Player Piano (41 page)

Bad guys turned informer. Good guys didn’t—no matter when, no matter what.

Kroner cleared his throat. “I said, ‘who’s their leader, Paul?’ ”

“I am,” said Paul. “And I wish to God I were a better one.”

The instant he’d said it, he knew it was true, and knew what his father had known—what it was to belong and believe.

“D
O YOU SWEAR
to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

“I do,” said Paul.

The courtroom television cameras dollied back from his face, to reveal on fifty million television screens the tableau of the Ilium Federal Courtroom’s south wall. There, beside and above Doctor Paul Proteus, sat the judge—the Sky Manager, Paul thought. The accused, seated on the witness stand, resembled less a man than an old-fashioned switchboard, with wires running from temperature-, pressure-, and moisture-sensitive instruments at his wrists, armpits, chest, temples, and palms. These, in turn, ran to a gray cabinet under the witness stand, where their findings were interpreted and relayed to a dial a yard in diameter over Paul’s head.

The indicator needle on the dial, now pointing straight down, was pivoted so as to swing easily between a black
T
on the right and a red
F
on the left, or to a series of arbitrarily calibrated points between them.

Paul had pleaded guilty to conspiring to advocate the commission of sabotage, but was now being tried for treason, three weeks after his arrest.

“Doctor Proteus,” said the prosecutor nastily. The television cameras closed in on his sneer and panned to the beads of sweat on Paul’s forehead. “You have pleaded guilty to conspiracy to advocate the commission of sabotage, isn’t that so?”

“It is.” The needle swung toward T, and back to the neutral position, proving that, to the best of Paul’s knowledge, it was indeed true.

“This conspiracy, of which you are the head, has as its method, and I quote from your famous letter, ‘We are prepared to use force to end the lawlessness, if other means fail.’ Those are your words, Doctor?”

“They were written by someone else, but I’m in sympathy with them,” said Paul.

“And the word, ‘lawlessness,’ refers in this case to the present mechanized economy?”

“And future.”

“Your goal, as I understand it, was to destroy machines in order that people might take a more personal part in production?”

“Some of the machines.”

“What machines, Doctor?”

“That would have to be worked out.”

“Oho! You haven’t worked
that
out yet, eh?”

“The first step would be to get Americans to agree that limitations be placed on the scope of machines.”

“You would get this agreement by force, if necessary? You would force this artificial condition, this step backward, on the American people?”

“What distinguishes man from the rest of the animals is his ability to do artificial things,” said Paul. “To his greater glory, I say. And a step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction.”

The television cameras looked deep into the prosecutor’s righteously angry eyes, and backed away, awed at the still unloosed mighty lightning there.

Paul looked too, and saw that the prosecutor knew a great deal more than he had yet revealed. But Paul doubted that the prosecutor knew his secretary was a member of the Ghost Shirt Society, and that Paul’s answers, while registering as heartfelt on the lie detector, were a synthesis of the best thinking and phrasing of Lasher, Finnerty, and Professor von Neumann.

Paul was at ease, filled with the euphoria of well-publicized martyrdom for a cause in which he believed. There was no more question in his mind than there was in the prosecutor’s that what the Ghost Shirt Society proposed to do was treason. The machines and the institutions of government were so integrated that trying to attack one without damaging the other was like trying to remove a diseased brain in order to save a patient. There would have to be a seizure of power—a benevolent seizure, but a seizure nonetheless.

The only old acquaintances in the room were Kroner, who seemed close to tears, and the fat, pig-eyed Fred Berringer, who was present, Paul supposed, to see the murder of Checker Charley avenged.

Anita hadn’t come to court, nor had Shepherd. The two of them, presumably, were too busy mapping future campaigns to give more than a brief, pious prayer for those caught on the barbed wire of the battlefield of life. There was no need for Anita’s coming to court to show the world how she felt about her erring husband. She had made that clear in several interviews with the press. She had married Paul, she’d explained, when she was but a child, and she thanked God things had come to a head while she was still young enough to salvage a little real happiness for herself. “Salvage” seemed a particularly apt term to Paul, with its implications of picking over city dumps and dragging harbor bottoms, for Anita had announced in her next breath that she was going to marry Doctor Lawson Shepherd as soon as she could get a divorce from Paul.

Paul had read her public declarations with ennui, as though they were gossip about someone else, about a television starlet’s accusations against a middle-aged producer, say. The thing he concentrated on now, a far more entertaining and consequential enterprise, was the saying of as many poignant, antimachine, pro-Ghost Shirt Society things as he could over a nationwide television network.

“This
use of force
—you don’t regard that as a levying of war against the United States, as treason, Doctor?” wheedled the prosecutor.

“The sovereignty of the United States resides in the people, not in the machines, and it’s the people’s to take back, if they so wish. The machines,” said Paul, “have exceeded the personal sovereignty willingly surrendered to them by the American people for good government. Machines and organization and pursuit of efficiency have robbed the American people of liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Paul twisted his head, and saw that the needle pointed at T.

“The witness will keep his head to the front,” said the Judge sternly. “His concern is with telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The indicator will take care of itself.”

The prosecutor turned his back to Paul, as though finished with him, and suddenly wheeled to shake a finger at him. “You are a patriot, are you, Doctor?”

“I try to be.”

“Your chief wish is to serve the American people well?”

“It is.” Paul was puzzled by this new line of questioning, for which no one had prepared him.

“That is your basic reason for serving as nominal head of the Ghost Shirt Society—to do good?”

“It is,” said Paul.

A ripple of whispers and a creaking of chairs under shifting bottoms told Paul that something had gone wrong with the lie detector’s indicator.

The judge hammered with his gavel. “Order in the court. The court engineer will please check the tubes and circuits.”

The engineer wheeled his steel cart up to the witness stand, and impersonally tested the connections to Paul. He took meter readings at various points along the circuits, slid the gray box out from under the witness stand, took out each
of the tubes and tested them, and put everything back together, all in less than two minutes. “Everything in order, your honor.”

“The witness will please tell what he considers to be a lie,” said the judge.

“Every new piece of scientific knowledge is a good thing for humanity,” said Paul.

“Object!” said the prosecutor.

“This is off the record—a test of the instrument,” said the judge.

“Swung to the left, all righty,” said the engineer.

“Now a truth,” said the judge.

“The main business of humanity is to do a good job of being human beings,” said Paul, “not to serve as appendages to machines, institutions, and systems.”

“Swung to T, O.K.,” said the engineer, tucking a metal clip just a little deeper into Paul’s armpit.

“Now, a half-truth,” said the judge.

“I am contented,” said Paul.

The spectators chuckled appreciatively.

“Square in the middle,” said the engineer.

“Proceed with the examination,” said the judge.

“I will ask the good patriotic doctor the same question,” said the prosecutor. “Doctor, your part in this plot to overthrow the—ah—machines: you say it was motivated solely by your desire to serve the American people?”

“I think so.”

Again the telltale restlessness in the courtroom.

“You
think
so, eh?” said the prosecutor. “Do you know where the needle pointed on that one, Doctor, patriot, latter-day Patrick Henry?”

“No,” said Paul uncomfortably.

“Squarely between T and F, Doctor. Apparently you’re not sure. Perhaps we can dissect this half-truth and remove from it a whole one—like removing a tumor.”

“Urn.”

“Could it be, Doctor, that this hate of what you describe as an injustice to humanity is in fact a hate or something a good bit less abstract?”

“Maybe. I don’t quite follow you.”

“I’m talking about your hate for someone, Doctor.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“The needle says you
do
know, Doctor—that you
do
know your red-white-and-blue patriotism is really an expression of hate and resentment—hate and resentment for one of the greatest true patriots in American history, your father!”

“Nonsense!”

“The needle says you lie!” The prosecutor turned away from Paul in seeming disgust. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury and the television audience: I submit that this man before you is little more than a spiteful boy, to whom this great land of ours, this great economy of ours, this civilization of ours, has become a symbol of his father! A father whom, subconsciously, he would have liked to destroy!

“A father, ladies and gentlemen of the jury and the television audience, to whom we are all in debt for our lives, for it was he, more than any other American, who mustered the forces of know-how, and brought civilization to victory!

“Call it Oedipus complex, if you will. He’s a grown man now, and I call it treason! Deny it, Doctor, deny it!

“But this boy chose to resent, to hate this brilliant apparition on the pages of history, out of whose loins he had sprung. And now, as a man, he has transferred this hate to what might very well serve as a symbol for his father, your land, ladies and gentlemen of the jury and the television audience, and mine.

“Deny it,” he said again, his voice little more than a whisper.

The cameras about-faced, and closed in on Paul like dogs closing in on a coon shot from a tree.

“Apparently I can’t deny it,” said Paul. He looked down helplessly, wonderingly, at the wires monitoring every
reflex God had given him with which to defend himself. A moment before, he had been a glib mouthpiece for a powerful, clever organization. Now, suddenly, he was all alone, dealing with a problem singularly his own.

“If my father were a petshop proprietor,” he said at last, “I suppose I would be a subconscious dog poisoner.”

The cameras dollied back and forth impatiently, panned across the spectators, glanced at the judge, and returned to Paul.

“But, even if there weren’t this unpleasant business between me and the memory of my father, I think I would believe in the arguments against the lawlessness of the machines. There are men who don’t hate their fathers, so far as I know, who believe in the arguments. What the hate does, I think, is to make me not only believe, but want to
do
something about the system. Does the needle agree?”

A number of spectators nodded.

“Good. So far, so good. I suspect that all people are motivated by something pretty sordid, and I guess the clinical data bears me out on that. Sordid things, for the most part, are what make human beings, my father included, move. That’s what it is to be human, I’m afraid.

“What the prosecutor has just done is to prove what everything about this world we’ve made for ourselves seems determined to prove, what the Ghost Shirt Society is determined to disprove: that I’m no good, you’re no good, that we’re no good because we’re human.”

Paul gazed into the television camera lenses and imagined the millions now watching, now listening, and he wondered if he’d made sense to any of them. He tried to think of some vivid image that would bring his point home to them all. An image came to mind; he rejected it as indelicate, could find no other, and so blurted it out anyway.

“The most beautiful peonies I ever saw,” said Paul, “were grown in almost pure cat excrement. I—”

Bagpipes and drums howled from the street below.

“What’s going on out there?” demanded the judge.

“Parade, sir,” said a guard, leaning out of the window.

“What organization is it?” said the judge. “I’ll have every last one of them hauled in for this outrage.”

“Dressed like Scotchmen, sir,” said the guard, “with a couple fellas up front that look kind of like Injuns.”

“All right,” said the judge irritably, “we’ll stop the testimony until they’re past.”