not dreams of the men hehad killed in battle, or, except for one about a huge, hot-smelling tankwith a red star on the turret, about the war. Generally, they were abouta strange, beautiful, office-room, in which a young man in uniformkilled an older man in a plum-brown coat and a vivid blue neck-scarf.Sometimes Benson identified himself with the killer; sometimes with theold man who was killed.
He talked to Myers about these dreams, but beyond generalities aboutdelayed effects of combat fatigue and vague advice to relax, thepsychologist, now head of Sales & Promotion of Evri-Flave, Inc., couldgive him no help.
The war ended three years after the new company was launched. There wasa momentary faltering of the economy, and then the work ofreconstruction was crying hungrily for all the labor and capital thathad been idled by the end of destruction, and more. There was a newflood-tide of prosperity, and Evri-Flave rode the crest. The estate atCarondelet was finished--a beautiful place, surrounded with gardens,fragrant with flowers, full of the songs of birds and soft music fromconcealed record-players. It made him forget the ugliness of the war,and kept the dreams from returning so frequently. All the world ought tobe like that, he thought; beautiful and quiet and peaceful. Peoplesurrounded with such beauty couldn't think about war.
All the world could be like that, if only....
* * * * *
The UN chose St. Louis for its new headquarters--many of its offices hadbeen moved there after the second and most destructive bombing of NewYork--and when the city by the Mississippi began growing into a realWorld Capital, the flow of money into it almost squared overnight.Benson began to take an active part in politics in the new WorldSovereignty party. He did not, however, allow his political activitiesto distract him from the work of expanding the company to which he owedhis wealth and position. There were always things to worry about.
"I don't know," Myers said to him, one evening, as they sat over abottle of rye in the psychologist's apartment. "I could make almost asmuch money practicing as a psychiatrist, these days. The whole worldseems to be going pure, unadulterated nuts! That affair in Munich, forinstance."
"Yes." Benson grimaced as he thought of the affair in Munich--aWagnerian concert which had terminated in an insane orgy of masssuicide. "Just a week after we started our free-sample campaign in SouthGermany, too...."
He stopped short, downing his drink and coughing over it.
"Bill! You remember those sheets of onion-skin in that envelope?"
"The foundation of our fortunes; I wonder where you really did getthat.... Fred!" His eyes widened in horror. "That caution about'heightened psycho-physiological effects,' that we were never ableto understand!"
Benson nodded grimly. "And think of all the crazy cases ofmass-hysteria--that baseball-game riot in Baltimore; the time everybodystarted tearing off each others' clothes in Milwaukee; the sex-orgy inNew Orleans. And the sharp uptrend in individual psycho-neurotic andpsychotic behavior. All in connection with music, too, and all afterEvri-Flave got on the market."
"We'll have to stop it; pull Evri-Flave off the market," Myers said. "Wecan't be responsible for letting this go on."
"We can't stop, either. There's at least a two months' supply out in thehands of jobbers and distributors over whom we have no control. And wehave all these contractual obligations, to buy the entire output of thecompanies that make the syrup for us; if we stop buying, they can sellit in competition with us, as long as they don't infringe ourtrade-name. And we can't prevent pirating. You know how easily we wereable to duplicate that sample I brought back from Turkey. Why, our legaldepartment's kept busy all the time prosecuting unlicensed manufacturersas it is."
"We've got to do something, Fred!" There was almost a whiff of hysteriain Myers' voice.
"We will. We'll start, first thing tomorrow, on a series of tests--justyou and I, like the old times at Eisenhower High. First, we want tobe sure that Evri-Flave really is responsible. It'd be a hell of athing if we started a public panic against our own product for nothing.And then...."
* * * * *
It took just two weeks, in a soundproofed and guarded laboratory onBenson's Carondelet estate, to convict their delicious drink ofresponsibility for that Munich State Opera House Horror and everythingelse. Reports from confidential investigators in Munich confirmed this.It had, of course, been impossible to interview the two thousand menand women who had turned the Opera House into a pyre for their ownimmolation, but none of the tiny minority who had kept their sanity andsaved their lives had tasted Evri-Flave.
* * * * *
It took another month to find out exactly how the stuff affected thehuman nervous system, and they almost wrecked their own nervous systemsin the process. The real villain, they discovered, was theincredible-looking long-chain compound alluded to in the original notesas Ingredient Beta; its principal physiological effect was to greatlyincrease the sensitivity of the aural nerves. Not only was the hearingrange widened--after consuming thirty CC of Beta, they could hear thesound of an ultrasonic dog-whistle quite plainly--but the very qualityof all audible sounds was curiously enhanced and altered. Myers, thepsychologist, who was also well grounded in neurology, explained how thechemical produced this effect; it meant about as much to Benson as someof his chemistry did to Bill Myers. There was also a secondary, purelypsychological, effect. Certain musical chords had definite effects onthe emotions of the hearer, and the subject, beside being directlyinfluenced by the music, was rendered extremely open to verbalsuggestions accompanied by a suitable musical background.
Benson transferred the final results of this stage of the research tothe black notebook and burned the scratch-sheets.
"That's how it happened, then," he said. "The Munich thing was theresult of all that Goetterdaemmerung music. There was a band at thebaseball park in Baltimore. The New Orleans Orgy started while a localradio station was broadcasting some of this new dance-music. Look, thesetone-clusters, here, have a definite sex-excitation effect. This seriesof six chords, which occur in some of the Wagnerian stuff; effect, acombined feeling of godlike isolation and despair. And these consecutivefifths--a sense of danger, anger, combativeness. You know, we could workout a whole range of emotional stimuli to fit the effects of IngredientBeta...."
"We don't want to," Myers said. "We want to work out a substitute forBeta that will keep the flavor of the drink without thepsycho-physiological effects."
"Yes, sure. I have some of the boys at the plant lab working on that.Gave them a lot of syrup without Beta, and told them to work out cheapadditives to restore the regular Evri-Flave taste; told them it was aneffort to find a cheap substitute for an expensive ingredient. But look,Bill. You and I both see, for instance, that a powerful world-widesupra-national sovereignty is the only guarantee of world peace. If wecould use something like this to help overcome antiquated verbalprejudices and nationalistic emotional attachments...."
"No!" Myers said. "I won't ever consent to anything like that, Fred! Noteven in a cause like world peace; use a thing like this for a good,almost holy, cause now, and tomorrow we, or those who would come afterus, would be using it to create a tyranny. You know what year this is,Bill?"
"Why, 1984," Benson said.
"Yes. You remember that old political novel of Orwell's, written aboutforty years ago? Well, that's a picture of the kind of world you'd have,eventually, no matter what kind of a world you started out to make.Fred, don't ever think of using this stuff for a purpose like that. Ifyou try it, I'll fight you with every resource I have."
There was a fanatical, almost murderous, look in Bill Myers' eyes.Benson put the notebook in his pocket, then laughed and threw up hishands.
"Hey, Joe! Hey, Joe!" he cried. "You're right, of course, Bill. We can'teven trust the UN with a thing like this. It makes the H-bomb look likea stone hatchet.... Well, I'll call Grant, at the plant lab, and see howhis boys are coming along with the substitute; as soon as we get it, wecan put out
a confidential letter to all our distributors andsyrup-manufacturers...."
* * * * *
He walked alone in the garden at Carondelet, watching the color fade outof the sky and the twilight seep in among the clipped yews. All theworld could be like this garden, a place of peace and beauty and quiet,if only.... All the world _would_ be a beautiful and peaceful garden, inhis own lifetime! He had the means of making it so!
Three weeks later, he murdered his friend and partner, Bill Myers. Itwas a suicide; nobody but Fred Benson knew that he had taken fifty CC ofpure Ingredient Beta in a couple of cocktails while listening to thequeer phonograph record that he had played half an hour before blowinghis
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