Sixth Column (19 page)

standpoint of theology I am forced to consider any sect that does not admit

authority of the Vicar on Earth-"

"Don't play with me, man! I'm in no mood for it."

"I am not playing with you, David. I was about to add that in spite of the

strict logic of theology, God in His mercy and infinite wisdom will find some

way to let even one like yourself into the Holy City. Now as for these priests

of Mota, I have not searched their creed for flaws, but it seems to me that

they are doing useful work; work that I have not been able to accomplish."

"That is exactly what worries me, Francis. There was a woman in my

congregation who was suffering from an incurable cancer. I knew of cases

like hers that had apparently been helped by . . . by those charlatans! What

was I to do? I prayed and found no answer."

"What did you do?"

"In a moment of weakness I sent her to them."

"Well?"

"They cured her."

"Then I wouldn't worry about it too much. God has more vessels than

you and me."

"Wait a moment. She came back to my church just once. Then she went

away again. She entered the sanctuary, if you can call it that, that they have

set up for women. She's gone, lost entirely to those idolaters! It has tortured

me, Francis. What does it avail to heal her mortal body if it jeopardizes her

soul?"

"Was she a good woman?"

"One of the best."

"Then I think God will look out for her soul, without your assistance, or

mine. Besides, David," he continued, refilling his pipe, "those so-called

priests-They are not above seeking your help, or mine, in spiritual matters.

They don't perform weddings, you know. If you should wish to use their

buildings, I am sure you would find it easy-"

" I can't imagine it!"

"Perhaps, perhaps, but I found a listening device concealed in my

confessional-" The priest's mouth became momentarily a thin angry line.

"Since then I've been borrowing a corner of the temple to listen to anything

which might possibly be of interest to our Asiatic masters."

"Francis, you haven't!" Then, more moderately, "Does your bishop know

of this?"

"Well, now, the bishop is a very busy man-"

"Really, Francis-"

"Now, now-I did write him a letter, explaining the situation as clearly as

possible. One of these days I will find someone who is traveling in that

direction and can carry it to him. I dislike to turn church business over to a

public translator; it might be garbled. "

"Then you haven't told him?"

"Didn't I just say that I had written him a letter? God has seen that letter;

it won't harm the bishop to wait to read it."

It was nearly two months later that David Wood was sworn into the

Secret Service of the United States Army. He was only mildly surprised when

he found that his old friend, Father Doyle, was able to exchange recognition

signals with him.

It grew and it grew. Organization-and communication-underneath each

gaudy temple, shielded from any possible detection by orthodox science,

operators stood watch and watch, heel and toe, at the pararadio equipment

operating in one band of additional spectra-operators who never saw the light

of day, who never saw anyone but the priest of their own temple; men

marked as missing in the fields of the Asiatic warlords; men who accepted

their arduous routine philosophically as the necessary exigency of war. Their

morale was high, they were free men again, free and fighting, and they

looked forward to the day when their efforts would free all men, from coast to

coast.

Back in the Citadel women in headphones neatly typed everything that

the pararadio operators had to report; typed it, classified it, condensed it,

cross-' indexed it. Twice a day the communication watch officer laid a brief of

the preceding twelve hours on Major Ardmore's desk. Constantly throughout

the day dispatches directed to Ardmore himself poured in from a dozen and a

half dioceses and piled up on his desk. In addition to these myriad sheets of

flimsy paper, each requiring his personal attention, reports piled up from the

laboratories, for Calhoun now had enough assistants to fill every one of those

ghost crowded rooms and he worked them sixteen hours a day.

The personnel office crowded more reports on him, temperament

classifications, requests for authorization, notifications that this department or

that required such and such additional personnel; would the recruiting service

kindly locate them? Personnel there was a headache! How many men can

keep a secret? There were three major divisions of personnel, inferiors in

routine jobs such as the female secretaries and clerks who were kept

completely insulated from any contact with the outside world; local temple

personnel in contact with the public who were told only what they needed to

know and were never told that they were serving in the army, and the

"priests" themselves who of necessity had to be in the know.

These latter were sworn to secrecy, commissioned in the United States

army, and allowed to know the real significance of the entire set-up. But even

they were not trusted with the underlying secret, the scientific principles

behind the miracles they performed. They were drilled in the use of the

apparatus entrusted to them, drilled with care, with meticulous care, in order

that they might handle their deadly symbols of office without error. But, save

for the rare sorties of the original seven, no person having knowledge of the

Ledbetter effect and its corollaries ever left the Citadel.

Candidates for priesthood were sent in as pilgrims from temples

everywhere to the Mother Temple near Denver. There they sojourned in the

monastery, located underground on a level between the temple building and

the Citadel. There they were subjected to every test of temperament that

could be devised. Those who failed were sent back to their local temples to

serve as lay brothers, no wiser than when they had left home.

Those who passed, those who survived tests intended to make them

angry, to make them loquacious, to strain their loyalty, to crack their nerve,

were interviewed by Ardmore in his persona as High Priest of Mota, Lord of

All. Over half of them he turned down for no reason at all, hunch alone, some

vague uneasiness that. this was not the man.

In spite of these precautions he never once commissioned a new officer

and sent him forth to preach without a deep misgiving that here perhaps was

the weak link that would bring ruin to them all.

The strain was getting him. It was too much responsibility for one man,

too many details, too many decisions. He found it increasingly difficult to

concentrate on the matter at hand, hard to make even simple decisions. He

became uncertain of himself and correspondingly irritable. His mood infected

those in contact with him and spread throughout the organization.

Something had to be done.

Ardmore was sufficiently honest with himself to recognize, if not to

diagnose, his own weakness. He called Thomas into his office, and

unburdened his soul. Concluding, he asked, "What do you think I should do

about it, Jeff? Has the job got too big for me? Should I try to pick out

somebody else to take over?"

Thomas shook his head slowly. "I don't think you ought to do that, Chief.

Nobody could work any harder than you do-there are just twenty-four hours

in a day. Besides, whoever relieved you would have the same problems

without your intimate knowledge of the background and your imaginative

grasp of what we are trying to accomplish."

"Well, I've got to do something. We're about to move into the second

phase of this show, when we start in systematically trying to break the nerve

of the PanAsians. When that reaches a crisis, we've got to have the

congregation of every temple ready to act as a military unit. That means

more work, not less. And I'm not ready to handle it! Good grief, man you'd

think that somebody somewhere would have worked out a science of

executive organization so that a big organization could be handled without

driving the man at the top crazy! For the past two hundred years the damned

scientists have kept hauling gadget after gadget out of their laboratories,

gadgets that simply demand big organizations to use them-but never a word

about how to make those organizations run." He struck a match savagely.

"It's not rational!"

"Wait a minute, Chief, wait a minute." Thomas wrinkled his brow in an

intense effort to remember. "Maybe there has been such work done-I seem

to recall something I read once, something about Napoleon being the last of

the generals."

"Huh?"

"It's pertinent. This chap's idea was that Napoleon was the last of the

great generals to exercise direct command, because the job got too big. A

few years later the Germans invented the principle of staff command, and,

according to this guy, generals were through: as generals. He thought that

Napoleon wouldn't have stood a chance against an army headed by a

general staff. Probably what you need is a staff:"

"For Pete's sake, I've got a staff! A dozen secretaries and twice that

many messengers and clerks-I fall over 'em."

"I don't think it was that kind of a staff he was talking about. Napoleon

must have had that kind of a staff."

"Well, what did he mean?"

"I don't know exactly, but apparently it was a standard notion in modern

military organization. You're not a graduate of the War College?"

"You know damn well I'm not." It was true. Thomas had guessed from

very early in their association that Ardmore was a layman, improvising as he

went along, and Ardmore knew that he knew; yet each had kept his mouth

closed.

"Well, it seems to me that a graduate of the War College might be able to

give us some hints about organization."

"Fat chance. They either died in battle, or were liquidated after the

collapse. If any escaped, they are lying very low and doing their best to

conceal their identity-for which you can't blame them."

"No, you can't. Well, forget it -I guess it wasn't such a good idea after

all."

"Don't be hasty. It was a good idea. Look-armies aren't the only big

organizations. Take the big corporations, like Standard Oil and U. S. Steel

and General Motors-they must have worked out the same principles."

"Maybe. Some of them, anyhow-although some o f them burn their

executives out pretty young. Generals have to be killed with an ax, it seems

to me."

"Still, some of them must know something. Will you see if you can stir out

a few?"

Fifteen minutes later a punched-card selector was rapidly rifling through

the personnel files of every man and woman who had been reported on by

the organization. It turned out that several men of business executive

experience were actually then working in the Citadel in jobs of greater or

lesser administrative importance. Those were called in, and dispatches were

sent out summoning about a dozen more to "make a pilgrimage" to the

Mother Temple.

The first trouble shooter turned out sour. He was a high-pressure man,

who had run his own business much along the lines of personal supervision

which Ardmore had been using up to then. His suggestions had to do with

routing and forms and personal labor savers - rather than any basic change in

principles. But in time several placid unhurried men were located who knew

instinctively and through practice the principle of doctrinal administration.

One of them, formerly general manager of the communications trust, was

actually a student and an admirer of modern military organizational methods.

Ardmore made him Chief of Staff. With his help, Ardmore selected several

others: the former personnel manager of Sears, Roebuck; a man who had

been permanent undersecretary of the department of public works in one of

the Eastern states; executive secretary of an insurance company. Others

were added as the method was developed.

It worked. Ardmore had a little trouble getting used to it at first; he had

been a one-man show all his life and it was disconcerting to find himself split

up into several alter egos, each one speaking with his authority, and signing

his name "by direction." But in time he realized that these men actually were

able to apply his own policy to a situation and -arrive at a decision that he

might have made himself. Those who could not he got rid of, at the

suggestion of his Chief of Staff: But it was strange to be having time enough

to watch other men doing HIS work HIS way under the simple but powerful

scientific principle of general staff command.

He was free at last to give his attention to perfecting that policy and to

deal thoroughly with the occasional really new situation which his staff

referred to him for solution and development of new policy. And he slept

soundly, sure that one, or more, of his "other brains" was alert and dealing

with the job. He knew now that, even if he should be killed, his extended

brain would continue until the task was completed.