American Science Fiction Five Classic Novels 1956-58 (12 page)

“Was there anybody there I should have called by name?”

“Not really. One or two maybe, but they wouldn’t expect it when you were so rushed.”

“I was caught in a squeeze. That fiddlin’ gatemaster and his passports. Penny, I should think that you would carry them rather than Dak.”

“Dak doesn’t carry them. We all carry our own.” She reached into her bag, pulled out a little book. “I had mine—but I did not dare admit it.”

“Eh?”

“
He
had
his
on him when they got him. We haven’t dared ask for a replacement—not at this time.”

I was suddenly very weary.

Having no instructions from Dak or Rog, I stayed in character during the shuttle trip up and on entering the
Tom Paine
. It wasn’t difficult; I simply went straight to the owner’s cabin and spent long, miserable hours in free fall, biting my nails and wondering what was happening down on the surface. With the aid of anti-nausea pills I finally managed to float off into fitful sleep—which was a mistake, for I had a series of no-pants nightmares, with reporters pointing at me and cops touching me on the shoulder and Martians aiming their wands at me. They all knew I was phony and were simply arguing over who had the privilege of taking me apart and putting me down the oubliette.

I was awakened by the hooting of the acceleration alarm. Dak’s vibrant baritone was booming, “First and last red warning! One third gee! One minute!” I hastily pulled myself over to my bunk and held on. I felt lots better when it hit; one third gravity is not much, about the same as Mars’ surface I think, but it is enough to steady the stomach and make the floor a real floor.

About five minutes later Dak knocked and let himself in as I was going to the door. “Howdy, Chief.”

“Hello, Dak. I’m certainly glad to see you back.”

“Not as glad as I am to be back,” he said wearily. He eyed my bunk. “Mind if I spread out there?”

“Help yourself.”

He did so and sighed. “Cripes, am I pooped! I could sleep for a week . . . I think I will.”

“Let’s both of us. Uh . . . You got him aboard?”

“Yes. What a gymkhana!”

“I suppose so. Still, it must be easier to do a job like that in a small, informal port like this than it was to pull the stunts you rigged at Jefferson.”

“Huh? No, it’s much harder here.”

“Eh?”

“Obviously. Here everybody knows everybody—and people will talk.” Dak smiled wryly. “We brought him aboard as a case of frozen canal shrimp. Had to pay export duty, too.”

“Dak, how is he?”

“Well . . .” Dak frowned. “Doc Capek says that he will make a complete recovery—that it is just a matter of time.” He added explosively, “If I could lay my hands on those rats! It would make you break down and bawl to see what they did to him— and yet we have to let them get away with it cold—for
his
sake.”

Dak was fairly close to bawling himself. I said gently, “I gathered from Penny that they had roughed him up quite a lot. How badly is he hurt?”

“Huh? You must have misunderstood Penny. Aside from being filthy-dirty and needing a shave he was not hurt physically at all.”

I looked stupid. “I thought they beat him up. Something about like working him over with a baseball bat.”

“I would rather they had! Who cares about a few broken bones? No, no, it was what they did to his
brain
.”

“Oh . . .” I felt ill. “Brainwash?”

“Yes. Yes and no. They couldn’t have been trying to make him talk because he didn’t have any secrets that were of any possible political importance. He always operated out in the open and everybody knows it. They must have been using it simply to keep him under control, keep him from trying to escape.”

He went on, “Doc says that he thinks they must have been using the minimum daily dose, just enough to keep him docile, until just before they turned him loose. Then they shot him with a load that would turn an elephant into a gibbering idiot. The front lobes of his brain must be soaked like a bath sponge.”

I felt so ill that I was glad I had not eaten. I had once read up on the subject; I hate it so much that it fascinates me. To my mind there is something immoral and degrading in an absolute cosmic sense in tampering with a man’s personality. Murder is a clean crime in comparison, a mere peccadillo. “Brainwash” is a term that comes down to us from the Communist movement of the Late Dark Ages; it was first applied to breaking a man’s will and altering his personality by physical indignities and subtle torture. But that might take months; later they found a “better” way, one which would turn a man into a babbling slave in seconds—simply inject any one of several cocaine derivatives into his frontal brain lobes.

The filthy practice had first been developed for a legitimate purpose, to quiet disturbed patients and make them accessible to psychotherapy. As such, it was a humane advance, for it was used instead of lobotomy—“lobotomy” is a term almost as obsolete as “chastity girdle” but it means stirring a man’s brain with a knife in such a fashion as to destroy his personality without killing him. Yes, they really used to do that—just as they used to beat them to “drive the devils out.”

The Communists developed the new brainwash-by-drugs to an efficient technique, then when there were no more Communists, the Bands of Brothers polished it up still further until they could dose a man so lightly that he was simply receptive to leadership—or load him until he was a mindless mass of protoplasm—all in the sweet name of brotherhood. After all, you can’t have “brotherhood” if a man is stubborn enough to want to keep his own secrets, can you? And what better way is there to be sure that he is not holding out on you than to poke a needle past his eyeball and slip a shot of babble juice into his brain? “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” The sophistries of villains—bah!

Of course, it has been illegal for a long, long time now, except for therapy, with the express consent of a court. But criminals use it and cops are sometimes not lily white, for it does make a prisoner talk and it does not leave any marks at all. The victim can even be told to forget that it has been done.

I knew most of this at the time Dak told me what had been done to Bonforte and the rest I cribbed out of the ship’s Encyclopedia Batavia. See the article on “Psychic Integration” and the one on “Torture.”

I shook my head and tried to put the nightmares out of my mind. “But he’s going to recover?”

“Doc says that the drug does not alter the brain structure; it just paralyzes it. He says that eventually the blood stream picks up and carries away all of the dope; it reaches the kidneys and passes out of the body. But it takes time.” Dak looked up at me. “Chief?”

“Eh? About time to knock off that ‘Chief ’ stuff, isn’t it? He’s back.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Would it be too much trouble to you to keep up the impersonation just a little while longer?”

“But why? There’s nobody here but just us chickens.”

“That’s not quite true. Lorenzo, we’ve managed to keep this secret awfully tight. There’s me, there’s you.” He ticked it off on his fingers. “There’s Doc and Rog and Bill. And Penny, of course. There’s a man by the name of Langston back Earthside whom you’ve never met. I think Jimmie Washington suspects but he wouldn’t tell his own mother the right time of day. We don’t know how many took part in the kidnaping, but not many, you can be sure. In any case,
they
don’t dare talk—and the joke of it is they no longer could prove that he had ever been missing even if they wanted to. But my point is this: here in the
Tommie
we’ve got all the crew and all the idlers not in on it. Old son, how about staying with it and letting yourself be seen each day by crewmen and by Jimmie Washington’s girls and such—while
he
gets well? Huh?”

“Mmm . . . I don’t see why not. How long will it be?”

“Just the trip back. We’ll take it slow, at an easy boost. You’ll enjoy it.”

“Okay. Dak, don’t figure this into my fee. I’m doing this piece of it just because I
hate
brainwashing.”

Dak bounced up and clapped me on the shoulder. “You’re my kind of people, Lorenzo. Don’t worry about your fee; you’ll be taken care of.” His manner changed. “Very well, Chief. See you in the morning, sir.”

But one thing leads to another. The boost we had started on Dak’s return was a mere shift of orbits, to one farther out where there would be little chance of a news service sending up a shuttle for a follow-up story. I woke up in free fall, took a pill, and managed to eat breakfast. Penny showed up shortly thereafter. “Good morning, Mr. Bonforte.”

“Good morning, Penny.” I inclined my head in the direction of the guest room. “Any news?”

“No, sir. About the same. Captain’s compliments and would it be too much trouble for you to come to his cabin?”

“Not at all.” Penny followed me in. Dak was there, with his heels hooked to his chair to stay in place; Rog and Bill were strapped to the couch.

Dak looked around and said, “Thanks for coming in, Chief. We need some help.”

“Good morning. What is it?”

Clifton answered my greeting with his usual dignified deference and called me Chief; Corpsman nodded. Dak went on, “To clean this up in style you should make one more appearance.”

“Eh? I thought——”

“Just a second. The networks were led to expect a major speech from you today, commenting on yesterday’s event. I thought Rog intended to cancel it, but Bill has the speech worked up. Question is, will you deliver it?”

The trouble with adopting a cat is that they always have kittens. “Where? Goddard City?”

“Oh no. Right in your cabin. We beam it to Phobos; they can it for Mars and also put it on the high circuit for New Batavia, where the Earth nets will pick it up and where it will be relayed for Venus, Ganymede, et cetera. Inside of four hours it will be all over the system but you’ll never have to stir out of your cabin.”

There is something very tempting about a grand network. I had never been on one but once and that time my act got clipped down to the point where my face showed for only twenty-seven seconds. But to have one all to myself——

Dak thought I was reluctant and added, “It won’t be a strain, as we are equipped to can it right here in the
Tommie
. Then we can project it first and clip out anything if necessary.”

“Well—all right. You have the script, Bill?”

“Yes.”

“Let me check it.”

“What do you mean? You’ll have it in plenty of time.”

“Isn’t that it in your hand?”

“Well, yes.”

“Then let me read it.”

Corpsman looked annoyed. “You’ll have it an hour before we record. These things go better if they sound spontaneous.”

“Sounding spontaneous is a matter of careful preparation, Bill. It’s my trade. I know.”

“You did all right at the skyfield yesterday without a rehearsal. This is just more of the same old hoke; I want you to do it the same way.”

Bonforte’s personality was coming through stronger the longer Corpsman stalled; I think Clifton could see that I was about to cloud up and storm, for he said, “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Bill! Hand him the speech.”

Corpsman snorted and threw the sheets at me. In free fall they sailed but the air spread them wide. Penny gathered them together, sorted them, and gave them to me. I thanked her, said nothing more, and started to read.

I skimmed through it in a fraction of the time it would take to deliver it. Finally I finished and looked up.

“Well?” said Rog.

“About five minutes of this concerns the adoption. The rest is an argument for the policies of the Expansionist Party. Pretty much the same as I’ve heard in the speeches you’ve had me study.”

“Yes,” agreed Clifton. “The adoption is the hook we hang the rest on. As you know, we expect to force a vote of confidence before long.”

“I understand. You can’t miss this chance to beat the drum. Well, it’s all right, but——”

“But what? What’s worrying you?”

“Well—characterization. In several places the wording should be changed. It’s not the way
he
would express it.”

Corpsman exploded with a word unnecessary in the presence of a lady; I gave him a cold glance. “Now see here, Smythe,” he went on, “who knows how Bonforte would say it? You? Or the man who has been writing his speeches the past four years?”

I tried to keep my temper; he had a point. “It is nevertheless the case,” I answered, “that a line which looks okay in print may not deliver well. Mr. Bonforte is a great orator, I have already learned. He belongs with Webster, Churchill, and Demosthenes—a rolling grandeur expressed in simple words. Now take this word ‘intransigent,’ which you have used twice. I might say that, but I have a weakness for polysyllables; I like to exhibit my literary erudition. But Mr. Bonforte would say ‘stubborn’ or ‘mulish’ or ‘pigheaded.’ The reason he would is, naturally, that they convey emotion much more effectively.”

“You see that you make the delivery effective! I’ll worry about the words.”

“You don’t understand, Bill. I don’t care whether the speech is politically effective or not; my job is to carry out a characterization. I can’t do that if I put into the mouth of the character words that he would never use; it would sound as forced and phony as a goat spouting Greek. But if I read the speech in words he
would
use, it will automatically be effective. He’s a great orator.”

“Listen, Smythe, you’re not hired to write speeches. You’re hired to——”

“Hold it, Bill!” Dak cut in. “And a little less of that ‘Smythe’ stuff, too. Well, Rog? How about it?”

Clifton said, “As I understand it, Chief, your only objection is to some of the phrasing?”

“Well, yes. I’d suggest cutting out that personal attack on Mr. Quiroga, too, and the insinuation about his financial backers. It doesn’t sound like real Bonforte to me.”

He looked sheepish. “That’s a bit I put in myself. But you may be right. He always gives a man the benefit of the doubt.” He remained silent for a moment. “You make the changes you think you have to. We’ll can it and look at the playback. We can always clip it—or even cancel completely ‘due to technical difficulties.’” He smiled grimly. “That’s what we’ll do, Bill.”