Towers of Utopia, page 14
The face of Roy Thomas faded in. The Director of the Department of Emergency Affairs was obviously in a state of irritation.
He said snappishly, “This is a Priority One call and supposedly secure. However, our subject was once himself employed in the National Data Banks in New Denver and undoubtedly has various associates in other key spots. Consequently, we’ll be discreet in what we say. First, have you had any results? I have already checked with the other demes.”
Barry Ten Eyck said reasonably, “We’ve had less than twenty-four hours on the job. No, thus far we’ve no results. We’re checking out various leads.”
Roy Thomas grunted. He took a breath, deeply and as though still irritated. He said, “The necessity of this project has been intensified since I talked to you. The organization we are discussing has brought out a new publication written by our subject. Evidently, in spite of his fugitive status, he is still finding time to work.”
Jim said, “Another pamphlet? I’ve already secured two, but haven’t gotten around to reading them as yet.”
Bat shrugged. “One more booklet wouldn’t seem to make much difference.”
The director turned the impatience on Bat Hardin. “The man is developing. His first pamphlet largely pointed out the need for minor changes in the Meritocracy system, a call for reforms. Some of them actually quite reasonable, and possibly some of the demands will be met—in time. The second work he turned out showed that he had been doing a good deal of research. It came out about a year after the first, and his organization had grown considerably. It called for stronger alterations in our system. However, both of them were mild tracts compared to the pamphlet which was released yesterday. It is, frankly, dynamite. The sort of pamphlet that moves people. If you know your American history, you are aware of the fact that the actual revolution of 1776 was precipitated by a single pamphlet, Tom Paine’s Common Sense. Our subject hasn’t perhaps quite reached the culmination of his career, but he’s getting closer each day that goes by. One of these days, all the parts will fit together, and he’ll have the final campaign plan for his group. We can’t afford for that to happen.”
Bat said, “Why not confiscate this new booklet?”
Thomas snorted disgust. “And by so doing bring it to the attention of everybody in the country who can read? Our best plan is to ignore it. Keep it from being reviewed in the mass media we control. The one way to guarantee the American people will read something is to tell them they can’t. Not only would the thing be published in a thousand cellars, attics and back rooms on everything from handicraft printing presses to primitive duplicating machines, but they’d undoubtedly print it abroad and smuggle it in wholesale.” He snorted again. “For that matter, it’s already been placed in the National Library Banks. Giving it a restrictive priority rating would, once again, focus attention on it. No, our best bet, and it’s not a very good one, is to completely ignore it.”
Barry Ten Eyck said, “You’re quite sure our, uh, subject is in Phoenecia?”
“More so than ever. This is imperative, gentlemen. He must be found if our socio-economic system is to stand. Our subject is a bomb with a lit fuse. I’ll keep in touch with your progress.” The authoritative face faded.
“Our progress, ha,” Bat Hardin said.
They remained silent for the nonce. The Demecrat said, finally, “Any ideas, boys?”
Jim grumbled, “No. Listen, what gets me is that this character Saxe still hasn’t done anything illegal. Evidently, they couldn’t even ban this new pamphlet on the grounds of being subversive. He still evidently keeps within legal boundaries.”
“Maybe they ought to pass some new laws,” Barry muttered. “Get something on the books preventing basic changes in the politico-economic system no matter what method of bringing them about is advocated.”
“Great,” Jim said. “And wind up a dictatorship.”
Carol Ann said, “Mr. Cotswold, if you are going to attend that Shrine of the White Goddess meeting, you’ll have to get along.”
Jim groaned and came to his feet.
Jim Cotswold winced when he entered the Community Church. Ordinarily, the room would accommodate two thousand five hundred persons. Now it was seemingly filled to the bursting point with less than a thousand. He estimated again. There were probably less than five hundred. It was just that one weird seemed capable of taking up three times the amount of space an ordinary person might.
Jim Cotswold was mildly taken aback. He hadn’t realized that there were this many weirds in the building. Weirds begot weirds. They congregated together, herded together, each trying to outdo the other in their far-out activities. If the deme ever got the reputation of being a stronghold of the movement, the more sedate residents would move out en masse. He groaned inwardly. He could just see he and Barry and Bat presiding over a deme all of whose residents were weirds.
At least half of them were barefooted, at least half of the females were topless, whether or not nature had equipped them attractively in that department. At least half of them, male and female, wore shorts, and often nothing more. At least half of the men wore the current half-beard, possibly the most ludicrous facial hair style Jim Cotswold had ever seen. At least half of them were in the age bracket eighteen to twenty-five. A few younger, a few gray beards, but teens and twenties predominated. He wondered vaguely what happened to a flapper, a zoot-suiter, a rock ’n’ roller, a hippy, a weird, when they grew older. They couldn’t just disappear.
He made his way down the center aisle, something like a football quarterback. Swivel-hipped, he ducked this chattering group, made way around end of that shrilling sextet, side-stepped that gesticulating trio.
At the rostrum was what was obviously the committee, or whatever they called themselves in the Shrine of the White Goddess. Two of them carried what were plainly musical instruments, but which Jim Cotswold couldn’t ever remember having seen before. Then it came to him. He remembered illustrations in a book on the Trojan War he had read as a boy. What was the title of it? The Twilight of the Heroes or some such. At any rate, the two weirds were carrying lyres. He wondered what kind of sounds they came up with. He could see now that they wore the short, kilt-like garb usually associated with Greeks of antiquity.
Centered among them was a girl who could have stood no more than five feet. She was as cute as the proverbial button, had a moppet face consisting largely of big eyes and a big mouth, and Jim Cotswold would have laid odds that she was smiling nine-tenths of the time. She was rigged up in what was probably meant to be a Grecian gown and wore Etruscan revival sandals on her feet. Her hair was piled atop her head in what he assumed was an attempt to recreate an ancient Greek hairdo. At least she seemed reasonably clean.
Since entering the Community Church he had recognized not a single person, which didn’t unduly surprise him. Shyler-deme when full could house twenty thousand persons. Jim Cotswold doubted that he knew more than two hundred, and these mostly connected with the staff.
No, he took that back, one of the younger looking weirds gathered around the girl was familiar. Then it came to him. Harold Harrylad, the young man who had accumulated his Negative Income Tax until he had enough to throw a party involving a case of ultra-expensive Scotch. The other didn’t recognize him—obviously. He had accomplished whisky nirvana when Jim saw him.
They had been jabbering rather excitedly until his approach. Now they fell silent and all eyes turned to the second Vice-Demecrat. His clothes alone branded him an outsider. Hell, he decided, a clean pair of pants would have branded you an outsider in this gathering.
For some reason, he addressed the girl rather than various others who were older, or less outlandishly attired.
He said, “I’m James Cotswold, the Second Vice-Demecrat of Shyler-deme. Mr. Ten Eyck thought it might be a good idea for me to check out this first meeting of yours.”
“The john-fuzz, come to roach us,” Harold Harrylad said in disgust. “Why don’t you shirk off?”
Jim looked at him in amusement. “Finish off the Scotch, Harry Harry?”
The youngster blinked, “How come you know me, flat?”
Jim said in amusement, “A Vice-Demecrat sees all, knows all.”
“Get goosed,” the other sneered.
The girl said, “We have permission to hold this rite.”
“Of course,” Jim said. “Mr. Ten Eyck just wondered if we could be of any assistance. Any additional furnishing, or whatever, you might need.”
The group wandered away, except for the girl. She said, “We extend thanks to you. I am Demeter.”
“You’re what?”
“I am Demeter, High Priestess of this Shrine, and rejoice in the love of the Mother Goddess.”
Jim said, “Oh. I thought the name of your, uh, goddess was the White Goddess.”
“The White Goddess was many-titled. She was the Great Goddess, the Triple-Goddess, and was many named in her various aspects as nymph or maiden, or as nubile or mature, or as crone, elderly. Long before the coming of the Aryans, who forcefully imposed their own male gods upon the people, the whole of Europe worshipped her. Indeed she was also known in Syria and Libya.”
“Well, fine,” Jim said. “Actually, I haven’t read much mythology since I was a …”
“The White Goddess is not a myth, Mr. Cotswold,” the girl said brightly. “She is the mother of all and her cult, though widely suppressed by the followers of the male gods—first the Greeks and then later the Jews, Christians and Mohammedans, has never completely disappeared from ken of man.”
A slightly older weird came up. Jim recognized him.
“Hello, Jo-Jo,” he said.
The other scowled at him. “What’re you roaching Demeter about?”
Jim said mildly, “I’m not roaching her. Just came around to see that everything’s all set. She’s been telling me about, the, uh, White Goddess. So you’re a follower of this, uh, Shrine?”
“Nah. You’re not reading the script right, padre. I’m just here to hear the tale. Maybe help out a little. Maybe I’ll join up later. I play it sage.”
“The Mother Goddess wishes to gather all to her bosom,” Demeter said softly.
Jim turned back to her. He said, smiling, “With so many religions already in the world, why do we need another one?”
She smiled in return. She was a quick one with a smile. “You have it the wrong way, Mr. Cotswold. Ours is the original religion, going back to Neolithic times. It is these others that are johnny-come-latelys. To the sorrow of womankind and mankind they have perverted the mother-principle religion under which all were once free and happy.”
Jim Cotswold was out of his field, but he tried to keep it going. “You said the Greeks were the ones that rang in the new male gods. But I thought that under the Greeks there was a Golden Age, not a loss of freedom and happiness.”
“Perhaps it was a Golden Age for men—some men, Mr. Cotswold. But the Greeks of the time of Pericles held women in subjection to the point that they were little better than slaves. And it was the Greeks, Mr. Cotswold, who brought war to the Mediterranean world.”
“Now you’re really readin’ him the script,” Jo-Jo said in approval.
“Oh, come on now,” Jim protested. “War we have always had with us.”
“To the contrary, Mr. Cotswold, it is a comparatively new development. Fighting we have had, yes. Even in the animal world there is conflict, especially between rival males. There were even raids and group fights in the days of the White Goddess, but it was not until the coming of such cultures as the Hittites and the Aryan Greeks that war as we now know it evolved, that is, organized warfare for political and economic reasons: thousands upon tens of thousands of highly trained men whose purpose was to kill and enslave, to loot and take over the lands of others.”
“So you want to return to the old days and the old ways,” he said. “Neolithic ways.”
“It might surprise you to know, Mr. Cotswold, that the ethical code of Neolithic times was higher than it is today.”
“Wouldn’t you have a hard time proving it at this late date?”
“Aw, why don’t you shirk off?” Jo-Jo muttered. “You’re too ossified in the head to get it. You flats are all the same.”
But Demeter was still smiling. “The White Goddess’ teachings are the proof, Mr. Cotswold.”
Jim said, “Oh, one thing. Some of the other groups that utilize the Community Church here have protested that you, ah, indulge in orgies in your, ah, rites.”
“Oh, fer Crissakes,” Jo-Jo blurted. “You really aren’t readin’ the script. You flats just can’t get the scenario.”
Demeter said seriously, “The term orgy is oft misused, you must understand. It is true that in our rites we eat the sacred mushroom, psilocybe, to acquire oneness with the White Goddess, even as did the followers of Dionysus thousands of years ago. But orgies, in the sense that the word is most often used today, are not sponsored by the Shrine of the White Goddess. As you will see, if you remain.”
One of the committee approached and spoke to her in a low voice.
She turned to Jim and said, “And now I must initiate the rites.”
She began to mount the rostrum and the noise in the hall largely fell away.
Just to be saying something, Jim said to Jo-Jo, “So it was the Aryans who brought modern war to the world.”
Jo-Jo looked at him scornfully. “Haven’t you ever read that there weren’t even walls around the cities that preceded them, such as Knossos, on Crete, or Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa in the Indus valley?”
“Okay,” Jim said. “Let’s sit down.”
He stuck it out for almost an hour, deciding, finally, that seemingly all religions propagated just about the same routine. We had to love one another, banish hate. Do good. Think beautiful thoughts. Return good for evil. And so forth and so on.
He found himself yawning and wondered when the hallucinogenic mushrooms would be eaten and what would take place then. He decided, suddenly, the hell with it. He could get Bat Hardin’s Security to activate a spy lens in the hall and check it out later. He didn’t have to be present.
He said, in half apology to the weird who had been sitting next to him, “I’ve got an appointment. So long.”
“Get goosed,” Jo-Jo said from the side of his mouth.
Evidently, Jim decided wryly, as he made his way up a side aisle to an exit, he hadn’t made much of an impression on Jo-Jo.
He checked with Carol Ann Cusack on his pocket phone and found that nothing in particular was demanding his attention in the administration offices, so made his way back to his apartment. Theoretically, as Second Vice-Demecrat of Shyler-deme, he was on call twenty-four hours a day. In actuality, his time was largely his own to dispose of. On an average, he found himself putting in a ten hour day, usually during the hours when Barry Ten Eyck and Bat Hardin were off, but now, of course, the Willard Saxe emergency was keeping him on the job during the same period they worked.
His apartment was somewhat larger than most bachelors were wont to maintain. As a sportsman, he disliked the ultra-small places so common in this age. He would rather put his income into roomy quarters than expend it for some of the other luxuries.
So it was that he even had a small escape sanctum, that ultimate retreat in a world where it had become difficult to retreat into solitude.
He dialed himself a drink, went over to his store of amateur films and selected a roll which he had taken in Africa on his last vacation. He took it over to the TV screen on one wall and inserted it and in doing so wondered all over again how much money he had spent in his time on photographic equipment. When he had first taken up the hobby of amateur movies, he had bought a movie projector. He had barely more than learned to operate it than the new development which allowed you to use your TV screen had come about and he hadn’t been able to sell the projector for more than a tenth of what he had paid for it. Projectors were antiquated. And cameras? Ha! You hardly got one home before it was antiquated.
He sat and watched for a few minutes scenes of various wild life he had taken in East Africa on one of the reserves, but then became restless. He was nervously unhappy about the developments of the last forty-eight hours, and something he couldn’t quite put his finger on was nagging him.
On the small table next to his comfort chair were the two pamphlets he had received from Locke. He flicked the TV screen off and picked one of them up. Futurist Reconstruction of Society. He checked the front of the booklet and found it was the second one that Willard Saxe had written, evidently more dynamic than the first, but not as much so as the one that had just been published a day or so ago. He turned to the first page, initially figuring on scanning the work, but in a few moments he had become engrossed.
When Jim Cotswold entered the office in the morning, Barry Ten Eyck and Carol Ann were already there and a weary Bat Hardin dropped in shortly later.
As usual, Barry wanted to know what spun, and they both told him, “Nothing.” Bat was disgusted. Evidently, he had spent the better part of the past twenty-four hours checking out his micro-spy lenses and digging into the personal affairs of everyone even remotely connected with the Futurists.
Jim said, “One thing occurred to me, just before I came down here. How long has our friend William Locke been in Shyler-deme?”
Barry Ten Eyck’s eyes narrowed slightly, as he got it immediately. He said, “You want to check that out, Miss Cusack?”
“Coming up.”
Jim said, “Probably silly, but you remember that Purloined Letter bit?”
“You mean where the missing letter was right out in the open, and nobody found it because it wasn’t really hidden?” Bat said.
“That’s right. What better disguise could a man like Saxe have than local leader of the Futurists—right out in the open?”
