“Very clever,” Jordan said. “But what about air traffic?”
“Don’t get very much that can see anything,” said Merle. “The PSA commuter run from L.A. to San Francisco flies east of Cliffhaven. Most of the other planes are too high or over the ocean. Helicopters could be bothersome, but we farm under camouflage nets. I’ve been up in a helicopter several times. I know where the fields are, and I can’t see them from four hundred feet, what with irregular edges and all that surrounding brush.”
Jordan scratched his right cheek with his left hand, a reflex elicited by skepticism. “Suppose you get caught?” he asked. “You can’t afford that.”
“Nonsense,” Merle asserted. “I’ve set aside a contingency fund of a quarter of a million cash for payoffs if need be. What I’m really concerned about is legalization. It’ll drive the price clear down to tobacco, and I’ll have to switch to something still prohibited.”
“You better make sure it’ll grow in California,” Jordan said.
“Not necessarily. I’ve devised a means of transporting the labor force elsewhere if it becomes necessary.”
“You sure have thought of everything.”
“Not true,” Merle said. “That leads straight to complacency. I test the program severely all the time. Does the name van den Haag mean anything to you?”
“Say that again,” Jordan said.
“That’s where the idea grew from. Van den Haag. Dutch. He’s a professor somewhere east. It’s his theory.”
“That fancy resorts ought to be put to better use?”
Merle studied his glass for a moment. Jordan was fundamentally a lightweight. Perhaps he wasn’t up to this. There was only one way to find out.
“Jordan, on the average, do you find Jews smarter than other people?”
“Clever. Shrewd.”
“It’s not just cleverness. Did you know that Jews are proportionately overrepresented in the best colleges?”
“Sure seems that way.”
“But did you know that it’s by three hundred and sixty-five percent?”
“Look here, Merle,” Jordan said, “we all know they push.”
“Surely it can’t be pushiness alone. Jews are only three percent of the population, yet twenty-seven percent of American Nobel prizewinners are Jews. That’s not just drive.”
“Maybe it’s the food they eat,” Jordan said, laughing.
He saw it was a mistake to laugh.
“All right,” said Merle. “It’s about time you gave some thought to this. For over a millennium the only way a Christian with brains and drive could get ahead was to go into the Church. It was the only place that intellectual ability was rewarded in Europe, and if you were smart and not a nobleman, what the hell else could you do? But there was a price to pay.” He studied Jordan’s face to see if he was following.
“This is that Dutch fellow’s idea?” Jordan asked.
“I fully accept his theories. Listen. The most gifted and intelligent members of the Christian population were forbidden to have offspring. Their genes, the best genes, were siphoned off from the genetic supply for over a thousand years, and while all this was going on, the Jews in Europe lived in small settlements where exactly the opposite was taking place. The most intelligent were encouraged to become rabbis. The rabbis were also the political leaders. And their daughters were the prizes for the smart young men. The whole process was directed at getting the best genes together, while their Christian counterparts were leading a monastic life. Just think, if two cars going forty hit head on, that’s an eighty-mile-per-hour impact. And if the same two cars going forty are heading in opposite directions, their speed of separation is eighty miles an hour. When that happens with genes for a thousand years, it’s bound to have had a tremendous impact on relative intelligence.”
“Makes sense,” Jordan said. He wasn’t sure it made sense, but judging by Merle’s high color, it was prudent to agree.
“And what we’re doing at Cliffhaven, Abigail and I, is reversing the process. We’re taking Jewish genes out of circulation!”
“Why don’t we have dinner?” Abigail said. She knew how important it was to Merle to enlist Jordan in his plan to set up a series of cross-country links to Cliffhaven. Jordan was being polite, but he wasn’t enthusiastic. Maybe the dinner she had prepared, laced with an almost undetectable amount of marijuana, would in combination with the bourbon, relax Jordan and make him more receptive.
*
When coffee was being served, Jordan accepted a cigar out of the box of Havanas proffered by Merle, but turned away the cigar cutter, which he considered one of Merle’s pretensions. You could bite the end off with friends, and in uncertain company you could always pinch the end off with thumb and forefinger.
“Merle,” he said, “back in Pinckton ’fore I met you, we had two Jews in that town that I knew of, the fellow that run the jewelry store and the one that owned the clothing store. The clothing fellow made a fair piece of change—maybe he’d make in a year what we’d make in the oil business in a day or two—but that jewelry store sold imitation everything and not much of that. Those two, they were no Nobel prizewinners. I knew them both to talk to now and again, and they were ordinary dumb.”
Abigail thought that if she had both of them in a bed at the same time, Jordan would clearly have her prime attention. But when it came to brains he was no match for Merle, who now sighed, hoping to explain.
“Jordan,” Merle said, “in dealing with population groupings, one has to go by averages, trends, observable differences. Of course, there are dumb Jews like there are dumb everyone elses. What van den Haag makes clear is why Jews taken as a whole tend to be smarter than Gentiles taken as a whole. What I’m about”—he leaned forward on his elbows, bringing his face closer to Jordan’s—“is reversing what happened in those thousand years.”
Jordan burst out laughing. “You and Abigail are starting late if you’re set on having a million smart Gentile kids before you die.”
Abigail hoped Merle would be patient with Jordan.
“It’s a pity we didn’t have any children,” Merle said.
It’s not a pity, thought Abigail, it’s what I wanted.
“My plan,” Merle said, “is to reverse the process that handicapped Gentile genes during all the years the Church was dominant in Europe. It’s not in my power to make Gentiles smarter. But there is one thing I can do.”
Abigail stood. “Why don’t we move back into the living room?”
“Please sit down,” Merle said. He didn’t want to lose Jordan’s attention.
“I am going to deplete the reservoir of Jewish genes.”
Well, Jordan thought, maybe he’s becoming a lunatic, and maybe he’s onto something real smart. Certainly that place he’s got in Big Sur is working out okay.
“You probably think that my accomplishment at Cliffhaven is keeping up to two hundred persons at a time involuntarily out of circulation. Let me tell you the real significance of what we’re doing there. I suppose you noticed that there weren’t any children.”
“Didn’t see any,” Jordan said.
“They are removed at once. They are useless as labor, and just make the parents sentimental and harder to control.”
“Removed?” Jordan asked, letting a questioning stream of smoke escape his lips.
“Disposed of. As are the recalcitrants and the troublemakers. Or those who prove useless in the fields. But the important part—mark this—is that because of the reputation our cuisine has earned—we’re very careful when food editors visit, only the best-behaved residents are allowed in the dining room—and the character as well as the price of the accommodations, we attract, naturally, mainly successful Jews who can afford a place like Cliffhaven. Many of them are past the active childbearing age, but then the interesting thing happens. Their teenage and older children come looking for them. By disposing of
them
we are gradually eroding the Jewish gene bank, do you see?”
Jordan’d seen fanaticism in religious cult leaders in Texas who’d come to him for money. Merle didn’t want money.
“Look,” Jordan said, “I don’t like Jews any more’n the next fellow, but I really don’t see devoting all that time and energy to knocking off a fraction of one percent of them. It’s like the Klan stringing up niggers long ago. I said that doesn’t deal with the nigger problem. You either ship them all back to Africa or leave them alone.”
“You’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg,” Merle said. “I see Cliffhavens near Dallas and Houston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Detroit, up past Racine for Chicago people, maybe twenty or thirty of them eventually.”
“You going to run all this, Merle?”
“I envision it more as a series of moral franchises. I demonstrate how it can be done. Others learn what they can from my early experiment, and carry on in their part of the country. In a decade we could have a significant effect on the genetic capability of Jews in this country.”
Jordan glanced over at Abigail. Where did she stand in all this?
“Perhaps you need some more time at Cliffhaven to study what we’re doing,” Merle said. “For instance, did you by any chance notice that there were no pregnant women?”
“I guess I didn’t see any.”
“There aren’t any, at least any that are noticeably pregnant, because the second they are noticeable that’s their last day. Actually, the Jews are smart, as I said, they get the point. Once they’re familiar with the rules, spoken and unspoken, they don’t get pregnant at Cliffhaven. It’s amazing how the human race adjusts to circumstances.”
“May we move to the living room now?” Abigail said.
And so they did, Jordan puffing on his cigar, wondering how much cash this was going to cost him as a
donation to get out of any more involvement in
this harebrained scheme.
*
Jordan waited till the Japanese manservant brought the brandy for them and Merle had poured.
“What’s next?” he said.
“I’m ready to go national. One step at a time, of course.”
“Jesus,” Jordan said. “You’re really serious.”
Abigail, seeing Merle’s color rise, interjected, “You’ve been there, Jordan. That wasn’t an architect’s plan you saw, it’s a going institution.”
“Jordan,” Merle said, “I’ve taken you into the deepest confidence one man can take another man.”
Well, thought Jordan, I can’t reciprocate by telling you about what Abigail and I did to while away the time while you were in the hospital. You’d have a fit.
“I appreciate that,” Jordan said.
“Moreover,” Merle continued, “I haven’t sworn you to secrecy the way some organizations would. I have relied on our friendship and your trustworthiness.”
“That you have,” Jordan said.
“I will work with you for the first few months. Closely.”
“Merle,” Jordan said, “before you give me any details, I’ve got my business to run.”
“I didn’t drop a stitch in my regular affairs during the time I organized Cliffhaven. You’re a smart executive, Jordan. You know how to drop unessentials to pick up the creative parts of organization that need doing. I want you to find a suitable location within a few hours’ driving time of Dallas and Houston. First priority should be given to difficulty of access, a piece of land that’s hard to get in or out of except by one controlled egress.”
“I know a lot of places in New Mexico and Arizona that lend themselves to that, but in my part of the country…”
“I don’t mean a place where there’s an existing resort. We’ll build that, recruit a staff. It’ll be easy. I know how to find like-minded individuals and test their sincerity, and I’ve had all the experience of Cliffhaven that should make any new location much easier to accomplish. In fact, I’d lend you some of the Cliffhaven staff to train your people.”
“Merle,” Jordan said, “we’re good friends.”
“Shall I leave the room?” Abigail asked. “Whenever I hear men start off that way, I think I may be a supernumerary.”
“Please stay,” Jordan said. With a possible disagreement brewing, he had long ago learned that a woman’s presence was a moderating factor. Turning to Merle, he continued, “I hope we stay friends. But your thing, Merle, is your thing and not my thing.”
“You don’t agree with the necessity of reversing a historical travesty that gave the Jews an edge they have no right to?”
Merle Clifford hoped his friend was swinging toward affirmation. “I’m waiting to hear what you have to say, Jordan.”
“If I wanted to help reverse any genetic imbalance, if I believed it was important to do something of that sort, I’d find me two or three really bright, good-looking, A-l Christian gentlemen—any age will do—and set up a sperm bank for Christian ladies who wanted intelligent, good-looking children because they
couldn’t get them from
their husbands, or didn’t have husbands, or whatever. That could be done with a lot less expense, certainly less danger, and it could influence
a
lot more genes in a shorter period of time. You could go national with a scheme like that in no time.”
Jordan waited for Merle’s reaction. He figured he had the son of a bitch in a corner. While you’re thinking about how simple my idea is compared to yours, Jordan thought, maybe Abigail and I could wander upstairs and find ourselves a firm mattress.
“Jordan,” Merle said, “your idea is not bad at all. It would be an excellent supplement to a series of Cliffhavens, and would probably speed up the achievement of my genetic goals.”