The Marching Morons
change of mood. "This damned mess is all your fault and the fault of
people like you! Now come along and no more of your nonsense."
He yanked Barlow into an office building lobby and an elevator that,
disconcertingly, went _whoosh_ loudly as it rose. The real estate man's
knees were wobbly as the psychist pushed him from the elevator, down a
corridor and into an office.
A hawk-faced man rose from a plain chair as the door closed behind
them. After an angry look at Barlow, he asked the psychist, "Was I
called from the Pole to inspect this--this--?"
"Unget updandered. I've dee-probed etfind quasichance exhim
Poprobattackline," said the psychist soothingly.
"Doubt," grunted the hawk-faced man.
"Try," suggested Tinny-Peete.
"Very well. Mr. Barlow, I understand you and your lamented had no
children."
"What of it?"
"This of it. You were a blind, selfish stupid ass to tolerate economic
and social conditions which penalized child-bearing by the prudent and
foresighted. You made us what we are today, and I want you to know that
we are far from satisfied. Damn-fool rockets! Damn-fool automobiles!
Damn-fool cities with overhead ramps!"
"As far as I can see," said Barlow, "you're running down the best
features of time. Are you crazy?"
"The rockets aren't rockets. They're turbo-jets--good turbo-jets, but
the fancy shell around them makes for a bad drag. The automobiles
have a top speed of one hundred kilometers per hour--a kilometer is,
if I recall my paleolinguistics, three-fifths of a mile--and the
speedometers are all rigged accordingly so the drivers will think
they're going two hundred and fifty. The cities are ridiculous,
expensive, unsanitary, wasteful conglomerations of people who'd
be better off and more productive if they were spread over the
countryside.
"We need the rockets and trick speedometers and cities because, while
you and your kind were being prudent and foresighted and not having
children, the migrant workers, slum dwellers and tenant farmers were
shiftlessly and short-sightedly having children--breeding, breeding. My
God, how they bred!"
* * * * *
"Wait a minute," objected Barlow. "There were lots of people in our
crowd who had two or three children."
"The attrition of accidents, illness, wars and such took care of that.
Your intelligence was bred out. It is gone. Children that should have
been born never were. The just-average, they'll-get-along majority took
over the population. The average IQ now is 45."
"But that's far in the future--"
"So are you," grunted the hawk-faced man sourly.
"But who are _you_ people?"
"Just people--real people. Some generations ago, the geneticists
realized at last that nobody was going to pay any attention to what
they said, so they abandoned words for deeds. Specifically, they formed
and recruited for a closed corporation intended to maintain and improve
the breed. We are their descendants, about three million of us. There
are five billion of the others, so we are their slaves.
"During the past couple of years I've designed a skyscraper, kept
Billings Memorial Hospital here in Chicago running, headed off war with
Mexico and directed traffic at LaGuardia Field in New York."
"I don't understand! Why don't you let them go to hell in their own
way?"
The man grimaced. "We tried it once for three months. We holed up at
the South Pole and waited. They didn't notice it. Some drafting-room
people were missing, some chief nurses didn't show up, minor government
people on the non-policy level couldn't be located. It didn't seem to
matter.
"In a week there was hunger. In two weeks there were famine and plague,
in three weeks war and anarchy. We called off the experiment; it took
us most of the next generation to get things squared away again."
"But why _didn't_ you let them kill each other off?"
"Five billion corpses mean about five hundred million tons of rotting
flesh."
Barlow had another idea. "Why don't you sterilize them?"
"Two and one-half billion operations is a lot of operations. Because
they breed continuously, the job would never be done."
"I see. Like the marching Chinese!"
"Who the devil are they?"
"It was a--uh--paradox of my time. Somebody figured out that if all
the Chinese in the world were to line up four abreast, I think it was,
and start marching past a given point, they'd never stop because of the
babies that would be born and grow up before they passed the point."
"That's right. Only instead of 'a given point,' make it 'the largest
conceivable number of operating rooms that we could build and staff.'
There could never be enough."
"Say!" said Barlow. "Those movies about babies--was that your
propaganda?"
"It was. It doesn't seem to mean a thing to them. We have abandoned the
idea of attempting propaganda contrary to a biological drive."
"So if you work _with_ a biological drive--?"
"I know of none which is consistent with inhibition of fertility."
* * * * *
Barlow's face went poker-blank, the result of years of careful
discipline. "You don't, huh? You're the great brains and you can't
think of any?"
"Why, no," said the psychist innocently. "Can you?"
"That depends. I sold ten thousand acres of Siberian tundra--through
a dummy firm, of course--after the partition of Russia. The buyers
thought they were getting improved building lots on the outskirts of
Kiev. I'd say that was a lot tougher than this job."
"How so?" asked the hawk-faced man.
"Those were normal, suspicious customers and these are morons, born
suckers. You just figure out a con they'll fall for; they won't know
enough to do any smart checking."
The psychist and the hawk-faced man had also had training; they kept
themselves from looking with sudden hope at each other.
"You seem to have something in mind," said the psychist.
Barlow's poker face went blanker still. "Maybe I have. I haven't heard
any offer yet."
"There's the satisfaction of knowing that you've prevented Earth's
resources from being so plundered," the hawk-faced man pointed out,
"that the race will soon become extinct."
"I don't know that," Barlow said bluntly. "All I have is your word."
"If you really have a method, I don't think any price would be too
great," the psychist offered.
"Money," said Barlow.
"All you want."
"More than you want," the hawk-faced man corrected.
"Prestige," added Barlow. "Plenty of publicity. My picture and my name
in the papers and over TV every day, statues to me, parks and cities
and streets and other things named after me. A whole chapter in the
history books."
The psychist made a facial sign to the hawk-faced man that meant, "Oh,
brother!"
The hawk-faced man signaled back, "Steady, boy!"
"It's not too much to ask," the psychist agreed.
Barlow, sensing a seller's market, said, "Power!"
"Power?" the hawk-faced man repeated puzzledly. "Your own hydro station
or nuclear pile?"
"I mean a world dictatorship with me as dictator!"
"Well, now--" said the psychist, but the hawk-faced man interrupted,
"It would take a special emergency act of Congress but the situation
warrants it. I think that can be guaranteed."
"Could you give us some indication of your plan?" the psychist asked.
"Ever hear of lemmings?"
"No."
"They are--were, I guess, since you haven't heard of them--little
animals in Norway, and every few years they'd swarm to the coast and
swim out to sea until they drowned. I figure on putting some lemming
urge into the population."
"How?"
"I'll save that till I get the right signatures on the deal."
* * * * *
The hawk-faced man said, "I'd like to work with you on it, Barlow. My
name's Ryan-Ngana." He put out his hand.
Barlow looked closely at the hand, then at the man's face. "Ryan what?"
"Ngana."
"That sounds like an African name."
"It is. My mother's father was a Watusi."
Barlow didn't take the hand. "I thought you looked pretty dark. I don't
want to hurt your feelings, but I don't think I'd be at my best working
with you. There must be somebody else just as well qualified, I'm sure."
The psychist made a facial sign to Ryan-Ngana that meant, "Steady
_yourself_, boy!"
"Very well," Ryan-Ngana told Barlow. "We'll see what arrangement can be
made."
"It's not that I'm prejudiced, you understand. Some of my best
friends--"
"Mr. Barlow, don't give it another thought. Anybody who could pick on
the lemming analogy is going to be useful to us."
And so he would, thought Ryan-Ngana, alone in the office after
Tinny-Peete had taken Barlow up to the helicopter stage. So he
would. Poprob had exhausted every rational attempt and the new
Poprobattacklines would have to be irrational or sub-rational. This
creature from the past with his lemming legends and his improved
building lots would be a fountain of precious vicious self-interest.
Ryan-Ngana sighed and stretched. He had to go and run the San
Francisco subway. Summoned early from the Pole to study Barlow, he'd
left unfinished a nice little theorem. Between interruptions, he was
slowly constructing an n-dimensional geometry whose foundations and
superstructure owed no debt whatsoever to intuition.
* * * * *
Upstairs, waiting for a helicopter, Barlow was explaining to
Tinny-Peete that he had nothing against Negroes, and Tinny-Peete wished
he had some of Ryan-Ngana's imperturbability and humor for the ordeal.
The helicopter took them to International Airport where, Tinny-Peete
explained, Barlow would leave for the Pole.
The man from the past wasn't sure he'd like a dreary waste of ice and
cold.
"It's all right," said the psychist. "A civilized layout. Warm,
pleasant. You'll be able to work more efficiently there. All the facts
at your fingertips, a good secretary--"
"I'll need a pretty big staff," said Barlow, who had learned from
thousands of deals never to take the first offer.
"I meant a private, confidential one," said Tinny-Peete readily, "but
you can have as many as you want. You'll naturally have top-primary-top
priority if you really have a workable plan."
"Let's not forget this dictatorship angle," said Barlow.
He didn't know that the psychist would just as readily have promised
him deification to get him happily on the "rocket" for the Pole.
Tinny-Peete had no wish to be torn limb from limb; he knew very
well that it would end that way if the population learned from this
anachronism that there was a small elite which considered itself
head, shoulders, trunk and groin above the rest. The fact that this
assumption was perfectly true and the fact that the elite was condemned
by its superiority to a life of the most grinding toil would not be
considered; the difference would.
The psychist finally put Barlow aboard the "rocket" with some thirty
people--real people--headed for the Pole.
* * * * *
Barlow was airsick all the way because of a post-hypnotic suggestion
Tinny-Peete had planted in him. One idea was to make him as averse as
possible to a return trip, and another idea was to spare the other
passengers from his aggressive, talkative company.
Barlow during the first day at the pole was reminded
of his first day in the Army. It was the same
now-where-the-hell-are-we-going-to-put-_you_? business until he took a
firm line with them. Then instead of acting like supply sergeants they
acted like hotel clerks.
It was a wonderful, wonderfully calculated buildup, and one that he
failed to suspect. After all, in his time a visitor from the past would
have been lionized.
At day's end he reclined in a snug underground billet with the 60-mile