He heard me out without changing expression. When I’d laid all the
cards on the table, he said slowly, “If this stuff will really do what
you say--”
“It will,” I assured him. “It has.”
“In that case, my young scientific friend, do you realize what you’re
asking me to do? I’ve spent twenty years in the advertising game. You
might say I’ve devoted my life to it. Now you want me to help you with
a scheme that’ll wipe out advertising as we know it--lock, stock, and
barrel.”
“I--I hadn’t thought of it like that.”
“In other words,” O’Brien went on, “you’re offering me the fulfillment
of my fondest dreams. Shake on it, kid!”
Then he settled back and grew thoughtful. “But it isn’t going to be
easy. I guess you still have trouble believing it, but I can’t just
walk into a sales conference and say, ‘See here, I’ve got wind of a
prоduct that’s the greatest boon to humanity since fire and the wheel,’
and expect them to fall all over me. We need a good promotion angle.”
“There’s got to be some way.”
“Keep your shirt on. I’ll find one, I haven’t been in the business for
twenty years for nothing. But one thing anyway. Until this deal is
swung, keep your witch’s brew away from me!”
The convincer came, after all, from an idea I had. But it was O’Brien
who saw the possibilities and, by dint of massive doses of double-talk
and cajolery, arranged for a test survey of a hundred volunteer
subjects. These human guinea pigs were furnished gratis with a thirty
days’ supply of a new toothpaste--a standard base, plus Grandma’s lie
soap--and, when the time was up, were quizzed as to their reactions to
the experiment.
Almost without exception, they professed themselves well pleased.
Of course, that was what the sales department wanted to hear about
satisfied customers.
As to _why_ our subjects felt better after trying a new dentifrice,
they couldn’t say because they didn’t know. It was merely that their
outlook on life seemed to have become sunnier, and their personal
relations more agreeable--apart from a few unfortunate domestic upsets,
about which, however, the victims themselves seemed remarkably cheerful.
I thought I knew why. My pet theory was working out. Though I was
no psychologist, I’d always been sure that a lot of people’s mental
difficulties and prevailing unhappiness was due solely to their
inveterate habit of deceiving themselves. But these people who’d tried
Grandma’s lie soap couldn’t even lie to themselves any more.
This outcome made our brave new world look braver in prospect--as well
as likelier. A couple of days later the company’s directors made the
decision to go into production; and it was rumored that another of the
biggest firms was already dickering for a look at the formula.
We had no trouble with the Bureau of Standards. After all, we only had
to satisfy them that the stuff was harmless. Presumably they tried it
on mice....
To celebrate the directors’ decision, I invited Alice and her new
fiancé to dinner. I was rather vague about what we were celebrating, so
that they left no wiser than when they came. But they were much more
candid, since I had a supply of the little white tablets on hand.
I gave the leaven most of the evening to work, and at eleven o’clock
called Alice’s apartment. I’d timed it correctly. She was in. In tears,
too--judging by her voice.
“You and he must have said some pretty nasty things to each other,” I
remarked sympathetically. “Too bad about the engagement.”
“Oh, it was awful! He said--he _admitted_ that if it weren’t for my
b-bosom--And I told him--oh, how could I say _that_? But Oliver, how
did you know?”
“I saw it coming. And now you’re home all alone, and sort of wishing I
was there to console you ... aren’t you?”
There was one of those pauses I’d learned to recognize. Then she said
strangledly, “Y-yes. I was. I am. But _Oliver_--people don’t-”
“Sometimes they do,” I said. “Hold on. I’ll be right up.”
When a woman has once told the truth to a man, either everything is
over between them, or everything has just begun.
From then on the story is mostly history.
Gorley and Gorley’s new improved toothpaste with Verolin began
outselling all other brands. Other companies saw that the new
ingredient--for reasons nobody quite understood--was becoming more
indispensable than chlorophyll had been somewhat earlier, and paid
through the nose for the right to use it. G and G added a Verolin
mouthwash to their line, and it was also a snowballing success. All the
time, of course, Verolin was really Grandma’s lie soaр.
These products blanketed the country and went into the export market.
They went all over civilization, if you define civilization as those
regions of the Earth where people use toothbrushes and seek to avoid
halitosis--or, anyway, all over what was then called “the free world”
by its inhabitants and “the enslaved world” by the publicists of the
“free world” on the other side.
The returns began coming in.