The Past Through Tomorrow (81 page)

She laughed a low chuckle that had little mirth in it. “I suppose you could have gotten that impression. But, believe me, the matter is all settled and for the best.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t misunderstand me. I am very fond of Zebadiah and I know he is equally fond of me. But we are both dominant types psychologically—you should see my profile chart; it looks like the Rocky Mountains! Two such people should not marry. Such marriages are
not
made in Heaven, believe me! Fortunately we found it out in time.”

“Oh.”

“Oh, indeed.”

Now I don’t know just how the next thing happened. I was thinking that she seemed rather forlorn—and the next thing I knew I was kissing her. She lay back in my arms and returned the kiss with a fervor I would not have believed possible. As for me, my head was buzzing and my eyeballs were knocking together and I couldn’t have told you whether I was a thousand feet underground or on dress parade.

Then it was over. She looked up for a bare moment into my eyes and whispered, “Dear John…” Then she got suddenly to her feet, leaned over me, careless of the towel, and patted my cheek. “Judith is a very lucky girl. I wonder if she knows it.”

“Maggie!” I said.

She turned away and said, without looking back, “I really must finish dressing. I’m cold.”

She had not felt cold to me.

She came out shortly, fully dressed and towelling her hair vigorously. I got my dry towel and helped her. I don’t believe I suggested it; the idea just took care of itself. Her hair was thick and lovely and I enjoyed doing it. It sent goose pimples over me.

Zeb and Miriam came back while I was doing so, not racing but swimming slowly; we could hear them laughing long before they were in sight. Miriam climbed out of the water as shamelessly as any harlot of Gomorrah, but I hardly noticed her. Zeb looked me in the eye and said aggressively, “Ready for your swim, chum?”

I started to say that I did not believe that I would bother and was going to make some excuse about my towel already being wet—when I noticed Maggie watching me…not saying anything but watching. I answered, “Why, surely! You two took long enough.” I called out, “Miriam! Get out from behind that rock! I want to use it.”

She squealed and giggled and came out, still arranging her clothes. I went behind it with quiet dignity.

I hope I still had quiet dignity when I came out. In any case I set my teeth, walked out and straight into the water. It was bitingly cold at first, but only for a moment. I was never varsity but I swam on my class team and I’ve even been in the Hudson on New Year’s Day. I liked that black pool, once I was in.

I just had to swim down to the other end. Sure enough, there was a little shelf beach there. I did not go up on it.

On the way back I tried to swim down to the bottom. I could not find it, but it must have been over twenty feet down. I liked it down there—black and utterly still. Had I the breath for it, or gills, it seemed to me that it would have been a good place to stay, away from Prophets, away from Cabals, and paperwork, and worries, and problems too subtle for me.

I came up gasping, then struck out hard for our picnic beach. The girls already had the food laid out and Zeb shouted for me to hurry. Zeb and Maggie did not look up as I got out of the water, but I caught Miriam eyeing me. I don’t think I blushed. I never did like blondes anyhow. I think Lilith must have been a blonde.

THE SUPREME COUNCIL
, consisting of heads of departments, General Huxley, and a few others, met weekly or oftener to advise the General, exchange views, and consider the field reports. About a month after our rather silly escapade in the underground pool they were in session and I was with them, not as a member but as recorder. My own girl was ill and I had borrowed Maggie from G-2 to operate the voicewriter, since she was cleared for top secret. We were always terribly shorthanded of competent personnel. My nominal boss, for example, was Wing General Penoyer, who carried the title of Chief of Staff. But I hardly ever saw him, as he was also Chief of Ordnance. Huxley was his own chief of staff and I was sort of a glorified aide—“midshipmite, and bosun tite, and crew of the captain’s gig.” I even tried to see to it that Huxley took his stomach medicine regularly.

This meeting was bigger than usual. The regional commanders of Gath, Canaan, Jericho, Babylon, and Egypt were present in person; Nod and Damascus were represented by deputies—every Cabal district of the United States except Eden and we were holding a sensitive hook-up to Louisville for that command, using idea code that the sensitives themselves would not understand. I could feel the pressure of something big coming up, although Huxley had not taken me into his confidence. The place was tyled so that a mouse couldn’t have got in.

We droned through the usual routine reports. It was duly recorded that we now had eighty-seven hundred and nine accepted members, either lodge brethren or tested and bound members of the parallel military organization. There were listed as recruited and instructed more than ten times that number of fellow travelers who could be counted on to rise against the Prophet, but who had not been intrusted with knowledge of the actual conspiracy.

The figures themselves were not encouraging. We were always in the jaws of a dilemma; a hundred thousand men was a handful to conquer a continent-wide country whereas the less than nine thousand party to the conspiracy itself were way too many to keep a secret. We necessarily relied on the ancient cell system wherein no man knew more than he had to know and could not give away too much no matter what an inquisitor did to him—no, not even if he had been a spy. But we had our weekly losses even at this passive stage.

One entire lodge had been surprised in session and arrested in Seattle four days earlier; it was a serious loss but only three of the chairs had possessed critical knowledge and all three had suicided successfully. Prayers would be said for all of them at a grand session that night, but here it was a routine report. We had lost four hatchet men that week but twenty-three assassinations had been accomplished—one of them the Elder Inquisitor for the entire lower Mississippi Valley.

The Chief of Communications reported that the brethren were prepared to disable 91% (figured on population coverage) of the radio & TV stations in the country, and that with the aid of assault groups we could reasonably hope to account for the rest—with the exception of the Voice of God station at New Jerusalem, which was a special problem.

The Chief of Combat Engineering reported readiness to sabotage the power supply of the forty-six largest cities, again with the exception of New Jerusalem, the supply of which was self-contained with the pile located under the Temple. Even there major interruption could be accomplished at distribution stations if the operation warranted the expenditure of sufficient men. Major surface transportation and freight routes could be sabotaged sufficiently with present plans and personnel to reduce traffic to 12% of normal.

The reports went on and on—newspapers, student action groups, rocket field seizure or sabotage, miracles, rumor propagation, water supply, incident incitement, counter-espionage, long-range weather prediction, weapons distribution. War is a simple matter compared with revolution. War is an applied science, with well-defined principles tested in history; analogous solutions may be found from ballista to H-bomb. But every revolution is a freak, a mutant, a monstrosity, its conditions never to be repeated and its operations carried out by amateurs and individualists.

While Maggie recorded the data I was arranging it and transmitting it to the calculator room for analysis. I was much too busy even to attempt a horse-back evaluation in my head. There was a short wait while the analysts finished programming and let the “brain” have it—then the remote-printer in front of me chattered briefly and stopped. Huxley leaned across me and tore off the tape before I could reach it.

He glanced at it, then cleared his throat and waited for dead silence. “Brethren,” he began, “comrades—we agreed long ago on our doctrine of procedure. When every predictable factor, calculated, discounted for probable error, weighted and correlated with all other significant factors, gave a calculated risk of two to one in our favor, we would strike. Today’s solution of the probability equation, substituting this week’s data for the variables, gives an answer of two point one three. I propose to set the hour of execution. How say you?”

It was a delayed shock; no one said anything. Hope delayed too long makes reality hard to believe—and all of these men had waited for years, some for most of a lifetime. Then they were on their feet, shouting, sobbing, cursing, pounding each others’ backs.

Huxley sat still until they quieted, an odd little smile on his face. Then he stood up and said quietly, “I don’t think we need poll the sentiment. I will set the hour after I have—”

“General! If you please! I do not agree.” It was Zeb’s boss, Sector General Novak, Chief of Psych. Huxley stopped speaking and the silence fairly ached. I was as stunned as the rest.

Then Huxley said quietly, “This council usually acts by unanimous consent. We have long since arrived at the method for setting the date…but I know that you would not disagree without good reason. We will listen now to Brother Novak.”

Novak came slowly forward and faced them. “Brethren,” he began, running his eyes over bewildered and hostile faces, “you know me, and you know I want this thing as much as you do. I have devoted the last seventeen years to it—it has cost me my family and my home. But I can’t let you go ahead without warning you, when I am sure that the time is not yet. I think—no, I
know
with mathematical certainty that we are not ready for revolution.” He had to wait and hold up both hands for silence; they did not want to hear him. “Hear me out! I concede that all military plans are ready. I admit that if we strike now we have a strong probability of being able to seize the country. Nevertheless we are not ready—”

“Why not?”

“—because a majority of the people still believe in the established religion, they believe in the Divine authority of the Prophet. We can seize power but we can’t hold it.”

“The Devil we won’t!”

“
Listen
to me! No people was ever held in subjection long except through their own consent. For three generations the American people have been conditioned from cradle to grave by the cleverest and most thorough psycho-technicians in the world. They
believe
! If you turn them loose now, without adequate psychological preparation, they will go back to their chains…like a horse returning to a burning barn. We can win the revolution but it will be followed by a long and bloody civil war—which we will lose!”

He stopped, ran a trembling hand across his eyes, then said to Huxley, “That’s all.”

Several were on their feet at once. Huxley pounded for order, then recognized Wing General Penoyer.

Penoyer said, “I’d like to ask Brother Novak a few questions.”

“Go ahead.”

“Can his department tell us what percentage of the population is sincerely devout?”

Zebadiah, present to assist his chief, looked up; Novak nodded and he answered, “Sixty-two per cent, plus-or-minus three per cent.”

“And the percentage who secretly oppose the government whether we have enlisted them or not?”

“Twenty-one per cent plus, proportional error. The balance can be classed as conformists, not devout but reasonably contented.”

“By what means were the data obtained?”

“Surprise hypnosis of representative types.”

“Can you state the trend?”

“Yes, sir. The government lost ground rapidly during the first years of the present depression, then the curve flattened out. The new tithing law and to some extent the vagrancy decrees were unpopular and the government again lost ground before the curve again flattened at a lower level. About that time business picked up a little but we simultaneously started our present intensified propaganda campaign; the government has been losing ground slowly but steadily the past fifteen months.”

“And what does the first derivative show?”

Zeb hesitated and Novak took over. “You have to figure the second derivative,” he answered in a strained voice; “the rate is accelerating.”

“Well?”

The Psych Chief answered firmly but reluctantly, “On extrapolation, it will be three years and eight months before we can risk striking.”

Penoyer turned back to Huxley. “I have my answer, sir. With deep respect to General Novak and his careful scientific work, I say—win while we can! We may never have another chance.”

He had the crowd with him. “Penoyer is right! If we wait, we’ll be betrayed.”—“You can’t hold a thing like this together forever.”—“I’ve been underground ten years; I don’t want to be buried here.”—“Win…and worry about making converts when we control communications.”—“Strike now! Strike now!”

Huxley let them carry on, his own face expressionless, until they had it out of their systems. I kept quiet myself, since I was too junior to be entitled to a voice here, but I went along with Penoyer; I couldn’t see waiting nearly four years.

I saw Zeb talking earnestly with Novak. They seemed to be arguing about something and were paying no attention to the racket. But when Huxley at last held up a hand for silence Novak left his place and hurried up to Huxley’s elbow. The General listened for a moment, seemed almost annoyed, then undecided. Novak crooked a finger at Zeb, who came running up. The three whispered together for several moments while the council waited.

Finally Huxley faced them again. “General Novak has proposed a scheme which may change the whole situation. The Council is recessed until tomorrow.”

Novak’s plan (or Zeb’s, though he never admitted authorship) required a delay of nearly two months, to the date of the annual Miracle of the Incarnation. For what was contemplated was no less than tampering with the Miracle itself. In hindsight it was an obvious and probably essential stratagem; the psych boss was right. In essence, a dictator’s strength depends not upon guns but on the faith his people place in him. This had been true of Caesar, of Napoleon, of Hitler, of Stalin. It was necessary to strike first at the foundation of the Prophet’s power: the popular belief that he ruled by direct authority of God.