“Is that all you have to tell me?” Walton asked.
“I guess so. I just wanted to show you where you had a big chance and muffed it. Where we could have helped you out if you’d let us. I don’t want you to think I’m being rude or critical, Roy; I’m just trying to be helpful.”
“Okay, Lee. Get out.”
“Huh?”
“Go away. Go sell ice to the Eskimos. Leave me alone, yes?”
“If that’s the way you want it. Hell, Roy, don’t brood over it. We can still fix things up before that alien gets here. We can put the content of tonight’s speech across so smoothly that they won’t even know we’re—”
“Get out!”
Percy skittered for the door. He paused and said, “You’re all wrought up, Roy. You ought to take a pill or something for your nerves.”
Well, he had his answer. An expert evaluation of the content and effect of his speech.
Dammit, he had tried to reach them. Percy said he hadn’t and Percy probably was right, little as Walton cared to admit the fact to himself.
But was Percy’s approach the only one? Did you have to lie to them, push them, treat them as seven billion morons?
Maybe. Right now billions of human beings—the same human beings Walton was expending so much energy to save—were staring at the kaleidowhirl programs on their videos. Their eyes were getting fixed, glassy. Their mouths were beginning to sag open, their cheeks to wobble, their lips to droop pendulously, as the hypnosis of the color patterns took effect.
This was humanity. They were busy forgetting all the things they had just been forced to listen to. All the big words, like mandate and eventually and wholesale destruction. Just so many harsh syllables to be wiped away by the soothing swirl of the colors.
And somewhere else, possibly, a poet named Prior was listening to his baby’s coughing and trying to write a poem—a poem that Walton and a few others would read excitedly, while the billions would ignore it.
Walton saw that Percy was dead right: Roy Walton could never have sold Popeek to the world. But FitzMaugham, that cagy, devious genius, did it. By waving his hands before the public and saying abracadabra, he he bamboozled them into approving Popeek before they knew what they were being sold.
It was a lousy trick, but FitzMaugham had realized that it had to be done. Someone had killed him for it, but it was too late by then.
And Walton saw that he had taken the wrong track by trying to be reasonable. Percy’s callous description of humanity as “seven billion morons” was uncomfortably close to the truth. Walton would have to make his appeal to a more subliminal level.
Perhaps, he thought, at the level of the kaleidowhirls, those endless patterns of colored light that were the main form of diversion for the Great Unwashed.
I’ll get to them, Walton promised himself. There can’t be any dignity or nobility in human life with everyone crammed into one sardine can. So I’ll treat them like the sardines they are, and hope I can turn them into the human beings they could be if they only had room.
He rose, turned out the light, prepared to leave. He wondered if the late Director FitzMaugham had ever faced an internal crisis of this sort, or whether FitzMaugham had known these truths innately from the start.
Probably, the latter was the case. FitzMaugham had been a genius, a sort of superman. But FitzMaugham was dead, and the man who carried on his work was no genius. He was only a mere man.
The reports started filtering in the next morning. It went much as Percy had predicted.
Citizenwas the most virulent. Under the sprawling headline, WHO’S KIDDING WHO? the telefax sheet wanted to know what the “mealy-mouthed” Popeek director was trying to tell the world on all media the night before. They weren’t sure, since Walton, according to Citizen, had been talking in “hifalutin prose picked on purpose to befuddle John Q. Public.” But their general impression was that Walton had proposed some sort of sellout to the Dirnans.
The sellout idea prevailed in most of the cheap telefax sheets.
“Behind a cloud of words, Popeek czar Walton is selling the world downstream to the greenskins,” said one paper. “His talk last night was strictly bunk. His holy-holy words and grim face were supposed to put over something, but we ain’t fooled—and don’t you be fooled either, friend!”
The video commentators were a little kinder, but not very. One called for a full investigation of the Earth-Dirna situation. Another wanted to know why Walton, an appointed official and not even a permanent one at that, had taken it upon himself to handle such high-power negotiations. The UN seemed a little worried about that, even though Ludwig had made a passionate speech insisting that negotiations with Dirna were part of Walton’s allotted responsibilities.
That touched off a new ruckus. “How much power does Walton have?” Citizen demanded in a later edition. “Is he the boss of the world? And if he is, who the devil is he anyway?”
That struck Walton harder than all the other blows. He had been gradually realizing that he did, in fact, control what amounted to dictatorial powers over the world. But he had not yet fully admitted it to himself, and it hurt to be accused of it publicly.
One thing was clear: his attempt at sincerity and clarity had been a total failure. The world was accustomed to subterfuge and verbal pyrotechnics, and when it didn’t get the expected commodity, it grew suspicious. Sincerity had no market value. By going before the public and making a direct appeal, Walton had aroused the suspicion that he had something hidden up his sleeve.
When Citizen’s third edition of the day openly screamed for war with Dirna, Walton realized the time had come to stop playing it clean. From now on, he would chart his course and head there at any cost.
He tore a sheet of paper from his memo pad and inscribed on it a brief motto:The ends justify the means!
With that as his guide, he was ready to get down to work.
XIV
Martinez, security head for the entire Appalachia district, was a small, slight man with unruly hair and deep, piercing eyes. He stared levelly at Walton and said, “Sellors has been with security for twenty years. It’s absurd to suggest that he’s disloyal.”
“He’s made a great many mistakes,” Walton remarked. “I’m simply suggesting that if he’s not utterly incompetent he must be in someone else’s pay.”
“And you want us to break a man on your say-so, Director Walton?”Martinez shook his head fussily. “I’m afraid I can’t see that. Of course, if you’re willing to go through the usual channels, you could conceivably request a change of personnel in this district. But I don’t see how else—”
“Sellors will have to go,” Walton said. “Our operation has sprung too many leaks. We’ll need a new man in here at once, and I want you to double-check him personally.”
Martinez rose. The little man’s nostrils flickered ominously. “I refuse. Security is external to whims and fancies. If I remove Sellors, it will undermine security self-confidence all throughout the country.”
“All right,” sighed Walton. “Sellors stays. I’ll file a request to have him transferred, though.”
“I’ll pigeonhole it. I can vouch for Sellors’ competence myself,”Martinez snapped. “Popeek is in good hands, Mr. Walton. Please believe that.”
Martinez left. Walton glowered at the retreating figure. He knew Martinez was honest—but the security head was a stubborn man, and rather than admit the existence of a flaw in the security structure he had erected, Martinez would let a weak man continue in a vital position.