Stand on Zanzibar (40 page)
Authors: John Brunner
MR. & MRS. EVERYWHERE: CALYPSO
“Like the good Lord God in the Valley of Bones
Engrelay Satelserv made some people called Jones.
They were not alive and they were not dead—
They were ee-magi-nary but always ahead.
What was remarkably and uniquely new—
A gadget on the set made them look like you!
“Watching their sets in a kind of a trance
Were people in Mexico, people in France.
They don’t chase Jones but the dreams are the same—
Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere, that’s the right name!
Herr und Frau Uberall
or
les Partout
,
A gadget on the set makes them look like you.
“You can’t see all the places of interest,
Go to the Moon and climb Mount Everest,
So you stay at home in a comfortable chair
And rely on Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere!
Doing all the various things you would like to do,
A gadget on the set makes them look like you.
“Wearing parkas and boots made by Gondola
You see them on an expedition polar.
They’re sunning on the beach at Martinique
Using lotion from Guinevere Steel’s Beautique.
Whether you’re red, white, black or blue
A gadget on the set makes them look like you!
“When the Everywhere couple crack a joke
It’s laughed at by all right-thinking folk.
When the Everywhere couple adopt a pose
It’s the with-it view as everyone knows.
It may be a rumour or it may be true
But a gadget on the set has it said by you!
“English Language Relay Satellite Service
Didn’t do this without any purpose.
They know very well what they would like—
A thousand million people all thinking alike.
When someone says something you don’t ask who—
A gadget on the set has it said by you!
“‘What do you think about Yatakang?’
‘I think the same as the Everywhere gang.’
‘What do you think of Beninia then?’
‘The Everywheres will tell me but I don’t know when.’
Whatever my country and whatever my name
A gadget on the set makes me think the same.”
“Which is the real time—his or ours?”
Norman had not intended the question to emerge in audible form. It was sparked by the sight of the enormous pile of printouts from Shalmaneser that had been delivered overnight to his office, and by recollection of the way they would have been produced. No conceivable printing device—not even the light-writers which had no moving parts except the fine beam from a miniature laser that inscribed words on photo-sensitive paper—could keep up with Shalmaneser’s nanosecond mental processes; the entire problem posed to him would have been solved, or at any rate evaluated, then shunted to a temporary storage bank while he got on with the next task his masters imposed, and the conversion of it into comprehensible language would have taken fifty or a hundred times as long.
Elihu glanced at him. His eyes were a little red from lack of sleep, as were Norman’s; one could not afford to sleep if one wanted to keep up with modern information-handling techniques. He said, “Whose?”
Norman gave a sour laugh, ushering the older man past him and closing the office door. “Sorry. I’m thinking of Shalmaneser as a ‘he’ again.”
Elihu nodded. “Like Chad said, he’s becoming one of the GT family … How is Chad, by the way? I expected him to take more of an interest in this project—after all, when I first met him at Miss Steel’s, he spent practically the entire evening interrogating me about Beninia.”
“I’ve hardly seen anything of him,” Norman said, moving around his electronic desk and shoving at the swivel chair with his knee to turn it so he could sit down. “He’s been using Don’s room, I know that, and I think much of the time he’s been going through Don’s books—he has about three thousand of them. But apart from a hello, we haven’t talked much.”
“I see what you mean about the real time,” Elihu said.
Norman blinked at him, puzzled.
“This!” Elihu amplified, tapping one of the three foot-deep stacks of printouts awaiting their attention. “Both you and I want to talk about the Beninian project. But we can’t. Anything we say without reference to computers is already out of date before it’s uttered, isn’t it? The information to correct and shape our opinions exists, and we know it exists, so we decline to communicate until we’ve briefed ourselves, and because Shalmaneser works thousands of times faster than we do, we can never catch up so we never genuinely manage to communicate.”
Norman hesitated. After the pause, he said, “Speaking of information to shape and change our opinions…”
“Yes?”
“Could you get me some data from State, do you think?”
“It depends.” Elihu settled into a chair facing him. “I can get anything that touches directly on my own interests, but even ambassadorial rank, these days, doesn’t carry infinite cachet.”
“It’s about Don,” Norman said. His mouth twisted into a wry grin. “What you said about failing to communicate made me think of it. I lived with that codder for years, you know, and I never really got to be close friends with him. And now he’s not around my place any longer, I miss him. I feel sort of guilty. I’d like to know if it’s possible for me to keep in touch.”
“I can inquire, I guess,” Elihu agreed. “What happened to him, by the way?”
“I thought you knew. Oh! If you don’t, maybe I shouldn’t … The hole with that, though. If a U.S. ambassador can’t be trusted, who can?”
“They don’t trust anybody, literally,” Elihu shrugged. “Except computers.”
“I do,” Norman said. He glanced down at his hands and wrung them together absently. “As of a few days ago, and on principle. Don’s gone to Yatakang on State business.”
Elihu mulled that over for a while. He said, “That places him for me. I’d wondered where to pigeon-hole him. You mean he’s one of these standby operatives State keeps on tap as insurance against the eventuation of low-probability trends.”
“I believe that’s correct, yes.”
“And the only thing that’s happened in Yatakang lately is this fantastic genetic programme they’re boosting. Is that connected with his visit?”
“I assume it must be. At any rate, Don took his degree in biology, and his doctorate thesis was on the survival of archetypal genes in living fossils like coelacanths and king crabs and ginkgos.”
“State wants the alleged techniques, presumably.”
“I’ve been wondering about that,” Norman said. “I wonder if we
do
want them.”
“How do you mean?”
“It’s a bit difficult to explain … Look, have you been following television at all since you came home?”
“Occasionally, but since the Yatakang news broke I’ve been much too busy to catch more than an occasional news bulletin.”
“So have I, but—well, I guess I’m more familiar with the way trends get started here nowadays, so I can extrapolate from the couple or three programmes I have had time for.” Norman’s gaze moved over Elihu’s head to the far corner of the room.
“Engrelay Satelserv blankets most of Africa, doesn’t it?”
“The whole continent, I’d say. There are English-speaking people in every country on Earth nowadays, except possibly for China.”
“So you’re acquainted with Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere?”
“Yes, of course—these two who always appear in station identification slots, doing exotic and romantic things.”
“Did you have a personalised set at any time, with your own identity matted into the Everywhere image?”
“Lord, no! It costs—what? About five thousand bucks, isn’t it?”
“About that. I haven’t got one either; the basic fee is for couple service, and being a bachelor I’ve never bothered. I just have the standard brown-nose identity on my set.” He hesitated. “And—to be absolutely frank—a Scandahoovian one for the shiggy half of the pair. But I’ve watched friends’ sets plenty of times where they had the full service, and I tell you it’s eerie. There’s something absolutely unique and indescribable about seeing your own face and hearing your own voice, matted into the basic signal. There you are wearing clothes you’ve never owned, doing things you’ve never done in places you’ve never been, and it has the immediacy of real life because nowadays television
is
the real world. You catch? We’re aware of the scale of the planet, so we don’t accept that our own circumscribed horizons constitute reality. Much more real is what’s relayed to us by the TV.”
“I can well understand that,” Elihu nodded. “And of course I’ve seen this on other people’s sets too. Also I agree entirely about what we regard as real. But I thought we were talking about the Yatakangi claim?”
“I still am,” Norman said. “Do you have a homimage attachment on your set? No, obviously not. I do. This does the same thing except with your environment; when they—let’s see … Ah yes! When they put up something like the splitscreen cuts they use to introduce SCANALYZER, one of the cuts is always what they call the ‘digging’ cut, and shows Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere sitting in
your
home wearing
your
faces watching the same programme you’re about to watch. You know this one?”
“I don’t think they have this service in Africa yet,” Elihu said. “I know the bit you mean, but it always shows a sort of idealised dream-home full of luxy gadgetry.”
“That used to be what they did here,” Norman said. “Only nowadays practically every American home
is
full of luxy gadgetry. You know Chad’s definition of the New Poor? People who are too far behind with time-payments on next year’s model to make the down-payment on the one for the year after?”
Elihu chuckled, then grew grave. “That’s too nearly literal to be funny,” he said.
“Prophet’s beard, it certainly is! I found time to look over some of Chad’s books after Guinevere’s party, and … Well, having met him I was inclined to think he was a conceited blowhard, but now I think he’s entitled to every scrap of vanity he likes to put on.”
“I thought of asking State to invite him to come in on this project as a special advisor, but when I broached the matter to Raphael Corning I was told State doesn’t approve of him.”
“Why should they? He’s successfully mocked everything authority stands for.”
“He doesn’t think he’s been successful.”
“He’s certainly coloured public opinion. He may not have changed it radically, but what social theorist since Mao
has
managed to turn it over? The mere fact that his books are prescribed for college courses means his views are widely disseminated.”
“Yes, but so are Thoreau’s and— Never mind, we’re digressing. You said something about our not wanting the Yatakangi genetic technique and then you started off about Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere.”
“Right. I’ve almost forgotten to make my main point. I’ve watched this happen a couple of times, over eugenic legislation and over the question of partisans. After they’ve been using a personalised TV set for a while, especially if it includes a homimage unit, people begin to lose touch with actuality. For instance, you’re supposed to have a fresh base-recording of your appearance put in about once a year. But I know people who’ve merely had a fresh track made of the first one, for four and even five years successively, so they can go on looking at their younger selves on the screen. They deny the passage of time. They live in an extended instant. Do you see what I’m steering towards?”
“People who can’t even reconcile themselves to growing older won’t submit to someone else’s good fortune when it comes to children?”
“Right. In other words: either our own government, and everyone else’s, has got to match the Yatakangi claim forthwith, or else it’s got to be shown up for an empty boast. The latter possibility would obviously suit State far better, because applying tectogenetic improvements to millions of pregnancies would cause a fantastic social upheaval—even worse than what followed the establishment of the Eugenic Processing Boards. But there’s no middle way. Success in Yatakang, denied to people in other countries, and even success in a limited area of our society denied to people in other groups, will lead to such widespread resentment … Am I stretching my argument too far?”
“I don’t believe you are.” Elihu tried and failed to control a visible shudder. “I haven’t been watching TV, as I told you—but since I’m rooming in the UN Hostel, I’ve been getting first-hand opinions from people of a hundred different nationalities, and take my word, Yatakang is the most cordially hated country on the face of the globe right now, not excluding China.”
“And here’s the crunch,” Norman said, leaning forward to emphasise his words. “There hasn’t been a
new
crisis since Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere took over. They emerged full-blown into the existing contemporary world, with its generation-long antipathies and hatreds. Even so, I’ve seen what they’ve done to public opinion. Tens—scores—of millions of people are becoming identified with that imaginary couple. The next presidential campaign will pivot on what they think, not on the validity of the rival policies. But the Yatakang question is going to hit first, and what’s worse it’ll hit people in the balls. Below the waist you don’t think, you react. Let Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere only say that this isn’t fair, and you’ll have a party in favour of war against Yatakang within a week.”
There was a short silence.
A kind of anguish was written on Norman’s face. Studying it, Elihu said finally, “It’s remarkable how much you’ve altered in the few days since I met you.”
“What? How do you mean?”
“Laying away your ancestor to his long-time rest has improved you out of recognition. A couple of weeks ago I can imagine you chortling over the discomfiture of the paleasses in face of this breakthrough by yellowbellies. Now what seems to worry you most is the fact that people won’t get the chance to judge the idea dispassionately for themselves, but may get stampeded into stupid emotional reactions.”
“My whole life has been one long emotional reaction,” Norman said, not looking at the older man. “Shall we leave the subject and get back to the business in hand?”