Prescription for Chaos

by Christopher Anvil

  Her voice seemed to reach him only faintly, and it took a moment to understand her words.

  "Good heavens," she was saying, her voice crisp, "look at those headlines!"

  The sense of bliss was gone. Dave looked around wearily, wondering what it was this time.

  Nearby in the hall was a stand displaying candy, cigars, magazines and newspapers. Anita was looking at a newspaper, whose oversize headlines screamed:

  PILLS KILL AGAIN!

  Dave looked at her wearily. Her shining auburn hair showed glints of flame in the light, and her face and figure were beautiful. But her brows were drawn, her lips compressed, and her eyes shot sparks.

  "Look at this," she said, showing Dave the paper.

  Dave looked at it dully, remembering that when he'd first met Anita, he'd told his best friend of his good fortune.

  "I've found a wonderful girl," he'd said.

  "Good for you."

  "The only trouble is, she's a follower of this—Harkman Bates, I think his name is."

  "Oh, God!"

  "She belongs to the—what do you call it—the—"

  "Security League," said his friend promptly. "Okay. You're not engaged to her?"

  "No," said Dave, startled.

  "You're not married to her?"

  "Of course not."

  "Drop her."

  "Listen—" Dave protested.

  "You listen to me! Every time you think of her, hold your breath till you're dizzy, and don't breathe till you think of something else. Go join the YMCA, and work out on the dumbbells and parallel bars till you're so worn out girls are meaningless. Sink yourself in abstruse mathematics till you warp yourself around into a frame of reference where sex isn't even conceivable. Go—"

  "Listen," said Dave furiously, "I didn't say I was a victim of passion! All I said—"

  "Was that you're falling in love with this girl, and she belongs to the Security League."

  "I just said she was a wonderful girl. Pretty. Intelligent. Good sense of humor. Nice figure. She's got everything. Only—"

  "Yeah," said his friend cynically. "Well, that's all it takes. The uncontrollable passion will come later. Whether it will be love or murder I don't know."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You're up against something you can't lick, that's all. You can't win. You're an engineer. The motto of the Security League might as well be, 'End Science Before Science Ends Us.' And it's backed up by facts, figures, sentiment, and some kind of mystical claptrap a man can't come to grips with. Right in the focus of this stands Harkman Bates. He's handsome, he's rich, he's got stage presence, he's got a voice of silver, and he's got an organization that works for him from morning till night. You might as well argue with an earth-moving machine.

  "If you go with this girl, there'll be endless conflict, because you're an engineer, and you'll represent Science to her. Your ego is going to take the bruising of a lifetime. You're going to cease to exist any time League business comes up. When Bates comes on TV, you're going to find yourself converted into a piece of furniture. Afterward you'll have to listen to how wonderful and how right he is. Get out now. Cut your losses. It's a hopeless cause."

  Dave stared at him. "How can you be so sure?"

  "I've been through it myself. A different girl, but the same situation. Take my word for it. You might just as well fall in love with a land mine."

  And now, Anita was studying the newspaper, her face angry and indignant.

  She glanced at him reproachfully, "Your scientific friends are responsible for this. Over three thousand people have died or are in the hospital thanks to those pills, and yet we can go into that drugstore over there—" She pointed across the hall to the entrance of a drugstore—"and buy a bottle right now to cure a headache. It doesn't say on the bottle that if you take too many they'll poison your liver. But—"

  Dave remembered the last time he'd tried to argue with her. That had been over a magazine article to the effect that auto exhaust was connected with lung cancer and a lung condition called emphysema.

  That argument had lasted three minutes by the clock, but it was three minutes packed with emotion and insult, and Dave wound up in the street, stunned.

  This memory, too, passed through Dave's mind as Anita looked at him accusingly.

  Then in memory Dave saw the smile on her lips and the glow in her eyes that had been there just a few minutes ago.

  And Dave realized that he was not going to cut his losses. Somehow, there must be a way to win.

  He'd already tried arguing it out with her, head-on. That had not worked.

  He forced himself to look at the paper as if interested.

  "I have to admit, you've got a point."

  She frowned at him. "I expected a lecture on the virtues of science."

  "Why? You're right."

  This seemed to leave her totally confused. She started to speak, looked at him for a long moment, then turned away, blushing.

  He didn't understand this. But it was better than fighting.

  They walked outside.

  She drew a deep breath. "What a lovely evening."

  "Isn't it?" said Dave. The air was cool and clear, with a fresh breeze. The streets were almost empty. Sometimes there was a solid mass of cars, the combined exhausts of which, as they started up at a green light, was enough to give anyone momentary doubts about technology.

  She put her hand in his.

  "I'm sorry I snapped, Dave."

  "I know how you feel."

  "I'm so glad you do." She smiled at him warmly. "Have you ever thought of joining the League?"

  "Ah—"

  They turned the corner. The theater marquee spelled out in bright lights:

  BOB HOPE

  Dave said hastily, "We're late. We'll have to hurry."

  Where the Security League wasn't involved, Anita's sense of humor was cheerful and robust. And if there was one entertainer she liked above all other, this was the one. Fortunately, she forgot her question.

  Two hours later, their disagreement completely forgotten, they came up the aisle of the theater hand-in-hand, and she smiled at him with sparkling eyes. They were buffeted by the crowd, but she didn't seem to mind. When they reached the lobby, she stopped for a box of popcorn. Around them people were rushing outside, and Dave felt a vague anxiety but couldn't pin it down. On the way out, they passed the door of a soda fountain known locally for its ice cream, and its after-movie snacks.

  Dave glanced at it. Something told him he should take her in there. He looked at her.

  "Would you like—"

  She smiled contentedly. "The air's so fresh, and it's such a nice evening. Why don't we just take a walk?"

  At the same time, he knew this wasn't going to work out, and he could think of no reason why it shouldn't.

  From somewhere came the rumble of a big truck, and on a building across the street the lights of cars were swinging across as the parking lot near the theater emptied itself.

  Dave looked into her clear dark eyes.

  He held her hand tightly.

  At the corner, the traffic light turned green.

  A big diesel truck gave a loud Baarroom! It started forward, slowed with a clash of gears, accelerated hard.

  A host of cars rushed forward as their drivers, anxious to get home so they'd be wide-awake at work the next day, jammed down the gas pedals.

  The traffic shot past down the street.

  The wind was right in the face of Dave and Anita.

  Gas fumes and diesel smoke whirled around them.

  "Oh, Dave!" cried Anita angrily.

  Once again she was a member of the Security League.

  She was somber as he drove toward her apartment.

  He turned the car radio on hoping to get music. Instead he got a smooth commercial voice saying:

  ". . . boon for allergy sufferers, and it has been scientifically tested and found perfectly harmless, so you can take it without your doctor's prescription."
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br />   "Yes," said Anita acidly. "That's what you say now."

  "And next," said the voice, "the news."

  Dave reached out to change stations, but she said, "Let's listen."

  "The town of Little Falls, Kansas," said the announcer, "was wiped out this afternoon. Not by fire, not by flood, but by a man-made catastrophe. Little Falls is in farming country, and planes were spraying insecticide unaware that the spray was remaining suspended in the air, to be blown in a thick deadly smog straight through town. Scientists say that the combination of atmospheric pressure, humidity, and temperature gradient which caused this smog was so unusual that no change in spraying technique is needed. The smog was only a freak, they say. But tonight, Little Falls is a ghost town—"

  Anita huddled near the door, and the announcer droned on about detection of cheating on test bans, radioactive fall-out, the kidnapping of a rocket scientist from a Middle East missile project, an investigation of an additive used in baked goods, a case of the Black Plague carried halfway around the world in an airplane—and all through this recitation Anita shrank further from Dave. To wind it up, the announcer reported an experiment to:

  ". . . determine, this coming Saturday, the internal structure of the earth, by explosion of nuclear missiles, fired down long shafts with powerful laser 'head-lights' intended to melt the layers of rock in front of them when, at high speeds, they reach the ends of the shafts. These missiles are designed to penetrate further and explode deeper than any other man-made device in history. The object is to set up seismic waves that can be analyzed by new equipment . . ."

  Dave slowed to a stop in front of Anita's apartment house.

  The news went on.

  ". . . despite the qualms of we uninformed laymen, scientists assure us there is no danger because the explosions are small, geologically speaking.—And that's the news. Good night."

  Dave shut the radio off before it could do more damage.

  Anita said, in a small voice, "You didn't answer my question, Dave?"

  "When?"

  "Before we went into the movie?"

  Dave remembered the question "Have you ever thought of joining the League?"

  He sighed.

  "To be truthful, Anita I hadn't thought about it."

  "Tonight is the first time I've even been able to talk to you about the League. Harkman Bates is going to speak on television in five minutes or so. Would you like to come up?"

  "Sure," said Dave wearily, "I'll come up."

  Bates's smooth deep voice rolled on. His chiseled features, cleft chin, and wavy silver hair gave him a look of distinction and power. His eyes spoke an unmistakable message of sincerity.

  Anita, watching him, sighed.

  Dave, contrasting the sincerity with the man's basic message, swore under his breath. Although it was unmistakable that Bates had a point.

  ". . . deformed children," Bates was saying, "brought into the world because scientists did not know the true nature of the 'harmless drug' gave another warning. But still they do not see the nature of the very thing they work with."

  His eyes blazed.

  "Science is unpredictable.

  "Will scientists never learn that?

  "The result of any new and basic experiment is not knowable in advance.

  "As science reaches closer and closer to the heart of nature, the results of miscalculation and ignorance loom larger. Already, the womb of woman has been distorted by science, the lungs of man filled with corruption by the technology of science, the natural longings of humanity perverted by this new godless religion.

  "Steadily the world becomes more strange to us, made strange by science. Already there are those who cannot make their way in such a world, and the number grows, day-by-day.

  "The scientist tells us, we must study, and learn, and take up the things of science. We must all become scientists and technicians, and then we shall all be happy, well-adjusted.

  "And all the time he says this, he is blinded to the flaw of his own belief:

  "The results of an experiment cannot be foreseen.

  "No-one knows where Science will lead us, or how suddenly the trail may end. Foolish men are raising this new unpredictable force to the point where we can no longer control it. Now is the time to control it.

  "Now is the time to say—So far and no further!"

  From somewhere, there rose an immense cheer, a thundering applause that grew and grew, and the camera shifted to show a huge audience on its feet, waving and cheering.

  For just an instant, Dave remembered the blast of gas fumes on the street, the bitter expressions of boys on street corners, ready for trouble because they could find no work—machines had the jobs. He remembered the pills that were known to be harmless, and that did their damage anyway. He remembered his amazement at the list of ingredients in a package of baked goods. What were these things, anyway? He remembered the poisoned insecticide that had wiped out a town, thought of the tons of poison that were dumped on plants yearly, washed into the soil and—then what? Did the plants take up the insecticide and pass it on, little by little, to the man who ate the plant?

  These and many other things flashed through his mind.

  "My friends," said the voice of the handsome silver-haired man,

  "Now is the time to stop it!

  "And to stop it forever!"

  The cheer rose again, but Dave was out of the spell.

  The speech was over.

  A band was playing, and Anita, her eyes shining, turned to Dave, including him in her own world.

  "Now you've heard him! Now will you join?"

  Wearily, Dave shook his head. "For just a minute, I almost agreed. But it's no use, Anita."

  She came over to sit beside him.

  "Why not, Dave?"

  "Because he doesn't know what he's talking about."

  He might have slapped her face. "Every word he said was true!"

  "I know. But he didn't say enough words. He overlooked a little point."

  She drew away from him.

  "What do you mean?"

  "How do you stop science? How, Anita? And what happens if you do? Science and technology give power, and the world is split up into countries that want power. If one stops, another will go on, and get the power to overcome the country that stops. So no one can stop. But that's only part of it. We—"

  "Dave," she said coldly, "don't you suppose he's thought of this? The League isn't made up of fools."

  "Then what's his answer?"

  "I don't know. I'm sure he has one."

  "I'm satisfied there isn't any. We're—"

  "Then you'd better go."

  Dave stood up angrily. "You don't want to listen, do you?"

  She held the door open.

  He walked past her. "Thanks. I listened to your side." He turned on his heel.

  Her voice was cold as ice. "Thank you for a pleasant evening."

  As Dave sat in his chilly car and pressed the starter, he could hear again his friend's voice:

  "You can't win . . . It's a hopeless cause . . . You might just as well fall in love with a land mine."

  Wearily, Dave drove back to his apartment, and spent the night in a miserable search for sleep.

  The next day, at the lab, his friend took one look, nodded wisely, and said nothing.

  Around ten o'clock, word came that Bardeen wanted to see him. Barrow was in the office when Dave got there, and listened as Dave told about the intruder in the magnetics lab.

  Bardeen nodded finally. "We expected it. It's too bad, but that's life."

  Dave said, "Do we have any idea how he got in?"

  "Under the outer and inner fences, over the walkway between the magnetics lab and Project 'S', then around to the front and through the door. He had the key, and someone had changed the filter on the control that snaps on the lights around the roof of the magnetics lab. He obviously had an accomplice, but we have no idea who."

  "The intruder wasn't one of our own people?" />
  "No. The police have identified him. The only interesting point so far is that he was a member of the Security League."