Turncoat

PROLOGUE

1990: THE pressroom on the eightieth floor of the World Legislature Building was a bedlam, but it quieted the minute the big sandy-haired man walked in.

“You know what we want, Doctor,” somebody called. “Let’s have it.”

“Print this,” said Dr. Kusko, enunciating clearly.

“The passage by the World Legislature today, of the bill creating a universal analogue treatment program, not only gives me and my associates a very deep gratification, but should be a cause for rejoicing on the part of every citizen of this globe. This date marks the beginning of the world’s maturity. We have put an end to war, to crimes of violence, to conspiracy against the peace, to corruption in public office, to all the myriad insanities that have oppressed and divided us since the beginning of history. From now on, we go forward.”

Pencils scribbled busily for another second or two. “What are you going to do next, Doctor ?” asked a reporter.

Kusko grinned. “Off the record—” A groan went up; the big man’s grin widened. “Off the record, I’ve spent the last twenty years, figuratively speaking, in building a bug-trap. Now that it’s built, I’m going to sleep for thirty-six hours, spend the next twelve getting reacquainted with my wife—and after that, praise God, I believe I can begin to get some real work done.”

“Some of us thought,” said a woman, “that Mr. Haggerty of the Civil Rights Commission might block the passage of the bill at this session and perhaps defeat it altogether. Have you any comment on that?”

“How could he?” Kusko asked. “Haggerty had the analogue treatment himself six years ago. He was developing a suicidal mania—off the record.”

After an uncertain pause, the woman said, “Dr. Kusko, forgive me if I’m misinterpreting you—do you mean that when you treated Mr. Haggerty for that condition, that you also deliberately made it impossible for him to interfere with the passage of this bill?”

“That’s what I mean,” siad Kusko.’ “Just as all of you in this room have had the treatment to keep you from revealing anything your informant asks you to keep quiet—otherwise you wouldn’t be getting this story. The only difference is, Haggerty didn’t know what was being done to him. Neither did the fifty-odd world senators who came to us for one reason or another. And everything I have just said, by the way, is—very definitely—off the record.”

Most of the reporters laughed. They liked Kusko; you couldn’t help it.

“The end justifies the means, is that it, Doctor?” said a little-man in the front row, who had not laughed.

“In this case,” said Kusko seriously, “it does.”

2035: “Gentlemen,” said the bulky, well-groomed man at the head of the table, “now that the mutual introductions are over, you undoubtedly realize that we have here a rather unique assemblage. Here in this room are representatives of some of the major interests in every field of production in North America, from food to steel. Together, the companies we represent can clothe Mr. Average North American Consumer, feed him, amuse him, keep him healthy, house him, and sell him everything he needs or wants: And we are all interested in that same consumer, yet we are not in competition with one another. For that reason”—he cleared his throat—“I believe that every one of you will be intensely interested in the proposition I have to lay before you here today.”

He glanced down the double line of faces, then consulted his notes. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “there is one amendment I should make to the statement I have just made. There is, in this room, no representative of the advertising industry. The reason for that will become apparent in a moment.

“My company, gentlemen, spends seven million credits each year on advertising and promotion. I believe that figure is not greatly out of line with the average figure of our respective companies. Now let me ask you this. How would you, as representatives of your companies, like to increase the sales of your products and services, while at the same time reducing your advertising and promotion budgets to exactly zero?”

At his signal, two young men came forward, one on either side of the table, and began to pass out large rectangles of plastic. Mounted on each was a glossy sheet of paper bearing a three-color sketch of a young man and woman standing under a golden cornucopia, from which a shower of jewelry, miniature automobiles, hams, fountain pens and fur coats was descending into their outstretched arms. The banner-line was:

FREE! FOR A WHOLE YEAR!!!

“That,” said the bulky man after a few moments; “is what I might refer to as the advertisement to end all advertisements. As you will note, the text here has been drawn up to represent sample brand names and lines of products from each of the companies and associations represented at this table. You will note that some companies have one brand name or line of products mentioned, while others have two or more.

“That has been done, in every case, to represent five percent of each company’s gross yearly sales. And also you will note that the total of the free goods and services amounts, pricewise, to the same percentage—five percent of the different items that the North American Consumer wants and needs. In other words, each company will take a one-hundred-percent loss for one year on five percent of its products, in order to induce the consumer to buy all the products of that company, exclusive of all other competitors. I have here”—the young men stepped forward again and distributed piles of documents—a table of estimated profit and loss resulting from this offer, based on an enrollment of ten million heads of families the first year. I believe that in every case, the capital reserves of every company represented here will be ample to cover that first year deficit.”

For the first time, one of the other men at the table spoke up. “I believe,” said a thin-faced oldster, “that this would be characterized as an association in restraint of trade, Mr. Dine.”

The Deadly Cycle

IN EVERY age there have been those who sought, for reasons of power or profit, to shackle men’s minds. A character named Hitler believed in the Big Lie—and it is true that for a while you can sell almost any idea, no matter how senseless, to enough people to make a difference. But in every age there are minds and spirits which cannot be deformed, no matter what the pressures, no matter how big the lies. Truth will out, if we may be pardoned a cliche, although sometimes it takes a devilish long time.

‘Meanwhile, there is little to suggest that the deadly cycle of intolerance and rebellion will not continue to be repeated in the future as it has in the past. Only as man becomes more ingenious the patterns will become more clever, the tortures more refined, the rebellions more cunningly fought. TURNCOAT reminds us that a thousand years from now Jefferson’s warning about the price of liberty may have greater point than ever as Iron Curtains give way to atomic force screens.

—The Editor

“Our legal department has covered this question very thoroughly, Mr. Hoyle, and they assure me that the offer is perfectly legal. Our respective companies will be associated only for the purpose of this offer. There will be no consolidation of capital, no interlocking directorates—nothing whatever of that nature, yet. There is no compulsion to accept the offer on the part of any person whatsoever. All we are doing is selling large quantities of merchandise at the same time and offering a premium—there will be a contract for the consumer to sign, over and above the analogue treatment. However, the contract is renewable yearly, and the treatment is permanent.”

The assembled gentlemen smiled the sort of smiles acquired at poker tables and board meetings.

“A more important question might be,” said a red-faced man with a clipped white mustache, “can you get the analogue facilities? I thought that was all owned by the government.”

“No, Colonel,” said the chairman, “I believe you will find that the Kusko Psychiatric Institute is a private, non-profit institution, licensed and subsidized by the government. The use of the analogue facilities is controlled by statute, but it is an interesting fact that according to the law, anyone can get analogue treatment, for a fee, to prevent him from doing anything he does not wish to do, except of course for legally compulsory acts. Gentlemen—”

He spread his hands. “I have too much respect for your intelligence to belabor the obvious to you. Let me be brutally frank. There it is. If we don’t take it first, somebody else will.”

2130: INSIDE the multiple carapace formed by his two thin undershirts, the heavier, weighted stole, young Arthur Bass itched intolerably.

Sweat trickled down his ribs across the exact focus of the itch, not relieving it but coaxing it to still greater virulence. Bass clenched his teeth and stared rigidly out across the massed hats of the Sunday crowd. Under the cod-like eye of Senior Salesman Leggett, he dared not scratch, wriggle or even change his expression.

Cursing himself silently for the frailty of his flesh, he waited until Leggett had done with his customer, then entered the amount of the last purchase on his machine, totaled it, and tore off the itemized tab, together with the customer’s credit card. The customer, a jaundiced, shriveled little woman, thrust out a liver-spotted hand for them, but Leggett’s voice stopped her.

“There is still time to alter your purchase, madam. This sweater”—he pointed to the image on the screen behind him —“is acceptable enough, I grant you, but this one— (thirty-seven-oh-nine-five, Bass, quickly)—is guaranteed to wear out in half the time.”

Bass relaxed, sweating harder, having managed to finish punching the code just as Leggett ended his sentence. The customer stared timidly at the flimsy, bright-pink garment that was now displayed on the screen, and said something totally inaudible.

“You’ll take it, then,” said Leggett. “Splendid. Bass, if you please—”

“No,” the customer said in a louder voice, “I can’t, Salesman. I jist can’t. ‘V go m’ worshing-machine payments to make, and m’ houserent’s due, and m’ husband’s been crippled up with’s back all this month. And I can’t.”

Leggett achieved a noteworthy sneer simply by exposing an additional eighth of an inch of his rabbity incisors. “I understand perfectly, madam,” he said. “There is no need to explain to me.” His cold eye raked her and passed on. “Next!”

Crushed, the little woman turned away without seeing the tab and credit card that Bass held out to her, and he had to lean down from his platform and press them into her hand. In the process, as stole and jacket swung away from his body, he plunged his free hand under them and raked his nails across his short ribs, once, twice, before he straightened again.

The relief was exquisite.

The next customer was a stout man in a plain unquilted jacket and breeches, with not more than a half-dozen bangles at his wrist. Beside him, as he climbed up to the dais below Leggett, was a moon-faced boy of about eleven, dressed in blouse and knee-breeches so much too small for him that he could barely move.

“Onward, Salesman,” the fat man wheezed. “It’s my boy Tom, come to get his first suit of man’s clothes.”

“Onward. High time, too, I should say,” Leggett rejoined frostily. “How old is the boy?”

“Just ten, Salesman. Big for his age.” Leggett’s glance visibly congealed. “How long since his birthday?”

“He’s just ten, Salesman, hardly past it.”

“How long?”

The fat man blinked uneasily. “Just a few weeks, Salesman. It’s the first chance I’ve had to bring him in, Salesman, I swear to you.”

Leggett made a sound of disgust and glanced at Bass. “Seventeen-eight-oh-one,” he said.

BASS, who knew his superior, had the number almost before Leggett finished. The item which now appeared on the screen was the most expensive boys’ intermediate suit the Store carried; the fabric showed wear readily, the dye was light in color and not fast, and the stitching was treated to disintegrate after four months, rendering the garments completely useless.

Leggett stared at the man, silently daring him to object.

The customer read the price and licked his lips. “Yes, Salesman,” he said miserably. “That’ll do main well.”

Bass entered the item.

“Ninety-one-two-seven-three,” said Leggett. That was overshirts, of the same quality, in lots of five.

The next item was undershirts, in lots of ten. Then underpants; then socks; then neckscarves; then shoes.

“Step down, Tom,” said the fat man at last, wearily. “Onward, Salesman.”

“A moment,” said Leggett. He leaned forward in his pulpit and affected to peer with sudden interest at the fat man’s magenta overshirt.”

“Your shirt, man, is fading,” he said. “You had better have a dozen new ones. Fifty-three-one-oh-nine, Bass.”

” ‘Scuse me, Salesman,” the fat man said jerkily, “that’ll better wait till next time. I’ve bought so much for the boy, I’ve nothing left to buy for myself.”

Leggett raised one gray eyebrow. “You surprise me,” he said. “Bass, what is the man’s credit balance?”

Bass tapped keys. “One hundred ninety point fifty-three, Salesman Leggett,” he said.

Leggett stared down his nose at the customer. ” ‘Nothing left,’ you said.”

“Two hundred’s legal,” the fat man said, his jowls quivering, “and it’s not even the end of the month yet. I know my rights—you can’t intimidate me—I need that money for expenses. C’mon, Tom.”

A murmur of outrage arose from the crowd. Peering down slantwise without moving his head, Bass could see the fat man and his son descending into a barrage of angry stares.

Despite himself, Bass too was trembling with disgust. The very fatness of the two was unspeakably offensive—the greasy swollen jowls, the necks folding over collars, the barrel thighs. How anyone could get himself into that condition on an orthodox diet, Bass was unable to imagine. They must gorge themselves like squirrels, eating till they choked, storing their wealth up under their skins because they could express their selfishness in no other way. Who did they think they were—Stockholders, perhaps, or Executives?

Leggett was silent, hands folded across his red-and-silver stole, staring down at the two through half-closed eyes. Here and there in the first ranks of the crowd, Bass saw a man or a woman surge abruptly forward with red face and uplifted fist, and as suddenly fall back, listening to angelic voices audible to them alone. If this were the bad old days, he thought, there would be a riot.

The fat man turned at the foot of the dais. “I know my rights,” he said angrily, and held up a balloon-fingered hand. “Give me my card.”

Bass stood motionless, waiting.

Leggett said expressionlessly, “You know your rights, man, but you have not yet learnt your duties. I therefore offer you a choice. Will you appear in Sumptuary Court with your boy and his birth certificate—and explain why you did not equip him with intermediate clothing until he had all but burst out of his last primaries—or will you make this additional purchase for the benefit of your soul? Eleven-five-two-six, Bass.”

The item that appeared on the screen was a complete costume in black pliovel, from turkey-feathered hat to buckled sandals—gala clothing, designed to be worn once, on an important occasion, and to fall apart after. The price was Cr. 190.50.

Someone shouted, “Good for old Leggett!” A whisper of laughter swelled to a roar.

Only Leggett did not smile. He stared down with the faintest expression of boredom and disdain as the fat man, legs planted, bracing himself against the laughter that swept round his ears, raised his fists to the level of his scarlet jowls and then dashed them down again.

His expression did not change until the fat man, two tears of rage squeezed out of his eyes by the swelling of his cheeks, opened a shapeless mouth and bellowed : “Die of a disease, y’ rotted vice-eaten mud-lick’n dogson!”

The crowd’s voice died as if cold water had been flung in its collective face. With no more sound than the scrape of one shoe, it moved back radially in every direction.

Into the silence that followed Leggett’s voice dropped and burst

“A demon!”

Next instant, Leggett’s hand slapped the panel in front of him, and a fiendish clangor burst out to drown the crowd’s noises as it surged away in panic. Bass saw clumps of people go down at either end of the hall as force-screens sealed the doorways. He saw the fat man; fists still clenched at’ his sides, crouching a little, face all awry and as pale as a flour-sack. He saw the moon-faced boy, mouth open to howl.

Then came a crackle aft flash at the nearer doorway; and the crowd split; turning away in redoubled terror, as three horrid black-masked men came bounding across, truncheons in their fists, lightnings at their heels.

Bass turned his head aside automatically, as from a blow: The last thing he saw was a glimpse of the fat man between two uniformed backs, pale face upturned in a desperate question; before they bore him away.

IN A few moments came the rustle of turning bodies and the gathering murmur that meant the Guardsmen and their prisoners were gone. Bass turned to face the room again, and saw that the pulpit above him was vacant. Leggett had retired to make his report to the Guard.

The customers were clotting at four or five points where, apparently, people had fainted or been injured by the closing of the force-screens. A white-robed medic came in, made a circuit of the room and left. A few minutes later he was back with two assistants and an emergency cart, around which the crowd eddied briefly until the bodies were loaded aboard and carried out. The murmur of talk had increased to a loud, steady drone.

Someone at the back of the room began to sing a hymn. Others took it up, and it contended for a while with the crowd-noise but finally sank, defeated: More people were entering constantly from both doorways. The sluggish flow past the platform gradually stopped; there was no longer any room to move.

Bass felt a trifle sick. He had heard tales of demonic possession ever since he could remember; cases were reported almost daily on the news channels; but that was not the same thing as witnessing one.

Hearing that man curse a Salesman—and knowing that if his guardian angel had not been driven out, he could no more have uttered a word of that anathema than he could have committed murder—was like seeing an ordinary door suddenly flung open to show a coal-black fiend grinning and posturing inside..

What had gone wrong? Every Child, when he was four and again at ten, was taken to the Confirmation Chambers in the Store, where an angel entered his soul through the sacred machines; and from then on, whenever he stretched out his hand to do a wrong thing, the angel appeared to him; so that no man could sin. But sometimes the angels were driven out, and demons took their places.

Why? How did it begin?

And how did he feel—the man himself, not his possessing demon—knowing that he was cut off from all human joy, here and hereafter; an object of loathing and fear in this world, a sentient cinder in the next?

Bass shuddered.

The door behind the pulpit opened and Leggett stepped through. Bass stiffened his already rigid spine.

SILENCE rippled back from the platform to the farthest corners of the room. Here, Bass knew, was a ready-made opportunity for an impromptu sermon, one that nine out of ten Salesmen would have seized. He felt a flush of reluctant admiration, then, as Leggett simply stared down at the front row of the crowd and said dryly, “Next!”

It was more effective than an hour’s oratory. The incident had told its own story, pointed its own moral; there was nothing more to be said.

And every customer in the room, unwilling to admit that he had waited not to buy but to hear a lurid tale of hellfire, stood submissively till his turn came, then took without argument whatever Leggett chose to give him.

The code numbers Bass punched were all in the first-quality group now; not a garment among them that would not disintegrate after the fifth wearing. Again and again, he had to announce that a bemused customer’s credit card was sub-zeroed. By midafternoon he realized that Leggett was piling up a sales total unprecedented in the history of the clothing department.

At three o’clock, the hall still more than three-quarters filled, Leggett stopped in the middle of a sale and said crisply, “Bass.”

“Yes, Salesman Leggett.”

To Bass’s astonishment, Leggett turned his back, opened the door behind the pulpit and stepped through. Bass followed.

Leggett was waiting in the corridor a pace beyond the doorway. Bass shut the door behind him.

“Bass,” said the Salesman coldly, “you are ordered to report to the chambers of Personnel Manager Wooten, in Block Eighteen, Level Thirty-five, at exactly three-twenty. It is now three o’clock. Before you go, since I probably shall not have a further opportunity, I wish to inform you that your demeanor and deportment today have been unspeakable. Five times, in the past hour alone, I have had to wait for you to punch a code number. You have slumped. You have shuffled your feet. You have scratched yourself when you supposed that I could not see you.”

Stunned, Bass opened his mouth.

“I do not wish to hear your excuses, Bass,” said Leggett. “Attend me. If you still retain any ambition to become a Salesman—an office for which you are grossly unfitted—let me advise you to remember this: a Salesman is the direct representative of his Store’s President, who in turn represents his District Executive, and so by an unbroken chain of authority to the Chairman himself, who is the direct representative of the Infinite on this Earth. A Salesman is and must be the living symbol of rectitude, an example for others to follow to the measure of their abilities. Not a callow, fidgeting jackanapes.” He turned abruptly. “Onward, Bass.”

“Onward,” croaked Bass automatically. He choked, and found his voice. “Salesman Leggett—”

Leggett stopped at the door. ‘Well? Be quick.”

“They’re going to send someone to fill in for me, aren’t they? I mean, Salesman, if they don’t, you’ll lose your record.”

“That,” said Leggett acidly, “is no concern of yours,” and he showed Bass a rapidly diminishing strip of his back through the closing door.

After a dazed moment Bass walked slowly down the corridor to the robing room. It was empty, the long ranks of open closets dismally gaping. Unwillingly, Bass removed his stole and cap, folded them carefully and put them away. With equal deliberation he put on his surcoat, hat, pouch, wrist-bangles and rings. Then he walked forlornly out of the room and down the long echoing corridor to the stair.

Two levels below, he crossed a ramp into the Block Nine concourse and boarded the northbound slideway. It was not crowded; few people came to Store at this hour, for fear of using up their time before they ever got to a Salesman. And then there was Sunday dinner to be gotten over with in time to come back for evening services… . Bass caught himself. Already, he thought with a pang of bitterness, he was thinking like a Consumer again. He might as well begin unlearning his painfully-acquired Mercantile diction, too; it would not be appreciated in a factory, or on a farm …

Beyond that his mind refused to go. Dismissal from the Store was an incomprehensible, alien idea. It was like a huge object of unheard-of shapes and colors, set down before him with a “Well—what do you think of that?” He could only gape at it numbly.

Curiously, the image that came to him now was not of himself, or of anyone he loved or hated, but of the possessed fat man, in that instant’s glimpse before he had looked away: the fat man’s anguished face, turned up in a silent appeal.