Lodge that night was the grandest I have ever attended. We tyled the communications room itself, with the comm chief sitting as secretary and passing incoming messages to General Huxley, sitting as Master in the east, as fast as they came in. I was called on to take a chair myself, Junior Warden, an honor I had never had before. The General had to borrow a hat and it was ridiculously too small for him, but it didn’t matter—I have never seen ritual so grand, before or since. We all spoke the ancient words from our hearts, as if we were saying them for the first time. If the stately progress was interrupted to hear that Louisville was ours, what better interruption? We were building anew; after an endless time of building in speculation we were at last building operatively.
CHAPTER 14
Temporary capital was set up at St Louis, for its central location. I piloted Huxley there myself. We took over the Prophet’s proctor base there, restoring to it its old name of Jefferson Barracks. We took over the buildings of the University, too, and handed back to it the name of Washington. If the people no longer recalled the true significance of those names, they soon would and here was a good place to start. (I learned for the first time that Washington had been one of us.)
However, one of Huxley’s first acts as military governor—he would not let himself be called even “Provisional President”—was to divorce all official connection between the Lodge and the Free United States Army. The Brotherhood had served its purpose, had kept alive the hopes of free men; now it was time to go back to its ancient ways and let public affairs be handled publicly. The order was not made public, since the public had no real knowledge of us, always a secret society and for three generations a completely clandestine one. But it was read and recorded in all lodges and, so far as I know, honored.
There was one necessary exception: my home lodge at New Jerusalem and the cooperating sister order there of which Maggie had been a member. For we did not yet hold New Jerusalem although the country as a whole was ours.
This was more serious than it sounds. While we had the country under military control, with all communication centers in our hands, with the Federal Forces demoralized, routed, and largely dispersed or disarmed and captured, we did not hold the country’s heart in our hands. More than half of the population were not with us; they were simply stunned, confused, and unorganized. As long as the Prophet was still alive, as long as the Temple was still a rallying point, it was still conceivably possible for him to snatch back the victory from us.
A fraud, such as we had used, has only a temporary effect; people revert to their old thinking habits. The Prophet and his cohorts were not fools; they included some of the shrewdest applied psychologists this tired planet has ever seen. Our own counterespionage became disturbingly aware that they were rapidly perfecting their own underground, using the still devout and that numerous minority, devout or not, who had waxed fat under the old regime and saw themselves growing leaner under the new. We could not stop this counterrevolution-Sheol! the Prophet had not been able to stop us and we had worked under much greater handicaps. The Prophet’s spies could work almost openly in the smaller towns and the country; we had barely enough men to guard the television stations—we could not possibly put a snooper under every table.
Soon it was an open secret that we had faked the call to Armageddon. One would think that this fact in itself would show to anyone who knew it that all of the Miracles of Incarnation had been frauds-trick television and nothing more. I mentioned this to Zebadiah and got laughed at for being naпve. People believe what they want to believe and logic has no bearing on it, he assured me. In this case they wanted to believe in their old time religion as they learned it at their mothers” knees; it restored security to their hearts. I could sympathize with that, I understood it.
In any case, New Jerusalem must fall—and time was against us.
While we were worrying over this, a provisional constitutional convention was being held in the great auditorium of the university. Huxley opened it, refused again the title, offered by acclamation, of president—then told them bluntly that all laws since the inauguration of President Nehemiah Scudder were of no force, void, and that the old constitution and bill of rights were effective as of now, subject to the exigencies of temporary military control. Their single purpose, he said, was to work out orderly methods of restoring the old free democratic processes; any permanent changes in the constitution, if needed, would have to wait until after free elections.
Then he turned the gavel over to Novak and left.
I did not have time for politics, but I hid out from work and caught most of one afternoon session because Zebadiah had tipped me off that significant fireworks were coming up. I slipped into a back seat and listened. One of Novak’s bright young men was presenting a film. I saw the tail end of it only, but it seemed to be more or less a standard instruction film, reviewing the history of the United States, discussing civil liberty, explaining the duties of a citizen in a free democracy-not the sort of thing ever seen in the Prophet’s schools but making use of the same techniques which had long been used in every school in the country. The film ended and the bright young man—I could never remember his name, perhaps because I disliked him. Stokes? Call him Stokes, anyway, Stokes began to speak.
“This reorientation film,” he began, “is of course utterly useless in recanalizing an adult. His habits of thought are much too set to be affected by anything as simple as this.”
“Then why waste our time with it?” someone called out.
“Please! Nevertheless this film was prepared for adults-provided the adult has been placed in a receptive frame of mind. Here is the prologue—” the screen lighted up again. It was a simple and beautiful pastoral scene with very restful music. I could not figure what he was getting at, but it was soothing; I remembered that I had not had much sleep the past four nights-come to think about it, I couldn’t remember when I had had a good night’s sleep. I slouched back and relaxed.
I didn’t notice the change from scenery to abstract patterns. I think the music continued but it was joined by a voice, warm, soothing, monotonous. The patterns were going round and around and I was beginning to bore . . . right . . .—into . . . the . . . screen . . .
Then Novak had left his chair and switched off the projector with a curse. I jerked awake with that horrid shocked feeling that makes one almost ready to cry. Novak was speaking sharply but quietly to Stokes-then Novak faced the rest of us. “Up on your feet!” he ordered. “seventh inning stretch. Take a deep breath. Shake hands with the man next to you. Slap him on the back, hard!”
We did so and I felt foolish. Also irritated. I had felt so good just a moment before and now I was reminded of the mountain of work I must move if I were to have ten minutes with Maggie that evening. I thought about leaving but the b. y. m. had started talking again.
“As Dr. Novak has pointed out,” he went on, not sounding quite so sure of himself, “it is not necessary to use the prologue on this audience, since you don’t need reorientation. But this film, used with the preparatory technique and possibly in some cases with a light dose of one of the hypnotic drugs, can be depended on to produce an optimum political temperament in 83% of the populace. This has been demonstrated on a satisfactory test group. The film itself represents several years of work analyzing the personal conversion reports of almost everyone-surely everyone in this audience!—who joined our organization while it was still underground. The irrelevant has been eliminated; the essential has been abstracted. What remains will convert a devout follower of the Prophet to free manhood-provided he is in a state receptive to suggestion when he is exposed to it.”