If This Goes On

CHAPTER 6

I had joined the Cabal on impulse. Certainly, under the stress of falling in love with Judith and in the excitement of the events that had come rushing over me as a result of meeting her, I had no time for calm consideration. I had not broken with the Church as a result of philosophical decision.

Of course I had known logically that to join the Cabal was to break with all my past ties, but it had not yet hit me emotionally. What was it going to be like never again to wear the uniform of an officer and a gentleman? I had been proud to walk down the street, to enter a public place, aware that all eyes were on me.

I put it out of my mind. The share was in the furrow, my hand was on the plow; there could be no turning back. I was in this until we won or until we were burned for treason.

I found Zeb looking at me quizzically. “Cold feet, Johnnie?”

“No. But I’m still getting adjusted. Things have moved fast.”

“I know. Well, we can forget about retired pay, and our class numbers at the Point no longer matter.” He took off his Academy ring, chucked it in the air, caught it and shoved it into his pocket. “But there is work to be done, old lad, and you will find that this is a military outfit, too—a real one. Personally, I’ve had my fill of spit-and-polish and I don’t care if I never again hear that “Sound off” and “Officers, center!” and “Watchman, what of the night?” manure again. The brethren will make full use of our best talents—and the fight really matters.”

Master Peter van Eyck came to see me a couple of days later. He sat on the edge of my bed and folded his hands over his paunch and looked at me. “Feeling better, son?”

“I could get up if the doctor would let me.”

“Good. We’re shorthanded; the less time a trained officer spends on the sick list the better.” He paused and chewed his lip. “But, son, I don’t know just what to do with you.”

“Eh? Sir?”

“Frankly, you should never have been admitted to the Order in the first place—a military command should not mess around with affairs of the heart. It confuses motivations, causes false decisions. Twice, because we took you in, we have had to show our strength in sorties that-from a strictly military standpoint-should never have happened.”

I did not answer, there was no answer—he was right. My face was hot with embarrassment.

“Don’t blush about it,” he added kindly. “Contrariwise, it is good for the morale of the brethren to strike back occasionally. The point is, what to do with you? You are a stout fellow, you stood up well-but do you really understand the ideals of freedom and human dignity we are fighting for?”

I barely hesitated. “Master—I may not be much of a brain, and the Lord knows it’s true that I’ve never thought much about politics. But I know which side I’m on!”

He nodded. “That’s enough. We can’t expect each man to be his own Tom Paine.”

“His own what?”

“Thomas Paine. But then you’ve never heard of him, of course. Look him up in our library when you get a chance. Very inspiring stuff. Now about your assignment. It would be easy enough to put you on a desk job here-your friend Zebadiah has been working sixteen hours a day trying to straighten out our filing system. But I can’t waste you two on clerical jobs. What is your savvy subject, your specialty?”

“Why, I haven’t had any P.G. work yet, sir.”

“I know. But what did you stand high in? How were you in applied miracles, and mob psychology?”

“I was fairly good in miracles, but I guess I’m too wooden for psychodynamics. Ballistics was my best subject.”

“Well, we can’t have everything. I could use a technician in morale and propaganda, but if you can’t, you can’t.”

“Zeb stood one in his class in mob psychology, Master. The Commandant urged him to aim for the priesthood.”

“I know and we’ll use him, but not here. He is too much interested in Sister Magdalene; I don’t believe in letting couples work together. It might distort their judgments in a pinch. Now about you. I wonder if you wouldn’t make a good assassin?”

He asked the question seriously but almost casually; I had trouble believing it. I had been taught—I had always taken it for granted that assassination was one of the unspeakable sins, like incest, or blasphemy. I blurted out. “The brethren use assassination?”

“Eh? Why not?” Van Eyck studied my face. “I keep forgetting. John, would you kill the Grand Inquisitor if you got a chance?”

“Well-yes, of course. But I’d want to do it in a fair fight.”

“Do you think you will ever be given that chance? Now let’s suppose we are back at the day Sister Judith was arrested by him. Suppose you could stop him by killing him-but only by poisoning him, or knifing him in the back. What would you do?”

I answered savagely, “I would have killed him!”

“Would you have felt any shame, any guilt?”

“None!”

“So. But he is only one of many in this foulness. The man who eats meat cannot sneer at the butcher—and every bishop, every minister of state, every man who benefits from this tyranny, right up to the Prophet himself, is an accomplice before the fact in every murder committed by the inquisitors. The man who condones a sin because he enjoys the result of the sin is equally guilty of the sin. Do you see that?”

Oddly enough, I did see it, for it was orthodox doctrine as I had learned it. I had choked over its new application. But Master Peter was still talking: “But we don’t indulge in vengeance-vengeance still belongs to the Lord. I would never send you against the Inquisitor because you might be tempted to exult in it personally. We don’t tempt a man with sin as a bait. What we do do, what we are doing, is engaging in a calculated military operation in a war already commenced. One key man is often worth a regiment; we pick out that key man and kill him. The bishop in one diocese may be such a man; the bishop in the next state may be just a bungler, propped up by the system. We kill the first, let the second stay where he is. Gradually we are eliminating their best brains. Now—“He leaned toward me. “—do you want a job picking off those key men? It’s very important work.”

It seemed to me that, in this business, someone was continually making me face up to facts, instead of letting me dodge unpleasant facts the way most people manage to do throughout their lives. Could I stomach such an assignment? Could I refuse it-since Master Peter had implied at least that assassins were volunteers-refuse it and try to ignore in my heart that it was going on and that I was condoning it?

Master Peter was right; the man who buys the meat is brother to the butcher. It was squeamishness, not morals-like the man who favors capital punishment but is himself too “good” to fit the noose or swing the axe. Like the person who regards war as inevitable and in some circumstances moral, but who avoids military service because he doesn’t like the thought of killing.

Emotional infants, ethical morons—the left hand must know what the right hand doeth, and the heart is responsible for both. I answered almost at once, “Master Peter, I am ready to serve . . . that way or whatever the brethren decide I can do best.”

“Good man!” He relaxed a bit and went on, “Between ourselves, it’s the job I offer to every new recruit when I’m not sure that he understands that this is not a ball game, but a cause to which he must commit himself without any reservation-his life, his fortune, his sacred honor. We have no place for the man who wants to give orders but who won’t clean the privy.”

I felt relieved. “Then you weren’t seriously picking me out for assassination work?”

“Eh? Usually I am not; few men are fitted for it. But in your case I am quite serious, because we already know that you have an indispensable and not very common qualification.”

I tried to think what was so special about me and could not. “sir?”

“Well you’ll get caught eventually, of course. Three point seven accomplished missions per assassin is what we are running now—a good score, but we ought to do better as suitable men are so scarce. But with you we know already that when they do catch you and put you to the Question, you won’t crack.”

My face must have shown my feelings. The Question? Again? I was still half dead from the first time. Master Peter said kindly, “Of course you won’t have to go up against it again to the fullest. We always protect assassins; we fix it so that they can suicide easily. You don’t need to worry.”

Believe me, having once suffered the Question, his assurance to me did not seem calloused: it was a real comfort. “How, sir?”

“Eh? A dozen different ways. Our surgeons can booby-trap you so that you can die at will in the tightest bonds anyone can put on you. There is the old hollow tooth, of course, with cyanide or such-but the proctors are getting wise to that; sometimes they gag a man’s mouth open. But there are many ways. For example—” He stretched his arms wide and bent them back, but not far. “—if I were to cramp my arms backward in a position a man never assumes without very considerable conscious effort, a little capsule between my shoulder blades would rupture and I would make my last report. Yet you could pound me on the back all day and never break it.”

“Uh . . . were you an assassin, sir?”

“Me? How could I be, in my job? But all of our people in positions of maximum exposure are loaded-it’s the least we can do for them. Besides that, I’ve got a bomb in my belly-He patted his paunch. “—that will take a roomful of people with me if it seems desirable.”

“I could have used one of those last week,” I said emphatically.

“You’re here, aren’t you? Don’t despise your luck. If you need one, you’ll have one.” He stood up and prepared to leave. “In the meantime, don’t give any special thought to being selected as an executioner. The psychological evaluation group will still have to pass on you and they are hard men to convince.”

Despite his words, I did think about it, of course, though it ceased to worry me. I was put on light duty shortly thereafter and spent several days reading proof on the Iconoclast, a smug, mildly critical, little reform-from-within paper which the Cabal used to pave the way for its field missionaries. It was a “Yes, but—” paper, overtly loyal to the Prophet but just the sort of thing to arouse doubt in the minds of the stiff-necked and intolerant. Its acid lay in how a thing was said, not what was said. I had even seen copies of it around the Palace.

I also got acquainted with some of the ramifications of the amazing underground headquarters at New Jerusalem. The department store above us was owned by a Past Grand Master and was an extremely important means of liaison with the outside world. The shelves of the store fed us and clothed us; through taps into the visiphone circuits serving the store commercially we had connection with the outside and could even put in transcontinental calls if the message could be phrased or coded to allow for the likelihood that it would be monitored. The owner’s delivery trucks could be used to spirit fugitives to or from our clandestine quarters—I learned that Judith started her flight that way, with a bill of lading that described her as gum boots. The store’s manifold commercial operations were a complete and plausible blind for our extensive operations.

Successful revolution is Big Business-make no mistake about that. In a modern, complex, and highly industrialized state, revolution is not accomplished by a handful of conspirators whispering around a guttering candle in a deserted ruin. It requires countless personnel, supplies, modern machinery and modern weapons. And to handle these factors successfully there must be loyalty, secrecy, and superlative staff organization.

I was kept busy but my work was fill-in work, since I was awaiting assignment. I had time to dig into the library and I looked up Tom Paine, which led me to Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson and others—a whole new world was opened up to me. I had trouble at first in admitting the possibility of what I read; I think perhaps of all the things a police state can do to its citizens, distorting history is possibly the most pernicious. For example, I learned for the first time that the United States had not been ruled by a bloodthirsty emissary of Satan before the First Prophet arose in his wrath and cast him out-but had been a community of free men, deciding their own affairs by peaceful consent. I don’t mean that the first republic had been a scriptural paradise, but it hadn’t been anything like what I had learned in school.

For the first time in my life I was reading things which had not been approved by the Prophet’s censors, and the impact on my mind was devastating. Sometimes I would glance over my shoulder to see who was watching me, frightened in spite of myself. I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy . . . censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know', the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything-you can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.

My thoughts did not then fall into syllogisms; my head was filled with an inchoate spate of new ideas, each more exciting than the last. I discovered that travel between the planets, almost a myth in my world, had not stopped because the First Prophet had forbidden it as a sin against the omnipotence of God; it had ceased because it had gone into the red financially and the Prophet’s government would not subsidize it. There was even an implied statement that the “infidels” (I still used that word in my mind) still sent out an occasional research ship and that there were human beings even now on Mars and Venus.

I grew so excited at that notion that I almost forgot the plight we were all in. If I had not been chosen for the Angels of the Lord, I would probably have gone into rocketry. I was good at anything of that sort, the things that called for quick reflexes combined with knowledge of the mathematical and mechanical arts. Maybe someday the United States would have space ships again. Perhaps I . . .

But the thought was crowded out by a dozen new ones. Foreign newspapers-why, I had not even been sure the infidels could read and write. The London Times made unbelievable and exciting reading. I gradually got it through my head that the Britishers apparently did not now eat human flesh, if indeed they ever had. They seemed remarkably like us, except that they were shockingly prone to do as they pleased-there were even letters in the Times criticizing the government. And there was another letter signed by a bishop of their infidel church, criticizing the people for not attending services. I don’t know which one puzzled me the more; both of them seemed to indicate a situation of open anarchy.

Master Peter informed me that the psych board had turned me down for assassination duty. I found myself both relieved and indignant. What was wrong with me that they would not trust me with the job? It seemed like a slur on my character-by then.

“Take it easy,” Van Eyck advised dryly. “They made a dummy run based on your personality profile and it figured almost an even chance that you would be caught your first time out. We don’t like to expend men that fast.”

“But—”

“Peace, lad. I’m sending you out to General Headquarters for assignment.”

“General Headquarters? Where is that?”

“You’ll know when you get there. Report to the staff metamorphist.”

Dr Mueller was the staff face-changer; I asked him what he had in mind for me. “How do I know until I find out what you are?” He had me measured and photographed, recorded my voice, analyzed my walk, and had a punched card made up of my physical characteristics. “Now we’ll find your twin brother.” I watched the card sorter go through several thousand cards and I was beginning to think I was a unique individual, resembling no one else sufficiently to permit me to be disguised successfully, when two cards popped out almost together. Before the machine whirred to a stop there were five cards in the basket.

“A nice assortment,” Dr Mueller mused as he looked them over, “one synthetic, two live ones, a deader, and one female. We can’t use the woman for this job, but we’ll keep it in mind; it might come in very handy someday to know that there is a female citizen you could impersonate successfully.”

“What’s a synthetic?” I enquired.

“Eh? Oh, it’s a composite personality, very carefully built from faked records and faked backgrounds. A risky business—it involves tampering with the national archives. I don’t like to use a synthetic, for there really isn’t any way to fill in completely the background of a man who doesn’t exist. I’d much rather patch into the real background of a real person.”

“Then why use synthetics at all?”

“Sometimes we have to. When we have to move a refugee in a hurry, for example, and there is no real person we can match him with. So we try to keep a fairly broad assortment of synthetics built up. Now let me see,” he added, shuffling the cards, “we have two to choose from—”

“Just a second, Doctor,” I interrupted, “why do you keep dead men in the file?”

“Oh, they aren’t legally dead. When one of the brethren dies and it is possible to conceal the fact, we maintain his public personality for possible future use. Now then,” he continued, “can you sing?”

“Not very well.”

“This one is out, then. He’s a concert baritone. I can make a lot of changes in you, but I can’t make a trained singer of you. It’s Hobson’s choice. How would you like to be Adam Reeves, commercial traveler in textiles?” He held up a card.

“Do you think I could get away with it?”

“Certainly—when I get through with you.”

A fortnight later my own mother wouldn’t have known me. Nor, I believe, could Reeves’s mother have told me from her son. The second week Reeves himself was available to work with me. I grew to like him very much while I was studying him. He was a mild, quiet man with a retiring disposition, which always made me think of him as small although he was of course, my height, weight, and bony structure. We resembled each other only superficially in the face.

At first, that is. A simple operation made my ears stand out a little more than nature intended; at the same time they trimmed my ear lobes. Reeves’s nose was slightly aquiline; a little wax under the skin at the bridge caused mine to match. It was necessary to cap several of my teeth to make mine match his dental repair work; that was the only part I really minded. My complexion had to be bleached a shade or two; Reeves’s work did not take him out into the sun much.

But the most difficult part of the physical match was artificial fingerprints. An opaque, flesh-colored flexible plastic was painted on my finger pads, then my fingers were sealed into molds made from Reeves’s fingertips. It was touchy work; one finger was done over seven times before Dr Mueller would pass it.

That was only the beginning; now I had to learn to act like Reeves-his walk, his gestures, the way he laughed, his table manners. I doubt if I could ever make a living as an actor-my coach certainly agreed and said so.

“Confound it, Lyle, won’t you ever get it? Your life will depend on it. You’ve got to learn!”

~But I thought I was acting just like Reeves,” I objected feebly.

“Acting! That’s just the trouble—you were acting like Reeves. And it was as phony as a false leg. You’ve got to be Reeves. Try it. Worry about your sales record, think about your last trip, think about commissions and discounts and quotas. Go on. Try it.”

Every spare minute I studied the current details of Reeves’s business affairs, for I would actually have to sell textiles in his place. I had to learn a whole trade and I discovered that there was more to it than carrying around samples and letting a retailer make his choice—and I didn’t know a denier from a continuous fibre. Before I finished I acquired a new respect for businessmen. I had always thought that buying and selling was simple; I was wrong again. I had to use the old phonographic tutor stunt and wear earphones to bed. I never sleep well that way and would wake up each morning with a splitting head and with my ears, still tender from the operations, sore as two boils.

But it worked, all of it. In two short weeks I was Adam Reeves, commercial traveler, right down to my thoughts.