“Over 50?” I asked, and he just said quietly and sadly, “55.”
Poor little President Kim, working so efficiently all that three months while mental ill health was growing in him! It was very sad and also a useful warning. High-level consultations were begun at once, as soon as President Kim was committed; and the decision was made to administer the Test monthly, instead of quarterly, to anyone in an executive position.
Even before this decision, the Universal scores had begun rising again. Dr. Speakie was not distressed. He had already predicted that this rise was highly probable during the transition period to World Sanity. As the number of the mentally healthy living outside the Asylums grew fewer, the strain on them kept growing greater, and they became more liable to break down under it—just as poor President Kim had done. Later, he predicted, when the Rehabs began coming out of the Asylums in ever increasing numbers, this stress would decrease. Also the crowding in the Asylums would decrease, so that the Staff would have more time to work on individually orientated therapy, and this would lead to a still more dramatic increase in the number of Rehabs released. Finally, when the therapy process was completely perfected, there would be no Asylums left in the world at all. Everybody would be either mentally healthy or a Rehab, or “neonormal,” as Dr. Speakie liked to call it.
It was the trouble in the State of Australia that precipitated the Government crisis. Some Psychometric Bureau officials accused the Australian Evaluators of actually falsifying Test returns, but that is impossible since all the computers are linked to the World Government Central Computer Bank in Keokuk. Dr. Speakie suspected that the Australian Evaluators had been falsifying the Test itself, and insisted that they themselves all be tested immediately. Of course he was right. It had been a conspiracy, and the suspiciously low Australian Test scores had resulted from the use of a false Test. Many of the conspirators tested higher than 80 when forced to take the genuine Test! The State Government in Canberra had been unforgivably lax. If they had just admitted it everything would have been all right. But they got hysterical, and moved the State Government to a sheep station in Queensland, and tried to withdraw from the World Government. (Dr. Speakie said this was a typical mass psychosis: reality evasion, followed by fugue and autistic withdrawal.) Unfortunately the Presidium seemed to be paralysed. Australia seceded on the day before the President and Presidium were due to take their monthly Test, and probably they were afraid of overstraining their SQ with agonising decisions. So the Psychometric Bureau volunteered to handle the episode. Dr. Speakie himself flew on the plane with the H-bombs, and helped to drop the information leaflets. He never lacked personal courage.
When the Australian incident was over, it turned out that most of the Presidium, including President Singh, had scored over 50. So the Psychometric Bureau took over their functions temporarily. Even on a long-term basis this made good sense, since all the problems now facing the world Government had to do with administering and evaluating the Test, training the Staff, and providing full self-sufficiency structuration to all Asylums.
What this meant in personal terms was that Dr. Speakie, as Chief of the Psychometric Bureau, was now Interim President of the United States of the World. As his personal secretary I was, I will admit it, just terribly proud of him. But he never let it go to his head.
He was so modest. Sometimes he used to say to people, when he introduced me, “This is Mary Ann, my secretary,” he’d say with a little twinkle, “and if it wasn’t for her I’d have been scoring over 50 long ago!”
There were times, as the World SQ scores rose and rose, that I would become a little discouraged. Once the week’s Test figures came in on the readout, and the average score was 71. I said, “Doctor, there are moments I believe the whole world is going insane!”
But he said, “Look at it this way, Mary Ann. Look at those people in the Asylums—3.1 billion inmates now, and 1.8 billion staff—but look at them. What are they doing? They’re pursuing their therapy, doing rehabilitation work on the farms and in the factories, and striving all the time, too, to help each other towards mental health. The preponderant inverse sanity quotient is certainly very high at the moment; they’re mostly insane, yes. But you have to admire them. They are fighting for mental health. They will—they will win through!” And then he dropped his voice and said as if to himself, gazing out the window and bouncing just a little on the balls of his feet, “If I didn’t believe that, I couldn’t go on.”
And I knew he was thinking of his wife.
Mrs. Speakie had scored 88 on the very first American Universal Test. She had been in the Greater Los Angeles Territory Asylum for years now.
Anybody who still thinks Dr. Speakie wasn’t sincere should think about that for a mintue! He gave up everything for his belief.
And even when the Asylums were all running quite well, and the epidemics in South Africa and the famines in Texas and the Ukraine were under control, still the workload on Dr. Speakie never got any lighter, because every month the personnel of the Psychometric Bureau got smaller, since some of them always flunked their monthly Test and were committed to Bethesda. I never could keep any of my secretarial staff any more for longerthan a month or two. It was harder and harder to find replacements, too, because most sane young people volunteered for Staff work in the Asylums, since life was much easier and more sociable inside the Asylums than outside. Everything so convenient, and lots of friends and acquaintances! I used to positively envy those girls! But I knew where my job was.
At least it was much less hectic here in the U.N. Building, or the Psychometry Tower as it had been renamed long ago. Often there wouldn’t be anybody around the whole building all day long but Dr. Speakie and myself, and maybe Bill the janitor (Bill scored 32 regular as clockwork every quarter). All the restaurants were closed, in fact most of Manhattan was closed, but we had fun picnicking in the old General Assembly Hall. And there was always the odd call from Buenos Aires or Reykjavik, asking Dr. Speakie’s advice as Interim President about some problem, to break the silence.
But last November 8, I will never forget the date, when Dr. Speakie was dictating the Referendum for World Economic Growth for the next five-year period, he suddenly interrupted himself. “By the way, Mary Ann,” he said, “how was your last score?”
We had taken the Test two days before, on the sixth. We always took the Test every first Monday. Dr. Speakie never would have dreamed of excepting himself from Universal Testing regulations.
“I scored 12,” I said, before I thought how strange it was of him to ask. Or, not just to ask, because we often mentioned our scores to each other; but to ask then, in the middle of executing important world government business.
“Wonderful,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re wonderful, Mary Ann! Down two from last month’s Test, aren’t you?”
“I’m always between 10 and 14,” I said. “Nothing new about that, Doctor.”
“Some day,” he said, and his face took on the expression it had when he gave his great speech about the Asylums, “some day, this world of ours will be governed by men fit to govern it. Men whose SQ score is Zero. Zero, Mary Ann!”
“Well, my goodness, Doctor,” I said jokingly—his intensity almost alarmed me a little—“even you never scored lower than 3, and you haven’t done that for a year or more now!”
He stared at me almost as if he didn’t see me. It was quite uncanny. “Some day,” he said in just the same way, “nobody in the world will have a Quotient higher than 50. Some day, nobody in the world will have a Quotient higher than 30! Higher than 10! The Therapy will be perfected. I was only the diagnostician. But the Therapy will be perfected! The cure will be found! Some day!” And he went on staring at me, and then he said, “Do you know what my score was on Monday?”