Philip Wylie - Tomorrow!

“The point is—why I came here, is—what do you really think? I’ve talked to lots of people, last few weeks. People in CD and even people from River City who think the whole show is some kind of boondoggle. Those folks haven’t even got enough organization on paper. I talked to Reverend Bayson, he’s a fire fighter in my outfit. I talked to a couple of professors. I kept asking, ‘Should we go on? Is it worth it? Are we doing anything valuable? Or are we what they call us—a bunch of Boy Scouts’? I decided to put you on my list of people to talk to.”

“Thinking of quitting, yourself?”

Henry Conner looked squarely at the editor. “That’s it.” He recrossed his legs as if his body dissatisfied him. “Not right off. I don’t mind looking ridiculous to other people, so long as I don’t feel that way myself. Well. What about it?”

“If I were you,” Coley said, “I wouldn’t quit if hell itself froze over.”

Henry stared for a moment. “Be damned,” he breathed. “Why?”

“Because men like you, Hank, are the only life insurance left to the people of U.S.A. The other policies have all run out. First, Soviet friendship; then, our lead on the bombs; next, our superiority and our H-bomb. All gone.”

“They’re talking peace, hard. They made those deals and kept their word, so far.” It was almost a question.

“How many times have they jockeyed our politicians into a peace mood? Fifty? Then snatched something. It’s got so the people of the United States are scared to say or do anything that sounds hostile, even disagree, for fear they’ll spoil some new ‘chance’ at ‘world peace.’

Makes a man sick! Can you imagine, twenty years ago, Senators pussyfooting around, trying to stop free men from freely saying what they think for fear Russia would be ‘antagonized’ or made ‘suspicious’? I say—the more suspicious they are the better, and the more antagonized the better.”

“Then why print in the Transcript that Civil Defense preparations in America discourage honest peace desires in the Kremlin?”

“Minerva Sloan.”

“Who does she think she is,” Hank asked enragedly, “Mrs. God?”

“You’ve hit it. Yes. Mrs. God.”

“If I could only be sure,” Hank murmured. He got up, went to the window, saw the moonlight and murmured, “Pretty view.”

“I like it,” the editor said and switched out the fluorescent lamps in the office. That allowed Henry Conner to absorb, as his eyes grew accustomed to the soft silver outdoors, the same panorama that so frequently held Coley fixed at his window.

“Be a shame,” Henry said at last, in a quiet tone, “to wreck it.”

“Lot of lives. Lot of work.”

“You think they’ll ever try?”

“That,” Coley answered, coming around his desk in the dark and standing beside Hank, “is not the question. The question is, Could they if they tried. And the answer is, They could. So long as that’s the answer, Hank, we need you where you are.”

“That’s your opinion?” Henry stared. “It’s darn beautiful out there.”

“Darned congested, too, Hank. And darned inflammable, if you want to think of that.”

The square, firm head of the chief accountant of a chain of hardware stores, the head of a father of a family, a husband, a citizen and a good neighbor was fixed for a while so its eyes could drink in the view; then a hand scratched its grizzled hair. “I know. I know all that stuff. I know it so well it sounds sometimes like jibberish. As if the meaning had gone out. Blast, heat, radiation, fire storm—all that. Nuts.”

“Nuts is the perfect word. Insane. Completely mad.”

“You mean people?”

“I mean people.”

Henry hardly knew how to say all that was on his mind. His deep respect for Coley Borden made him prefer to appear the easy-going, almost “folksy” kind of individual for whom he was generally taken. Lacking much formal education, he hesitated even to display the insights he had gained through reading and observation. Finally he put a question. “Know much about psychology, Coley?”

“Read a lot of books. Seems the psychologists don’t know too much themselves! Keep arguing…”

Henry nodded, smiled a little. “Sure. You read much about the unconscious mind?

Subconscious? Whatever they call it?”

“Some, Henry. Why?”

“You believe in it?”

The editor laughed. “Have to. Can’t explain a single thing otherwise. Take you and Alton Bowers. You agree on every solitary fact taught in school. Comes to religion—you’re a Presbyterian, Alt’s a Baptist. Why? Something unconscious, something not faced fair and square by you both, right there.”

“Never thought of it that way,” Henry admitted. “I was only thinking about Civil Defense. Atom bombs. I get a lot of what the Government calls ‘Material.’ Even psychology stuff. It’s all about how people will act. It’s all based on studies of how they did act in other disasters. But if people have unconscious minds, how in Sam Hill can any psychologist figure what they’d do, facing utterly new terrors?”

“Some psychologists know a lot about how even the unconscious mind works—and why.”

“Not the ones the Government hires! All their birds are mighty chirky about the American people. Think they’d do fine if it rained brimstone. I’m not so sure. I’m far from sure!

I suspect the worst thing you can do, sometimes, is to keep patting people’s backs. Keep promising them they’re okay because they’ll do okay in a crisis. Makes ’em that much more liable to skittishness, to loss of confidence, if the crisis rolls around and they find they’re not doing letter perfect.”

Coley nodded. “I’ll buy that. It’s like the armed forces. Always calculating what’s going to happen on the basis of what happened before. Trying to convince themselves, even now, that an atom bomb is just another explosion—when it’s that, times a million, plus an infinite number of side effects, and not counting the human factor. The factor you call ‘unconscious’-and rightly.” The editor nodded. “They ought to look back over the military panics that have followed novel weapons. Next, they ought to reckon on how much less a civilian is set for uproar than troops. People go nuts, easy.”

“And then,” Henry went on slowly, “what about the people that are nuts? Seems to me I’ve read someplace that about a third of all the folks think they’re sick are merely upset in their heads. That’s a powerful lot of people, to begin with. Then, a tenth of us are more or less cracked. Neurotic, alcoholic, dope-takers, emotionally unstable, psycopaths, all that sort. Plus the fact that half the folks in hospital beds this very day are out-and-out nuts!”

“What’s your procedure with them?”

Henry shook his head. “What can it be? They’re uneducatable. Can’t teach ’em to behave properly in normal situations. How’n hell you teach ’em to face atom bombing? A tenth of the whole population is worse than a dead loss. It’s a dangerous handicap, come real trouble.”

The editor smiled. “ Only a tenth, Henry? More likely a third of the people are neurotic.

Already over-anxious, fearful, insecure. What about the have-not people? People with hate in their hearts? People who never were free, who never had an even and equal chance? What would they do, if things blew sky-high? Stand firm and co-operate? Like hell!”

“I know,” Henry murmured.

“And the merely poor people! With a feeling they’ve heen gypped. And look! Five per cent of the total population of River City and Green Prairie, like the people in every city, are folks with criminal records. Not just unpredictable. You can predict that—sure—a few will become noble in a disaster. lust as sure, you know the most of ’em will keep on being criminal and take advantage of every chance. Loot, for instance. Kill, if they’re that type. Rape, if they’re in that sex-offense category. Everything! What’s procedure there?”