The Best of Fritz Leiber (6 page)

The general secretary did not lift his head, but he rolled up his strange, distant eyes until they were fixed directly on Carrsbury. He shivered a little, his body seemed to contract, and his bloodless hands tightened their interlocking grip.

“I know,” he said in a low, effortful voice. “You think I’m insane.”

Carrsbury sat back, forcing his brows to assume a baffled frown under the mane of silvery hair.

“Oh, you needn’t pretend to be puzzled,” Phy continued, swiftly now that he had broken the ice. “You know what that word means as well as I do. Better—even though we both had to do historical research to find out.”

“Insane,” he repeated dreamily, his gaze wavering. “Significant departure from the norm. Inability to conform to basic conventions underlying all human conduct.”

“Nonsense!” said Carrsbury, rallying and putting on his warmest and most compelling smile. “I haven’t the slightest idea of what you’re talking about. That you’re a little tired, a little strained, a little distraught—that’s quite understandable, considering the burden you’ve been carrying, and a little rest will be just the thing to fix you up, a nice long vacation away from all this. But as for your being… why, ridiculous!”

“No,” said Phy, his gaze pinning Carrsbury. “You think I’m insane. You think all my colleagues in the World Management Service are insane. That’s why you’re having us replaced with those men you’ve been training for ten years in your Institute of Political Leadership—ever since, with my help and connivance, you became World manager.”

Carrsbury retreated before the finality of the statement. For the first time his smile became a bit uncertain. He started to say something, then hesitated and looked at Phy, as if half hoping he would go on.

But that individual was once again staring rigidly at the floor.

Carrsbury leaned back, thinking. When he spoke it was in a more natural voice, much less consciously soothing and fatherly.

“Well, all right, Phy. But look here, tell me something, honestly. Won’t you—and the others—be a lot happier when you’ve been relieved of all your responsibilities?”

Phy nodded somberly. “Yes,” he said, “we will… but”—his face became strained—“you see—”

“But—?” Carrsbury prompted.

Phy swallowed hard. He seemed unable to go on. He had gradually slumped toward one side of the chair, and the pressure had caused the green gasoid to ooze from his pocket. His long fingers crept over and kneaded it fretfully.

Carrsbury stood up and came around the desk. His sympathetic frown, from which perplexity had ebbed, was not quite genuine.

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell you all about it now, Phy,” he said simply. “In a queer sort of way I owe it all to you. And there isn’t any point now in keeping it a secret… there isn’t any danger—”

“Yes,” Phy agreed with a quick bitter smile, “you haven’t been in any danger of a
coup d’etat
for some years now. If ever we should have revolted, there’d have been”—his gaze shifted to a point in the opposite wall where a faint vertical crease indicated the presence of a doorway—“your secret police.”

Carrsbury started. He hadn’t thought Phy had known. Disturbingly, there loomed in his mind a phrase
The cunning of the insane
. But only for a moment. Friendly complacency flooded back. He went behind Phy’s chair and rested his hands on the sloping shoulders.

“You know, I’ve always had a special feeling toward you, Phy,” he said, “and not only because your whims made it a lot easier for me to become World manager. I’ve always felt that you were different from the others, that there were times when—” He hesitated.

Phy squirmed a little under the friendly hands. “When I had my moments of sanity?” he finished flatly.

“like now,” said Carrsbury softly, after a nod the other could not see. “I’ve always felt that sometimes, in a kind of twisted, unrealistic way, you
understood
. And that has meant a lot to me. I’ve been alone, Phy, dreadfully alone, for ten whole years. No companionship anywhere, not even among the men I’ve been training in the Institute of Political Leadership—for I’ve had to play a part with them too, keep them in ignorance of certain facts, for fear they would try to seize power over my head before they were sufficiently prepared. No companionship anywhere, except for my hopes—and for occasional moments with you. Now that it’s over and a new regime is beginning for us both, I can tell you that. And I’m glad.”

There was a silence. Then—Phy did not look around, but one lean hand crept up and touched Carrsbury’s. Carrsbury cleared his throat. Strange, he thought, that there could be even a momentary rapport like this between the sane and the insane. But it was so.

He disengaged his hands, strode rapidly back to his desk, turned.

“I’m a throwback, Phy,” he began in a new, unused, eager voice. “A throwback to a time when human mentality was far sounder. Whether my case was due chiefly to heredity, or to certain unusual accidents of environment, or to both, is unimportant. The point is that a person had been born who was in a position to criticize the present state of mankind in the light of the past, to diagnose its condition, and to begin its cure. For a long time I refused to face the facts, but finally my researches—especially those in the literature of the twentieth century—left me no alternative. The mentality of mankind had become—aberrant. Only certain technological advances, which had resulted in making the business of living infinitely easier and simpler, and the fact that war had been ended with the creation of the present world state, were staving off the inevitable breakdown of civilization. But only staving it off—delaying it. The great masses of mankind had become what would once have been called hopelessly neurotic. Their leaders had become… you said it first, Phy… insane. Incidentally, this latter phenomenon—the drift of psychological aberrants toward leadership—has been noted in all ages.”

He paused. Was he mistaken, or was Phy following his words with indications of a greater mental clarity than he had ever noted before, even in the relatively non-violent World secretary? Perhaps—he had often dreamed wistfully of the possibility—there was still a chance of saving Phy. Perhaps, if he just explained to him clearly and calmly—

“In my historical studies,” he continued, “I soon came to the conclusion that the crucial period was that of the Final Amnesty, concurrent with the founding of the present world state. We are taught that at that time there were released from confinement millions of political prisoners—and millions of others. Just who were those others? To this question, our present histories gave only vague and platitudinous answers. The semantic difficulties I encountered were exceedingly obstinate. But I kept hammering away. Why, I asked myself, have such words as insanity, lunacy, madness, psychosis, disappeared from our vocabulary—and the concepts behind them from our thought? Why has the subject ‘abnormal psychology’ disappeared from the curricula of our schools? Of greater significance, why is our modern psychology strikingly similar to the field of abnormal psychology as taught in the twentieth century, and to that field alone? Why are there no longer, as there were in the twentieth century, any institutions for the confinement and care of the psychologically aberrant?”

Phy’s head jerked up. He smiled twistedly. “Because,” he whispered slyly, “everyone’s insane now.”

The cunning of the insane
. Again that phrase loomed warningly in Carrsbury’s mind. But only for a moment. He nodded.

“At first I refused to make that deduction. But gradually I reasoned out the why and wherefore of what had happened. It wasn’t only that a highly technological civilization had subjected mankind to a wider and more swiftly-tempered range of stimulations, conflicting suggestions, mental strains, emotional wrenchings. In the literature of twentieth century psychiatry there are observations on a land of psychosis that results from success. An unbalanced individual keeps going so long as he is fighting something, struggling toward a goal. He reaches his goal—and goes to pieces. His repressed confusions come to the surface, he realizes that he doesn’t know what he wants at all, his energies hitherto engaged in combatting something outside himself are turned against himself, he is destroyed. Well, when war was finally outlawed, when the whole world became one unified state, when social inequality was abolished… you see what I’m driving at?”

Phy nodded slowly. “That,” he said in a curious, distant voice, “is a very interesting deduction.”

“Having reluctantly accepted my mam premise,” Carrsbury went on, “everything became clear. The cyclic six-months’ fluctuations in world credit—I realized at once that Morganstern of Finance must be a manic-depressive with a six-months’ phase, or else a dual personality with one aspect a spendthrift, the other a miser. It turned out to be the former. Why was the Department of Cultural Advancement stagnating? Because Manager Hobart was markedly catatonic. Why the boom in Extraterrestrial Research? Because McElvy was a euphoric.”

Phy looked at him wonderingly. “But naturally,” he said, spreading his lean hands, from one of which the gasoid dropped like a curl of green smoke.

Carrsbury glanced at him sharply. He replied. “Yes, I know that you and several of the others have a certain warped awareness of the differences between your… personalities, though none whatsoever of the basic aberration involved in them all. But to get on. As soon as I realized the situation, my course was marked out. As a sane man, capable of entertaining fixed realistic purposes, and surrounded by individuals of whose inconsistencies and delusions it was easy to make use, I was in a position to attain, with time and tact, any goal at which I might aim. I was already in the Managerial Service. In three years I became World manager. Once there, my range of influence was vastly enhanced. Like the man in Archimedes’ epigram, I had a place to stand from which I could move the world. I was able, in various guises and on various pretexts, to promulgate regulations the actual purpose of which was to soothe the great neurotic masses by curtailing upsetting stimulations and introducing a more regimented and orderly program of living. I was able, by humoring my fellow executives and making the fullest use of my greater capacity for work, to keep world affairs staggering along fairly safely—at least stave off the worst. At the same time I was able to begin my Ten Years’ Plan—the training, in comparative isolation, first in small numbers, then in larger, as those instructed could in turn become instructors, of a group of prospective leaders carefully selected on the basis of their relative freedom from neurotic tendencies.”

“But that—” Phy began rather excitedly, starting up.

“But what?” Carrsbury inquired quickly.

“Nothing,” muttered Phy dejectedly, sinking back.

“That about covers it,” Carrsbury concluded, his voice suddenly grown a little duller. “Except for one secondary matter. I couldn’t afford to let myself go ahead without any protection. Too much depended on me. There was always the risk of being wiped out by some ill-co-ordinated but none the less effective spasm of violence, momentarily uncontrollable by tact, on the part of my fellow executives. So, only because I could see no alternative, I took a dangerous step.

I created“—his glance strayed toward the faint crease in the side wall—”my secret police. There is a type of insanity known as paranoia, an exaggerated suspiciousness involving delusions of persecution. By means of the late twentieth century Rand technique of hypnotism, I inculcated a number of these unfortunate individuals with the fixed idea that their lives depended on me and that I was threatened from all sides and must be protected at all costs. A distasteful expedient, even though it served its purpose. I shall be glad, very glad to see it discontinued. You can understand, can’t you, why I had to take that step?“

He looked questioningly at Phy—and became aware with a shock that that individual was grinning at him vacuously and holding up the gasoid between two fingers.

“I cut a hole in my couch and a lot of this stuff came out,” Phy explained in a thick naive voice. “Ropes of it got all over my office. I kept tripping.” His fingers patted at it deftly, sculpturing it into the form of a hideous transparent green head, which he proceeded to squeeze out of existence. “Queer stuff,” he rambled on. “Rarefied liquid. Gas of fixed volume. And all over my office floor, tangled up with the furniture.”

Carrsbury leaned back and shut his eyes. His shoulders slumped. He felt suddenly a little weary, a little eager for his day of triumph to be done. He knew he shouldn’t be despondent because he had failed with Phy. After all, the main victory was won. Phy was the merest of side issues. He had always known that, except for flashes, Phy was hopeless as the rest. Still—

“You don’t need to worry about your office floor, Phy,” he said with a listless kindliness. “Never any more. Your successor will have to see about cleaning it up. Already, you know, to all intents and purposes, you have been replaced.”

“That’s just it!” Carrsbury started at Phy’s explosive loudness. The World secretary jumped up and strode toward him, pointing an excited hand. “That’s what I came to see you about! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! I can’t be replaced like that! None of the others can, either! It won’t work! You can’t do it!”

With a swiftness born of long practice, Carrsbury slipped behind his desk. He forced his features into that expression of calm, smiling benevolence of which he had grown unutterably weary.

“Now, now, Phy,” he said brightly, soothingly, “if I can’t do it, of course I can’t do it. But don’t you think you ought to tell me why? Don’t you think it would be very nice to sit down and talk it all over and you tell me why?”

Phy halted and hung his head, abashed.

“Yes, I guess it would,” he said slowly, abruptly falling back into the low, effortful tones. “I guess I’ll have to. I guess there just isn’t any other way. I had hoped, though, not to have to tell you everything.” The last sentence was half question. He looked up whee-dlingly at Carrsbury. The latter shook his head, continuing to smile. Phy went back and sat down.