A well-known radio news commentator paused for a refreshing gargle in
the mid-break of his program, was unable to continue broadcasting, and
resigned the same day.
Various other commentators and newspaper columnists suffered more
or less similar fates, while a good many newspapers and periodicals
underwent violent shifts of editorial policy.
Half a dozen magazines having the word “True” in their titles suspended
publication.
Quite a few authors, including some more than usually successful ones,
abandoned their profession. Surprisingly, those who quit included some
who had been praised by the critics for the stark realism of their
work, and among those who did not quit were some whose writings were
regarded as sheer imaginative flights.
As for the critics, most of them took up useful trades.
A number of university professors conscientiously resigned, stating
that they could not teach “facts” which they did not know to be true.
Several hitherto popular and, to their founders, profitable religious
cults abruptly disintegrated. In one case there was a riot, when the
Prophet of the Luminous Truth appeared in a mass meeting and told his
followers some home truths about himself, his doctrines, and themselves.
Most of the churches lost grievously in membership, though at the same
time they enjoyed an accession of new converts. Those whose rites
included confession complained that, somehow, the act appeared to be
losing its deep significance.
Psychoanalysts at first rejoiced over their sudden wholesale success
in overcoming their patients’ “resistances,” and a little later were
appalled by their empty waiting rooms.
The divorce rate skyrocketed, then plunged to a permanent record low.
Conversely, the marriage rate at first fell off sharply, then climbed
gradually back to normal. The birth rate was unaffected.
Innumerable lawyers took down their shingles.
Congressional investigating committees enjoyed a field day, but fell
prey to an increasing nervous frustration as witness after witness
refused to perjure himself.
In Washington, D. C., a conservatively-dressed gentleman checked into a
hotel, came down to the lobby after brushing his teeth, and in response
to a commercial traveler’s casual question said, “My business? Well,
I’m a secret agent for the Soviet Union. And you?”
Police in scores of cities were swamped by confessions of offenses
ranging from multiple murder to double parking, and were bewildered by
the absence of the expected percentage of false confessions.
For the first time in modern history, the number of homicides exceeded
the number of suicides. In general, crimes of stealth virtually ceased
to occur, while crimes of violence continued at about their previous
level and reported cases of rape declined spectacularly.
Numerous government officials admitted themselves guilty of peculation
and malfeasance in office. The business bureaucracy was even harder
hit. Among the casualties was a prominent board member of Gorley and
Gorley.
To my particular satisfaction, the mayor our local machine had elected
made a public speech--apparently unaware that he was doing anything out
of the way--in which he thanked by name the boys who had purchased the
most votes for him in the last campaign, also those who had put in the
strong-arm work.
All the F.B.I. agents doing undercover work in the Communist Party
were exposed, and as a result the party went bankrupt for lack of dues
paying members.
As O’Brien had predicted, the advertising business collapsed, burying
many lesser enterprises under the ruins. But somehow no general
financial panic took place.
A man from Texas was heard to confess that he sometimes got tired of
hearing about Texas, and even admitted it couldn’t be twice as large as
the rest of the United States.
Events such as these were the convulsions, the death throes of an old
world and the birth pangs of a new.
Their final phase was the breakdown of the international situation,
which had continued for over a decade in a sort of deadly balance.
The balance was destroyed when U. S. and other Western diplomats
adopted a new tack which provoked, in their Eastern-bloc opponents,
reactions first of suspicious alarm, then of bafflement, and finally
of a dazed conviction that the spirit of Marxian history had at long
last delivered the enemy into their hands--which last impression led
directly to their undoing.
Forgetting the chiseler’s basic precept--you can’t cheat an honest
man--they set about exploiting the situation by extracting from the
West all the technical information they coveted, and which was now
theirs for the asking. Along with plutonium refinement methods and
guided missile designs, they obtained, naturally, the formula for
Grandma’s lie soap, alias Verolin.
The counterparts of Gorley and Gorley’s sales department, in their
government-run industries, were also shrewdly alive to the importance
of having satisfied customers. Clearly, they reasoned, studying our
records, this is a good thing, this is a valuable bit of _kul’tura_....
From there on developments followed pretty much the pattern already
established in the West. There were some painful incidents, such as the
Kiev massacre of former secret police agents, and the three days when
_Pravda_ shut down to retool. But on the whole, the reaction was more
than anything else like that of a man who comes to the top and takes
breath at last, after very nearly drowning.
The Iron Curtain sagged, fell apart, and sank into oblivion. Grandma’s
lie soap had conquered the world.
V
Since I retired, I’ve been using my leisure in exploration and
observation of this world which I did a good deal to create, this world
which differs so much from the one I grew up in and can remember better
than most others even of my own generation. They’ve had the treatment,
and they’ve changed. But I still brush my teeth with a salt-and-soda
mixture.
In many ways, the present era answers to the visions that were called
Utopian when I was a boy--called that, usually, with a sneer. A lot of
the social and political reforms we only dreamed about then have been
carried out as a matter of course which was inevitable once people
stopped lying themselves and one another black in the face.
Mental diseases, tangled lives, crime have all been swept away--not to
mention the threat of war that was the Great Shadow overlying all the
lesser shadows of the old world.
An election campaign now is carried on in an atmosphere of sobriety and
statesmanship that would have given an old-time politician the creeps.
None of the old bandstand, circus stuff.... Speaking of that, one
thing I miss is the circus. I used to like to listen to the sideshow
barkers--an extinct tribe. I know, they still have circuses, or call
them that; but P. T. Barnum would disown them.
But ... people look one another in the eyes much more than they ever
used to. They don’t seem afraid. There’s confidence--not the ballooning
confidence that led to big economic booms and bigger busts, but a trust
resting on solid foundations.
Still, sometimes I wonder.
Not long ago I ran into O’Brien, for the first time in years, in a bar.
People don’t drink as much as they did, but O’Brien had been drinking a
good deal.
“How are you?” I said automatically, the sight of such a
long-remembered face making me forget that that particular greeting
wasn’t used nowadays.
He began a detailed description of his general state of health and
present state of intoxication. “Oh,” I said. “You’ve had it.”
“Yeah,” said O’Brien. “I broke down and took the treatment. I got like
everybody else. I couldn’t stand the temptation any more. You know what
I mean?”
I knew exactly what he meant. For him, with his background, it must
have been much worse.
“Maybe,” said O’Brien thickly, “I could have been dictator of the world
if I’d wanted. But this way’s better.” He signaled the waiter, then
looked at me curiously. “You--not yet?”
“Not yet,” I said. “Maybe never. I like to watch things.”
“Watch the sheep run,” mumbled O’Brien. “All sheep....”
* * * * *
He was drunk, but he’d had Grandma’s lie soap, and he spoke the truth.
Perhaps there’s too much confidence.
Once in a while I yield a little to that temptation O’Brien mentioned,
but always in harmless ways, merely for amusement or out of curiosity
to see just how much people _will_ swallow. Like in that fabrication
of Howling Wolf, the genius of the North Woods, which I told you about
in the beginning. More and more I find that they’ll believe almost
anything, especially the younger generation. Older people still have a
residuum of skepticism.
Now it’s plain--using hindsight--that we should easily have foreseen
the secondary effect. But it developed very slowly. No physiological
effect, this, but a psychological one--or simply logical. Once people
stop lying, they’ll also stop suspecting deceit. They’ll believe as
they expect to be believed. Little by little, particularly as the young
ones who don’t remember grow up, they’ll become totally--gullible, it
used to be called.
A while back, down South, there was an unwashed prophet who made
converts right and left to а weird sect of his own devising--until
somebody seduced him into heathenish ways, and he tried brushing his
teeth. But incidents like that don’t really disturb me. As the example
shows, they all come out in the wash.
Yet there is something that bothers me. Back before Grandma’s lie soap,
we used to get sporadic reports of “mysterious airships”, “Flying
saucers”, or similarly named equivalents for unexplained objects in the
sky. We laughed them off, mostly, because people were always starting
crazy rumors.... After the great change, those reports might have been
expected to stop coming.
But they didn’t.
And more recently there have been some queer phenomena noted by the
space station and the bubbles on the Moon.
So suppose we’re not alone in the Universe or even in the Solar System?
And suppose that whoever is out there--circling us, observing us with
immense caution for so long--are beings like _we_ used to be--fierce,
wary, enormously suspicious as their behavior suggests, capable of any
falsehood, any treachery?
Wolves, circling the sheep....
Perhaps it’s all my imagination. I can’t be sure. There’s only one way
I can be sure even of what I think myself.
Pretty soon now I’ll go into the bathroom and wash my mouth with
Grandma’s lie soap. Then I’ll look into the mirror and ask myself, face
to face, with no possibility of deception: _Did I do right?_
What will my answer be?
Transcriber’s note:
This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe, February 1956 (Vol. 5,
No. 1.). Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.
Obvious errors have been silently corrected in this version, but minor
inconsistencies have been retained as printed.