"How do you – the corps, feel about Yancy?"
"He's a big sack of hot air."
"None of you is convinced?"
"Even Babson has to laugh. And Babson is at the top; after him come the boys who sign the checks. God, if we ever started believing in Yancy… if we got started thinking that trash meant something -" An expression of acute agony settled over Sipling's face. "That's it. That's why I can't stand it."
"Why?" Taverner asked, deeply curious. His throat-mike was taking it all in, relaying it back to the home office at Washington. "I'm interested in finding out why you broke away."
Sipling bent down and called his son. "Mike, stop playing and come on over here." To Taverner he explained: "Mike's nine years old. Yancy's been around as long as he's been alive."
Mike came dully over. "Yes, sir?"
"What kind of marks do you get in school?" his father asked.
The boy's chest stuck out proudly; he was a clear-eyed little miniature of Leon Sipling. "All A's and B's."
"He's a smart kid," Sipling said to Taverner. "Good in arithmetic, geography, history, all that stuff." Turning to the boy he said: "I'm going to ask you some questions; I want this gentleman to hear your answers. Okay?"
"Yes, sir," the boy said obediently.
His thin face grim, Sipling said to his son: "I want to know what you think about war. You've been told about war in school; you know about all the famous wars in history. Right?"
"Yes, sir. We learned about the American Revolution, and the First Global War, and then the Second Global War, and then the First Hydrogen War, and the War between the colonists on Mars and Jupiter."
"To the schools," Sipling explained tightly to Taverner, "we distribute Yancy material – educational subsidies in packet form. Yancy takes children through history, explains the meaning of it all. Yancy explains natural science. Yancy explains good posture and astronomy and every other thing in the universe. But I never thought my own son…" His voice trailed off unhappily, then picked up life. "So you know all about war. Okay, what do you think of war?"
Promptly, the boy answered: "War is bad. War is the most terrible thing there is. It almost destroyed mankind."
Eying his son intently, Sipling demanded: "Did anybody tell you to say that?"
The boy faltered uncertainly. "No, sir."
"You really believe those things?"
"Yes, sir. It's true, isn't it? Isn't war bad?"
Sipling nodded. "War is bad. But what about just wars?"
Without hesitation the boy answered: "We have to fight just wars, of course."
"Why?"
"Well, we have to protect our way of life."
"Why?"
Again, there was no hesitation in the boy's reedy answer. "We can't let them walk over us, sir. That would encourage aggressive war. We can't permit a world of brute power. We have to have a world of -" He searched for the exact word. "A world of law."
Wearily, half to himself, Sipling commented: "I wrote those meaningless, contradictory words myself, eight years ago." Pulling himself together with a violent effort he asked: "So war is bad. But we have to fight just wars. Well, maybe this planet, Callisto, will get into a war with… let's pick Ganymede, at random." He was unable to keep the harsh irony from his voice. "Just at random. Now, we're at war with Ganymede. Is it a just war? Or only a war?"
This time, there was no answer. The boy's smooth face was screwed up in a bewildered, struggling frown.
"No answer?" Sipling inquired icily.
"Why, uh," the boy faltered. "I mean…" He glanced up hopefully. "When the time comes won't somebody say?"
"Sure," Sipling choked. "Somebody will say. Maybe even Mr. Yancy."
Relief flooded the boy's face. "Yes, sir. Mr. Yancy will say." He retreated back toward the other children. "Can I go now?"
As the boy scampered back to his game, Sipling turned miserably to Taverner. "You know what game they're playing? It's called Hippo-Hoppo. Guess whose grandson just loves it. Guess who invented the game."
There was silence.
"What do you suggest?" Taverner asked. "You said you thought something could be done."
A cold expression appeared on Sipling's face, a flash of deeply-felt cunning. "I know the project… I know how it can be pried apart. But somebody has to stand with a gun at the head of the authorities. In nine years I've come to see the essential key to the Yancy character… the key to the new type of person we're growing, here. It's simple. It's the element that makes that person malleable enough to be led around."
"I'll bite," Taverner said patiently, hoping the line to Washington was good and clear.
"All Yancy's beliefs are insipid. The key is thinness. Every part of his ideology is diluted: nothing excessive. We've come as close as possible to no beliefs… you've noticed that. Wherever possible we've cancelled attitudes out, left the person apolitical. Without a viewpoint."
"Sure," Taverner agreed. "But with the illusion of a viewpoint."
"All aspects of personality have to be controlled; we want the total person. So a specific attitude has to exist for each concrete question. In every respect, our rule is: Yancy believes the least troublesome possibility. The most shallow. The simple, effortless view, the view that fails to go deep enough to stir any real thought."
Taverner got the drift. "Good solid lulling views." Excitedly he hurried on, "But if an extreme original view got in, one that took real effort to work out, something that was hard to live…"
"Yancy plays croquet. So everybody fools around with a mallet." Sipling's eyes gleamed. "But suppose Yancy had a preference for – Kriegspiel."
"For what?"
"Chess played on two boards. Each player has his own board, with a complete set of men. He never sees the other board. A moderator sees both; he tells each player when he's taken a piece, or lost a piece, or moved into an occupied square, or made an impossible move, or checked, or is in check himself."
"I see," Taverner said quickly. "Each player tries to infer his opponent's location on the board. He plays blind. Lord, it would take every mental faculty possible."
"The Prussians taught their officers military strategy that way. It's more than a game: it's a cosmic wrestling match. What if Yancy sat down in the evening with his wife and grandson, and played a nice lively six-hour game of Kriegspiel? Suppose his favorite books – instead of being western gun-toting anachronisms – were Greek tragedy? Suppose his favorite piece of music was Bach's Art of the Fugue, not My Old Kentucky Home?"
"I'm beginning to get the picture," Taverner said, as calmly as possible. "I think we can help."
Babson squeaked once. "But this is – illegal!"
"Absolutely," Taverner acknowledged. "That's why we're here." He waved the squad of Niplan secret-servicemen into the offices of the Yancy Building, ignoring the stunned workers sitting bolt-upright at their desks. Into his throat-mike he said, "How's it coming with the big-shots?"
"Medium," Kellman's faint voice came, strengthened by the relay system between Callisto and Earth. "Some slipped out of bounds to their various holdings, of course. But the majority never thought we'd taken action."
"You can't!" Babson bleated, his great face hanging down in wattles of white dough. "What have we done? What law -"
"I think," Taverner interrupted, "we can get you on purely commercial grounds alone. You've used the name Yancy to endorse various manufactured products. There's no such person. That's a violation of statutes governing ethical presentation of advertising."