"This is the headquarters group here, but the movement is largely decentralized, with regional and local people responsible for their areas. We give them help on organization and recruiting and objectives and tactics, but, on the big day, the local people will be pretty much on their own. We'd like to have a bigger organization, a more centralized one. But that would lay us that much more open to the police. The way things stand now, the police don't know who we are and what we've got. On paper, we don't look like much. Actually, with our people placed right, we have a tremendous potential in fellow travelers."
"How many do you suppose will follow?" said Paul.
"As many people as are bored to death or sick of things the way they are," said Lasher.
"All of 'em," said Finnerty.
"And then what?" said Paul.
"And then we get back to basic values, basic virtues!" said Finnerty. "Men doing men's work, women doing women's work. People doing people's thinking."
"Which reminds me," said Lasher. "Who's going to do the job on EPICAC?"
"Last I heard D-71 say was, it's between the Moose and the Elks in Roswell who's goin' to do it," said Luke Lubbock.
"Put them both on it," said Lasher. "G-17, any bright ideas on how to knock off EPICAC?"
"Bes' idee," said Bud, "'d be to put some kind of bomb in the coke machines. They got one in every chambah. That way, we'd git all of him, not just part." His hands were working in air, fashioning a booby trap for a coke machine. "See? Take a li'l ol' coke bottle, only fill her full of nitro. Then we run a li'l ol' -"
"All right. Make a sketch and give it to D-17, so he can get it to the right people."
"An' balooooooowie!" said Bud, bringing his fist down on the table.
"Great," said Lasher. "Anybody else got anything on his mind?"
"What about the Army?" said Paul. "What if they're called out to -"
"Both sides had better throw in the towel if somebody's crazy enough to give them real rifles and ammunition," said Lasher. "Fortunately, I think both sides know that."
"Where we stand now?" asked the nervous man.
"Not bad, not good," said Lasher. "We could put on a pretty good show now, if they forced our hand. But give us two more months, and we'll really have a surprise for them. All right, let's get this meeting over with, so we can all get to work. Transportation?"
On and on the reports went: transportation, communications, security, finance, procurement, tactics . . .
Paul felt as though he'd seen the surface scraped from a clean, straight rafter, and been shown the tunnels and flimsy membranes of a termite metropolis within.
"Public information?" said Lasher.
"We've mailed out warning letters to all the bureaucrats, engineers, and managers with classification numbers below one hundred," said Professor von Neumann. "Carbon copies to the news service, the radio network, and the television network."
"Damn good letter," said Finnerty.
"Rest of you like to hear it?" said von Neumann.
There were nods around the table.
"Countrymen," the professor read -
"Admittedly, we are all in this together. But -
"You, more than any of us, have spoken highly of progress recently, spoken highly of the good brought by great and continued material change.
"You, the engineers and managers and bureaucrats, almost alone among men of higher intelligence, have continued to believe that the condition of man improves in direct ratio to the energy and devices for using energy put at his disposal. You believed this through the three most horrible wars in history, a monumental demonstration of faith.
"That you continue to believe it now, in the most mortifying peacetime in history, is at least disturbing, even to the slow-witted, and downright terrifying to the thoughtful.
"Man has survived Armageddon in order to enter the Eden of eternal peace, only to discover that everything he had looked forward to enjoying there, pride, dignity, self-respect, work worth doing, has been condemned as unfit for human consumption.
"Again, let me say we are all in this together, but the rest of us, for what we perceive as good, plain reasons, have changed our minds about the divine right of machines, efficiency, and organization, just as men of another age changed their minds about the divine right of kings, and about the divine rights of many other things.
"During the past three wars, the right of technology to increase in power and scope was unquestionably, in point of national survival, almost a divine right. Americans owe their lives to superior machines, techniques, organization, and managers and engineers. For these means of surviving the wars, the Ghost Shirt Society and I thank God. But we cannot win good lives for ourselves in peacetime by the same methods we used to win battles in wartime. The problems of peace are altogether more subtle.
"I deny that there is any natural or divine law requiring that machines, efficiency, and organization should forever increase in scope, power, and complexity, in peace as in war. I see the growth of these now, rather, as the result of a dangerous lack of law.
"The time has come to stop the lawlessness in that part of our culture which is your special responsibility.
"Without regard for the wishes of men, any machines or techniques or forms of organization that can economically replace men do replace men. Replacement is not necessarily bad, but to do it without regard for the wishes of men is lawlessness.
"Without regard for the changes in human life patterns that may result, new machines, new forms of organization, new ways of increasing efficiency, are constantly being introduced. To do this without regard for the effects on life patterns is lawlessness.
"I am dedicated, and the members of the Ghost Shirt Society are dedicated, to bringing this lawlessness to an end, to give the world back to the people. We are prepared to use force to end the lawlessness, if other means fail.
"I propose that men and women be returned to work as controllers of machines, and that the control of people by machines be curtailed. I propose, further, that the effects of changes in technology and organization on life patterns be taken into careful consideration, and that the changes be withheld or introduced on the basis of this consideration.
"These are radical proposals, extremely difficult to put into effect. But the need for their being put into effect is far greater than all of the difficulties, and infinitely greater than the need for our national holy trinity, Efficiency, Economy, and Quality.
"Men, by their nature, seemingly, cannot be happy unless engaged in enterprises that make them feel useful. They must, therefore, be returned to participation in such enterprises.
"I hold, and the members of the Ghost Shirt Society hold:
"That there must be virtue in imperfection, for Man is imperfect, and Man is a creation of God.
"That there must be virtue in frailty, for Man is frail, and Man is a creation of God.
"That there must be virtue in inefficiency, for Man is inefficient, and Man is a creation of God.
"That there must be virtue in brilliance followed by stupidity, for Man is alternately brilliant and stupid, and Man is a creation of God.
"You perhaps disagree with the antique and vain notion of Man's being a creation of God.
"But I find it a far more defensible belief than the one implicit in intemperate faith in lawless technological progress - namely, that man is on earth to create more durable and efficient images of himself, and, hence, to eliminate any justification at all for his own continued existence.