Master of Life and Death

XVII

Walton stepped off the jetbus at Broadway and West 382nd Street, paused for a moment beneath a street lamp, and fingered his chin to see if his mask were on properly. It was.

Three youths stood leaning against a nearby building, “Could you tell me where the block meeting’s being held?” Walton asked.

“Down the street and turn left. You a telefax man?”

“Just an interested citizen,” Walton said. “Thanks for the directions.”

It was easy to see where the block meeting was; Walton saw streams of determined-looking men and women entering a bulky old building just off 382nd Street. He joined them and found himself carried along into the auditorium.

Nervously he found a seat. The auditorium was an old one, predominantly dark brown and cavernous, with row after row of hard wooden folding chairs. Someone was adjusting a microphone on stage. A sharp metallic whine came over the public address system.

“Testing. Testing, one two three…”

“It’s all right, Max!” someone yelled from the rear. Walton didn’t turn around to look.

A low undercurrent of murmuring was audible. It was only 1815; the meeting was not due to start for another fifteen minutes, but the hall was nearly full, with more than a thousand of the local residents already on hand.

The fifteen minutes passed slowly. Walton listened carefully to the conversations around him; no one was discussing the Venus situation. Apparently his cloud of censorship had been effective. He had instructed Percy to keep all word of the disaster from the public until the 2100 newsblares. By that time, the people would have been exposed to the indoctrinating kaleidowhirl program at 2000, and their reaction would be accordingly more temperate—he hoped.

Also, releasing the news early would have further complicated the survey Walton was trying to make by attending this public meeting. The Index of Public Confusion increased factorially; one extra consideration for discussion and Walton’s task would be hopelessly difficult.

At exactly 1830, a tall, middle-aged man stepped out on the stage. He seized the microphone as if it were a twig and said, “Hello, folks. Glad to see you’re all here tonight. This is an important meeting for us all. In case some of you don’t know me—and I do see some new faces out there—I’m Dave Forman, president of the West 382nd‘ Street Association. I also run a little law business on the side, just to help pay the rent.” (Giggles.)

“As usual in these meetings,” Forman went on, “we’ll have a brief panel discussion, and then I’ll throw the thing open to you folks for floor discussion. The panelists tonight are people you all know—Sadie Hargreave, Dominic Campobello, Rudi Steinfeld. Come on out here, folks.”

The panelists appeared on the stage diffidently. Sadie Hargreave was a short, stout, fierce-looking little woman; Campobello was chunky, balding, Steinfeld tall and ascetic. Walton was astonished that there should be such camaraderie here. Was it all synthetic? It didn’t seem that way.

He had always remained aloof, never mingling with his neighbors in the gigantic project where he lived, never suspecting the existence of community life on this scale. But, somehow, community life had sprung up in this most gargantuan of cities. Organizations within each project, within each block perhaps, had arisen, converting New York into an interlocking series of small towns. I ought to investigate the grass roots more often, Walton thought. Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid having a night on the town.

“Hello, folks,” Sadie Hargreave said aggressively. “I’m glad I can talk to you tonight. Gosh, I want to speak out. I think it’s crazy to let these thing-men from outer space push us around. I for one feel we ought to take strong action against that space world.”

Cries of “Yeah! Yeah! Go to it, Sadie!” rose from the audience.

Skillfully she presented three inflammatory arguments in favor of war with Dirna, backing up each with a referent of high emotional connotation. Walton watched her performance with growing admiration. The woman was a born public relations technician. It was too bad she was on the other side of the fence.

He saw the effect she had: people were nodding in agreement, grimacing vehemently, muttering to themselves. The mood of the meeting, he gathered, was overwhelmingly in favor of war if Dirna did not yield New Earth.

Dominic Campobello began his address by inviting all and sundry to his barber shop; this was greeted with laughter. Then he launched into a discourse on Popeek as an enemy of mankind. A few catcalls, Walton noted, but again chiefly approval. Campobello seemed sincere.

The third man, Rudi Steinfeld, was a local music teacher. He, too, spoke out against Popeek, though in a restrained, dryly intellectual manner. People began yawning. Steinfeld cut his speech short.

It was now 1900. In one hour Percy’s kaleidowhirl program would be screened.

Walton stayed at the block meeting until 1930, listening to citizen after citizen rise and heap curses upon Popeek, Dirna, or Walton, depending on where his particular ire lay. At 1930 Walton rose and left the hall.

He phoned Percy. “I’m on West 382nd Street. Just attended a block meeting. I’d say the prevailing sentiment runs about ninety percent again us. We don’t have the people backing our program any more, Lee.”

“We never did. But I think we’ll nail ‘em now. The kaleidowhirl’s ready to go, and it’s a honey. And I think Citizen will sell ’em too! We’re on our way, Roy.”

“I hope so,” Walton said.

He was unable to bring himself to watch Percy’s program, even though he reached his room in time that night. He knew there could be no harm in watching—at least not for him—but the idea of voluntarily submitting his mind to external tampering was too repugnant to accept.

Instead he spent the hour dictating a report on the block meeting, for benefit of his pollster staff. When he was done with that, he turned to the 2100 edition of Citizen, which came clicking from the telefax slot right on schedule.

He had to look hard for the Venus story. Finally he found it tucked away at the bottom of the sheet.

Walton chuckled. They may be dead, indeed! By now Lang and his team, and the rescue mission as well, lay dead under showers of radioactive formaldehyde, and Venus had been turned into a blazing hell ten times less livable than it had been before.

Percy had mishandled the news superbly. For one thing, he had carefully neglected to link Lang with Popeek in any way. That was good connotative thinking. It would be senseless to identify Popeek in the public mind with disasters or fiascos of any kind.

For another, the skimpy insignificance of the piece implied that it had been some natural phenomenon that sent Venus up in flames, not the fumbling attempts of the terraformers. Good handling there, too.

Walton felt cheerful. He slept soundly, knowing that the public consciousness was being properly shaped.

By 0900, when he arrived at his office, the pollsters had reported a ten percent swing in public opinion, in the direction of Popeek and Walton. At 1000, Citizen hit the slots with an extra announcing that prospects for peaceful occupation of New Earth looked excellent. The editorial praised Walton. The letters-to-the-editor column, carefully fabricated by Lee Percy, showed a definite upswing of opinion.

The trend continued, and it was contagious. By 1100, when Walton left theCullenBuilding and caught a jet-copter for United Nations Headquarters, the pro-Popeek trend in public opinion was almost overwhelming.

The copter put down before the gleaming green-glass facade of UN Headquarters; Walton handed the man a bill and went inside, where a tense-faced Ludwig was waiting for him.

“They started early,” Ludwig said. “It’s been going on since 1000.”

“How do things look?”

“I’m puzzled, Roy. Couple of die-hards are screaming for your scalp, but you’re getting help from unexpected quarters. Old Mogens Snorresen ofDenmark suddenly got up and said it was necessary for the safety of mankind that we give you a permanent appointment as director of Popeek.”

“Snorresen?But hasn’t he been the one who wanted me bounced?”

Ludwig nodded. “That’s what I mean. The climate is changing, definitely changing. Ride the crest, Roy. The way things look now, you may end up being swept into office for life.”

They entered the giant Assembly hall. At the dais, a black-faced man with bright teeth was speaking.

“Who’s that?” Walton whispered.

“Malcolm Nbono, the delegate from Ghana. He regards you as a sort of saint for our times.”

Walton slipped into a seat in the gallery and said, “Let’s listen from here before we go down below. I want to catch my breath.”

The young man from Ghana was saying, “…Crisis points are common to humanity. Many years ago, when my people came from their colonial status and achieved independence, we learned that painstaking negotiations and peaceful approaches are infinitely more efficacious than frontal attack by violent means. In my eyes, Roy Walton is an outstanding exponent of this philosophy. I urge his election as director of the Bureau of Population Equalization.”

A heavy-bearded, ponderous man to Nbono’s right shouted “Bravo!” at that point, and added several thick Scandinavian expletives.

“That’s good old Mogens. The Dane really is on your side this morning,” Ludwig said.

“Must have been watching the kaleidowhirl last night,” Walton murmured.

The delegate from Ghana concluded with a brief tremolo cadenza praising Walton. Walton’s eyes were a little moist; he hadn’t realized he was a saint. Nbono tacked on an abrupt coda and sat down.

“All right,” Walton said. “Let’s go down there.”

They made a grand entrance. Ludwig took his seat behind the neon United States sign, and Walton slid into the unoccupied seat to Ludwig’s right. A definite stir of interest was noticeable.

The secretary-general was presiding—beady-eyed Lars Magnusson of Sweden. “I see Mr. Walton of Popeek has arrived,” he commented. “By a resolution passed unanimously yesterday, we have invited Mr. Walton this morning to address us briefly. Mr. Walton, would you care to speak now?”

“Thank you very much,” Walton said. He rose.

The delegates were staring at him with great interest… and, somewhere behind them, obscured by the bright lights of the cameras, there were, he sensed, a vast multitude of onlookers peering at him from the galleries.

Onlookers who had seen Percy’s kaleidowhirl last night, evidently. A thunderous wave of applause swept down on him. This is too easy, he thought. That kaleidowhirl program seems to have hypnotized everybody.

He moistened his lips.

“Mr. Secretary-General, members of the Assembly, friends: I’m very grateful for this chance to come before you on my own behalf. It’s my understanding that you are to choose a permanent successor to Mr. FitzMaugham today. I offer myself as a candidate for that post.”

He had planned a long, impassioned, semantically loaded speech to sway them, but the happenings thus far this morning convinced him it was unnecessary. The kaleidowhirl had done the work for him.

“My qualifications for the post should be apparent to all. I worked with the late Director FitzMaugham during the formative days of Popeek. Upon his death I succeeded to his post and have efficiently maintained the operation of the Bureau during the eight days since his assassination.

“There are special circumstances which dictate my continuation in office. Perhaps you know of the failure of our terraforming experiments—the destruction of our outpost on Venus, and the permanent damage done to that planet. The failure of this project makes it imperative that we move outward to the stars to relieve our population crisis.”

He took a deep breath. “In exactly four hours,” he said, “a representative of an alien race will land on Earth to confer with the director of Popeek. I cannot stress too greatly the importance of maintaining a continuity of thought and action within our Bureau. Bluntly, it is essential that I be the one who deals with this alien. I ask for your support. Thank you.”

He took his seat again. Ludwig was staring at him, aghast.

“Roy! What kind of a speech was that? You can’t just demand the job! You’ve got to give reasons! You have to—”

“Hush,” Walton said. “Don’t worry about it. Were you watching the kaleidowhirls last night?”

“Me? Of course not!”

Walton grinned. “They were,” he said, gesturing at the other delegates. “I’m not worried.”