Tomorrow! (14 page)

for company
and
comforts. Alton Bowers may own ten acres of lawn and landscaped gardens and a big mansion, and he may own a pile of grain elevators, but he’s as close to Christian as Baptists ever get!” Hank, a Presbyterian, let the joke linger for a moment. Then the brightness left his eyes, he came back and sat down. “Called a meeting of the whole gang at the South High yesterday, Coley.” Hank looked at his pipe. “Forty-three people showed up.”

“Good Lord!”

Henry sighed. “We usually turned out around five, six hundred.”

“What do you want me to do, Henry?”

The bulky man stirred in his chair, frowned, rubbed his thorny cheek and said, “Talk, first of all. Get out from behind Minerva Sloan’s skirts and talk!” He reached around his neck and wrestled, one-handedly, with his vertebrae, disarranging his neat blue suit. “I’ve always had a good deal of respect for you. You’ve been right about things in this man’s town—sometimes when I was wrong. You’ve got a good mind, Coley. You’ve read a lot of history. You know a lot about this science stuff. Your paper’s been wide awake. Now, all of a sudden, because we jam up traffic—and it’s not the first time we’ve done it but maybe the tenth—you change tack on us.”

Coley Borden’s face wrinkled with intensity, glowed with a burning expression, like helpless sympathy. It was a brownish face, as if perennially suntanned; and the eyes were too big for it. Time, not very much time at that, for Borden was contemporary with Henry Conner, had bent and gnarled the editor. “I can imagine how you feel, Henry.”

“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?”

“Green Prairie has a lot of volunteer auxiliary police and the cops train ‘em. River City?

You tell me how they’d handle things. They’ve got nothing.”

“What’s Federal policy?” Coley persisted. “After all, the Government must realize that somewhere between a quarter and a half of your big-city people aren’t what could be called at all emotionally stable. They’re pushovers for panic and naturals for improper reaction.”

“No policy,” the other replied. “Except force. Police effort. How can there be?”

“And psychological contagion?”

“Meaning what?”

“If the nuts, the near-nuts, the neurotic, the criminal, the have-not people and the repressed minorities go haywire—why, how many of the rest will
catch
it? What’s
more
catching than panic?”

“You got me,” Henry said. He sighed and stood. “All I believe is, the more people face what might happen, ahead of time, without being deluded about how ‘firm’ they are, the fewer’ll go wild.” He glanced around the office as if it symbolized something he cherished and had reluctantly hurt. ‘‘I’m sorry to come up here with all this on my mind, Coley. . . .”

“I know.”

“Guess you do. Well. . . !”

They shook hands warmly.

When the lights had been turned on, when Henry Conner had gone, saying it was past his bedtime, chuckling, walking out with square shoulders, Coley Borden sat a while and then buzzed for Mrs. Berwyn. She came in—red hair piled high, greenish eyes mapped out as usual with mascara, all her brains and kindness and unanchored tenderness concealed in the outlandish aspect of her homely face and big body. (After Nan died, he thought, I should have married Beatrice; she’d be terrific—you’d only have to have it dark.)

“Get your book, Bea,” he said over his shoulder. He was standing again, looking along shelves for a volume which, presently, he took down. When he turned, she was sitting; she had brought her pencils and stenographic notebook with the first buzz.

“How old are you, Bea?” he asked, opening the book and looking from page to page. “You never asked me that.” Her voice was clear and rather high.

“Asking now.”

“Fifty-three.”

“I’ll be damned!”

“Why? Didn’t a woman ever tell you her right age before?”

He gazed at her and his lips twitched. “Sure. Once. I thought it was going to land me in prison, too. She was seventeen.”

“Your dissolute ways!” the green eyes flickered.

“I was kind of surprised,” he said quietly, “because you’re a year older than me. That’s all.”

“Oh.” She looked at the Door. “From you, that’s a compliment.”

“Right. We’re going to do some work. An editorial.”

“For morning? The page is in.”

“Yeah. If it comes out right, it’ll be for morning. I’m kind of rusty, Bea. But I’ll take a crack at it and maybe I’ll run it. Ready?”

She nodded.

He began to walk in front of his desk and to dictate:

“Ten years ago and more, this nation hurled upon its Jap foe a new weapon, a weapon cunningly contrived from the secrets of the sun. Since that day the world has lived in terror.

“Every year, every month, every hour, terror has grown. It is terror compounded of every fear. Fear of War. Fear of Defeat. Fear of Slavery. These fears are great, but they are common to humanity. Man in his sorrow has sustained them hitherto. But there are other fears in the composition of man’s present terror. These are fears that his cities may be reduced to rubble, his civilization destroyed, humanity itself wiped out; in sum, fear that man’s world will end. And this last fear has been augmented through the long, hideous years by hints from the laboratories that, indeed, the death of life is possible—and even the incineration of the planet may soon be achievable, by scientific design or by careless accident.

“Fears of mortal aggression and human crimes are tolerable, however dreadsome. But men have never borne with sanity a fear that their world will end. To all who accept as likely that special idea, reason becomes inaccessible; their minds collapse; madness invades their sensibilities. What they then do no longer bears reasonably upon their peril, however apt they deem their crazed courses. They are then puppets of their terror. And it is as such puppets that we Americans have acted for ten years, and more.”

Coley paused. Bea looked up and nodded appreciatively at his rhetoric. But when he did not immediately continue, she said, “I think, if you asked the first hundred people on the street if they were terrified, they’d laugh.”

“That’s a fact,” he answered. “Good suggestion.” He went on: