Most of the churches lost grievously in membership, though at the same time they enjoyed an accession of new converts. Those whose rites included confession complained that, somehow, the act appeared to be losing its deep significance.
Psychoanalysts at first rejoiced over their sudden wholesale success in overcoming their patients’ “resistances,” and a little later were appalled by their empty waiting rooms.
The divorce rate skyrocketed, then plunged to a permanent record low. Conversely, the marriage rate at first fell off sharply, then climbed gradually back to normal. The birth rate was unaffected.
Innumerable lawyers took down their shingles.
Congressional investigating committees enjoyed a field day, but fell prey to an increasing nervous frustration as witness after witness refused to perjure himself.
In Washington, D. C., a conservatively dressed gentleman checked into a hotel, came down to the lobby after brushing his teeth, and in response to a commercial traveler’s casual question said, “My business? Well, I’m a secret agent for the Soviet Union. And you?”
Police in scores of cities were swamped by confessions of offenses ranging from multiple murder to double parking, and were bewildered by the absence of the expected percentage of false confessions.
For the first time in modern history, the number of homicides exceeded the number of suicides. In general, crimes of stealth virtually ceased to occur, while crimes of violence continued at about their previous level and reported cases of rape declined spectacularly.
Numerous government officials admitted themselves guilty of peculation and malfeasance in office. The business bureaucracy was even harder hit. Among the casualties was a prominent board member of Gorley and Gorley.
To my particular satisfaction, the mayor our local machine had elected made a public speech—apparently unaware that he was doing anything out of the way—in which he thanked by name the boys who had purchased the most votes for him in the last campaign, also those who had put in the strong-arm work.
All the F.B.I, agents doing undercover work in the Communist Party were exposed, and as a result the party went bankrupt for lack of dues-paying members.
As O’Brien had predicted, the advertising business collapsed, burying many lesser enterprises under the ruins. But somehow no general financial panic took place.
A man from Texas was heard to confess that he sometimes got tired of hearing about Texas, and even admitted it couldn’t be twice as large as the rest of the United States.
Events such as these were the convulsions, the death throes of an old world and the birth pangs of a new.
Their final phase was the breakdown of the international situation, which had continued for over a decade in a sort of deadly balance. The balance was destroyed when U. S. and other Western diplomats adopted a new tack which provoked, in their Eastern-bloc opponents, reactions first of suspicious alarm, then of bafflement, and finally of a dazed conviction that the spirit of Marxian history had at long last delivered the enemy into their hands—which last impression led directly to their undoing.
Forgetting the chiseler’s basic precept—you can’t cheat an honest man—they set about exploiting the situation by extracting from the West all the technical information they coveted, and which was now theirs for the asking. Along with plutonium refinement methods and guided missile designs, they obtained, naturally, the formula for Grandma’s lie soap, alias Verolin.
The counterparts of Gorley and Gorley’s sales department, in their government-run industries, were also shrewdly alive to the importance of having satisfied customers. Clearly, they reasoned, studying our records, this is a good thing, this is a valuable bit of kul’tura . . .
From there on developments followed pretty much the pattern already established in the West. The Iron Curtain sagged, fell apart, and sank into oblivion.
Grandma’s lie soap had conquered the world.
* * * *
Since I retired, I’ve been using my leisure in exploration and observation of this world which I did a good deal to create, this world which differs so much from the one I grew up in and can remember better than most others even of my own generation. They’ve had the treatment, and they’ve changed. But I still brush my teeth with a salt-and-soda mixture.
In many ways, the present era answers to the visions that were called Utopian when I was a boy—called that, usually, with a sneer. A lot of the social and political reforms we only dreamed about then have been carried out as a matter of course, which was inevitable once people stopped lying themselves and one another black in the face.
Mental diseases, tangled lives, crime have all been swept away—not to mention the threat of war that was the Great Shadow overlying all the lesser shadows of the old world.
An election campaign now is carried on in an atmosphere of sobriety and statesmanship that would have given an old-time politician the creeps. None of the old bandstand, circus stuff . . . Speaking of that, one thing I miss is the circus. I used to like to listen to the sideshow barkers—an extinct tribe. I know, they still have circuses, or call them that; but P. T. Barnum would disown them.
But . . . people look one another in the eyes much more than they ever used to. They don’t seem afraid. There’s confidence—not the ballooning confidence that led to big economic booms and bigger busts, but a trust resting on solid foundations.
Still, sometimes I wonder.
Not long ago I ran into O’Brien, for the first time in years, in a bar. People don’t drink as much as they did, but O’Brien had been drinking a good deal.
“How are you?” I said automatically, the sight of such a long-remembered face making me forget that that particular greeting wasn’t used nowadays.
He began a detailed description of his general state of health and present state of intoxication. “Oh,” I said. “You’ve had it.”
“Yeah,” said O’Brien. “I broke down and took the treatment. I got like everybody else. I couldn’t stand the temptation any more. You know what I mean?”
I knew exactly what he meant. For him, with his background, it must have been much worse.
“Maybe,” said O’Brien thickly, “I could have been dictator of the world if I’d wanted. But this way’s better.” He signaled the waiter, then looked at me curiously. “You— not yet?”
“Not yet,” I said. “Maybe never. I like to watch things.”
“Watch the sheep run,” mumbled O’Brien. “All sheep ...”
* * * *
He was drunk, but he’d had Grandma’s lie soap, and he spoke the truth.
Perhaps there’s too much confidence.
Once in a while I yield a little to that temptation O’Brien mentioned, but always in harmless ways, merely for amusement or out of curiosity to see just how much people will swallow. Like in that fabrication of Howling Wolf, the genius of the North Woods, which I told you about in the beginning. More and more I find that they’ll believe almost anything, especially the younger generation. Older people still have a residuum of skepticism.
Now it’s plain—using hindsight—that we should easily have foreseen the secondary effect. But it developed very slowly. No physiological effect, this, but a psychological one —or simply logical. Once people stop lying, they’ll also stop suspecting deceit. They’ll believe as they expect to be believed. Little by little, particularly as the young ones who don’t remember grow up, they’ll become totally—gullible, it used to be called.
A while back, down South, there was an unwashed prophet who made converts right and left to a weird sect of his own devising—until somebody seduced him into heathenish ways, and he tried brushing his teeth. But incidents like that don’t really disturb me. As the example shows, they all come out in the wash.
Yet there is something that bothers me. Back before Grandma’s lie soap, we used to get sporadic reports of “mysterious airships,” “flying saucers,” or similarly named equivalents for unexplained objects in the sky. We laughed them off,
mostly, because people were always starting crazy rumors. . . . After the great change, those reports might have been expected to stop coming.
But they didn’t.
And more recently there have been some queer phenomena noted by the space station and the bubbles on the Moon.
So suppose we’re not alone in the Universe or even in the Solar System? And suppose that whoever is out there— circling us, observing us with immense caution for so long— are beings like we used to be—fierce, wary, enormously suspicious as their behavior suggests, capable of any falsehood, any treachery?
Wolves, circling the sheep . . .
Perhaps it’s all my imagination. I can’t be sure. There’s only one way I can be sure even of what I think myself.
Pretty soon now I’ll go into the bathroom and wash my mouth with Grandma’s lie soap. Then I’ll look into the mirror and ask myself, face to face, with no possibility of deception: Did I do right?
<
* * * *
COMPOUNDED INTEREST
by Mack Reynolds
Mr. Reynolds is an elusive man. I met him once in Chicago, on his way from New Mexico to Florida. A letter to his Florida address, some months after, followed him to Mexico, and I received a reply from Algiers. My queries about the Foreign Legion elicited an explanation (from Tangiers) about pretty girls, the Casbah, and his lifelong ambitions.
To the best of my knowledge, Reynolds does not possess a time machine, and uses only orthodox methods of travel.
* * * *
The stranger said in miserable Italian, “I wish to see Sior Marin Goldini on business.”
The concierge’s manner was suspicious. Through the wicket he ran his eyes over the newcomer’s clothing. “On business, Sior?” He hesitated. “Possibly, Sior, you could inform me as to the nature of your business, so that I might inform his Zelenza’s secretary, Vico Letta . . .” He let his sentence dribble away.
The stranger thought about that. “It pertains,” he said finally, “to gold.” He brought a hand from his pocket and opened it to disclose a half dozen yellow coins.
“A moment, Lustrissimo,” the servant blurted quickly. “Forgive me. Your costume, Lustrissimo ...” He let his sentence dribble away again and was gone.
A few moments later he returned to swing the door open wide. “If you please, Lustrissimo, his Zelenza awaits you.”
He led the way down a vaulted hall to the central court, to the left past a fountain well to a heavy outer staircase supported by Gothic arches and sided by a carved parapet. They mounted, turned through a dark doorway and into a poorly lit corridor. The servant stopped and drummed carefully on a thick wooden door. A voice murmured from within and the servant held the door open and then retreated.
Two men were at a rough-hewn oak table. The older was heavy-set, tight of face and cold, and the other tall and thin and ever at ease. The latter bowed gently. He gestured and said, “His Zelenza, the Sior Marin Goldini.”
The stranger attempted a clumsy bow in return, said awkwardly, “My name is ... Mister Smith.”
There was a moment of silence which Goldini broke finally by saying, “And this is my secretary, Vico Letta. The servant mentioned gold, Sior, and business.”
The stranger dug into a pocket, came forth with ten coins which he placed on the table before him. Vico Letta picked one up in mild interest and examined it. “I am not familiar with the coinage,” he said.
His master twisted his cold face without humor. “Which amazes me, my good Vico.” He turned to the newcomer. “And what is your wish with these coins, Sior Mister Smith? I confess, this is confusing.”
“I want,” Mister Smith said, “to have you invest the sum for me.”
Vico Letta had idly weighed one of the coins in question on a small scale. He cast his eyes up briefly as he estimated. ‘The ten would come to approximately forty-nine zecchini, Zelenza,” he murmured.
Marin Goldini said impatiently, “Sior, the amount is hardly sufficient for my house to bother with. The bookkeeping alone—”
The stranger broke in. “Don’t misunderstand. I realize the sum is small. However, I would ask but ten per cent, and would not call for an accounting for . . . for one hundred years.”
The two Venetians raised puzzled eyebrows. “A hundred years, Sior? Perhaps your command of our language . . .” Goldini said politely.
“One hundred years,” the stranger said.
“But surely,” the head of the house of Goldini protested, “it is unlikely that any of we three will be alive. As God desires, possibly even the house of Goldini will be a memory only.”
Vico Letta, intrigued, had been calculating rapidly. Now he said, “In one hundred years, at ten per cent compounded annually, your gold would be worth better than 700,000 zecchini.”
“Quite a bit more,” the stranger said firmly.
“A comfortable sum,” Goldini nodded, beginning to feel some of the interest of his secretary. “And during this period, all decisions pertaining to the investment of the amount would be in the hands of my house?”
“Exactly.” The stranger took a sheet of paper from his pocket, tore it in two, and handed one half to the Venetians. “When my half of this is presented to your descendants, one hundred years from today, the bearer will be due the full amount.”
“Done, Sior Mister Smith!” Goldini said. “An amazing transaction, but done. Ten per cent in this day is small indeed to ask.”
“It is enough. And now may I make some suggestions? You are perhaps familiar with the Polo family?”
Goldini scowled. “I know Sior Maffeo Polo.”
“And his nephew, Marco?”
Goldini said cautiously, “I understand young Marco was captured by the Genoese. Why do you ask?”
“He is writing a book on his adventures in the Orient. It would be a well of information for a merchant house interested in the East. Another thing. In a few years there will be an attempt on the Venetian government and shortly thereafter a Council of Ten will be formed which will eventually become the supreme power of the republic. Support it from the first and make every effort to have your house represented.”
They stared at him and Marin Goldini crossed himself unobtrusively.
The stranger said, “If you find need for profitable investments beyond Venice I suggest you consider the merchants of the Hanse cities and their soon to be organized League.”
They continued to stare and he said, uncomfortably, “I’ll go now. Your time is valuable.” He went to the door, opened it himself and left.
Marin Goldini snorted. “That liar, Marco Polo.”
Vico said sourly, “How could he have known we were considering expanding our activities into the East? We have discussed it only between ourselves.”
‘The attempt on the government,” Marin Goldini said, crossing himself again. “Was he hinting that our intriguing is known? Vico, perhaps we should disassociate ourselves from the conspirators.”
“Perhaps you are right, Zelenza,” Vico muttered. He picked up one of the coins again and examined it, back and front. ‘There is no such nation,” he grumbled, “but the coin is perfectly minted.” He picked up the torn sheet of paper, held it to the light. “Nor have I ever seen such paper, Zelenza, nor such a strange language, although, on closer examination, it appears to have some similarities to the English tongue.”
* * * *
The House of Letta-Goldini was located now in the San Toma district, an imposing structure through which passed the proceeds of a thousand ventures in a hundred lands.
Riccardo Letta looked up from his desk at his assistant. “Then he really has appeared? Per favore, Lio, bring me the papers pertaining to the, ah, account. Allow me a matter of ten minutes to refresh my memory and then bring the Sior to me.”
The great grandson of Vico Letta, head of the House of Letta-Goldini, came to his feet elegantly, bowed in the sweeping style of his day, said, “Your servant, Sior . . .”
The newc
omer bobbed his head in a jerky, embarrassed return of the courtesy, said, “Mister Smith.”
“A chair, Lustrissimo? And now, pray pardon my abruptness. One’s duties when responsible for a house of the magnitude of Letta-Goldini . . .”
Mister Smith held out a torn sheet of paper. His Italian was abominable. “The agreement made with Marin Goldini, exactly one century ago.”
Riccardo Letta took the paper. It was new, clean and fresh, which brought a frown to his high forehead. He took up an aged, yellowed fragment from before him and placed one against the other. They matched to perfection. “Amazing, Sior, but how can it be that my piece is yellow with age and your own so fresh?”
The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 2 - [Anthology] Page 23
