Day After Tomorrow

XIII

On awakening in the morning, Larry Woolford stared glumly at the ceiling for long moments before dragging himself from bed. This was, he decided, the damnedest assignment he’d ever been on. In his day he had trekked through South America, Common Europe, a dozen African states, and even areas of Southern Asia, combatting Commie pressures here, fellow-traveler organizations there, disruptive plots hatched in the Soviet Complex in another place. On his home grounds in the United States he’d covered everything from out and out Soviet espionage to exposing Communist activities of complexions from the faintest of pinks to the rosiest Trotskyite red. But, he decided, he’d never expected to wind up after a bunch of weirds whose sole actionable activity to date seemed to be the counterfeiting of a fantastic amount of legal tender which thus far they were making no attempt to pass.

He got out of bed and went through the rituals of showering, shaving and dressing, of coffee, sausages and eggs, toast and more coffee.

What amazed Larry Woolford was the shrug-it-off manner in which the Boss seemed to accept this underground Movement and its admittedly subversive goals—whatever they were. Carry the Boss’ reasoning to its ultimate and subversion was perfectly all right, just so it didn’t involve force and violence. If he was in his chief’s position, he would have thrown the full resources of the department into tracking down these crackpots. As it was, he, Larry Woolford, was the only operative on the job.

He needed a new angle on which to work. Steve Hackett was undoubtedly handling the tracing down of the counterfeit with all of the resources of the Secret Service. Larry didn’t know much about such activities.

He finished his final cup of coffee in the living room and took up the pipe he was currently breaking in. He loaded it automatically from the humidor and lit it with his pocket lighter. Three drags, and he tossed it back to the table, fumbled in a drawer and located a pack of cigarettes. His status group might be currently smoking Irish briars in public, but, let’s face it, he hated the goddamned things. He couldn’t keep himself from inhaling, and pipe tobacco was never built for inhaling, it was too strong.

He sat down before the phone screen and dialed the offices of the Sun-Post. Eventually he got Sam Sokolski who beat him to the punch this time.

Sam said, “You shouldn’t drink alone. Listen, Larry, why don’t you get in touch with Alcoholics Anonymous? It’s a great outfit. Kind of a mutual masturbation society. You sit around and have kind of a circle jerk.”

“You ought to know,” Larry growled. “If you’d just stop sucking on bottles, you’d probably have prospects of becoming some sort of newspaper man. Look, as science columnist for that rag you work for, you probably come in touch with a lot of eggheads.”

“Laddy-buck, you have said it,” Sam said. “In my life there are more eggheads than eggs, of which I eat two every morning.”

“Fine. Now look, what I want to know is have you ever heard—even the slightest of rumors—about an organization called the Movement?”

“What’d’ya mean, slightest of rumors? Half the weirds I run into are interested in the outfit. Get two or three intellectuals, scientists, technicians, or what have you, together and they start knocking themselves out on the pros and cons of the Movement.”

Larry Woolford goggled at him. “You must be kidding. I’ve never even heard of them until the last few days.”

The other was mystified. “Why should I kid you? As a matter of fact, I was thinking of doing a column one of these days on Voss and this Movement of his.”

“Voss and this movement of his!” Larry blurted. “What do you mean by that?”

“Sure,” Sam said. “Professor Peter Voss, over at the university. He’s the top leader.”

“Oh, great,” Larry growled. “Look, Sam, eventally there is probably a story in this for you. Right now, though, we’re trying to keep the lid on it. Could you brief me a little on this Movement? What are they trying to put over? How do they expect to accomplish it?”

“I seem to spend half of my time briefing you on information any semi-moron ought to be up on,” the newspaperman told him nastily. “However, briefly, they’re in revolt against social-label judgements. They think it’s fouling up the country and that eventually it’ll result in the Russkies passing us in all the fields that really count, although the Russkies have a certain amount of the same situation themselves.”

“I keep running into this term,” Larry complained. “What do you mean, social-label judgements, and how can they possible louse up the country?”

Sam said, “I was present a month or so ago when Voss gave an informal lecture to a group of twenty or so. Here’s one of the examples he used.

“Everybody wants to be rated on a (1) personal, or, (2) social-label basis, depending on which basis is to his greater advantage. The Black who is a no-good, lazy, objectionable person demands to be accepted because Blacks should not be discriminated against. The highly competent, hard working, honest and productive Black wants to be accepted because he is hard-working, honest and productive—and should be so accepted.

“See what I mean? This social-label system is intended to relieve the individual of the necessity of judging, and the consequences of being judged. If you have poor judgement, and are forced to rely on your own judgement, you’re almost sure to go under. So persons of poor judgement support our social-label system. If you’re a louse, and are correctly judged as being a louse, you’d prefer that the social dictum ‘Human beings are never lice’ should apply.”

Larry said impatiently, “What in the devil’s this got to do with the race between this country and the Russkies?”

Sam said, his voice as patient as his caller’s was the opposite, “Voss and the Movement he leads contend that a social-label system winds up with incompetents running the country in all fields. Often, incompetent scientists are in charge of our research; incompetent doctors in charge of our health; incompetent politicians run our government; incompetent teachers, leaden with social-labels, teach our youth. Our young people are going to college to secure a degree, not an education. It’s the label that counts, not the reality.

“Voss contends that it’s getting progressively worse. That we’re sinking into an equivalent of a ritual-taboo, tribal social-like situation. This is the system the low-level human wants, yearns for and seeks. A situation in which no one’s judgement is of any use. Then his lack of judgement is no handicap to him.”

The newspaperman went on. “According to members of the Movement, today the tribesman type is seeking to reduce civilization back to ritual-taboo tribalism wherein no one man’s judgement is of any value. The union wants advancement based on seniority, not on ability and judgement. The persons with whom you associate judge you by the amount of money you possess, the family from which you come, the degrees you hold, by social-labels—not by your own proven abilities. Down with judgement! is the cry.”

“It sounds awfully weird to me,” Larry grumbled in deprecation.

Sam shrugged. “There’a lot of sense in it, so far as I’m concerned. What the Movement wants is to develop a socio-economic system in which judgement produces a maximum advantage.”

Larry sighed and said, “What gets me is that you talk as though half the country was all caught up in debating this Movement. But I haven’t even heard of it, neither has my department chief, nor any of my colleagues, so far as I know. Why isn’t anything about it in the papers, or on the Tri-Di?”

Sam said, “As a matter of fact, I took in Mort Lenny’s show the other night and he made some cracks about it. But it’s not the sort of thing that’s even meant to become popular with the man in the street. To put it bluntly, Voss and his people aren’t particularly keen about the present conception of the democratic ideal. According to him, true democracy can only be exercised by peers and society today isn’t composed of peers. If you have one hundred people, twenty of them competent, intelligent persons, eighty of them untrained, incompetent and less than intelligent, then it’s ridiculous to have the eighty dictate to the twenty.”

Larry looked accusingly at his long-time friend. “You know, Sam, you sound as though you approve of all this.”

Sam said patiently, “I listen to it all, Larry my boy. And, like I said, I think there’a lot of sense in it. There’s only one drawback.”

“And that is?”

“How’s it going to be put over? This social-label system the Movement complains about was bad enough ten years ago. But look how much worse it is today. It’s a progressive thing. And, remember, it’s to the advantage of the incompetent. Since the incompetents predominate, you’re going to have a hard time starting up a system based on judgement and ability.”

Larry thought about it for a moment.

Sam said, “Look, I’m working, Larry. Was there anything else?”

Larry said, “You wouldn’t know where I could get hold of Voss, would you?”

“At his home, I imagine. If I recalled, he lives somewhere over in Baltimore. Not the swank apartment area around Druid Hill, but the older section near Paterson Park. Or, you could probably contact him at the University.”

“He’s disappeared. We’re looking for him.”

Sam laughed. “Gone underground, eh? The old boy is getting romantic.”

“Does he have any particular friends who might be putting him up?”

Sam thought that over for a moment. “There’s Frank Nostrand. You know, that rocket expert who was fired when he got into the big hassle with Senator McCord.”

When Sam Sokolski had flicked off, Larry stared at the vacant phone screen for a long moment, assimilating what the other had told him. He was astonished that an organization such as the Movement would have spread to the extent it evidently had through the country’s intellectual circles, through the scientifically and technically trained, without his department being keenly aware of it.

One result, he decided glumly, of labeling everything contrary to the status quo as weird and dismissing it with contempt. Admittedly, that would have been his own reaction only a week ago. For that matter he still thought that Professor Peter Voss and his group were on the weird side. It wasn’t as simple as all that, this being opposed to the status label. He’d worked hard for his own status labels, he told himself virtuously.

But suppose that he’d been at a cocktail party, and had drifted up to a group who were arguing about social labels judgements and the need to develop a movement to change society’s use of them. The discussion would have gone in one ear and out the other and he would have muttered inwardly, “Weirds,” and drifted away to get himself another vodka martini.

Larry snorted the subject away and dialed the Department of Records. He’d never heard of Frank Nostrand before, nor of his run-in with Senator McCord, the current top witch-hunter when it came to subversives, which was interesting in itself. Was Nostrand considered a subversive? He got information.

The bright young thing who answered seemed to have a harried expression untypical of Records employees. Larry said to her, “I’d like the brief dossier of a Mr. Frank Nostrand who is evidently an expert on rocketry. The only other thing I know about him is that he recently got in the news as a result of a controversy with Senator McCord.”

“Just a moment, sir,” the bright young thing said.

She touched buttons and reached into a delivery chute. When her eyes came up to meet his again, they were more than ever harried. They were absolutely confused.

“Mr. Franklin Howard Nostrand,” she said. “Currently employed by Madison Air as a rocket research technician.”

“That must be him,” Larry said. “I’m in a hurry, Miss. What is his background?”

Her eyes rounded. “It says… it says he’s an Archbishop of the Anglican Church.”

Larry Woolford looked at her.

She looked back, pleadingly.

Larry scowled and said, “His university degrees, please.”

Her eyes darted to the report and she swallowed. “A bachelor in Home Economics, sir.”

“Look here, Miss,” Larry snarled. “How could a Home Economics degree result in his becoming either an Archbishop or a rocket technician?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” she said, confused. “But that’s what his dossier says.”

Larry was fuming but there was not point in taking it out on this junior employee of the Department of Records. He snapped, “Just give me his address, please.”

She said agonizingly, “Sir, it says, Lhasa, Tibet.”

A red light flicked at the side of his phone and he said to her, “I’ll call you back. I’m getting a priority call.”

He flicked her off, and flicked the incoming call in. It was LaVerne Polk. She seemed to be on the harried side, too.

“Larry,” she said. “You’d better get over here soonest. Hellz-a-poppin’.”

“What’s up. LaVerne?”

“This Movement,” she said. “It seems to have started moving! The Boss says to get over here right away.”