Prescription for Chaos (6 page)

Banner smiled. "You have to crush all that wordage through a hydraulic press to get the meaning out of it."

"But what
does
it mean?"

"In his words, 'progressive and ordered civilization depends for its smooth functioning upon the existence, in a sizable proportion of the populace, of an extensive degree of waking suggestibility, and in some cases a mild state of hypnosis.'"

Hommel thought it over. "And he says, just incidentally, that our De-Tox cuts down this suggestibility?"

"That's it."

Hommel groaned.

"Nice, isn't it?" said Banner. "The pills are all over the world."

"Do you suppose he's right?"

Banner scowled. "That's a good question. Do you get out much, Mort?"

"Well . . . lately, since we've been working on this new hay-fever drug . . ."

"I know," said Banner. "I've been tied up lately myself. You've just been going back and forth between your office and apartment, right?"

"That's pretty close to it."

"Read the papers?"

"Just the headlines."

Banner tossed over a folded newspaper. "Take a look at the car ad on the back page."

Hommel turned the page over, and read:

Abelson's presents the first choice of long-lasting motor vehicles. The price is low but the value is high. Every interior is cleaned, all fittings tightened, and all moving parts lubricated. Why pay $4,000.00 and up for "newness"? Who cares if the fenders sweep up, out, or down? What's a little rust? A car is transportation. Who cares if the style is boxy, stretched-out, flattened, or flaring? Let's be frank; Do you want to buy a new car and look like a fool to the neighbors? Drop in at Abelson's Used Car Lot and see our selection of best buys from the best years.

You'll be glad you did.

Hommel looked at the picture above the advertising message. The picture showed an exaggeratedly modern-looking car, with a grille like two rows of teeth, and the ends of four bills, each labeled $1,000, sticking out between the teeth.

He read the ad over and over again, and one line stood out:

"Let's be frank: Do you want to buy a new car and look like a fool to the neighbors?"

Hommel scratched his head. "I certainly seem to have missed
something
."

Banner glanced at his watch. "Let's go into town for lunch. We can circulate around a little, and look things over."

Banner Laboratories was located well out of town, so it was after noon when they got there, and the best eating places were crowded.

Banner said, "If you can hold out for an hour or so, Mort, it might be a good idea to just look around."

"Suits me."

Banner parked the car, and they got out, across the street from a large new-car showroom. The big window was plastered with bright stickers, and the face of the building was hung with pennants and streamers.

Hommel felt the usual quickening of his pulse as he and Banner approached the door. They stepped in, to be assaulted by a glitter of polished metal, a fresh new-rubber smell, and the impressive sight of a brand-new car slowly revolving on a turntable.

Across the room, four or five salesmen sat hunched around a table, their ties loosened, coats hanging over the backs of their chairs, and smoldering cigarettes drooping out of the corners of their mouths as they played a listless game of pinochle.

The door clicked and banged shut.

The salesmen looked around, blinking. There was one swift complex movement, a momentary waving of arms, sawing of elbows, scraping of chairs, and a salesman, exhaling a cloud of smoke but with no cigarette in sight, came neatly, briskly, across the floor toward them. His step was confident, and his manner friendly, but his eyes suggested a boxer who had been thrown three times by a judo expert, and is coming out for the fourth time.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen. You want to look at a
new car
?"

Banner nodded.

"Well, sir, we've cut the price on this model to $2,895.00. For your money, you get something no used-car dealer can offer—newness. The style, of course, is a little different from past years. But what is style but
proof of newness
?"

He maneuvered them around to a sleek, dark-blue model, and opened the door to show a lush, expensive interior.

"Granted," he said, "it's a little extreme, but . . . ah . . . look how new the upholstery is! Look at the floor mats, and the brake pedal—"

Banner, obviously patterning his reaction after the advertisement they'd read earlier, shrugged. "Who cares about the upholstery?"

"Ah, sir, but remember, it's more
proof of newness
! Of course, what counts in a car is the running gear. But one of the most important factors in the condition of the running gear is its freeness from wear and misuse. It's
newness
, in other words. And you'll find no newer car anywhere than—"

Banner peered inside.

"Fantastic dash. Everyone will laugh like—"

"A car, sir," said the salesman quickly, "is a long-term investment. Would you permit uninformed neighbors to decide your choice of stocks and bonds? Of course not! Why, then—"

Like two fencers, Banner and the salesman thrust and parried in a rapid exchange of arguments that lasted five minutes, with the other salesmen listening breathlessly, and the owner wide-eyed in a glassed-in cubicle to one side. At the end, Banner conceded that he hadn't heard such good reasons for a new car in years, but he still wanted to look around. The salesman handed over his card, and managed to shake hands with both of them on the way out, while telling them how welcome they'd be when they came back.

As the door swung shut, a voice could be heard in the background, saying, "We've got to tone that dash down,
somehow
."

Banner and Hommel glanced at each other after they'd gone a few steps.

"If," said Banner, "
that
salesman can't sell new cars, who could?"

Hommel said uneasily, "How do we know where a thing like this is going to stop?"

"That's the trouble. We don't."

They walked on in silence. Then Banner cleared his throat.

"Look there. Down on the next block."

Hommel glanced at a huge sign:

Twenty or thirty customers were unhurriedly making their way through a large used-car lot. Here and there, attendants were polishing and waxing cars. Salesmen were raising hoods, and helpfully taking off brake drums so customers could see the condition of the brake lining.

As Hommel and Banner walked past the car lot, Hommel became conscious of some odd quality about the appearance pf the customers. "They look—" he hesitated.

"Neat," said Banner, frowning, "but shabby?"

"I think that's it."

Hommel studied a middle-aged man by a nearby car. He was wearing a clean, frayed, black sweater with three yellow stripes on the sleeve and a big yellow "W" on the back. He was saying expansively to a salesman, "So the wife says, 'Charles, you can't wear that old thing. What will people think?' And I said, 'This sweater's as warm as a new one. They'll think I've got sense, what
would
they think?'" He shook a little greenish object out of the bottle, shot it into his mouth, crunched it up, and offered the bottle to the salesman.

"Don't mind if I do," said the salesman. He shook the bottle over his open hand, tossed a little pale-green pill into his mouth, chewed contentedly, and handed back the bottle. The word "De-Tox" was momentarily visible on the label. The customer slipped the bottle in a side pocket. The two men chewed placidly.

Hommel and Banner stared.

"Ah," said the customer, "that old stuff really knocks the horrors in the head, doesn't it?"

"Good stuff," agreed the salesman.

"So they drop the bomb—" said the customer.

"Sure. So what? You're no deader than if a truck hit you."

"How much you want for this clunker?"

"Nine hundred. Good tires, good battery. The engine's smooth. Standard transmission, so you got no worry there. Heater. Radio. If you listen to that junk anyway."

"I used to listen to the news. But why bother?"

"Sure. What happens, happens."

"So the Arabs
are
mad at each other. What can I do about that? How's she start?"

"Fast. We take care of that."

"Jack her up. Let's jerk a wheel off to begin with."

"Yes,
sir
."

As the customer bent over to examine a tire, the neck of the pill bottle thrust out of his pocket.

Banner tore his gaze away with an effort.

Hommel let his breath out with a hiss.

They walked on, feeling stupefied, and caught sight of a "Bar and Grille" sign down the street.

"Let's go in there and eat," said Banner. "I want to sit down and think this over."

"It will certainly bear thought," said Hommel. "Did you see how casually they shook out those pills?"

"'Really knocks the horrors in the head,'" quoted Banner. "What was it he called them?"

"'That old stuff,'" said Hommel.

"It sounds like some kind of liquor. Of course, it could be that that was just an exception."

Hommel was feeling more and more sure of it as they put the car lot farther behind them. "After all," he said, "some people chew garlic—"

Banner put his hand on Hommel's arm.

Hommel looked around.

Coming out of the doorway of the bar was a man with ruddy complexion and bloodshot eyes. He pressed his hand to his mouth, tilted his head back, and chewed with a solid crunching noise. With his other hand, he held onto the doorpost. "Ah," he murmured, swallowing repeatedly, "that licks it." He reeled out onto the sidewalk, tilted expertly, banged into the building, and walked along with his feet tilted out and hands moving along the brick face of the building as if it were on wheels and he was shoving it to the rear. As he came closer, he saw Hommel and Banner, and muttered, "'M all right. Don't worry. M'body's drunk, but my head's cold sober."

An aproned figure appeared in the doorway. "You take those pills, Fred?"

"Sure, sure. You think I want to get run over or something?"

He reeled out past a storefront with a plate-glass window, staggered over to a door leading to a flight of stairs, expertly grabbed the handle on the third try, tilted forward, and vanished inside.

The bartender mopped his brow with a big handkerchief, and went back into the bar.

Two men in their early twenties came out, absently tossing pale green pills in their mouths, and strolled off down the street.

Hommel looked in the doorway, and saw, beside the cash register, a glass dish of pale-green pills with a cardboard sign, rudely lettered:

"Dettox. Take some."

Banner glanced in over his shoulder. "Let's eat some place else."

Hommel looked down the street. On the corner at the far end of the block, a sign read, "Soda-Pharmacy-Lunch."

Hommel pointed. "How about that?"

"Fine. A sandwich is all I want."

They walked in silence for a moment, then Banner said, "This thing is a lot more widespread than I imagined."

"We might
still
be getting an exaggerated picture of it."

"Maybe. But it's one of those things you can discount by fifty per cent, and
still
have too much."

They pushed open the door of the drugstore, sat down at the lunch counter, and ordered ham sandwiches and milk shakes. Hommel gradually relaxed, and was moodily contemplating his sallow and unsatisfactory image in the drugstore mirror across from the counter, when he felt Banner grip his arm. He turned, and Banner murmured, "Look at that boy and girl."

Seated at a table between the soda fountain and a display of alarm clocks were a boy and girl with glasses of some kind of dark-brown carbonated drink. The boy raised his eyebrows at the girl, who giggled as he solemnly dropped two pale-green pills, one in his drink, one in hers. To the accompaniment of a violent effervescence, they crushed the pills with their spoons.

Hommel was momentarily paralyzed. Then he glanced around, horrified that no one was doing anything to stop them.

At the soda fountain, a boy in a light-brown jacket was turned away, just taking two milk shakes from the mixers. At the prescription counter at the far end of the room, a man in a white jacket was handing a woman a package, and smiling at her owlishly through thick lenses. He raised one finger of each hand.

"
One
for
one
. You'll be tranquil, but not dopey." He laughed. "No, madam, they won't fight each other." He turned to the next customer. "Yes, ma'am?"

Hommel let his breath whistle out through his teeth. The boy and girl had set down their empty glasses, and were now watching each other expectantly.

For an instant, they both straightened with a look of mutual disapproval. Then a kind of greenish light came into the boy's eyes. The skin at the corners of his eyes tightened up as his ears pulled back. He opened his mouth and made a "
whooo
"
sound, as if blowing out live flames.

Arm in arm, the boy and girl went out the door.

Hommel stared after them. "Great, leaping—"

Banner growled, "That boob at the prescription counter is packaging De-Tox with the tranquilizers."

Hommel started to get up.

Banner gripped his arm. "Hold on. You stop a fan by pulling out the plug, not grabbing the blade."

Another customer was approaching the drug counter. Another large bottle of De-Tox was wrapped up and handed over. The cash register jingled merrily. Another customer stepped up.

"I see what you mean," said Hommel slowly.

Just then, the boy behind the lunch counter set down their milk shakes and sandwiches. They ate somberly, then started back to the plant. On the way, they stopped for gas, and were treated to the sight of a yawning truck driver swallowing a pill to keep awake, and following it with two pale-green De-Tox pills.

Banner and Hommel pulled through the gates of the Banner Value Drug and Vitamin Laboratories, Inc., in silence and a state of profound gloom.