic system. And I need only point out that the average American still enjoys more material things than any other nation, though admittedly the European countries, and I don't exclude the Soviet Complex, are coming up fast."

  Flowers said indignantly, "But what's this charge that I'm participating in a subversive—"

  "Mr. Flowers," Tracy overrode him, "let's not descend to pure maize in our denials of the obvious. If this outfit of yours, Freer Enterprises, was successful in its fondest dreams, what would happen?"

  "Why, the consumers would be able to buy commodities at a fraction of the present cost!"

  Tracy half came to his feet and pounded the table with fierce emphasis. "What would they buy them with? They'd all be out of jobs!"

  Frederic Flowers bug-eyed him.

  Tracy sat down again and seemingly regained control of himself. His voice was softer now. "Our social system may have its strains and tensions, Mr. Flowers, but it works and we don't want anybody throwing wrenches in its admittedly delicate machinery. Advertising is currently one of the biggest industries of the country. The entertainment industry, admittedly now based on advertising, is gigantic. Our magazines and newspapers, employing hundreds of thousands of employees from editors right on down to newsstand operators, are able to exist only through advertising revenue. Above all, millions of our population are employed in the service industries, and in distribution, in the stock market, in the commodity markets, in all the other branches of distribution which you Freer Enterprises people want to pull down. A third of our working force is now unemployed, but given your way, it would be at least two thirds."

  Flowers, suddenly suspicious, said, "What has all this to do with the Department of Internal Revenue, Mr. Tracy?"

  Tracy came to his feet and smiled ruefully, albeit a bit grimly. "Nothing," he admitted. "I have nothing at all to do with that department. Here is my real card, Mr. Flowers."

  The Freer Enterprises man must have felt a twinge of premonition even as he took it up, but the effect was still enough to startle him. "Bureau of Economic Subversion!" he said.

  "Now then," Tracy snapped. "I want the names of your higher ups, and the address of your central office, Flowers. Frankly, you're in the soup. As you possibly know, our h
ush-hush department has unlimited emergency powers, being answerable only to the President."

  "I ... I've never even heard of it." Flowers stuttered. "But—"

  Tracy held up a contemptuous hand. "Many people haven't," he said curtly.

  ***

  Frank Tracy hurried through the outer office into LaVerne Sandell's domain, and bit out to her, "Tell the Chief I'm here. Crisis. And immediately get my team together, all eight of them. Heavy equipment. Have a jet readied. Chicago. The team will rendezvous at the airport."

  LaVerne was just as crisp. "Yes, sir." She began doing things with buttons and switches.

  Tracy hurried into the Chief's office and didn't bother with the usual amenities. He snapped, "Worse than I thought, sir. This outfit is possibly openly subversive. Deliberately undermining the economy."

  His superior put down the report he was perusing and shifted his bulk backward. "You're sure? We seldom run into such extremes."

  "I know, I know, but this could be it. Possibly a deliberate program. I've taken the initiative to have Miss Sandell summon my team."

  "Now, see here, Frank—" The bureau head looked at him anxiously.

  Tracy said, impatience there, "Chief, you're going to have to let your field men use their discretion. I tell you, this thing is a potential snowball. I'll play it cool. Arrange things so that there'll be no scandal for the telly-reporters. But we've got to chill this one quickly, or it'll be on a coast to coast basis before the year is out. They're even talking about going into automobiles."

  The Chief winced, then said unhappily, "All right, Tracy. However, mind what I said. Curb those roughnecks of yours."

  ***

  It proved considerably easier than Frank Tracy had hoped for. Adam Moncure's national headquarters turned out to be in a sparsely settled area not far from Woodstock, Illinois. The house, in the passé ranch style, must have once been a millionaire's baby, what with an artificial fishing lake in the back, a kidney shaped swimming pool, extensive gardens and an imposing approach up a corridor of trees.