Collected Short Fiction, page 301
Nourse’s eyelid twitched convulsively. “You can’t come right out and tell everyone about the aliens, of course. No one would believe you.”
“If I produced an alien?”
“That would be your final job. First it’s necessary to reestablish contact between the nations. Once that’s done, drag out your alien and show them the common threat.” Nourse shook his head bitterly. “It’s no simple job to reestablish contact, though. Three generations of Americans have been taught to hate Europe as a plague-spot. The young people hardly even know it’s there. Thanks to our blessed mass media, a perfect propaganda job has been done.”
“Propaganda works both ways,” Amory said. “And the video audience is a captive one. There must be fifty million compulsive televiewers in this country who’d sooner cut off a hand than turn the set off in the evening.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Suppose—just for the sake of discussion—that a few people set about altering the national viewpoint, shifting it away from isolationism. A reference here, a news item there . . . it could be done, couldn’t it?”
“How? I can put any damn thing I want into a script, but Dave Kavanagh’s going to take it out again anyway, so why bother? Video’s too thoroughly censored.”
“Kavanagh has no control over the actual production. We get a few actors to restore your original lines the night of the performance—make them subtle, of course—and reinforce our holdings with printed handbills.” Amory clasped his hands a moment and added, “We could get the newscasters to help out. And a few of the folksy guitar-men could slip a couple of references in. We carry this on for nearly a year, slowly building up in the public mind the concept that there are other countries in the world, that they’re not our enemies, that we can live peacefully with them. Then—we pool our cash, buy 90 minutes of video time, and put on a spectacular fact-show that clinches the case. No one can censor it before hand, since we’ll be the sponsors!”
“They can cut it off the air,” Nourse pointed out.
“Certainly they can. But that’ll simply arouse the public more strongly. We bait our hook in the first part of the show; if they cut us off, the audience is going to want to know why. It won’t be easy, but I think we could manage to swing it. And then finally we get the barrier legislation repealed and—”
“You talk as if this can be done in a single year,” Nourse said. “It can’t. Five years, ten maybe, but not one year. It takes time to put a world back together.”
Amory stood up. “We only have a year, Lee. I wasn’t fooling about those aliens. They’re here, and they’re ready to wipe us all out.”
“John—”
“Okay,” snapped Amory. “Don’t believe me. Let’s just take this on as an intellectual game: can we, being influential executives of America’s greatest mass medium, so manipulate the public consciousness in a way that will bring about the rebirth of internationalism? Call it a project. Set a year’s deadline for it.”
“It’s subversive. It’s deviational.”
“Of course it is. Will you help?” Nourse smiled warmly. “Sure I will,” he said. “Aliens or no aliens.”
The next few days were busy ones for Amory. He put in his nightly stint on Folly and Fortune, which underwent a midweek change of title to Flesh and Folly. The word came from Dave Kavanagh, who explained that money-referents were henceforth to be dropped from drama-program titles, as a general rule. It seemed the Mundy-Richardson connotation researchers had come up with the fact that many viewers subconsciously resented such referents, and tended to objectify their resentment by staying away from the client’s product.
A close observer might have noticed that Amory was not devoting his full intensity of attention to the rechristened play, but there were no close observers. Amory saw to it that the job he was turning out was mechanically competent, at least, but he made no extra effort to inspire his cast. He needed his energies elsewhere.
For three hours each day he met with Cargh, and he and the alien progressed rapidly on their tour of Terran art and culture. Chiefly Amor’s work was one of list-making: he prepared lengthy catalogues of the world’s finest paintings, and Cargh assured him that matter-duplications would be made of these paintings almost immediately. How the aliens planned to gain access to the works, Amory did not know and only half-cared; perhaps they had a worldwide network of human collaborators ready to visit museums for them.
He left these meetings with Cargh drained of vigor, white-faced, exhausted. The endless list-making tired him, as did the effort of keeping his false face up at all times. Cargh seemed to have no difficulty along those lines; never once did he say or imply that his presence on Garth was for any other than benign purposes. Amory wondered occasionally whether that memorandum had been an hallucination—but he knew his mind was too clear and sharp, his memory of that sheet of paper too vivid, for it to be any less real than Cargh himself.
Amory formed the habit of going to a Relaxomat after leaving the alien. His nerves needed easing, and generally he had several hours to spend before reporting to the studio. Besides, the Relaxomat gave him an automatic entry into the everyday world, the world of that common mass audience with which he had so little in common and whose mind he was hoping to reach and manipulate.
Rehearsal was called for 8; he left Cargh at 5. The Relaxomat was a bright cave in the sublevel of the nearby transport depot, and Amory entered.
They knew him by sight, but not by name. The white-smocked attendants nodded politely at him. He rented a locker, stripped, and ducked through the low door into the relaxing chamber. He found an unoccupied relaxor and climbed in.
The warm nutrient mixture welled up around him as he slumped down into it, his body finding the textured rubber cushion at the bottom of the vat. He leaned back, letting the stress drain from his muscles, keeping only his head above the surface of the nutrient. A warm lethargy stole over him; he felt protected, secure, free from strain.
The relaxor was vaguely womblike in shape. It was no coincidence of design.
After the first few moments of relaxation he forced himself up out of the mindless content that enwrapped him. He opened his eyes and glanced around.
Bright glareless overhead lights illuminated the vitrin tiles. He saw four balding heads projecting from four relaxor vats, men with eyes closed, mouth upcurving in the inane smile of utter tranquility. But on the other side of him men were exercizing. He listened to their conversation eagerly.
“You watch Furley’s show last night, Jack?”
“Never miss it. Wife swears by it. Don’t know what we’d do without Furley on Monday nights.”
“That man has sense. When he says something it’s true. Comes from the heart, y’know?”
“Isn’t it the truth? I believe in that man, Fred.”
Amory smiled to himself and shut his eyes once again, slipping back into the bath. Furley. He had met the man once. One of these homespun philosophers so popular on video. Amory made a note to see him, as soon as possible.
Not now, though. Not for a while. First, relax. Slide back into the warm beckoning trough of life, return, relax, sleep. Warm. Comforting. You can stop thinking here; you don’t have to think at all.
You can almost forget that a shadow hangs over the world, and that all responsibility devolves on you. Shuck off responsibility here. Relax . . . relax . . .
Relax until there’s nothing left of you but the cold hard core of fear and tension in your middle, Amory thought suddenly. A core that no gentle lapping bath can wash away. You can forget only so much—but not the inner stab of fear.
He climbed out of the bath. Almost instantly an attendant glided toward him.
“Rubdown, sir? Exercise? Mechanostim?”
Amory shook his head impatiently. “Not today, Joe. Some other time.” It was a great temptation, but he fought it off. There was work to do.
Hal Furley was a rawboned, rangy man well over six feet tall, wearing a loose gabardine shirt, bright green whipcord trousers, and an informal duroplast neckerchief twisted in an intricate knot. He seemed to radiate good nature, virtue, strength and charm; the open readiness of his smile indicated sincerity and warmth. It was hardly surprising that his monologues, delivered in traditional homespun style, would be so fantastically popular with the American people. He seemed to sum up all the subliminal connotations that the label “American” brought to mind.
Including one that the American people failed to see in him, but which Amory, being a considerably more perceptive judge of character than the average televiewer, spotted instantly. Something—a glint in Furley’s eyes, a way he had of carefully rippling his jaw muscles before each supposedly unstudied smile—spoke of shrewdness and ambition carried almost to the point of greed.
He said, “You could get me a part in your show, Mr. Amory? A starring role?”
His voice was deep and soft, with the flat twang of New England speech and the slow drawl of the South and the clear-cut Midwestern inflection all simultaneously embodied in it. They were in his office in the Transvideo Tower, a luxuriously furnished place that seemed oddly in contrast with the simple virtues Furley publicly espoused.
Amory nodded slowly. “It wouldn’t be hard. The casting chief takes his orders directly from me. So do most of the writers. We could build a play around you—or, rather, a homespun-type character of the sort you embody. It wouldn’t be you, of course—you’d simply be playing a Hal Furley named Joe So-and-So in a video drama.” Furley moistened his lips in a clearly calculating way. “You think this’ll be good for my career, Mr. Amory? I wouldn’t want to disappoint my public.”
“I’ll put it to you squarely: aside from the fifty thousand or so you’d no doubt draw for this one-shot appearance on my drama hour, you’d be laying down assurance against the future. Look, Furley: you’re not the only homespun man on the air now. Rod Garson draws quite a rating with the Universal network, and there are plenty of others. You can’t last in the top spot forever. Someday you’ll stumble. Well, there’ll always be a future for you in drama. Capitalize now. When you appear on my show, you’ll draw not only my regular viewers but yours as well; we’ll double the rating.”
“And when and if I fold up as a lasso-twirler,” Furley said smoothly, “I can always point to that night’s rating and tell the vicepresidents, ‘Looky here, see what happened the last time I played a straight role.’ I think I begin to understand your point of view, Amory. But it’s this return favor that worries me.”
Amory firmed his jaw and said, “You never get anything for nothing in video. I’m just asking you to make a few innocent remarks on your show.”
“Subversion, Mr. Amory. Deviation.”
“What of it? Nobody’ll notice. You’ll be hitting the viewers so deep they won’t know about it until it’s done.” Amory took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “After all, how did you convince them you were a loyal family man, Furley, when it’s practically common knowledge you’ve been keeping a mistress in—”
“Okay,” Furley cut in roughly. “You play a hard game, Mr. Director Amory. And I don’t know what your point is, but we have a deal. You sign me up for lead role in one of your plays, and on my program I’ll guarantee to slip a couple of subversive remarks in. But I’m warning you that they’ll be subtle. There won’t be anything overt in it. I’m damned if I’ll get myself thrown off the air out of this.”
Gone was the homespun philosopher now; Furley was all business, and tough at it. Amory extended a hand. “Subtlety is what we want. It has to be that way. Deal?”
“Deal,” Furley said, as he shook hands.
Amory monitored the Hal Furley show the following week, forcing himself to listen to the endless reams of guff and to endure the bad guitar-playing for nearly an hour, wondering whether Furley was going to back out on the deal or not. A contract offering Furley $45,000 for a one-shot appearance on the drama hour, with return options, lay unsigned in Amory’s desk, ready to go out.
The show was nearly over. Suddenly, between guitar-strums, Furley grinned in that deadly winning way of his and said, “My grandad was a great one for travelling. He went darned near around the world in his day—he died back in ’ninety-eight, or maybe it was ought-one, I forget now—and he used to sing me some pretty fine songs from the lands over the water. I recall one old English tune I learned pretty near at the old man’s knee, when I was in rompers—”
Furley launched into something Amory barely recognized as Greensleeves, heavily disguised by the comic’s customary style of guitar-embroidery. Beneath the twanging chords and the steady repetitive beat, Amory was able to distinguish the familiar old sinuous melody, and he smiled.
Furley would get his contract. The seed had been planted; the first attack on the walls of the world was under way. Just the merest hint that there was a land across the waters that could possibly produce a song worthy of being played on the air by Hal Furley was the sort of below-the-threshold assault needed now.
Later, he could afford to be more open about things. Right now caution was necessary, until the campaign was well under way.
The next step was to call Rod Garson, the rival network’s competitor to Furley, and let him know gratuitously that Furley had taken a new tack and was plugging for internationalism. Garson was quick to imitate any idea Furley developed; soon Universal would catch the fever.
Amory had other plans as well. He smiled. Directing this campaign required the finesse needed to direct a classic play—and Amory felt much the same thrill he might have felt working with Racine or Moliere. The gradual building of a hundred small effects, minute nuances, half-noticed subtleties, toward one grand climax—this production, Amory thought warmly, will be my greatest directorial triumph!
THREE WEEKS passed. They were weeks of complex maneuvering on many levels, of careful, meticulously-planned placement of overtones here and there in various video shows. Amory took to conspiracy like a born plotter.
He kept up his daily contact with Cargh, and while he was in the silent office all was serene; he and the alien methodically plodded through the world’s art, and Amory exerted such control over himself that he scarcely even thought of Cargh’s true purpose while in the alien’s presence. He found himself growing to like the strange being, in a curious way: Cargh had a bright boundless eagerness to learn which impressed Amory, and he was openly friendly and cheerful.
Behind the scenes at Transvideo Tower he worked furiously and long, occasionally drawing an actor aside to communicate a special shade of meaning, several times changing a line entirely at the final rehearsal. Luckily Kavanagh and Graben kept their attention elsewhere, giving Amory more freedom than he might have had had they attended all rehearsals as they sometimes did.
And the Relaxomat, his ear to the world, gave signs of the change. Stray fragments of discussion reached him: an occasional questioning of the policy of isolation, perhaps a remark that Amory knew evolved directly from one of his network plants.
He saw his work taking hold, and he felt pleased. The temper of the times was shifting. And there still was plenty of time left before Cargh and his collections departed and the invasion army arrived.
Hal Furley appeared on an Amory-directed show scripted by Lee Nourse, and all ratings jumped astronomically. Furley, Nourse, and Amory drew bonuses and plaudits from Graben; Kavanagh remained in the background, a gray figure with little praise in him.
Amory met occasionally with Beckett, Nourse, Viglan, and some of the others who formed the chief backbone of anti-isolation agitation. They were full of ideas, brimming with enthusiasm—but Amory quickly saw that all looked to him for leadership. He was the only one in a direct position to act, by virtue of his position in the network; the others were hampered by the Scripting Committee and by other forms of censorship.
The days passed. Amory received a Matt Viglan script called Pride Leads To A Fall in which no less than four buried internationalist references had survived the Scripting Committee’s hatchet, and set to work preparing it for the following week’s production. A sudden phone-call jarred him out of his concentration.
He snapped on the phone. “Yes? Who is it, please?”
As if in answer, the square, unattractive face of Dave Kavanagh appeared on the screen. The Scripting Committee pundit looked even less cheerful than usual, his hard eyes flickering rapidly and his thin lips tight and pale.
“What is it, Dave? I’m busy with this new Viglan script,” Amory said irritably. “The staging still isn’t worked out, and—”
“Could you stop over here to see me?” Kavanagh asked quietly.
Amory shrugged. “I’ll be at the studio by eight or so for the rehearsal. Suppose I look in on you about seven-thirty, thereabouts? Okay?”
“No,” Kavanagh said. “I’d like to see you right now.”
Something in his tone told Amory not to argue. Inwardly fuming, he said, “I’ve got an appointment for this afternoon, Dave. Is it that urgent?”
“Yes. How urgent is this appointment?”
“So-so.”
“Break it, then. I’ll expect you in an hour.”
Amory felt sweat cascading down his abruptly cold skin. High as his own rank was, Kavanagh still outranked him in the hierarchy—and strict observance of hierarchical order was the law in video custom and ethos. Kavanagh very rarely pulled rank on Amory; there probably was some good and special reason for it now. Amory had his ideas about that reason, and he hoped he was wrong.
Kavanagh sat behind a broad realwood desk polished so brightly the glare made Amory wince. There was nothing at all friendly in the Scripting Committee chairman’s manner or voice as he said, “Sit down, John. Have a cigarette.”
Mechanically Amory accepted the cigarette and flicked the igniting capsule with a careless gesture of his thumb. He puffed twice, then waited.
Kavanagh said, “I have a script here. Lee Nourse turned it in this morning. Perhaps you know that I read all scripts submitted by our staff writers personally, and make recommendations to the Committee concerning the necessary changes they must make.”
