As he restored the tape, Taverner wondered just what the hell Yancy had said. What were his views on war? They took up a hundred separate reels of tape; Yancy was always ready to hold forth on such vital and grandiose subjects as War, the Planet, God, Taxation. But did he say anything?
A cold chill crawled up Taverner's spine. On specific – and trivial – items there were absolute opinions: dogs are better than cats, grapefruit is too sour without a dash of sugar, it's good to get up early in the morning, too much drinking is bad. But on big topics… an empty vacuum, filled with the vacant roll of high-sounding phrases. A public that agreed with Yancy on war and taxes and God and planet agreed with absolutely nothing. And with everything.
On topics of importance, they had no opinion at all. They only thought they had an opinion.
Rapidly, Taverner scanned tapes on various major subjects. It was the same all down the line. With one sentence Yancy gave; with the next he took away. The total effect was a neat cancellation, a skillful negation. But the viewer was left with the illusion of having consumed a rich and varied intellectual feast. It was amazing. And it was professionaclass="underline" the ends were tied up too slickly to be mere accident.
Nobody was as harmless and vapid as John Edward Yancy. He was just too damn good to be true.
Sweating, Taverner left the main reference room and poked his way toward the rear offices, where busy yance-men worked away at their desks and assembly tables. Activity whirred on all sides. The expression on the faces around him was benign, harmless, almost bored. The same friendly, trivial expression that Yancy himself displayed.
Harmless – and in its harmlessness, diabolical. And there wasn't a damn thing he could do. If people liked to listen to John Edward Yancy, if they wanted to model themselves after him – what could the Niplan Police do about it?
What crime was being committed?
No wonder Babson didn't care if the police prowled around. No wonder the authorities had freely admitted them. There weren't any political jails of labor gangs or concentration camps… there didn't have to be.
Torture chambers and extermination camps were needed only when persuasion failed. And persuasion was working perfectly. A police state, rule by terror, came about when the totalitarian apparatus began to break down. The earlier totalitarian societies had been incomplete; the authorities hadn't really gotten into every sphere of life. But techniques of communication had improved.
The first really successful totalitarian state was being realized before his eyes: harmless and trivial, it emerged. And the last stage – nightmarish, but perfectly logical – was when all the newborn boys were happily and voluntarily named John Edward.
Why not? They already lived, acted, and thought like John Edward. And there was Mrs. Margaret Ellen Yancy, for the women. She had her full range of opinions, too; she had her kitchen, her taste in clothes, her little recipes and advice, for all the women to imitate.
There were even Yancy children for the youth of the planet to imitate. The authorities hadn't overlooked anything.
Babson strolled over, a genial expression on his face. "How's it going, officer?" he chuckled wetly, putting his hand on Taverner's shoulder.
"Fine," Taverner managed to answer; he evaded the hand.
"You like our little establishment?" There was genuine pride in Babson's thick voice. "We do a good job. An artistic job – we have real standards of excellence."
Shaking with helpless anger, Taverner plunged out of the office and into the hall. The elevator took too long; furiously, he turned toward the stairs. He had to get out of the Yancy Building; he had to get away.
From the shadows of the hall a man appeared, face pale and taut. "Wait. Can I talk to you?"
Taverner pushed past him. "What do you want?"
"You're from the Terran Niplan Police? I -" The man's Adam's apple bobbed. "I work here. My name's Sipling, Leon Sipling. I have to do something – I can't stand it anymore."
"Nothing can be done," Taverner told him. "If they want to be like Yancy -"
"But there isn't any Yancy," Sipling broke in, his thin face twitching spasmodically. "We made him up… we invented him."
Taverner halted. "You what?"
"I've decided." Voice quavering excitedly, Sipling rushed on: "I'm going to do something – and I know exactly what." Catching hold of Taverner's sleeve he grated: "You've got to help me. I can stop all this, but I can't do it alone."
In Leon Sipling's attractive, well-furnished living room, the two of them sat drinking coffee and watching their children scramble around on the floor, playing games. Sipling's wife and Ruth Taverner were in the kitchen, drying the dishes.
"Yancy is a synthesis," Sipling explained. "A sort of composite person. No such individual actually exists. We drew on basic prototypes from sociological records; we based the gestalt on various typical persons. So it's true to life. But we stripped off what we didn't want, and intensified what we did want."
Broodingly, he added: "There could be a Yancy. There are a lot of Yancy-like people. In fact, that's the problem."
"You deliberately set out with the idea of remolding people along Yancy's line?" Taverner inquired.
"I can't precisely say what the idea is, at top level. I was an ad writer for a mouthwash company. The Callisto authorities hired me and outlined what they wanted me to do. I've had to guess as to the purpose of the project."
"By authorities, you mean the governing council?"
Sipling laughed sharply. "I mean the trading syndicates that own this moon: lock, stock, and barrel. But we're not supposed to call it a moon. It's a planet." His lips twitched bitterly. "Apparently, the authorities have a big program built up. It involves absorbing their trade rivals on Ganymede – when that's done, they'll have the out-planets sewed up tight."
"They can't get at Ganymede without open war," Taverner protested. "The Medean companies have their own population behind them." And then it dawned. "I see," he said softly. "They'd actually start a war. It would be worth a war, to them."
"You're damn right it would. And to start a war, they have to get the public lined up. Actually, the people here have nothing to gain. A war would wipe out all the small operators – it would concentrate power in fewer hands – and they're few enough already. To get the eighty million people here behind the war, they need an indifferent, sheep-like public. And they're getting that. When this Yancy campaign is finished, the people here on Callisto will accept anything. Yancy does all their thinking for them. He tells them how to wear their hair. What games to play. He tells the jokes the men repeat in their back rooms. His wife whips up the meal they all have for dinner. All over this little world – millions of duplicates of Yancy's day. Whatever he does, whatever he believes. We've been conditioning the public for eleven straight years. The important thing is the unvarying monotony of it. A whole generation is growing up looking to Yancy for an answer to everything."
"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."