The Minority Report and Other Classic Stories (11 page)

“That eager-beaver,” Joe Pines, at the next desk, cat-called.

From the screen, Yancy’s voice rolled on, confident, amiable, undisturbed. “Well, Ralf saw this squirrel; it was just sitting there on the sidewalk. He stopped for a minute and watched.” The look on Yancy’s face was so real that Sipling almost believed him. He could, almost, see the squirrel and the tow-headed youngest grandson of the Yancy family, the familiar child of the familiar son of the planet’s most familiar—and beloved—person.

“This squirrel,” Yancy explained, in his homey way, “was collecting nuts. And by golly, this was just the other day, only the middle of June. And here was this little squirrel—” with his hands he indicated the size, “collecting these nuts and carrying them off for winter.”

And then, the amused, anecdote-look on Yancy’s face faded. A serious, thoughtful look replaced it: the meaningful-look. His blue eyes darkened (good color work). His jaw became more square, more imposing (good dummy-switch by the android crew). Yancy seemed older, more solemn and mature, more impressive. Behind him, the garden-scene had been jerked and a slightly different backdrop filtered in; Yancy now stood firmly planted in a cosmic landscape, among mountains and winds and huge old forests.

“I got to thinking,” Yancy said, and his voice was deeper, slower. “There was that little squirrel. How did he know winter was coming? There he was, working away, getting prepared for it.” Yancy’s voice rose. “Preparing for a winter he’d never seen.”

Sipling stiffened and prepared
himself;
it was coming. At his desk, Joe Pines grinned and yelled: “Get set!”

“That squirrel,” Yancy said solemnly, “had faith. No, he never saw any sign of winter. But he knew winter was coming.” The firm jaw moved; one hand came slowly up …

And then the image stopped. It froze, immobile, silent. No words came from it; abruptly the sermon ended, in the middle of a paragraph.

“That’s it,” Babson said briskly, filtering the Yancy out. “Help you any?”

Sipling pawed jerkily at his work papers. “No,” he admitted, “actually it doesn’t. But—I’ll get it worked out.”

“I hope so.” Babson’s face darkened ominously and his small mean eyes seemed to grow smaller. “What’s the matter with you? Home problems?”

“I’ll be okay,” Sipling muttered, sweating. “Thanks.”

On the screen a faint impression of Yancy remained, still poised at the word
coming.
The rest of the gestalt was in Sipling’s head: the continuing slice of words and gestures hadn’t been worked out and fed to the composite.

Sipling’s contribution was missing, so the entire gestalt was stopped cold in its tracks.

“Say,” Joe Pines said uneasily, “I’ll be glad to take over, today. Cut your desk out of the circuit and I’ll cut myself in.”

“Thanks,” Sipling muttered, “but I’m the only one who can get this damn part. It’s the central gem.”

“You ought to take a rest. You’ve been working too hard.”

“Yes,” Sipling agreed, on the verge of hysteria. “I’m a little under the weather.”

That was obvious: everybody in the office could see that. But only Sipling knew why. And he was fighting with all his strength to keep from screaming out the reason at the top of his lungs.

Basic analysis of the political milieu at Callisto was laid out by Niplan computing apparatus at Washington, D.C.; but the final evaluations were done by human technicians. The Washington computers could ascertain that the Callisto political structure was moving toward a totalitarian make-up, but they couldn’t say what that indicated. Human beings were required to class the drift as malign.

“It isn’t possible,” Taverner protested. “There’s constant industrial traffic in and out of Callisto; except for the Ganymede syndicate they’ve got out-planet commerce bottled up. We’d know as soon as anything phony got started.”

“How would we know?” Police Director Kellman inquired.

Taverner indicated the data-sheets, graphs and charts of figures and percentages that covered the walls of the Niplan Police offices. “It would show up in hundreds of ways. Terrorist raids, political prisons, extermination camps. We’d hear about political recanting, treason, disloyalty … all the basic props of a dictatorship.”

“Don’t confuse a totalitarian society with a dictatorship,” Kellman said dryly. “A totalitarian state reaches into every sphere of its citizens’ lives, forms their opinions on every subject. The government can be a dictatorship, or aparliament, or an elected president, or a council of priests. That doesn’t matter.”

“All right,” Taverner said, mollified. “I’ll go. I’ll take a team there and see what they’re doing.”

“Can you make yourselves look like Callistotes?”

“What are they like?”

“I’m not sure,” Kellman admitted thoughtfully, with a glance at the elaborate wall charts. “But whatever it is, they’re all beginning to turn out alike.”

Among its passengers the interplan commercial liner that settled down at Callisto carried Peter Taverner, his wife, and their two children. With a grimace of concern, Taverner made out the shapes of local officials waiting at the exit hatch. The passengers were going to be carefully screened; as the ramp descended, the clot of officials moved forward.

Taverner got to his feet and collected his family. “Ignore them,” he told Ruth. “Our papers will get us by.”

Expertly prepared documents identified him as a speculator in nonferric metals, looking for a wholesale outlet to handle his jobbing. Callisto was a clearing-point for land and mineral operations; a constant flood of wealth-hungry entrepreneurs streamed back and forth, carting raw materials from the underdeveloped moons, hauling mining equipment from the inner planets.

Cautiously, Taverner arranged his topcoat over his arm. A heavyset man, in his middle thirties, he could have passed for a successful business operator. His double-breasted business suit was expensive, but conservative. His big shoes were brightly shined. All things considered, he’d probably get by. As he and his family moved toward the exit ramp, they presented a perfect and exact imitation of the out-planet business-class.

“State your business,” a green-uniformed official demanded, pencil poised. ID tabs were being checked, photographed, recorded. Brain pattern comparisons were being made: the usual routine.

“Nonferric enterprises,” Taverner began, but a second official cut him abruptly off.

“You’re the third cop this morning. What’s biting you people on Terra?” The official eyed Taverner intently. “We’re getting more cops than ministers.”

Trying to maintain his poise, Taverner answered evenly: “I’m here to take a rest. Acute alcoholism—nothing official.”

“That’s what your cohorts said.” The official grinned humorously. “Well, what’s one more Terran cop?” He slid the lockbars aside and waved Taverner and his family through. “Welcome to Callisto. Have fun—enjoy yourselves. Fastest-growing moon in the system.”

“Practically a planet,” Taverner commented ironically.

“Any day now.” The official examined some reports. “According to our friends in your little organization, you’ve been pasting up wall graphs and charts about us. Are we that important?”

“Academic interest,” Taverner said; if three spots had been made, then the whole team had been netted. The local authorities were obviously primed to detect infiltration … the realization chilled him.

But they were letting him through. Were they
that
confident?

Things didn’t look good. Peering around for a cab, he grimly prepared to undertake the business of integrating the scattered team members into a functioning whole.

That evening, at the
Stay-Lit
bar on the main street of the commercial district of town, Taverner met with his two team members. Hunched over their whiskey sours, they compared notes.

“I’ve been here almost twelve hours,” Eckmund stated, gazing impassively at the rows of bottles in the gloomy depths of the bar. Cigar smoke hovered in the air; the automatic music box in the corner banged away metallically. “I’ve been walking around town, looking at things, making observations.”

“Me,” Dorser said, “I’ve been at the tape-library. Getting official myth, comparing it to Callistote reality. And talking to the scholars—educated people hanging around the scanning rooms.”

Taverner sipped his drink. “Anything of interest?”

“You know the primitive rule-of-thumb test,” Eckmund said wryly. “I loafed around on a slum street corner until I got in a conversation with some people waiting for a bus. I started knocking the authorities: complaining about the bus service, the sewage disposal, taxes, everything. They chimed right in. Heartily. No hesitation. And no fear.”

“The legal government,” Dorser commented, “is set up in the usual archaic fashion. Two-party system, one a little more conservative than the other—no fundamental difference of course. But both elect candidates at open primaries, ballots circulated to all registered voters.” A spasm of amusement touched him. “This is a model democracy. I read the text books. Nothing but idealistic slogans: freedom of speech, assembly, religion—the works. Same old grammar school stuff.”

The three of them were temporarily silent.

“There are jails,” Taverner said slowly. “Every society has law violations.”

“I visited one,” Eckmund said, belching. “Petty thieves, murderers, claim-jumpers, strong-arm hoods—the usual.”

“No political prisoners?”

“No.” Eckmund raised his voice. “We might as well discuss this at the top of our lungs. Nobody cares—the authorities don’t care.”

“Probably after we’re gone they’ll clap a few thousand people into prison,” Dorser murmured thoughtfully.

“My God,” Eckmund retorted, “people can leave Callisto any time they want. If you’re operating a police state you have to keep your borders shut. And these borders are wide open. People pour in and out.”

“Maybe it’s a chemical in the drinking water,” Dorser suggested.

“How the hell can they have a totalitarian society without terrorism?” Eckmund demanded rhetorically. “I’ll swear to it—there are no thought-control cops here. There is absolutely no fear.”

“Somehow, pressure is being exerted,” Taverner persisted.

“Not by cops,” Dorser said emphatically. “Not by force and brutality. Not by illegal arrest and imprisonment and forced labor.”

“If this were a police state,” Eckmund said thoughtfully, “there’d be some kind of resistance movement. Some sort of ‘subversive’ group trying to overthrow the authorities. But in this society you’re free to complain; you can buy time on the TV and radio stations, you can buy space in the newspapers—anything you want.” He shrugged. “So how can there be a clandestine resistance movement? It’s silly.”

“Nevertheless,” Taverner said, “these people are living in a one-party society with a party line, with an official ideology. They show the effects of a carefully controlled totalitarian state. They’re guinea pigs—whether they realize it or not.”

“Wouldn’t they realize it?”

Baffled, Taverner shook his head. “I would have thought so. There must be some mechanism we don’t understand.”

“It’s all open. We can look everything over.”

“We must be looking for the wrong thing.” Idly, Taverner gazed at the television screen above the bar. The nude girlie song-and-dance routine had ended; now the features of a man faded into view. A genial, round-faced man in his fifties, with guileless blue eyes, an almost childish twitch to his lips, a fringe of brown hair playing around his slightly prominent ears.

“Friends,” the TV image rumbled, “it’s good to be with you again, tonight. I thought I might have a little chat with you.”

“A commercial,” Dorser said, signalling the bartending machine for another drink.

“Who is that?” Taverner asked curiously.

“That kindly-looking geezer?” Eckmund examined his notes. “A sort of popular commentator. Name of Yancy.”

“Is he part of the government?”

“Not that I know of. A kind of home-spun philosopher. I picked up a biography of him on a magazine stand.” Eckmund passed the gaily-colored pamphlet to his boss. “Totally ordinary man, as far as I can see. Used to be a soldier; in the Mars-Jupiter War he distinguished himself—battlefield commission. Rose to the rank of major.” He shrugged indifferently. “A sort of talking almanac. Pithy sayings on every topic. Wise old saws: how to cure a chest cold. What the trouble is back on Terra.”

Taverner examined the booklet. “Yes, I saw his picture around.”

“Very popular figure. Loved by the masses. Man of the people—speaks for them. When I was buying cigarettes I noticed he endorses one particular brand. Very popular brand, now; just about driven the others off the market. Same with beer. The Scotch in this glass is probably the brand Yancy endorses. The same with tennis balls. Only he doesn’t play tennis—he plays croquet. All the time, every weekend.” Accepting his fresh drink Eckmund finished, “So now everybody plays croquet.”

“How can croquet be a planet-wide sport?” Taverner demanded.

“This isn’t a planet,” Dorser put in. “It’s a pipsqueak moon.”

“Not according to Yancy,” Eckmund said. “We’re supposed to think of Callisto as a planet.”

“How?” Taverner asked.

“Spiritually, it’s a planet. Yancy likes people to take a spiritual view of matters. He’s strong on God and honesty in government and being hardworking and clean-cut. Warmed-over truisms.”

The expression on Taverner’s face hardened. “Interesting,” he murmured. “I’ll have to drop by and meet him.”

“Why? He’s the dullest, most mediocre man you could dream up.”

“Maybe,” Taverner answered, “that’s why I’m interested.”

Babson, huge and menacing, met Taverner at the entrance of the Yancy Building. “Of course you can meet Mr. Yancy. But he’s a busy man—it’ll take a while to squeeze in an appointment. Everybody wants to meet Mr. Yancy.”