Crisis!

by James Gunn

  “I know,” he said.

  “It must be worse for you,” she said. People were beginning to stop near them and stare curiously at this unusual couple. “Oh, no, not worse. Just different.” She caught her lower lip between her teeth as if to stop the words from coming out. “You don't know how many times I have thought I saw you and called or run after a man, only to discover he was a stranger. And now, of course, to you I am a stranger. If we could just have a few moments together—but it wouldn't be any good now. I'm too upset, and I—"

  She paused as if trying to pull herself together and talk calmly. “You are Bill Johnson, aren't you?"

  “Yes."

  “I accept the fact that you don't know me. My name is Frances Miller. I'm the managing editor of the Associated Press, and I'm here for a conference. On what else? Pollution. I'm staying in the Hilton there. Remember the Hilton? In New York?.... No, of course you don't. I've got to rest. But I want you to promise me something: come see me tonight when I'm myself. In memory of what we did together, even though you don't remember it."

  “I'll try,” he said.

  “Oh, god!” she said, turning away. “I know you'll try. But will it be enough?” And she almost ran toward the entrance of the hotel.

  * * * *

  They sat once more with their backs to the bluff, Johnson and Duke, watching the river burn in the dusk. Sometimes the colored sprites ran across the water and onto the land, and sometimes the will-of-the-wisps seemed to dance to the water's edge and hesitate, as if their magic ended where the river began, and then skip out to join the water spirits.

  “A marvelous woman, Vinya,” Duke said. “A little fiery at times. A bit overpowering perhaps. But I don't mind that in a woman. Some might."

  “I liked her,” Johnson said.

  “But is she going to help you?"

  “She says she is."

  “She's confident, too. Maybe too confident. But then she hasn't had to face up to failure. You have to be confident, though, if you're going to succeed in the help business."

  “I can see that,” Johnson said. “If I really believed in my delusions, if I really thought I was in the help business, I'd have to appear confident, even when I wasn't. Faith is what it's all about."

  “That's true."

  “And the pollution business, that's one big problem."

  “If you can see how it ends up, the way you do,” Duke agreed. “But then the things you can't do anything about, you don't want to think about. That includes most things."

  “What if you could do something about it, though?"

  “That would be a difficult situation, wouldn't it?” Duke said. “But pollution isn't like that. It's a natural consequence of industrialization. It starts off small, when it doesn't matter, when the ‘sinks'—the oceans and the air—seem bottomless, and then it builds until the sinks are filled up."

  “Can't people stop the way they start?” Johnson asked. “People don't want to die. They don't want to run out of air or water or food. They don't want to kill birds and fish and animals."

  “Not unless they can enjoy it or profit from it. Trouble is, the profit comes from doing it, and it costs too much to stop. Any one person who stops doesn't solve the problem; he just goes broke himself. It's what a man named Garrett Hardin called ‘the tragedy of the commons.'

  “When people share something like a pasture, where everybody can graze their animals as much as they wish, if too many cattle are added to the pasture it will be overgrazed and destroyed, and nobody will be able to use it. Adding one more animal, or two or three, doesn't injure the pasture. But it increases individual profits, so the rational act of each herdsman is to increase his herd, because the effect of his actions are minimal on the pasture but improve his personal situation significantly. It's like that with the world."

  “What about government? Shouldn't it think about the welfare of the group?"

  “It should, and there was a period in the Sixties and Seventies when government was doing something about it, and conditions were improving. But government isn't just people. It is industries and corporations and smaller units of government, and the constituencies for the general welfare are never as vocal or as well-financed as the special interests. And people have never been good at putting off a present benefit for a future good. The general welfare is abstract and unfocused; making a profit or avoiding a loss is specific and sharp.

  “No,” Duke said, and laughed. “I'm reminded of a reply that Ralph G. Ingersoll, the famous agnostic, made to the fundamentalist minister who baited him with the question as to how he would improve the world if he were God. ‘Why,’ Ingersoll said, ‘I'd make good health catching instead of sickness.’ I reckon we won't get rid of pollution until we can make a profit out of it."

  They looked out past the firelight toward one of the old man's sculptures. It had been put together from driftwood and automobile parts, and it looked like a crucified robot.

  * * * *

  Once more they sat in Dr. Roggero's office. She was like a goddess presiding over the altar of her desk, he like a worshipper in the chair beside it.

  She toyed with a slender metal letter opener as she studied his face and said, “Dr. Lindner reported a case that later become famous in which he cured a patient by falling in with his delusions and then convincing him of the fallacies of his logic."

  “But I already know the fallacies of my delusion,” Johnson said.

  “Exactly. And you merely want to be rid of them. What if I told you to forget about them, and merely go on with your life, accepting the fact that you have this mild delusion that seems to do no harm?"

  “I could do that,” Johnson said. “But what about my visions? And what about my feelings of guilt?"

  “Why should you feel guilty? You know that you did not come from the future."

  “Certainly the likelihood is very small,” Johnson said.

  “But it is still a possibility?"

  “Isn't it?"

  “Of course. But then so are the bases of every other delusion. The problem is, if we act upon them, we run into inconsistencies."

  “My delusion has no inconsistencies. It is only unlikely. What can one man do in the face of so many problems? How can one person make a difference when pollution is so omnipresent?"

  “If everybody felt like that, nothing would ever get done."

  “The fallacy of the irrelevant individual makes a nice complement to the tragedy of the commons,” Johnson said. “But I have heard of such things as catalysts, substances that make chemical reactions possible without participating in them. If they are present, the reaction proceeds. Without them, nothing happens. Maybe there are comparable situations among people. Maybe it takes only one person to get something going, to make a difference. It's ridiculous to think that I am that sort of person, but knowing how bad situations are going to become, or the possibility that I know, means that I must feel guilt if I don't act."

  “Do you know what your situation reminds me of? ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son....’”

  “You think I have a Christ complex?"

  “You suffer for the sins of mankind,” she said dryly.

  “Not on purpose,” Johnson said. “I don't think of myself as Christ. I'm just a poor suffering bastard caught in a psychological trap not of my making. And I'd like to get free."

  “'Lord, if it be thy will, let these things pass from me,'” she said.

  “I don't feel in any way special,” Johnson said, “—except that I have this vision. I don't feel divine. I don't feel like the Son of God or the son of man. But how can one see the condition of the world and not feel guilty?"

  “A certain amount of guilt is healthy,” Dr. Roggero said. “It keeps us from committing crimes. It's society's way of teaching us how to be good citizens and our parents’ way of teaching us how to be good people. A person without guilt is a monster. It's only when we feel unnecessary or excessive guilt that it becomes
neurosis. To feel guilty about conditions you did not create and cannot change is unnecessary and excessive."

  “Thanks,” Johnson said, “but it isn't enough."

  “I do not like to recommend radical measures,” Dr. Roggero said, “but this is a special case. You are impatient, and I do not have the kind of time to devote to this case as might be necessary if we were to proceed with discussion and analysis. Successes have been reported, however, by such brute means as electrical shock or chemical counterparts."

  “Would they work?” Johnson said quietly.

  “There is a good chance,” she said, studying his face. He took a deep breath. “I want to go ahead with it."

  “You will have to sign papers, authorizations, maybe commitments."

  “I'll sign them."

  “You realize that you may not be the same person afterward."

  “In what way?"

  “It isn't customary to put it this way, but the kind of person you are will not exist afterward."

  “What kind of person am I?"

  She looked at him as if she was seeing him not as a patient but as a person. “You are a kind and thoughtful person, a reasonable man, a good listener, a responsible person. You are a good man who may be overly concerned about doing good, but that is a benign condition. The world would be a better place if there were more people like you. There is a legend that Charlie Chaplin went to a psychiatrist for treatment, and that the psychiatrist refused because curing the neuroses might destroy the underlying motivations of his art. Do you know I might feel guilty if I helped you do this?"

  “If I were the kind of person you describe,” Johnson said slowly, “I might be able to cope with it. If I could really do something about pollution...."

  “How do you know you can't?"

  “It just seems so—” He sighed. “—Overpowering."

  “There is one other possibility.” She seemed to hesitate, as if she did not want to give him false hope. “There must be people who knew you before you lost your memory. There must be records: social security records, credit records, birth records, school records. We go through the world leaving trails on paper, like so many snails.... If you could discover something that would confirm or deny the information on the piece of paper in your pocket...."

  “Yes,” he said, looking up. “I could do that. That would help, wouldn't it, if I knew.” He stood up suddenly as if he had just thought of something. “Doctor, I've got to leave, to find somebody. Could you get in touch with Duke, with Dr. Vines. Ask him to come here to your office—Are you free over the lunch hour?"

  “Yes. But I don't know—"

  “That's two hours from now. If you can't find him, then I will search him out. But I would like him here. And thank you—thank you for your patience!"

  She looked up at him, clearly surprised at how the office over which she presided so completely had been removed from her control, and then she nodded, accepting his independence.

  * * * *

  When Johnson returned he had a woman with him. She was cool, blonde, tailored, and puzzled. Dr. Roggero was seated at her desk, but her attention was directed toward the couch against the wall. On it Duke was sitting, but he had shaved, cleaned his suit, and combed his hair. He looked almost like the physician he once had been. He grimaced apologetically at Johnson. “I could not let Vinya see what a bum I had become. But you have a lady with you...."

  “This is Frances Miller. She says she knew me once."

  “What's going on?” Miller demanded. She turned to Johnson. “You didn't come to see me last night."

  “I thought only pain would come of it. I was so wrapped up in my own problems that I couldn't see yours."

  “And now you grab me as I come out of a meeting and pull me upstairs like this....” she continued.

  “He needs you,” Dr. Roggero said.

  At that, Miller's face changed from anger to concern.

  “He is a troubled man,” the psychiatrist said.

  “What's the matter?” Miller said, turning to Johnson.

  “I need to know,” he said with intensity. “What did we do?"

  She looked at the vivid woman behind the desk and the white-haired little man sitting on the sofa. The man smiled and nodded. The woman stared at her. “You want them to know?"

  “You said, when we met in the plaza below, ‘in memory of what we did together.’ That wasn't the way you would have described a personal experience."

  “No,” she said, looking down and then up at his face. “But it may create problems for you."

  “They must be better than the ones I have,” he said. “I think I'm crazy."

  “Oh, no,” Miller said. “You're not. You're—” She stopped again.

  “What did we do?"

  “We stopped World War III,” she said. “You and me and a young fellow named Tom Logan."

  Dr. Roggero's office had been audience to many revelations, but the implications of Miller's statement produced a silence that may have outdistanced any of them.

  Duke broke it. “Johnson, my boy, you're not crazy. But you may have a more serious problem."

  Johnson grinned lopsidedly as if he recognized the truth of Duke's remark. “Which would I rather be? A crazy Don Quixote? Or a sane one?"

  “Are you going to tell me what's going on?” Miller demanded.

  “In a few minutes,” Johnson said, “I will go with you to a quiet spot where we can talk, and I will tell you everything I know. It isn't much, because all I remember about myself starts two days ago. It can't be the same between us as it once must have been. If we were intimate"—she looked down at the floor and then up into his eyes—"I cannot hope for that again. I cannot even imagine it. But I can answer your questions, as you have answered mine and perhaps will answer more."

  “We can make it the way it was before,” she said fiercely.

  “I like you,” he said admiringly. “You are a person of conviction and accomplishment. But I must do something now that will destroy what few bridges we have been able to rebuild."

  “No,” she said.

  But he turned to Duke and said, “When Dr. Roggero mentioned solving the pollution problem, I suddenly had a vision of a world free from wastes. Things I saw, things you said, began to fall into place."

  “What kind of things?” Duke said. “I certainly didn't intend to be a problem solver. I'm not one of the help people."

  “Oh, but you are,” Johnson said. “You pretend not to be, but you can't keep from being the kind of person you are."

  “That's what I keep telling you, Sylvie,” Dr. Roggero said. “All the pretending in the world can't conceal that even from someone who has known you only a few days."

  “You helped me. You helped Dr. Roggero. You have helped thousands of people. You help the dropouts at the dump. And now it's time to put yourself back in the help business officially."

  Duke's face turned hard. “Never! You don't know what you're asking. There are things in my life...."

  “Would you trade it for mine?” Johnson asked. “Would you like to forget everything every few days?"

  Duke was silent.

  “The will-of-the-wisp,” Johnson said. “A symbol of pollution. But some places, you said, were using marsh gas to do useful work. The dropouts at the dump. They exist by turning refuse into usable materials. They live on the wastes of society. Let's turn them into a resource."

  “What do you mean?” Duke asked. He was skeptical, but he was listening.

  “Let's turn wastes into a resource,” Johnson said. “Wastes are only materials that nobody has found a use for. Let's set up viable commercial operations to find uses for wastes. You said that pollution would not be cleaned up until it became profitable. Let's find a way to make it profitable."

  “That's a big job,” Duke said.

  “It's a job for scavengers. You can give people like that a purpose. Maybe a scavenger is only a person who hasn't found what he or she is good for. Give them a purpose. Give
them status. Give them a job: cleaning up the environment."

  “Not everything can be cleaned up that way,” Duke said.

  “I know it can't,” Johnson said. “You believe the motivation to make a profit is more trustworthy than the motivation to do good. All right. Find a way to make a profit. It doesn't have to be a big profit. But there's another part to the profit motive: the desire to minimize loss. That's where Frances Miller comes in."

  “Me?” she said.

  “I'm sure your meetings here have discussed Federal legislation, and most of that has focused on forbidding pollution in various ways and various degrees. Mostly polluters have tried to find loopholes or lax enforcement."

  “That's true,” Miller admitted, “but I don't see what—"

  “Let the polluters pollute,” Johnson said, “but charge them for the privilege."

  “How can any fee compensate for polluting everybody else's environment?” Dr. Roggero asked.

  “Wait!” Miller said. “Let him talk."

  “You adjust the fee so that in the end it is cheaper not to pollute. It works better than absolute abolition because it is cheaper to enforce and leaves the decision about anti-pollution measures to the polluter, who is in the best position to know what to do and how to do it."

  “But what about Duke's group?” Dr. Roggero asked.

  “And all the others like it,” Johnson said. “Because this is a way to redeem not only material but human wastes. The fees that are collected from the polluters will go to subsidize the products of Duke's operations until they are self-supporting."

  “Do you think it could work?"

  Duke said. “If somebody makes it work,” Johnson said.

  “It might work,” Miller said. “I'd be willing to help, and other news media could be persuaded to work on public awareness and political action."

  “You could do it,” Dr. Roggero said to Duke.

  “'We make money on what you throw away,'” Duke mused. “Might make people think about what they're throwing away. ‘Your by-products are our raw materials.’ It could be interesting."