Why Call Them Back from Heaven

21

Godfrey Cartwright leaned far back in his padded chair and clasped his hands behind his head. It was the position he assumed when he was about to discuss some weighty matters, but wanted to seem casual in his discussion of them.

"The way I see it," he said, "something queered the deal. No publisher before ever offered the kind of money that I did, and even a stuffed shirt like Frost would have grabbed it if he thought he had a chance of not getting caught at it. But now Frost has disappeared and Joe Gibbons is nowhere to be found. Maybe Appleton had a hand in it. It would have to be someone like Appleton, for there are just a few in Forever Center who know that censorship is being carried on. And if Appleton found out, he's not a man to fool with."

"Tfou mean," said Harris Hastings, plaintively, "that you won't put out my book."

Cartwright stared at him. "Why, bless you, man," he said, "we never said we would."

Hastings squirmed in his chair. He was an unprepossessing sight. His head was round and hairless, looking somewhat like a naked sphere with a face upon it. He wore thick glasses and he squinted. His billiard-ball head rode thrust forward on his shoulders and this, tied in with the squint, gave him the appearance of a man who was more than a bit befuddled, but trying very hard to understand.

"But you said…"

"I said," Cartwright told him, "that I thought your book would sell. I said that if it could be published we'd make a mint of money on it. But I also told you that I had to be sure, before any more was done, that we could get it before the public. I didn't want to run the chance of Frost finding out about it when we had a lot of money in it and then bringing pressure on us. Once we had it published and up for sale, why, then, of course, Frost couldn't do a thing, for if he tried there'd be a public uproar and a public uproar is the one thing Forever Center doesn't want." "But you told me.." Hastings said again. "I told you, sure," said Cartwright, "but we haven't got a contract and the deal is dead. I told you] couldn't give you one until I saw if I could make a deal with Frost. I couldn't take the chance. Frost had a lot of snoopers and I can tell you they were good. Joe Gibbons is one of the best of them and Joe has always made a sort of specialty of us and some half dozen other houses. He kept close tab on us; he had pipelines into us. I don't know who it was. If I had known who I'd have canned them long ago. But the point is that we couldn't have made a move without Joe finding out about it and he did find out about it, just the way I knew he would. The only thing that I could do was try to make a deal. I don't mind telling you that your book was one of the few I ever tried to make a deal to publish."

"But the work," Hastings said, in anguish. "The work I put into it. I put twenty years in it. Do you realize what twenty years of research and writing means? I put my Me into it, I tell you. I made a Me of it. I sold my life for it."

Cartwright said, easily, "You believe it, don't you-this stuff that you wrote."

"Of course I believe it," Hastings exploded. "Can't you see that it's the truth? I searched the records and I know it is the truth. The circumstantial evidence is there for anyone to see. This plan, this Me continuation, this whatever you may call it, is the greatest hoax that ever has been played upon the human race. Its purpose was not, it never was, what it purports to be. It was, instead, a last and desperate measure to bring an end to war. For if you could make people believe that their bodies could be preserved and later be revived, who would go to war—what man would fight in any war? What government or nation would dare become involved in war? For the victims of a war could not hope for preservation of their bodies. In many cases there'd be very little of the bodies to preserve. In cases where there was, facilities for the retrieval and preservation of those bodies could not operate.

"And it may be that the ends justified the means. It may be that we cannot condemn the trickery. For war was a terrible thing. We today, who had not known war for more than a century, can not know how terrible. There was actual fear, a hundred years ago, that another major war might wipe out all human culture, if not all life, from earth. And in the light of this the hoax may be justified. But in any case, the people should be told, they should be…"

He stopped and looked at Cartwright, still propped back in his chair, with his hands behind his head. "You don't believe any of this, do you?" The publisher took his hands from behind his head and sat forward in the chair, leaning his forearms on the desk top.

"Harris," he said, earnestly, "it doesn't matter whether I believe or not. It's not my business to believe in the books I publish, beyond the one belief that they will make some money. I'd like to publish your book because I know that it would sell. You can't expect more of me than that."

"But now you say you won't publish it." Cartwright nodded. "That is right. Not won't, but can't. Forever Center wouldn't let me." "They couldn't stop you."

"No, not legally. But there can be pressure brought— not only on myself but on the stockholders and the other officers of this company. And you must not forget that Forever Center itself owns some of the stock, as it owns a part, or all, of everything upon the entire earth.

The pressure that they could bring would be unbelieva ble if you hadn't seen it. As I said, if I could have got it published and on sale, then I'd have been in the clear, It would have been Frost's error then, not mine. His neck, not mine. It would have been something that he should have caught, but didn't, something that he slipped up on. The onus of the entire thing would have been shifted off my shoulders. The only thing they could have charged me with was a piece of bad judgment and, perhaps, poor taste, and that I could have stood. But the way it is…" He made a hopeless gesture. "I could try other publishers." "Sure you could," said Cartwright. "By that I suppose you mean none of them would touch it either."

"Not with a ten-foot pole. By now the news is out—that I tried to buy off Frost and failed and now Frost is among the missing. Every publisher in town has heard about it. There are all sorts of whispers flying." "Then I'll never be published."

"I'm afraid you're right. Just go home and sit down in a chair and feel smug and comfortable that you've uncovered something that is too big for anyone to touch, that you're the only man who knows the secret, that you were astute enough to uncover a plot that no one, absolutely no one, ever had suspected." Hastings hunched his head even farther forward. "There is a trace of mockery in your words," he said, "that I'm not too sure I like. Tell me, if you will, what your version is." "My version?"

"Yes. Wat do you really think about Forever Center?" "Why," asked Cartwright, "what's so wrong in thinking that it's exactly the way they say it is?"

"Nothing, I suppose. It's the comfortable viewpoint for one to take, but it isn't true."

"Most people think it is. There's talk, of course, and rumors—you hear them everywhere. But I think most people take the talk and rumors for sheer entertainment. They talk about it and listen to it, but they really don't believe it. There's so little entertainment these days that people hang onto all that they can get. Go and read about the entertainment of two hundred years ago, or even less than that. The night life in the cities, the theater, the opera, the music. And there were sports-baseball and football and a lot of other things. And where are they all now? Strangled to death by the miserly leanings of our present culture. Pay to see a show when you can stay at home and watch TV? Hell, no! Pay to get into a ball game? Who wants to see a ball game when he can buy a share of Forever stock with what the ticket would cost? Pay fancy prices to get some entertainment when you eat? Are you crazy? When you go out to eat now, and not too many do, you go out to eat and nothing else—no frills. That's why books sell as well as they do. We keep them cheap—shoddy, but cheap. When you're through reading a book someone else can read it and after a while you can read it again yourself. But a ball game or a show, you could only see it once. That's why people are newspaper readers and book readers and TV watchers. They can get a lot of entertainment for almost next to nothing. Cheap entertainment, and much of it's cheap, believe me, but it fills up the hours. Hell, that's all we're doing—filling up the hours. Grabbing everything we can and filling up the hours, aiming everything at our second shot at life. That explains die rumors and the stories and the talk. All of it is free and the people suck it dry, get everything they can get out of it before they turn it loose."

"You," said Hastings, "should write a book, yourself." "I may," said Cartwright, contentedly. "By God, I really may. Take the hide off them and their penny-pinching lives. They'd eat it up. They'd like it. Give them stuff to talk about for months."

"You think, then, that my book…"

"That's one," said Cartwright, "that some of them might actually have believed in. You have it all annotated and documented within an inch of its very life. Impressive sort of stuff. I don't see how you did it."

"You still don't believe it," said the author, bitterly. "You have a sneaking hunch I faked it."

"Well, now," said Cartwright, "you can't say I said that. I never asked you, did I?"

He stared off into space, with a lost look on his face.

"Too bad," he said. "Too bad. We could have made a billion. I tell you, boy, no kidding, we could have made a billion."