Authors: Lawrence Sanders
She laughed again. A throaty, gurgling laugh. She seemed freer, relaxed, glad to be out from behind that barred door.
“I’m going to church,” she said. Hint of mischief in her voice. “I’m a religionist. Did you know that?”
“No, Mrs. Wingate, I didn’t. Which religion?”
“Beist.”
“Deist?”
“
Beist
. I’m sure you’ve never heard of it. It’s very new.”
“How many members?” I asked her.
“Oh . . . perhaps a hundred.”
“That’s not a religion,” I said. “It’s a cult.”
“Beist,” she repeated. “We have a small chapter here, and in New York, and in San Francisco. But we make no effort to recruit. If objects hear about us and want to attend meetings, they are welcome. We ask nothing from them. We own no property. Meetings are held in members’ homes or, as tonight, in offices or stores. It’s all very informal. Unstructured. We hope to keep it that way. ” “And what does a Beist believe?”
“A force. A Life Force. We prefer not to define it. We accept the mystery. We welcome the mystery. We say the individual is not immortal, but the human species is. We say all life is growth, with purpose. To merge finally, and become one with that Life Force.” “Vaguely mystic,” I murmured.
“Is it? Perhaps. You said tonight at dinner that we are the first species capable of directing and controlling our own evolution. We accept that. We say the human species, now, today, is the highest form of life but will direct its evolution, over thousands and thousands of years, to a higher form, something finer, that will eventually become one with the divine essence of the universe, the Life Force.”
She stopped suddenly, turned sideways from the waist, stared at me.
“Well?” she demanded. “What do you think?”
“You want me to be honest?”
“Of course. You must always be honest.”
This last was uttered in such a sweetly innocent tone that I could not scoff.
“Mrs. Wingate,” I said, “I can’t—”
“You may call me Grace,” she said.
“Thank you. Grace, I’m glad your new faith encompasses manipulated evolution. But when you speak of a Life Force, a divine essence, you lose me. Consider my conditioning. All scientists—well, certainly most—equate the individual corpus with a clock. Nothing divine about a clock. Dial, hands, wheels, pivots, gears, springs: a mechanical device. Reproduce it exactly—so many teeth in the gears, ratios just so—put tension on the spring or provide some other power source, and away it goes. Tick-tick-tick. Nothing mysterious there. Similarly with the human corpus But infinitely more complex. Not only mechanical, but electrical and chemical. Still, the corpus is
stuff,
no matter how complex. Bone, blood, tissue, cells, enzymes, hormones, glands, organs, skin, muscle. All
stuff
And the time will come when we can produce it all, assemble it correctly, and then away it will go, the heart beating steadily—ca-thump, ca-thump, ca-thump. But no finger of God will poke down through the clouds and touch it. No divine essence will be injected. No Life Force will be needed. It will be purely a laboratory product, a reasonable facsimile of the real thing. We’re closer to that synthesis than you might think. Where does that leave Beism?”
“But don’t you see?” she said excitedly. “We accept all that. It’s all part of the purpose. To evolve into something finer and better. When you can create a living human in the laboratory, won’t you try to improve on it?”
“Probably. In fact, undoubtedly.”
“Well, there you are!” she said triumphantly. “You’re part of it, part of the Life Force, whether you recognize it or not. And— Oh, we’re here. Nick, would you like to attend? You don’t have to, of course. But you’re welcome, if you’d like to come in.”
“I’d like to very much.”
This particular meeting of the Beists was held in the back of a commercial laundry on Sixteenth Street, behind the White House. There were, perhaps, thirty objects present. There was one ef in the uniform of a naval commander, and I recognized the junior Senator from South Dakota. The others were a diverse lot. Most, apparently, middle class, but with a sprinkling of artisans, zipsuits from several Public Service ranks, a few adolescents, a few obsos, a tall, dignified em in Arabic robes.
The congregation stood against the walls, or sat on a miscellany of folding chairs, or perched on cold pressing tables and laundry machinery. The mood seemed light, carefree, informal, lively. There appeared to be no ceremony or ritual. Grace Wingate left me a moment to whisper to a plump young ef with stringy hair and a complexion disfigured by a bad case of
acne vulgaris.
Grace rejoined me. I had ‘ ‘reserved’ ’ a seat for her alongside me on a long metal sorting table. If we had leaned back incautiously, we’d have fallen into empty wire bins labeled Shirts, Skirts, Sheets, Towels, Drawers, etc. Just the place to seek the divine essence.
The dumpy young ef stood up before the gathering. Gradually, the congregation quieted. The ef introduced herself as Joanne Wilensky. She welcomed newcomers. She regretted there was no literature on the Beist movement to distribute, but suggested those interested might question any members present after the formal meeting was concluded.
“We can’t answer all your questions,”, she said. A smile that made her almost pretty. “Because we don’t know all the answers. Beism is as much a seeking as a knowing. Perhaps you can help us. We hope you can. Does the secretary have anything to report?”
The junior Senator from South Dakota rose and read two short letters from the Beist chapters in New York and San Francisco. Both reported increased attendance at their most recent weekly meetings and growing membership. The secretary announced with some pride that he now estimated the total number of Beists in the US at almost 200. Fingers were snapped.
Joanne Wilensky then asked if anyone else cared to speak. An em in a bronze-colored zipsuit rose and stated he was about to be transferred to Yuma, Arizona. He requested permission to start a Beist group there. The congregation voted approval enthusiastically. The wave of the future.
The Wilensky ef paused a moment, surveying the group slowly. She was a dowdy figure, shapeless, in a wrinkled plasticot dress.
“Is she the minister, or priestess, or guru?” I whispered to Grace Wingate.
“Sort of. It all started with her. But we take turns leading the meetings. She doesn’t get paid or anything. She’s a presser in this laundry.”
“Scientists believe—” Joanne Wilensky began in a hesitant, stammering voice—and then she proceeded to tell us what scientists believed, repeating almost word for word the comparison of a clock to a human corpus I had made to Grace Wingate in the car. I had seen Grace speak to her, but I was startled at how accurately the Beist leader was repeating my thesis.
“But the life of the clock comes from a coiled spring,” she stated. “Or from an electric outlet. Or from a battery. Where does the life of a human come from? Not from on high, the scientists say. Not from the finger of God poking down through a cloud. Then from where? Why should this combination of blood, tissue, cells, and organs result in animate life? Because, say the scientists, it is the nature of the materials used, being so constituted that in proper combination life begins. That is no answer at all.
Why
should the constitution of the materials be of such a nature?
Why
should the proper combination of those materials result in a beating heart? It is the
why
we seek. It may or may not be the touch of a Divine Creator. It may or may not be the blind functioning of chance. God or accident: Is there any difference? But we believe there is a reason, a purpose. We know not what. But we ask the scientists this question: Why do they exist? Or we? Or stones, stars, fish, and the universe? Why a something and not a nothing? Nullity, complete nonexistence, would prove nonpurpose. Existence presupposes purpose.” And so forth, and so forth. A stew of not especially new ideas. She made the mistake so many religionists make of trying to justify their faith by reason. Then they’re in my court, and I can slaughter them. If I started a new religion, I would have but one law, one justification: Believe. Faith confounds reason.
I said much the same thing to Grace Wingate on the ride back to the Georgetown White House.
“Don’t you believe in anything?” she asked me.
“Of course. In the immortality of the human species and the ability of science to ensure that immortality.”
“But to what purpose?”
“My Personality Profile says that I am goal-oriented. That is true, but in the short run. I am essentially pragmatic. I am not concerned with teleology. A lot of kaka. A waste of time. There’s too much to be done today. For tomorrow.”
Suddenly, unexpectedly, she put a hand on mine. She leaned toward me.
“Will you be my friend, Nick?” she asked. A whisper.
“Of course.” I smiled. “Do you have to ask?”
“Do you know what was in Angela’s briefcase?”
“No. I obviously have no need to know.”
She sat back, huddled into the corner of the wide seat. She stared at me thoughtfully a long moment. In the gloom she seemed suddenly older, despite the girlish middy, the ashen hair misting about her shoulders. I was conscious of the bare legs, the curve of her upper arms.
“I want to tell you,” she said.
“I don’t think you should,” I said.
“I
want
to.”
“Please don’t. It’s wrong for you to talk about restricted material, and dangerous for me to listen.”
“Then I’ll tell my husband you tried to worm it out of me, that you tried and tried to get me to reveal what’s going on, but I refused to tell you.”
I looked at her in astonishment. Shocked by her resoluteness.
“Why would you want to do that to me?” I asked her. “I have done you no harm.”
Then she was weeping. Hand over her eyes. Shoulders hunched, shaking. Hair a scrim about her face. Little sounds came out of her. My hand crept sideways, found her free hand. She gripped my fingers with surprising force.
“All right, Grace,” I said gently. “What’s this all about?”
“Angela,” she said. “And Mike. What she’s doing. With Mike. To Mike.”
Mike? Chief Director Michael Wingate, manager of the US. It sounded odd. Did President Harold K. Morse’s wife call him Harry? Probably. And here was Grace Wingate worrying. about Mike. Knowing Angela, I thought she probably had cause for worry.
“Grace.” I said her name softly. I gripped her hand tightly. “I want to be your friend. Tell me what is in Angela’s briefcase.”
We were on M Street, approaching Georgetown, and she spoke rapidly in her deep, throaty voice. What she told me seemed anti-climactic. But I did not at that point in time fully compute the Washington world. I was not conditioned to assigning operative political values. It was my first experience as a major mover and shaker. Later, when I learned the techniques of power politics, I realized the importance of what Grace Wingate told me that night.
This had been the sequence of events:
1. Hyman R. Lewisohn had run a definitive computer study of the US Government’s assets in real property. The inventory included public lands, military bases and hardware, natural resources (estimated), power generating facilities, and such real estate as shipyards, factories, homes, universities, hotels, motels, schools, zoos, wholesale and retail businesses, etc. Most of the last-mentioned had reverted to US ownership upon the default of government loans or for nonpayment of voluntary contributions.
2. The total proved simply astonishing. The US was by far the largest landholder, the largest shipbuilder, the largest
everything
in the world. This enormous capital had been amassed not deliberately but by a slow process of accretion, almost by accident. The US Government now owned and operated, either directly or through license, hamburger stands and swimming pools, parks and playgrounds, macaroni factories and airlines, golf courses and bordellos, bridges and distilleries, shipping lines and private mints, an orchard in Florida, and a trout stream in Oregon. Even whole towns that had grown up about military bases.
3. It was determined that all these enterprises were under the direction of or operated by several Public Service departments. Natural Resources handled public lands and parks. Commerce handled hotels, motels, factories, stores. Bliss handled nursing homes, hospitals, recreation facilities. Agribusiness handled farms, food processing plants, supermarkets. And so forth.
4. Lewisohn’s plan was to maximize income by bringing all US Government profit-making properties under the management of a new Public Service department, the Department of National Assets. He argued that by centralized control, modern management techniques, stricter accounting procedures—by operating US-owned business as an efficient conglomerate might—income from government property could be increased by 38.6416 percent and result, if desired, in a 4.2674 percent tax reduction.
5. Chief Director Wingate, his staff and directors were enthusiastic about Lewisohn’s proposal. But the creation of a new Public Service department would necessitate enabling legislation from Congress. Wingate wasn’t so enthusiastic about stirring up the Whigs (formerly the Republican Party). And they would certainly be stirred up by the revelation of the incredible total of real property held by the US Government that would have to be made in any Congressional hearing on a bill to create the proposed department.
6. Angela Berri had suggested a way out of the difficulty. Instead of a new department, a new section in the Department of Bliss, which she ruled, would be established. New sections were purely an administrative matter and required no Congressional approval. The new section would perform all the functions of the new department proposed by Lewisohn. It was a detailed prospectus for this new section that Angela was carrying in her chained briefcase to discuss with the Chief Director.
Dear Angela! For an ef on the suck, I could understand how tempting the new section must seem. All that love rolling in from government properties all over the world. If she skimmed only one-tenth of one percent, she’d be the wealthiest ef in the world within five years. Temerity! Greed!