They'd Rather Be Right

by Mark Clifton

  Kennedy whirled his chair around. His eyes were bleak, but his lips were fighting a smile.

  “That’s the one who saw Mabel at the jail, isn’t it?” he asked.

  Steve turned several pages of the paper. The comments of Dr. Eustace Fairfax were buried down among the reactions of the lesser lights.

  “‘There were those among the laity,’” Steve read, “‘who scorned professional opinion and counsel. There were those in public life who preferred to pander to the emotions of the mob. There were those who chose to ridicule me when I testified that Mabel Monohan was a mentally unbalanced young woman who should be confined to an institution. Perhaps now they will remember their words, and in the future leave the problems of the mentally ill to those who are qualified to deal with them.’”

  One could almost see the thin, fanatic face, the long nose quivering with indignation, the polished glasses sparkling with triumphant venom. Dr. Eustace Fairfax was indeed a cookbook psychiatrist, and by turning the tentative considerations of authority into esoteric articles of commandments he became authority.

  The quotation sparked Joe’s impatience. He decided it was time now to let both men know where he was going.

  “Of course none of them realize that the experiment was a complete success,” he said quietly.

  Steve Flynn all but fell out of his chair. His mouth dropped open and his chin hung slack as he stared at Joe. Kennedy’s eyes sparkled with something approaching pride and approval.

  “I’ve been wondering when you were going to take us into your confidence, Joe,” he said.

  Steve’s jaw suddenly clamped shut and his eyes narrowed in sudden anger.

  “I don’t get it!” he said harshly. “I don’t get any part of that. You mean you knew this was going to happen, that Bossy wasn’t going to work on Billings, and you let us go ahead and make fools of ourselves anyway?”

  “The point,” Joe said mildly, “is that I didn’t know, not surely. I had to find out. I tried to warn you to tone down the publicity. I would have preferred the experiment in complete secrecy; that is, at first. Then later, I realized the wider the publicity for the failure, the better. It’s a good idea for mankind to know just what he’s up against.”

  “Right now I’d settle for knowing what I’m up against,” Steve said disgustedly. Joe could feel the release of somatic tensions as the anger drained out of Flynn.

  “Look,” he continued, “what Bossy can or can’t do is no skin off my nose. But you give me a job to do. You give me the job of making the public like Bossy. So I go ahead and build it up, make a big production out of it, big deal, my masterpiece. And now I find out you’re expecting just the opposite of what I expected.” He turned to Kennedy and asked, with a note of accusation in his voice. “Did you expect this too, Mr. Kennedy?”

  “I wondered about it,” Kennedy answered him quietly. “In view of what Joe said to me the first time we met, I wondered.”

  “It wasn’t a deliberate double cross, Steve,” Joe said, and washed away the traces of rebellion in Steve’s mind. “I didn’t know how it was going to come out. I hoped it would turn out the way it has, but I didn’t know it would.”

  “I don’t get it,” Steve repeated, and this time there was hurt in his voice. “It helps that you didn’t deliberately cross me up, but—oh brother!”

  “Do you know anything about trees, Steve?” Joe asked.

  Flynn turned and looked at him sharply. These Brains! You never knew what tangent they were going to take next. How they ever managed to get anything done when they couldn’t stay on the subject more than two minutes was beyond him. Oh, brother!

  “I don’t get that either,” he answered, and kept his opinion of this woolgathering to himself.

  “In a forest of giant trees,” Joe said, “seedlings sicken and die. They need sunlight to grow; they can’t get it. It’s only around the fringes of the forest, as it spreads out, that they can get the right environment for growth. In the center the only growths that survive are the kind who can live in a filtered gloom. They survive under that certain condition, but they couldn’t survive a change; they couldn’t survive a condition which is normal environment elsewhere. They can’t even survive direct sunlight. You get that in a civilization of humans, too. The significant changes always come from the fringes; there’s no room for them to develop where the giant trees still stand.”

  It was obvious that Steve still did not get it.

  “It may sound like a paradox,” Joe explained, “but death, itself, is a survival factor. Environment is subject to change. The only life which can survive is the kind which can meet the challenge of the change. This means that every form of life must be constantly trying out new mutant patterns so that when the change comes there are mutations capable of meeting it.

  “Did you ever notice, speaking as a class, that the castoff detritus of evergreen trees poisons the ground around them so that nothing but their own kind can grow? An idea, which becomes an evergreen tradition, does the same. But the castoff detritus of deciduous trees, which have the false death of winter, enriches the ground. A variant offspring has a chance to survive.”

  Kennedy’s eyes closed, and he sat silently, hardly breathing.

  “And I’ve always been bitter toward my son,” he said. “No wonder he couldn’t grow.”

  “You’ll have to draw pictures for me,” Steve said in a puzzled voice. “The boss gets it, but I don’t.”

  “The reason Mabel was able to respond to Bossy is quite simple,” Joe explained. “In spite of the kind of life she led, Mabel was at heart quite a believer in the truth of the artificial mores our civilization has set up. You find that far more frequently than is generally realized. Now she lived a life of sin and a life of crime. She should have been punished for it, according to her inner convictions, but instead she prospered. As she grew older, she grew more confused. Humanity says one thing and does another; sets up a whole system of ethics and then prospers through violating them. Mabel was honest, she could not reconcile what happens with what is taught. She wound up completely bewildered, at a loss to account for why man’s teachings and his behavior seem to have little or nothing in common.

  “She wanted answers to all this. She really wanted answers, not just confirmations of what she already believed. Her prejudice screen had been knocked so full of holes that ideas could get through to her without first being deformed all out of reality to fit her preset conviction. Mabel was ready for therapy.”

  “And Dr. Billings wasn’t,” Kennedy said.

  “That’s right,” Joe agreed. “Dr. Billings had built a worldwide reputation on a structure which he believed to be right. Intellectually he is able to consider that other structures may be valid, but against deep seated convictions that his must be the right one because he has proved that it works, these are just mental exercises. In a showdown, he stopped playing word games and clung to his convictions. Only on a single-valued basis were they right. Mabel wanted to know; Billings already knew, or thought he did.”

  “I don’t see what that has got to do with trees,” Steve said flatly.

  “Man represents a mutation of life wherein the intellect will get its chance to prove survival worth. It hasn’t done that yet, you understand. All sorts of life forms flourish grandly for a while and then die out. But universal time is a long time. Remember the giant reptiles flourished for forty million years. Man will have to better that record before he can truly say that intellect is superior to massive bulk and a thick hide.

  “Against that forty million years, man has about seven thousand years of historical record. But man acts as if, and apparently really believes, he already has the answers, that there is nothing left for mankind to do for the next forty million years except to imitate the man of today.”

  “Trees,” Steve reminded Joe dryly.

  “We have always thought that immortality would be valuable because it would preserve the great minds, give them a longer span to carry on their
work. But that would be making a mind perpetually green, to tower over others, to prevent the growth of unlike ideas.

  “When a thing stops growing, reaches its maximum growth, it starts to die. Any single-valued idea is limited to a given set of frameworks, but a man who holds to a single-valued idea tries to make it fit all frameworks. He warps it and twists it into a monstrosity, until it defeats its own purpose and denies its own validity. Its own warp and tension destroys it, and him with it.

  “One of the laws of life, of the universe since life is of the universe and not an exception to it, is that change takes place. But a single-valued idea, by definition, denies the possibility of change. Bossy is a scientific instrument. Scientific instruments do not work through denying the basic laws of matter-energy. Bossy cannot work to restore an organism which denies them.

  “Through statements he made the night before, I suspected Dr. Billings couldn’t shed the old and worn-out single values upon which he had built his life. But, you see, all this was only theory. And I couldn’t know what would happen until it was put to the test. I don’t trust theories which can’t be demonstrated, particularly when they depend upon the support of other theories which also can’t be demonstrated. I had to see if Bossy worked at a basic level, or if she was simply a super gook gadget, hypnotizing the cells into renewing themselves.”

  “I can just see myself selling all this to the public,” Steve said gloomily. “Oh, brother!”

  Kennedy’s lips twitched in a smile.

  “Evergreen trees,” Steve mourned on, “deciduous trees, civilizations, forty million years, laws of matter-energy, single-value ideas—oh, brother!”

  He took out a cigarette and even his lighter seemed to lack its usual loud snap.

  “And right now, the way things have gone, the public wouldn’t touch Bossy with a ten-foot pole, anyhow.”

  CHAPTER XX

  But a good night’s sleep was all Steve Flynn really needed. He awoke the following morning filled with optimism and wonder that he had even temporarily felt set back.

  That was the trouble with being around Brains. They were so confused themselves that they got everybody else confused. Just being around them, listening to them talk, made a man forget what was important and what wasn’t. Being around these guys had made him forget he had a simple job to do. He had to make the public like Bossy, that was all.

  He had been just plain nuts. The big copy, the real copy, the kick with all the oomph in it was Mabel. And he hadn’t played her up hardly at all. The gal had legs, she had teeth, what more could a publicity man want? Just smile at ’em, sister, and show ’em your gams, and they’ll buy.

  By the time he reached his office in the Kennedy Building, he already had a campaign mapped out. And he had a staff, a real staff of upbeat boys and gals to carry out the details. The public wanted Mabel? The public would get Mabel! It was that simple.

  He was whistling through his teeth and snapping his gold lighter loudly when his Publicity Department heads trouped in for the conference he summoned. Their faces showed an appreciation of his mood.

  All day yesterday they had not known what to do. They were like dancers frozen into still poses by sudden silence as the desperate music was cut off. Everything had come to an end with the failure of Bossy, and the empty pause had been ghastly. By evening they had been ready to cut their own throats, and only the stupor of Brady’s tall cool ones had got them through the night. But now all was well. The boss was whistling through his teeth and snapping his lighter.

  Flynn needed to give them only the bare outlines of the campaign. They could pick up a beat and knew what to do with it. The music was starting up again around the public relations offices.

  As complementary to one another as an expert jam session they trouped out of his office, anxious to get the variations on the theme suggested. Steve signaled to the head production man to wait while he made a phone call. There might be further things to be picked up.

  His upbeat mood was running so strong that Steve was not even set back when Joe refused to allow Mabel to be disturbed.

  Mabel wasn’t able to see photographers and reporters? Swell, kid! Wonderful. Great copy! By the way, what was wrong with her? A sort of shock? Stupendous! This was more like it. Couldn’t be better! Kid, why didn’t you tell me all this before? Kid, you’re just plain nuts! Can’t you see it, fella? MABEL ROUSED FROM DEEP COMA TO APPEAR BEFORE WORLD SCIENTISTS! You Brains, you kill me! Don’t you know a dramatic punch when it’s smacking you right in the nose? Oh, brother! I’ll play that angle up in such a way that they’ll forget all about Billings. Billings? Who’s Billings? That’s what they’ll be saying by this time tomorrow, fella.

  Now look here, Joe. I got a job to do. They gotta forget about Billings. I can’t sell Bossy by playing up how she failed on him! Man, use some sense. You gotta have positive! You can’t sell negative! Look, boy, I don’t care one blasted thing about whether the public gets educated or not. Kennedy says make ’em like Bossy. Kennedy’s my boss. I’m gonna make ’em like Bossy. It’s that simple!

  He felt like slamming down the phone, but he was a publicity man and years of training turned on an automatic charm, instead.

  “O.K., fella? Sure, sure. I see your point. Sure, Joe, anything you want. O.K.? O.K., then.”

  He put the phone receiver down and grimaced up to his waiting production man.

  “No fresh pics,” he said.

  The production man shrugged. There were plenty of studies from the newsreels taken at the show yesterday. The boss knew they could be superimposed over any background needed. It wasn’t a calamity.

  “Whatever you say, boss,” he agreed. “Just so I know what I got to work with.” He’d sold ’em high, he’d sold ’em low. He’d built one thing up today, and built something else up tomorrow to top it. It was all in the day’s work for him. All he asked was to be let in on what was going on, what was wanted. He’d produce it.

  Thin, blond, deceptively mild, infinitely obliging, he was ideal for his job. He was like Toledo steel, pliable enough to bend in any direction required, and then snapping right back as soon as the pressure eased. Like Steve, he agreed with his opposition, and then did it his own way, anyhow.

  He left Steve’s office and began to go from department to department, coordinating, sparking, blending ideas, giving in to arguments without expressing any opposition and then winning the argument in the long run through the sheer power of flexibility and resilience; he began to get releases on the wires, layout copy to printers, setting up conferences, arranging influence dates, wheedling or requiring cooperation as the circumstances indicated.

  The communications systems got some new things to talk about.

  CHAPTER XXI

  For three days Steve’s office kept Mabel hovering on the thin edge between life and death. Her fever was up, it was down. She was conscious, she was in a coma. She could eat, she had to be fed intravenously. Breath by faltering breath, she fought a valiant battle for her life in the columns of the press.

  And throughout it all she was still young, still beautiful, still able to flash her teeth and show her gams, still gloriously photogenic.

  As Steve Flynn had predicted, the public forgot all about Billings. This was more like it. Now the full story was being told. Nurtured on soap opera, their concepts shaped by Hollywood’s interpretation of what constitutes drama, which had not changed except in techniques from the days of Pearl White and the Keystone Cops, at last the public was getting a full-course dinner of sloppy sentimentalism and ersatz amusement park thrills.

  The principal commentators who dealt in like material saw rich fare for their audiences and the public went on a dizzying binge of concern. Mabel was nobly forgiven for the past life that she had led, and everyone enjoyed that feeling of personal stature by admitting that there might be some good in the worst of us.

  Yet not everyone. For all his knowledge of his business of how to play upon public emotion like an artist at a con
sole organ, Steve slipped. The very bulletins which were selling the public on Mabel, and through her on Bossy, in the way a car is sold by showing a woman’s legs as she climbs into it, also provided the opposition with the material it had been needing.

  The time has passed when a company may hand down an edict that no employee below the rank of top executive may own certain exclusive makes of cars, or royalty say that certain thrills are too good for commoners. The time has passed, but the motivation behind it has not. The more the common public exulted, the more the elite ground its teeth in rage. How dare this stupid machine grant immortality to a common prostitute and deny it to a man of their own class, Billings? The more the public wallowed in its binge of emotionalism, the more the intellectuals held aloof in disdain.

  Some of Joe’s discussion had crept into Steve’s campaign. Gradually the public began to realize that Mabel had gone through a form of dying and being reborn. They saw danger where there had been no danger, because they preferred it that way.

  And life and death was the sole prerogative of the medical profession. By the admission of Bossy’s own protectors, submission to Bossy was a matter of life and death.

  They stormed upon Washington in concerted protest. And they provided the hook which Washington had been seeking. The legislative, the administrative, the judicial branches of government had all been asking the same question of themselves.

  “Who deserves to be perpetuated, made immortal?”

  And the answer had been obvious to them.

  This was something clearly too good for the commoners, but they had not dared impound the machine for this reason. They had needed as always, some other reason quite remote from their true motive. The medical profession proved it; Bossy was too dangerous to be left in irresponsible hands.

  Still, this was election year. The administrative and the legislative branches were directly dependent upon votes, and the judicial was indirectly dependent as even a cursory glance at history would show.