For Us, The Living

XII

For the next several days Perry reveled in his new-found freedom. He made a number of trips purely for the pleasure of being out and free. Sometimes one or both of the girls accompanied him, more often he went alone. He made a practice of telling Olga or someone in authority where he was going and when he expected to return, but met with no objection to any of his plans. His trips were varied. By now he had practically complete familiarity with the customs of the country and could get around even in a metropolis without arousing comment. He spent several days in San Francisco just looking around and getting acquainted. He dropped in at Berkeley and looked up Master Cathcart, who appeared glad to see him and showed him around the University. Perry was struck by the un-collegiate quality of the place. There seemed to be few students and little of the ant hill activity that characterized the academic institutions of his day. He asked Cathcart what the enrollment was. Cathcart answered, "About fifty thousand." Perry commented that it must be vacation time. The older man said, no, but that few students were actually in residence at Berkeley. He explained that they made a practice of actually being present only when doing laboratory work, inasmuch as the lecture method had been superseded by the stereoscopic record, such as Perry had used. On the other hand there were close personal relationships between teachers and pupils, as most of the direct instruction was of the seminar rather than the classroom variety. Instruction was characterized by discussion groups and guidance in study rather than the cut-and-dried cram-and-exam methods of 1939.

At this time Cathcart was preparing to leave for a trip to Washington to hear the closing debates of the session of Congress. This was primarily a vacation as he could have heard them as well or better in his home and studied the records at his leisure. But, as he told Perry, he liked to browse around the sessions at Washington and gossip with the officials in order to get the smell of the place. He felt that it helped him when interpreting the current scene to others.

He learned that Perry had not yet been to Washington and invited him to come along. Perry explained somewhat diffidently that he was not entirely a free agent. However a call to Master Hedrick cleared that difficulty and Perry found himself headed for the Bay Rocket Port.

This was Perry's first trip by rocket. He spent the three hours as busy as a small boy with two ice cream cones. A transparent bulkhead separated the passengers' seats from the navigation compartment. Perry placed himself in the first row of seats and tried to figure out the technique of the controls. In place of a stick the principal controls seemed to be a double bank of keys arranged above and below a flange that projected from under the instrument board. Perry asked Cathcart the reason for this peculiar arrangement, but the historian admitted that he had taken it for granted. Cathcart rang for the stewardess and held a short conference with her. She looked dubious but entered the navigation room, and got the ear of one of the pilots, who glanced back through the bulkhead and met Perry's eyes. Then he said something to the stewardess, who nodded and re-entered the passenger compartment. She stopped by Cathcart and reported:

"The Skipper says your friend can ride in the inspector's seat if he's strapped in and keeps quiet during maneuvering."

Perry arose, his face radiant, thanked the young woman and turned to Cathcart. "Sure you don't mind?"

"Not at all. I'd like to catch a nap."

The stewardess let him into the navigation room, and strapped him into a chair just behind and about ten inches higher than the pilot's and navigator's seats. The skipper gave him a curt nod and turned away. Perry followed his glance, saw the field lights turn red, then a light ahead showed green in double flashes. The skipper reached out and pinched a pair of control buttons between thumb and forefinger. A buzzer sounded and a transparency flashed, 'PASENJERS STRAP IN'. Perry felt his own safety belt. The pilot pinched another pair of buttons, then several more in rapid succession. Perry felt heavy and a cloud of white smoke blotted out the view ports. It cleared away almost immediately, and the ground appeared far below. San Francisco vanished beneath them. The pilot's hands moved nervously among the controls. Perry watched the numbers click past on the altigraph, two thousand—three—five—nine—thirteen—up and up. At twenty thousand meters the pilot leveled off and accelerated, faster and faster, until seventeen hundred kilometers per hour was reached. The light in the car had taken on an unreal quality, like the glares and sharp shadows of a welder's arc. Outside the sky was a deep purple and stars shown clearly and without twinkling. Just ahead he saw the sickle of Leo beginning to rise. He twisted around in his seat and attempted to see the sun, but it was obscured by the stern of the ship. He was forced to content himself with imagining what the solar prominences and spots might be like. He recalled the warning printed on his ticket: 'DANJER! OBTAN DARK GLASES FROM STUARDES BEFORE VUING SON' and he had neglected to obtain dark glasses from the stewardess. Below the ground flowed past in plastic miniature, each detail sharp. It looked remarkably like the illuminated strip map that unrolled on the instrument board. A glowing red dot floated on the surface of the map. Perry recognized this as a dead reckoner of some sort and wondered how the trick was done. Air speed? Hardly. Earth induction? Possible but difficult, especially in latitude made good. Radio? More likely, but still a clever trick.

When the pilot was satisfied with his combination, Perry ventured to speak. "Excuse me." The pilot glanced back and his grimness relaxed a trifle.

"Oh, it's you. I'd forgotten you were here. Want something?"

"Just one thing. Why are all your controls double?"

"As a matter of fact they are quadruple, in parallel-series around each pilot's chair. I suppose you mean why the pinch-buttons."

"Yes, why not ordinary push buttons?"

"Each side is an ordinary push button, but you have to pinch a pair with thumb and forefinger to cause any action. Look." He ran his finger along the key board, pressing a dozen or more keys. Nothing happened. "It's a safety device against freezing on the keyboard at high acceleration. I could pass out and fall face down on the keyboard and never set off a jet. My partner could then land by squeezing the keys on his board. For example, if we had ordinary push buttons and I pressed the combination for maximum breaking, I'd be pushed hard upon the board by my own momentum, and I might not be able to release the controls. With this system I have to will to pinch or nothing happens."

"Thanks. Say, how long does it take to learn to be a rocket pilot?"

The pilot looked at him curiously but answered his question. "If you are temperamentally fitted, three months should do. There is always more to learn."

The stewardess stuck in her head. "Ready for your tea, Skipper? And you, Jack?" The navigator gave a taciturn nod. The skipper assented, and said to Perry, "I think you'd better have your tea in the passenger compartment."

Perry unstrapped himself and returned to Cathcart, who nodded greeting. "See what you wanted to?"

"Yes, and was dismissed most diplomatically."

Sandwiches, tea, and little cakes brought on sleep. Perry was awakened by the deceleration warning as they circled over Washington. Perry stared out. Here was a place which time had not changed beyond recognition. The Potomac and the tidal basin were below. There stood the Washington Monument and Lincoln still stared into the reflecting pool. The White House still sprawled among the budding trees, serene and cool. And on Capitol Hill the ponderous Greco-Roman majesty of the Capitol still stood, far-flung, solid, and enduring. He choked and sudden tears came to his eyes.

The visit to Washington was amusing but without special incident. The constitutional changes were not apparent on the surface. The city was changed in many details, but the landmarks remained. The streets were unroofed, and, in the absence of surface traffic, constituted popular promenades and lounging places. Perry wandered about them and visited the museums and art galleries. He spent one afternoon in the gallery of the House listening without much interest to the debate Cathcart had come to hear. The president had directed the building of a fleet of fast, unarmed, long-radii patrol vessels, both air and surface, to maintain a constant patrol from the Aleutians through Hawaii and down to Ecuador, and ear-marked a portion of the dividend for that purpose. The President's plan was practically unopposed, but one group wished to enlarge it with a new issue of money to provide more heavy armored short radii rockets for coast defense. The debate dragged on and a compromise seemed likely. As Perry was no longer in the navy this didn't interest him much, especially as the type of armament proposed was obviously unsuited for foreign war. He concluded that the American people were both determined not to fight and determined to let the whole world know that they were prepared to resist invasion.

That night at dinner at the New Mayflower, Cathcart asked him what impressed him most about the Capitol. Perry replied that it was the Congressmen, and explained that they appeared to be a much more able body of men than was commonly reputed to be the case in 1939. Cathcart nodded.

"That was probably the case," he said. "If you got good elective officials in your day, it was a happy accident, better than you deserved."

"To what do you attribute the change?" asked Perry.

"To a number of things. To my mind there is no single answer. The problem involved is the very heart of the political problem and has been plaguing philosophers for thousands of years. Plato and Confucius each took a crack at it and each missed it by a mile. Aesop stated it sardonically in the fable of the convention of the mice, when he inquired gently, 'Who is to bell the cat?'. The present improvement over your period can, I think, be attributed to correcting a number of things which were obviously wrong without worrying too much about theory. In the first place all of our elective officials are well paid nowadays and most of them have full retirement. In the second place, every official makes a full statement of his personal finances on taking office, annually, and again on leaving office. In the third place, public service has gradually been built up as a career of honor, like the military and naval services in your day. A scholarship to the School of Social Science is as sought after as an appointment to West Point was in 1939. Most of our undersecretaries and executives of every sort are graduates. They are recruited for they have the same reputation for efficiency and incorruptability that your West Pointers and Annapolis men have always had.

"Of course you can't teach creative policy making in a school. The top men still come from everywhere. Our complete system of social security makes it possible for any man with a taste for it to enter politics, and several arbitrary changes in the code of customs have encouraged them to do so. Campaign funds and permissible types of campaigning are now restricted enormously, a degree of change comparable to the difference between your day and the elections at the beginning of the nineteenth century when a man announced his vote to a teller at the polls whereupon the favored candidate shook hands with him and gave him a drink of whiskey. Nowadays our object is to ensure that each voter has a chance to know the record, appearance and proposals of each candidate. They must use the franking privilege jointly. They must go on the air together, they must refrain from certain forms of emotional campaigning. The people are better able to judge than they were in 1939 because of the improvement in our educational methods. They are not as subject to word magic, not so easily spellbound.

"Possibly the most important change that has improved the chances of obtaining honesty and efficiency in government was the extension of civil rights after the defeat of the Neo-Puritans. You will recall the new constitutional principle that forbade the state to pass laws forbidding citizens to commit acts which did not in fact damage other citizens. Well, that meant the end of the blue laws, and a grisly unconscious symbiosis between the underworld and the organized churches—for the greatest bulwark of the underworld were always the moral creeds of the churches. You still think that unlikely? Consider this: The churches had great political power. It was almost impossible to be elected to office if the churches disapproved. It is a matter of fact, easily checked, that every public leader of every corrupt political machine was invariably a prominent member of a large, powerful sect. He always contributed heavily to the church, especially to its charities. On the other hand every church stood publicly for honesty in government. At the same time they demanded of the government that there be suppressed all manner of acts, harmless in themselves, but offensive to the creeds of the churches. Churches and the clergy were usually willing to accept the word for the deed. Protestations of integrity, combined with tithing and psalm singing, plus a willingness to enact into law the prejudices of the churches, were usually all that the churches required of a candidate. On the other hand the gang leaders were hardened realists. They cared nothing about a candidate's appearance of pious virtue if he could be depended on to protect from prosecution the gang that supported him. Furthermore they were anxious to have blue laws on the books as long as they were not enforced. Illicitness was the thing that made most of their stock in trade valuable, and they knew it. Where in your 1930's was there a gang leader who urged repeal of the eighteenth amendment? The very blue laws they broke gave them a weapon to destroy competition, for the same machine which gave them protection could be used to destroy an enemy who did not own a piece of the local government. And so it went for years, in every large American city, the gangsters and the preachers, each for his own purpose, supported and elected the same candidates. It was inevitable, because the churches demanded of government things that government cannot or should not perform—things that come under the head of making a man be 'good' for the good of his soul, instead of interfering only to prevent him damaging another. The churches had a thousand rationalizations to prove that their nosey-parker interference was necessary for the welfare of all.

"For example, Brown must be stopped from peddling pornography, because, if he does, he will harm the purchaser, Smith. But note that Smith is to be Saved from harm for the good of Smith's soul, as defined by the churches. Sometimes the concatenation is very involved, but in every case you will find at the end the churches attempting to use the state to coerce the citizen into complying with a creed which the churches have been unsuccessful in persuading the citizen to accept without coercion. Wherever that occurs you have a condition which inevitably results in the breeding of a powerful underworld which will seize the local government, and frequently, through control of local political machines, seize state and national governments as well.

"One is always asked, 'What about the sweet innocent children? Are they to have no protection?' Certainly not, but many of the things which were believed to be bad for children were bad only in the unventilated minds of the religious moralists. For example, we now realize that it is not bad for children to be used to naked human bodies—on the contrary it is very unhealthy for them not to be. We know that knowledge of the objective fact of bisexual procreation is not harmful to children—on the contrary if we satisfy their natural curiosity by telling them lies, we are building trouble for the future. But we do know that nicotine and alcohol do more physical harm to children than to adults and we punish the adult who provides them with such. By the same token we look with disfavor on a church which fills children's minds with sadistic tales of a cruel vengeful tribe of barbarians under the guise of teaching them the revealed word of God. We disapprove of exhibiting pictures and statues of a man spiked to a wooden frame. I say we disapprove—but we do not forbid, for the damage, though probably greater than habit-forming drugs, is hard to prove, but we do insist on some years of instruction through the public development centers to clean their minds of the sadism, phobias, simple misstatements of fact, faulty identifications, and confusion of abstractions that their preachers and priests have labored to instill."

"Is the state actively fighting religion?"

"Of course not. To educate in opposition to particular dogmas of particular sects is not to fight religion. But if a church persists in teaching anti-social doctrine, the state reserves the right to combat those doctrines with argument in rebuttal. It is necessary to remember that head-hunting is a religious rite. Shall we tolerate it? The most popular sects of your day practiced a form of symbolic cannibalism. Is the state obligated to stand in awe of that rather nauseating myth? Our answer is simple. Any religion is free to preach and practice but the state and all individuals have an equal right to combat their doctrines by any peaceful means."

"Haven't some sects attempted to prevent any non-conformist instruction of their children?"

"Yes, some extreme cases have preferred to go to Coventry, whole sects. They seceded from us, so instead of fighting, we seceded from them. But we were talking about politics and here we are on religion. What was I saying? Oh yes, why we get better men into office than we used to. I think I've covered most of the reasons. The destruction of the political power of finance capitalism was a big factor, naturally. Required voting helps—only those can draw the dividend who vote, and the franchise calls for a rather stiff course in the details of the mechanics of government."

"Suppose one doesn't pass the examination, does he lose his vote?"

"There is no examination. If there were, the party in power might use it to disenfranchise the opposition, just as such laws were used to disenfranchise the negroes in the South in your day. We just make sure that the citizen has been thoroughly instructed in the machinery of government. All these things help to make a more intelligent electorate and bring out better candidates. In spite of everything we get a certain percentage of stupid, or unqualified, or small-souled men in office. This isn't Utopia, you know. This is just the United States of America in 2086.