John Brunner - The Squares of the City

I frowned. “Well, I know the principle—you project a message on a TV screen or a movie screen for a fraction of a second, and it’s, alleged to impress the subconscious mind. They tried it out in movie houses with simple words like ‘ice cream,’ and some people said it worked and others said it didn’t. I thought it had gone out of fashion, because it proved unreliable or something.”

“Not exactly. Oh, it is true that it was not reliable. But indisputably it worked at least part of the time, and of course in most civilized countries it was immediately recognized as a powerful political weapon. If it could be made consistent in its effect, it could be used to indoctrinate the population. One of the first people to emphasize this was—Alejandro Mayor.”

Memories of hints contained in Mayor’s first book confirmed this. I nodded.

“It so happened,” said Senora Posador, looking at the glowing tip of her cigarette, “that twenty years ago Juan Sebastian Vados was campaigning for the presidency In our country. It was the first election after an unpopular dictatorship. The television service had just been brought to the country—at first it served only Cuatrovientos, Astoria Negra, and Puerto Joaquin—and its director supported Vados.

“Who first saw the possibilities? I cannot say. It was all kept very secret. In most countries use of subliminal perception is banned by law, because its effectiveness—oh, it has been made reliable by testing!—it is inhuman. But in Aguazul there was no law. The single obstacle was that most of our people were, still are, illiterate. Yet that in its way was an advantage; it was soon found that even for persons who could read, pictures worked better than words. A message in words you can argue with, but pictures have the impact of something seen con los ojos de si.”

She was still staring at her cigarette, but plainly was not seeing it, because the ash was growing and trembling and she made no move to disturb it. Her voice became taut and a little harsh.

“Vados, with advice from Mayor who had become a friend of his, employed this knowledge. He broadcast very often in this technique a picture of his opponent copulating with a donkey, and—since television was rather new to us and very many people watched very much of the time—his opponent was called foul names as he went through the streets, his house was stoned daily, and—and in the end he killed himself.”

There was a pause.

At length Senora Posador recollected herself, shifted a little on her perch, and threw the ash from her cigarette aside.

“And so, my friend, it has continued. Those of us who know what we know—and object—never go to the movies; we never watch the television without a blinker. With practice has come skill, and what you have seen here is typical of the technique as it is employed today.

“It is now known for certain to many of our citizens that the squatters in the shantytowns practice bestial cruelty to their children, that they offend the morals of the young, that they elaborately blaspheme against the Christian religion. It is likewise known that you are a good man, a good Catholic, and a close friend of the president, whom you may never have seen in your life.”

“Once, in a car the other day,” I said. “That’s all.” She shrugged. “I saw you smile at the picture of yourself as an avenging angel,” she went on. “Yet even that is carefully planned. Many persons watching the program may have been children who believe in such things. Others—many, many more in the small towns and villages and even in Cuatrovientos and Puerto Joaquin—are simple and uneducated, and likewise hold such things to be literally true. You are a free man, Senor Hakluyt, compared to anyone walking the streets of Vados. You come here; you can go away again; it will not matter that your thinking has been influenced in Aguazul. But it would be better to watch no more television.”

“Are you trying to tell me that all the TV programs are loaded with this kind of crap?” I demanded.

She slipped from her perch and bent to open a sliding door set under the bench where she was sitting. “Choose any of these,” she invited, indicating a row of tape spools filed on a shelf. “They are programs transmitted during the last few months. I will do the same again for you.”

“Don’t trouble,” I said distractedly.

She looked at me with something approaching pity. “As I imagined, Senor Hakluyt, you are a good man. It shocks you to discover what methods are employed in the most governed country in the world!”

I lit a cigarette, staring at her. “I was talking to Dr. Mayor last night,” I said after a pause. “He used that same phrase. What does it mean? What does it really mean?”

“To the ordinary citizen? Oh, not very much. Our government is subtle as governments go—always it is the velvet glove where possible. For most of our people, the twenty years of Vados’s rule may truly be described as happy. Never before was Aguazul so prosperous, so peaceful, so satisfied. But we who know—and there are not many of us, senor—what long invisible chains we carry, fear for the future. If Mayor were to die, for example, who can predict the consequences? For all his elaborate theories, he is still a brilliant improvisateur; his gift is to trim his sails to the wind of change a moment before it begins to blow. With him, Vados, who is growing old— who can tell whether he has planned well enough for another to take the controls when he has gone, and keep our country on a steady forward course? And there is a still further danger: the danger that this disguised control may have worked all too well, that if change becomes necessary, we may have been too skillfully guided for too long to respond, so that before we can again forge ahead we must fall back in chaos.”

She made a helpless gesture with one superbly manicured hand and cast down the butt of her cigarette.

“I try not to speak politics to you, Senor Hakluyt. I know you are a foreigner and a good man. But it is of concern to all the world what happens here in Aguazul; we have laid claim to a government of tomorrow to match our city of tomorrow, and if we have gone wrong, then the world must take notice and avoid the same mistakes. Your hour is up, senor. I will drive you wherever you wish to go.”

I didn’t say a word as the big Pegasos carried me back to the traffic department, where I had to call and see Angers for my daily visit. My state of mind approached consternation.

I had come to Vados to do a standard kind of job, one carrying far more kudos than anything I had yet attempted, owing to the special status of the city, but to outward appearance otherwise routine.

And now I found myself faced with a task of moral judgment instead. Or as well.

What Senora Posador had shown me had shaken me badly.

Aside from the questionable ethics of using subliminal perception for political purposes, there was the purely personal reaction against being lied about to the public. That the lies were intended to make me a popular figure merely aggravated the situation. And yet…

For twenty years Vados had ruled his country without revolution, civil war, slump, panic, or any other disaster. He had created peace unprecedented in the century and a half of the country’s checkered history. While his neighbors were wasting time and energy in internecine disturbances, he had managed to build Ciudad de Vados, to raise living standards almost everywhere, to make inroads on the problems of disease, hunger, illiteracy, and poverty. His people respected him for that; probably in the minds of most Vadeanos this city alone excused whatever else he might have done. What was I to do? Quit cold?