The Best of Fritz Leiber

by Fritz Leiber

  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 becau
se 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.

  “Well,” he finally began, gloomily kneading the gasoid, “it all began when you first wanted to be World manager. You weren’t the usual type, but I thought it would be kind of fun—yes, and kind of helpful.” He looked up at Carrsbury. “You’ve really done the world a lot of good in quite a lot of ways, always remember that,” he assured him. “Of course,” he added, again focusing the tortured gasoid, “they weren’t exactly the ways you thought.”

  “No?” Carrsbury prompted automatically. Humor him. Humor him. The wornout refrain droned in his mind.

  Phy sadly shook his head. “Take those regulations you promulgated to soothe people—”

  “Yes?”

  “—they kind of got changed on the way. For instance, your prohibition, regarding reading tapes, of all exciting literature… oh, we tried a little of the soothing stuff you suggested at first. Everyone got a great kick out of it. They laughed and laughed. But afterwards, well, as I said, it kind of got changed—in this case to a prohibition of all unexciting literature.”

  Carrsbury’s smile broadened. For a moment the edge of his mind had toyed with a fear, but Phy’s last remark had banished it.

  “Every day I coast past several reading stands,” Carrsbury said gently. “The fiction tapes offered for sale are always in the most chastely and simply colored containers. None of those wild and lurid pictures that one used to see everywhere.”

  “But did you ever buy one and listen to it? Or project the visual text?” Phy questioned apologetically.

  “For ten years I’ve been a very busy man,” Carrsbury answered. “Of course I’ve read the official reports regarding such matters, and at times glanced through sample resumes of taped fiction.”

  “Oh, sure, that sort of official stuff,” agreed Phy, glancing up at the wall of tape files beyond the desk. “What we did, you see, was to keep the monochrome containers but go back to the old kind of contents. The contrast kind of tickled people. Remember, as I said before, a lot of your regulations have done good. Cut out a lot of unnecessary noise and inefficient foolishness, for one thing.”

  That sort of official stuff. The phrase lingered unpleasantly in Carrsbury’s ears. There was a trace of irrepressible suspicion in his quick over-the-shoulder glance at the tiered tape files.

  “Oh, yes,” Phy went on, “and that prohibition against yielding to unusual or indecent impulses, with a long listing of specific categories. It went into effect all right, but with a little rider attached: ‘unless you really want to.’ That seemed absolutely necessary, you know.” His fingers worked furiously with the gasoid. “As for the prohibition of various stimulating beverages—well, in this locality they’re still served under other names, and an interesting custom has grown up of behaving very soberly while imbibing them. Now when we come to that matter of the eight-hour working day—”

  Almost involuntarily, Carrsbury had got up and walked over to the outer wall. With a flip of his hand through an invisible U-shaped beam, he switched on the window. It was as if the outer wall had disappeared. Through its near-perfect transparency, he peered down with fierce curiosity past the sleekly gleaming facades to the terraces and parkways below.

  The modest throngs seemed quiet and orderly enough. But then there was a scurry of confusion—a band of people, at this angle all tiny heads with arms and legs, came out from a shop far below and began to pelt another group with what looked like foodstuffs. While, on a side parkway, two small ovoid vehicles, seamless drops of silver because their vision panels were invisible from the outside, butted each other playfully. Someone started to run.

  Carrsbury hurriedly switched off the window and turned around.

  Those were just off-chance occurrences, he told himself angrily. Of no real statistical significance whatever. For ten years mankind had steadily been trending toward sanity despite occasional relapses. He’d seen it with his own eyes, seen the day-by-day progress—at least enough to know. He’d been a fool to let Phy’s ramblings effect him —only tired nerves had made that possible.

  He glanced at his timepiece.

  “Excuse me,” he said curtly, striding past Phy’s chair, “I’d like to continue this conversation, but I have to get along to the first meeting of the new Central Managerial Staff.”

  “Oh but you can’t!” Instantly Phy was up and dragging at his arm. “You just can’t do it, you know! It’s impossible!”

  The pleading voice rose toward a scream. Impatiently Carrsbury tried to shake loose. The seam in the side wall widened, became a doorway. Instantly both of them stopped struggling.

  In the doorway stood a cadaverous giant of a man with a stubby dark weapon in his hand. Straggly black beard shaded into gaunt cheeks. His face was a cruel blend of suspicion and fanatical devotion, the first directed along with the weapon at Phy, the second— and the somnambulistic eyes—at Carrsbury.

  “He was threatening you?” the bearded man asked in a harsh voice, moving the weapon suggestively.

  For a moment an angry, vindictive light glinted in Carrsbury’s eyes. Then it flicked out. What could he have been thinking, he asked himself. This poor lunatic World secretary was no one to hate.

  “Not at all, Hartman,” he remarked calmly. “We were discussing something and we became excited and allowed our voices to rise. Everything is quite all right.”

  “Very well,” said the bearded man doubtfully, after a pause. Reluctantly he returned his weapon to its holster, but he kept his hand on it and remained standing in the doorway.

  “And now,” said Carrsbury, disengaging himself, “I must go.”

  He had stepped on to the corridor slidewalk and had coasted halfway to the elevator before he realized that Phy had followed him and was plucking timidly at his sleeve.

  “You can’t go off like this,” Phy pleaded urgently, with an apprehensive backward glance. Carrsbury noted that Hartman had also followed—an ominous pylon two paces to the rear. “You must give me a chance to explain, to tell you why, just like you asked me.”

  Humor him. Carrsbury’s mind was deadly tired of the drone, but mere weariness prompted him to dance to it a little longer. “You can talk to me in the elevator,” he conceded, stepping off the slidewalk. His finger flipped through a U-beam and a serpentine movement of light across the wall traced the elevator’s obedient rise.

  “You see, it wasn’t just that matter of prohibitory regulations,” Phy launched out hurriedly. “There were lots of other
things that never did work out like your official reports indicated. Departmental budgets for instance. The reports showed, I know, that appropriations for Extraterrestrial Research were being regularly slashed. Actually, in your ten years of office, they increased tenfold. Of course, there was no way for you to know that. You couldn’t be all over the world at once and see each separate launching of supra-stratospheric rockets.”

  The moving light became stationary. A seam dilated. Carrsbury stepped into the elevator. He debated sending Hartman back. Poor babbling Phy was no menace. Still—the cunning of the insane. He decided against it, reached out and flipped the control beam at the sector which would bring them to the hundredth and top floor. The door snipped softly shut. The cage became a surging darkness in which floor numerals winked softly. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three.

  “And then there was the Military Service. You had it sharply curtailed.”

  “Of course I did.” Sheer weariness stung Carrsbury into talk. “There’s only one country in the world. Obviously, the only military requirement is an adequate police force. To say nothing of the risks involved in putting weapons into the hands of the present world population.”

  “I know,” Phy’s answer came guiltily from the darkness. “Still, what’s happened is that, unknown to you, the Military Service has been increased in size, and recently four rocket squadrons have been added.”

  Fifty-seven. Fifty-eight. Humor him. “Why?”

  “Well, you see we’ve found out that Earth is being reconnoitered.

  Maybe from Mars. Maybe hostile. Have to be prepared. We didn’t tell you… well, because we were afraid it might excite you.“