The Minority Report and Other Classic Stories (13 page)

“It’s a big business, then,” Taverner observed. “This project of creating and maintaining Yancy.”

“Thousands of people are involved in just writing the material. You only saw the first stage—and it goes into every city. Tapes, films, books, magazines, posters, pamphlets, dramatic visual and audio shows, plants in the newspapers, sound trucks, kids’ comic strips, word-of-mouth report, elaborate ads … the works. A steady stream of Yancy.” Picking up a magazine from the coffee table he indicated the lead article. “ ‘How is John Yancy’s Heart?’ Raises the question of what would we do without Yancy? Next week, an article on Yancy’s stomach.” Acidly, Sipling finished: “We know a million approaches. We turn it out of every pore. We’re called yance-men; it’s a new art-form.”

“How do you—the corps, feel about Yancy?”

“He’s a big sack of hot air.”

“None of you is convinced?”

“Even Babson has to laugh. And Babson is at the top; after him come the boys who sign the checks. God, if we ever started believing in Yancy … if we got started thinking that trash
meant
something—” An expression of acute agony settled over Sipling’s face. “That’s it. That’s why I can’t stand it.”

“Why?” Taverner asked, deeply curious. His throat-mike was taking it all in, relaying it back to the home office at Washington. “I’m interested in finding out why you broke away.”

Sipling bent down and called his son. “Mike, stop playing and come on over here.” To Taverner he explained: “Mike’s nine years old. Yancy’s been around as long as he’s been alive.”

Mike came dully over. “Yes, sir?”

“What kind of marks do you get in school?” his father asked.

The boy’s chest stuck out proudly; he was a clear-eyed little miniature of Leon Sipling. “All A’s and B’s.”

“He’s a smart kid,” Sipling said to Taverner. “Good in arithmetic, geography, history, all that stuff.” Turning to the boy he said: “I’m going to ask you some questions; I want this gentleman to hear your answers. Okay?”

“Yes, sir,” the boy said obediently.

His thin face grim, Sipling said to his son: “I want to know what you think about war. You’ve been told about war in school; you know about all the famous wars in history. Right?”

“Yes, sir. We learned about the American Revolution, and the First Global War, and then the Second Global War, and then the First Hydrogen War, and the War between the colonists on Mars and Jupiter.”

“To the schools,” Sipling explained tightly to Taverner, “we distribute Yancy material—educational subsidies in packet form. Yancy takes children through history, explains the meaning of it all. Yancy explains natural science. Yancy explains good posture and astronomy and every other thing in the universe. But I never thought my own son …” His voice trailed off unhappily, then picked up life. “So you know all about war. Okay, what do you think of war?”

Promptly, the boy answered: “War is bad. War is the most terrible thing there is. It almost destroyed mankind.”

Eying his son intently, Sipling demanded: “Did anybody tell you to say that?”

The boy faltered uncertainly. “No, sir.”

“You really believe those things?”

“Yes, sir. It’s true, isn’t it? Isn’t war bad?”

Sipling nodded. “War is bad. But what
about just
wars?”

Without hesitation the boy answered: “We have to fight just wars, of course.”

“Why?”

“Well, we have to protect our way of life.”

“Why?”

Again, there was no hesitation in the boy’s reedy answer. “We can’t let them walk over us, sir. That would encourage aggressive war. We can’t permit a world of brute power. We have to have a world of—” He searched for the exact word. “A world
of law.”

Wearily, half to himself, Sipling commented: “I wrote those meaningless, contradictory words myself, eight years ago.” Pulling himself together with a violent effort he asked: “So war is bad. But we have to fight just wars. Well, maybe this
planet,
Callisto, will get into a war with … let’s pick Ganymede, at random.” He was unable to keep the harsh irony from his voice. “Just at random. Now, we’re at war with Ganymede. Is it a
just
war? Or only a war?”

This time, there was no answer. The boy’s smooth face was screwed up in a bewildered, struggling frown.

“No answer?” Sipling inquired icily.

“Why, uh,” the boy faltered. “I mean…” He glanced up hopefully. “When the time comes won’t somebody say?”

“Sure,” Sipling choked. “Somebody will say. Maybe even Mr. Yancy.”

Relief flooded the boy’s face. “Yes, sir. Mr. Yancy will say.” He retreated back toward the other children. “Can I go now?”

As the boy scampered back to his game, Sipling turned miserably to Taverner. “You know what game they’re playing? It’s called Hippo-Hoppo. Guess whose grandson just loves it. Guess who invented the game.”

There was silence.

“What do you suggest?” Taverner asked. “You said you thought something could be done.”

A cold expression appeared on Sipling’s face, a flash of deeply-felt cunning. “I know the project… I know how it can be pried apart. But somebody has to stand with a gun at the head of the authorities. In nine years I’ve come to see the essential key to the Yancy character … the key to the new type of person we’re growing, here. It’s simple. It’s the element that makes that person malleable enough to be led around.”

“I’ll bite,” Taverner said patiently, hoping the line to Washington was good and clear.

“All Yancy’s beliefs are insipid. The key is
thinness.
Every part of his ideology is diluted: nothing excessive. We’ve come as close as possible to
no
beliefs … you’ve noticed that. Wherever possible we’ve cancelled attitudes out, left the person apolitical. Without a viewpoint.”

“Sure,” Taverner agreed. “But with the illusion of a viewpoint.”

“All aspects of personality have to be controlled; we want the total person. So a specific attitude has to exist for each concrete question. In every respect, our rule is:
Yancy believes the least troublesome possibility.
The most shallow. The simple, effortless view, the view that fails to go deep enough to stir any real thought.”

Taverner got the drift. “Good solid lulling views.” Excitedly he hurried on, “But if an extreme original view got in, one that took real effort to work out, something that was hard to live …”

“Yancy plays croquet. So everybody fools around with a mallet.” Sipling’s eyes gleamed. “But suppose Yancy had a preference for—Kriegspiel.”

“Chess played on two boards. Each player has his own board, with a complete set of men. He never sees the other board. A moderator sees both; he tells each player when he’s taken a piece, or lost a piece, or moved into an occupied square, or made an impossible move, or checked, or is in check himself.”

“I see,” Taverner said quickly. “Each player tries to infer his opponent’s location on the board. He plays blind. Lord, it would take every mental faculty possible.”

“The Prussians taught their officers military strategy that way. It’s more than a game: it’s a cosmic wrestling match. What if Yancy sat down in the evening with his wife and grandson, and played a nice lively six-hour game of Kriegspiel? Suppose his favorite books—instead of being western gun-toting anachronisms—were Greek tragedy? Suppose his favorite piece of music was
Bach’s Art of the Fugue,
not
My Old Kentucky Home?”

“I’m beginning to get the picture,” Taverner said, as calmly as possible. “I think we can help.”

Babson squeaked once. “But this is—illegal!”

“Absolutely,” Taverner acknowledged. “That’s why we’re here.” He waved the squad of Niplan secret-servicemen into the offices of the Yancy Building, ignoring the stunned workers sitting bolt-upright at their desks. Into his throat-mike he said, “How’s it coming with the big-shots?”

“Medium,” Kellman’s faint voice came, strengthened by the relay system between Callisto and Earth. “Some slipped out of bounds to their various holdings, of course. But the majority never thought we’d taken action.”

“You can’t!” Babson bleated, his great face hanging down in wattles of white dough. “What have we done? What law—”

“I think,” Taverner interrupted, “we can get you on purely commercial grounds alone. You’ve used the name Yancy to endorse various manufactured products. There’s no such person. That’s a violation of statutes governing ethical presentation of advertising.”

Babson’s mouth closed with a snap, then slid feebly open. “No—such—person? But everybody knows John Yancy. Why, he’s—” Stammering, gesturing, he finished, “He’s everywhere.”

Suddenly a wretched little pistol appeared in his pulpy hand; he was waving it wildly as Dorser stepped up and quietly knocked it skidding across the floor. Babson collapsed into fumbling hysterics.

Disgusted, Dorser clamped handgrapples around him. “Act like a man,” he ordered. But there was no response; Babson was too far gone to hear him.

Satisfied, Taverner plunged off, past the knot of stunned officials and workers, into the inner offices of the project. Nodding curtly, Taverner made his way up to the desk where Leon Sipling sat surrounded by his work.

The first of the altered gestalts was already flickering through the scanner. Together, the two men stood watching it.

“Well?” Taverner said, when it was done. “You’re the judge.”

“I believe it’ll do,” Sipling answered nervously. “I hope we don’t stir up too much … it’s taken eleven years to build it up; we want to tear it down by degrees.”

“Once the first crack is made, it should start swaying.” Taverner moved toward the door. “Will you be all right on your own?”

Sipling glanced at Eckmund who lounged at the end of the office, eyes fixed on the uneasily working yance-men. “I suppose so. Where are you going?”

“I want to watch this as it’s released. I want to be around when the public gets its first look at it.” At the door, Taverner lingered. “It’s going to be a big job for you, putting out the gestalt on your own. You may not get much help, for a while.”

Sipling indicated his co-workers; they were already beginning to pick up their tempo where they had left off. “They’ll stay on the job,” he disagreed. “As long as they get full salaries.”

Taverner walked thoughtfully across the hall to the elevator. A moment later he was on his way downstairs.

At a nearby street corner, a group of people had collected around a public vid-screen. Anticipating the late-afternoon TV cast of John Edward Yancy.

The gestalt began in the regular way. There was no doubt about it: when Sipling wanted to, he could put together a good slice. And in this case he had done practically the whole pie.

In rolled-up shirt sleeves and dirt-stained trousers, Yancy crouched in his garden, a trowel in one hand, straw hat pulled down over his eyes, grinning into the warm glare of the sun. It was so real that Taverner could hardly believe no such person existed. But he had watched Sipling’s sub-crews laboriously and expertly constructing the thing from the ground up.

“Afternoon,” Yancy rumbled genially. He wiped perspiration from his steaming, florid face and got stiffly to his feet. “Man,” he admitted, “it’s a hot day.” He indicated a flat of primroses. “I was setting them out. Quite a job.”

So far so good. The crowd watched impassively, taking their ideological nourishment without particular resistance. All over the moon, in every house, schoolroom, office, on each street corner, the same gestalt was showing. And it would be shown again.

“Yes,” Yancy repeated, “it’s really hot. Too hot for those primroses—they like shade.” A fast pan-up showed he had carefully planted his primroses in the shadows at the base of his garage. “On the other hand,” Yancy continued, in his smooth, good-natured, over-the-back-fence conversational voice, “my dahlias need lots of sun.”

The camera leaped to show the dahlias blooming frantically in the blazing sunlight.

Throwing himself down in a striped lawnchair, Yancy removed his straw hat and wiped his brow with a pocket handkerchief. “So,” he continued genially, “if anybody asked me which is better, shade or sun, I’d have to reply it depends on whether you’re a primrose or a dahlia.” He grinned his famous guileless boyish grin into the cameras. “I guess I must be a primrose—I’ve had all the sun I can stand for today.”

The audience was taking it in without complaint. An inauspicious beginning, but it was going to have long-term consequences. And Yancy was starting to develop them right now.

His genial grin faded. That familiar look, that awaited serious frown showing that deep thoughts were coming, faded into place. Yancy was going to hold forth: wisdom was on the way. But it was nothing ever uttered by him before.

“You know,” Yancy said slowly, seriously, “that makes a person do some thinking.” Automatically, he reached for his glass of gin and tonic—a glass which up until now would have contained beer. And the magazine beside it wasn’t
Dog Stories Monthly;
it was
The Journal of Psychological Review.
The alteration of peripheral props would sink in subliminally; right now, all conscious attention was riveted on Yancy’s words.

“It occurs to me,” Yancy orated, as if the wisdom were fresh and brand-new, arriving just now, “that some people might maintain that, say, sunlight is
good
and shade is
bad.
But that’s down-right silly. Sunlight is good for roses and dahlias, but it would darn well finish off my fuchsias.” The camera showed his ubiquitous prize fuchsias.

“Maybe you know people like that. They just don’t understand that—” And as was his custom, Yancy drew on folklore to make his point. “That one man’s meat,” he stated profoundly, “is another man’s poison. Like for instance, for breakfast I like a couple of eggs done sunny-side up, maybe a few stewed prunes, and a piece of toast. But Margaret, she prefers a bowl of cereal. And Ralf, he won’t take either. He likes flapjacks. And the fellow down the street, the one with the big front lawn, he likes a kidney pie and a bottle of stout.”