Complete Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by Fox B. Holden

  He would listen again, when the counter-march command was given. Impossible, of course. Unthinkable, unthinkable . . .

  It seemed suddenly that the two-hour long march about the 5-mile mean circumference would take two days. The display was ridiculous and time-consuming, but he was thankful for it even as he cursed it. For he must hear the sound again. Yet if he heard it, then the spectacle must never end.

  Slowly, slowly, at a measured, tireless step the Prelate General’s Review marched in indefatigable tribute.

  And at length, at the half-way mark, Doug raised his sword for the command, whipped it downward.

  “Inner columns march to the rear!”

  The relay began.

  “Inner columns as assigned, to the rear—”

  And the last words were magnified to the proportion of thunder, but his ears heard it only as a faraway thing. And again he heard the near-by command, again a split-second off.

  “MARCH!”

  This time it was unmistakable. A recently designed section or squad-leader, of course, who had not yet mastered the timing of commands to perfection. Nearby. He looked desperately into the files of marching boys at his side, now muddled as the centermost columns marched to the rear. The command would not have been relayed to the outside columns, since they were continuing their march forward. Then he must quickly search the reverse column as it shuttled its obscured way to the rear.

  But of course not! He would not recognize a face, even as—as his had gone unrecognized! But the voice he had heard it three times, three split-seconds! And somehow it was, it was Terry’s voice! In there somewhere—Terry, Terry and Mike! Swords and maces swinging rhythmically at their sides . . .

  CHAPTER XIV

  CARL GRAYSON lit a cigarette. Senior Quadrate Blair watched him closely as he went over the last of his notes. The man was obviously disturbed, but only about the interview itself. There had not been an instant’s suspicion; Blair was certain of it. The greatest danger was over. It had been a danger ever-present with first meetings but with each, it had become progressively easier with which to cope, yet with the man Grayson, there had been unexpected pitfalls. These strange people indulged in a peculiar relationship called friendship, he had discovered—in essence it was a psychological thing, a thing from which to derive a satisfying personal pleasure. In actuality, it had become a rather distorted relationship, forged as it had been into a many-ratcheted tool. Between the Congressman and Grayson, however, the relationship was genuine and—the subtle thing which he had missed until it had been almost too late—of a partial nature. The thing called friendship was a thing of varying degree. And Grayson was a “best” friend. He had almost missed that. It was so different to stabilize things here . . .

  “Doug, I want to get this straight for sure, and then I think I’ll have the works. What do you mean by ‘new sources of military manpower yet waiting to be tapped’ ? You mean simply the next UMT draft in July don’t you—all the new 17-year-olds?”

  “For broadcast—immediate broadcast, Carl, I shall explain the phrase by simply saying, uh—a new program of draft-age analysis and evaluation is soon expected to be under study by the Blair Defense Preparedness Committee . . .”

  “Yes, but—Doug that’s just a mess of words. It doesn’t tell beans about . . . Oh. I get it—OK.” He pushed the hat further back on his head, made a marginal clarification. It was comfortable in the small office, but there was perspiration on Grayson’s wide forehead.

  “You don’t sound too satisfied, Carl.”

  “Who, me? Hell, I’m satisfied. I keep getting the exclusives, so I can’t holler. I just thought somehow you’d never get around to using that method, that’s all, Doug. If you want to tell ’em, you can—and I guess you always have. But I supposes if you don’t want to, but want ’em to think you have, it’s as legitimate as ever to just confuse ’em. Get me. Philosopher.” He completed the marginal note. “Now let’s see . . . OK, OK, OK.”

  “Carl, how busy are you this afternoon?”

  “Not, especially. Got to get this ready for my seven o’clock stint tonight and knock out the rest of next Monday’s column, and then there’s some of the routine junk but that can wait. Why?”

  “I think I need your personal reaction to—well, to be frank about it, to a new angle the committee’s got in its sights on this UMT business. I want to know what you think the radio—and the press, of course—will do with it.”

  “I guess I better put the pencil away?”

  “Afraid so. But you’ll get it first when the time comes. And perhaps you can help me decide when that should be, too.”

  “Shoot. All ears and no memory.” He folded the uneven sheets of newsprint, crammed them in an inner pocket.

  “The story I’ve just given you, Carl, is a lot more important than it looks. At first glance it’s just Sunday feature stuff—that’s the way you’ll play it in your column, and you’ll probably just give it a tag-end spot on your program. And that’s the way I want it played. But—it is important. I think you could call it a sort of—of a cornerstone story.”

  “Thinking of a series, you mean? Hell, Doug, you’ve got the next elec—”

  “Not as a series, that’s the point. Not so direct. More like a good propag—public relations campaign I mean. The development will be gradual, and not too regular—that part of it I’m going to leave up to you to some extent, I think—until it automatically becomes the top news.”

  “Don’t get it, Doug. I’ve told you before what’s page one and what isn’t. This thing you’ve just given me hasn’t any big names in it, anything about money, taxes, or things to make anybody good and sick at heart. This is just—well, just opinion. Thoughtful analysis. The thoughtful stuff never makes the front pages, you know that.”

  THE Quadrate smiled. “Precisely. I feel it should be pretty casually introduced. But don’t worry—I won’t ruin its news value. I think you’ll agree with me when I’m ready for the top spot on your broadcast and for the front pages, I’ll have something that will—how do you put it?—make people suddenly sick. Point is, I want them to be unconsciously thinking along the right lines first, so that when they get through being sick and stop to think about it, it will make sense.”

  He was careful. It was difficult to maintain the curious bantering way of speech these people continually employed. An end-product, of course, of their emotional degeneration, and therefore as difficult to perfectly imitate as a provincial misuse of the language. But it was not as difficult as at first.

  “Sure Doug—what you’re talking about is done all the time, every day of the week. That part’s easy enough—too damn easy. But—you keep saying ‘it.’ ‘It’ will make sense. What are you gunning at?”

  “Suppose I give you an example. The final development of that statement you weren’t clear on. ‘New sources of military manpower yet waiting to be tapped.’ What it will mean, when the time comes, is the UMT drafting of children ten years old. Thirteen at first.”

  “The what?” The man Grayson looked almost ludicrous. His mouth hung foolishly open, and there was no sound coming from it.

  “I’m afraid you not only heard correctly, Carl, but that I had better tell you that if you’re thinking of sending for the booby-wagon for me, you’ll have to send for about thirty others for the rest of the committee. Next week, the Blair Defense Preparedness Committee will introduce a bill for unlimited lowering of the draft age, for either war or peacetime use. Within a month after its passage—and I can guarantee you that it will be passed—the committee will give you what you’ll need for your first big story on it. It will urge, and then it will demand that all male youths from the present draft age of 17 down to the age of thirteen be immediately registered for selective service.”

  “Good Lord, Doug—”

  “The committee is strong, Carl. It is strong because I knew how to pick it. I did not pick it, I assure you, on the basis of intelligence or learning or capability. I picked it in ter
ms of personal political and financial influence, and in terms of my capability in persuading its members to my way of thinking. That was not too difficult—they’re all band-wagon men.

  “But to the point. On the heels of the new Blair Law’s invocation, the committee will again make a demand—registration of all youngsters down to and including the age of ten years.”

  “Doug for God’s sake—”

  “Sit down, Carl!”

  “Sure . . .”

  “I’m quite sane. Worried?”

  “Hell yes I’m worried.”

  “Take it easy. They thought a man called Litvinov was deranged once—around 1913 I think it was, when he predicted World War One, and the fall of the House of Czars.”

  “BUT you can’t be serious about this—this kid business. Why my God if I think you’ve been—overworking, let’s say, what d’you think the reaction of the man in the street’ll be?”

  “That, Carl, hasn’t mattered for quite some time. You know it, and I know it. He’s already swallowed UMT itself, don’t forget.”

  “But—hell, the Blair Committee isn’t the only bunch of politicians around here. And they—”

  “I told you, Carl, my committee is strong. I picked it that way. Others can yell all they want. But no amount of yelling—even by the most widely-heard commentators and widely-published columnists—has ever really accomplished much when a particularly strong political faction has decided how things are going to be. It’s the things that make you sick that have always made the front pages, remember?”

  “I—you’re crazy, Doug. Crazy as a 1951 tax program. You’ve gotten bitter about things in the past, sometimes a little cynical. Hell, who doesn’t. But you’ve always been the one man the people knew they could count on—and your fellow-workers, I can even add. If you try to come out with a thing like this—”

  “A moment. Just a minute, Carl. I want to ask an easy one. It is really easy. How. long before the next world war breaks out?”

  “Easy, what d’you mean, easy? Tomorrow, next month, next year maybe. Maybe not until 1960. Nobody knows that—”

  “I still say, easy. There’s certainty it will be at least by 1960, and probably sooner. That’s terrifyingly close enough, isn’t it, when you’re speaking in terms of the inevitable?”

  “I see.”

  “The world is a pretty desperate place right now, wouldn’t you say? Worse even than five or six years ago.”

  “Desperate, desperate—yes of course it’s desperate. And you—you’re going to make something of it, is that it? Doug, you’re not being very original. I never thought—I never honestly thought the day would come when I’d hear you—”

  “Give me a chance, Carl.”

  “If I do I don’t think I’ll ever broadcast another word of what you have to say.”

  “I’ll take that chance. But first I’d better clear some things up. First of all, I’ll tell you how much I’ve explained to the committee. I’ve pointed out to them that there is but one way open—and one way only—of offsetting the Soviets’ superiority in arms production, and that’s to shock the living daylights out of them. Shock them so that they’ll be convinced we’re—we’re a nation gone mad, perhaps. As you think I’ve gone mad, this moment. But—what stomach would any foreign enemy have for fighting a madman, armed to the teeth with atomic weapons? They say a lunatic with a gun is a great deal more deadly than a sane man similarly armed.

  “So—we shall shock them, Carl. We shall, perhaps before the year is out, not only double our own production regardless of cost, but register every kid in the country down to the ten-year age level. And have a gun ready for each one, too. As I explained to the committee, it won’t be even their tremendous numbers that will be frightening. It will be the seemingly crazed desperation of the country that would consider calling them to arms that would throw the scare. And then, of course, we’ll take advantage of the scare. Well produce A-weapons as we never have before. Hell, every parent in the nation will be breaking his back at a defense plant—not just for the ridiculously high wages that a riveter gets, but to insure the safety of their kids’ skins.”

  “Doug, you’re either really nuts or—or—”

  “So much the committee knows, as of now. And, I’ve sold it to them. I sold it to them by simply asking them which was less desirable, my plan, or the end of civilization in a few short years. And, by asking them what other solution they had.”

  “Any straw—any straw at all.” The reporter was not speaking to be heard, but Blair heard him.

  “You’ve hit it precisely, Carl. It’s come finally to that. Any straw at all.”

  FOR a few moments there was silence in the small office, and Carl Grayson just sat, staring at the floor. At length he put a fresh cigarette between his lips, lit it, and smoked automatically. It was half consumed before Doug said, “Now, I want to discuss the rest of the plan with you. The part I’ve not broached to the committee as yet.”

  “The—rest? Doug what are you talking about?”

  “The rest of it. You see, sooner or later the initial shock is going to wear off, Carl. Then, perhaps if we’re lucky, we’ll be evenly matched in armament and personnel under arms, but that will be all. A balance of peace is no good. You convince no one that peace is desired. You simply convince them that for awhile, there’s no way they dare break it. But again, sooner or later, the dare is taken and then—”

  “I want to go, Doug.”

  “Not yet. I want you to hear me out. And, I’m going to ask a rather special favor, Carl. Judge the plans on the merits of its logic alone. For the moment, imagine you have no emotion.”

  “I can, but it won’t do any good. Afraid I have emotion, Douglas.”

  “I see. Tell me, if it is so valuable a thing as to be allowed to cloud your reasoning, why would you instantly throw it away if something called patriotic duty were suddenly thrust upon you?”

  “It would shake me up a little of course—”

  “Yes, but you’d chuck it. You’d perform the duty.”

  “All right. I don’t know the tricks of debate, you do. Go ahead I’m listening.”

  “I’ll begin this way. If, we’ll say, an infantry captain realized that by sacrificing the lives of three of his men and possibly his own, he could save the lives of his entire company, what would he do, if he were what is termed a ‘good’ officer?”

  “Why, if that were his only alternative—”

  “I assure you, it would be, for the purposes of my analogy.”

  “He’d—he’d save the company. That’s happened.”

  “Even to men with emotions.”

  “Why—yes of course. Damn you Doug—”

  “Even when one of the three to be sacrificed might be a kid who was still in high school when he enlisted—”

  “Yes. Yes I guess so.”

  “Now remember what you’ve just told me, and switch to this . . . What, actually, is the basis for armed conflict between nations? Generally speaking, with the long view of history?”

  “I—I suppose covetousness. Materially translated that would mean just plain wanting the grain fields, the ore mines, the sea ports, the wealth someone else has and that you no longer have, doesn’t it? Land, then. Hitler called it Lebensraum. One outfit thinks another is stepping on its toes over this chunk of real estate or that. Etcetera, ad nauseum, ad politics.”

  “Good. And what’s the real root of this material covetousness do you think?”

  “Grass is always greener, I guess.”

  “That is motive enough for the small-scale wars, yes. But I’m speaking of the kind nations fight in desperation, not merely for the sake of warring.”

  “Then, well—they run out of what they’ve got. Want more. Is that the answer you want?”

  “Almost. What makes them run out, Carl?”

  “Not enough stuff to take care of their population, not enough work to supply the money to buy what little there is to buy. Too many people, not enoug
h resources to keep ’em happy.”

  “Now, essentially, you have it. Now, if you’ll remember those two things—the captain’s sacrifice and Mr. Hitler’s fight for Lebensraum—we’ll switch again. If I owed you a dollar, Carl, and. gave you a bill, you’d accept it. What would it be worth?”

  “Why, about—let’s see—”

  “No, I mean in terms of the metal backing it.”

  “Well—actually, it could be worthless. But as long as I don’t think it is—”

  “CORRECT. As long as you, and everybody else of course, has faith in it, it is of value, and is working currency. Now one more thing. Did you ever have anything really bad happen to you when you were a youngster—say about ten years old, Carl?”

  “I don’t get this, Doug. You’re way over me—”

  “No, answer me. Think of something unpleasant that happened—”

  “Don’t have to think. I still get _ goose-pimples when I hear a near-by train whistle. Almost got killed once when my father’s car got stalled on a railroad crossing. Sort of a—I guess they call it conditioning. Pretty strong with me, I guess.”

  “Yes. Now—we’ll put the four things together, Carl. First of all, according to my plan, the world must somehow be given implicit faith in a method for the elimination of warfare. A method in which they will so strongly believe that, although the supposed reason for such belief may be scientifically quite fallacious, they will practice it nonetheless. To do this, they must be shown a method which, by one means or another, actually works. And, that is possible. There is such a method, based on the sacrifice of the few for the ultimate preservation of the many . . .”

  “Go on. So far you’ve brought in the dollar-bill idea; the business about conditioning, the captain and his company . . . What method?”