I have been in such a pickle
since I saw you last.
--Shakespeare
I wasn't in my cell any more. I was lying back in an armchair in a
large comfortable-looking room. There was one other person in it, a
kindly looking middle-aged man in another armchair next to a wall under
a painting of a country scene, with trees and cows and a sky studded
with tiny clouds.
"Hello," the man said. "I am Mox." He was wearing one of those
Monolithian cloaks. "How are you?"
I felt too weak to answer. I tapped my finger on the arms of the chair
and the effort made me terribly tired. I closed my eyes again.
"Lunch is about to be served," Mox said. "Perhaps you would care to
freshen up first? To shave?"
I opened my eyes and rubbed a hand over my cheeks. They were pretty
whiskery.
"How are you fixed for blades?" I said. Don't ask me why. One gets
conditioned.
"Amply," Mox said. He made a gesture with his left hand and somebody in
another woolen cloak came in with shaving equipment, put it on a table
at my elbow and went out, bowing.
I looked at the steaming bowl of hot water, the tube of shaving cream
(brush versus jar, I thought, remembering the old ad), the razor and
mirror. I looked in the mirror, expecting the worst. The beard was
pretty heavy and the cheeks under it looked more sunken than I'd
remembered. But my eyes were clear and my tongue looked normal.
"There will be no deleterious effects," Mox said. "You'll be good as
new after your lunch."
"Lunch? What time is it?"
He seemed to do a mental conversion before he replied:
"Twelve-seventeen P.M. Eastern Daylight Saving Time; 1617 Greenwich."
"And an hour later on the Rue de la Paix," I said. "I'll have the
snails and some Beaujolais." I was feeling light-headed.
"Interesting," he said, watching me with an encouraging smile.
"But irrelevant. I couldn't eat snails on an empty stomach. I just said
that because it rhymes. What have you got for American times?"
"Lamb chops," Mox said, looking at me closely now, "baked potato,
broccoli, tossed salad, strawberry shortcake and coffee. Or----"
"That's for me. Stop right there. Can I have it now and shave later?
I'm starved."
"Certainly. Without further ado." Mox raised his right hand again and
the same man came in, though he couldn't have seen the signal, wheeling
a tray. An almost overpoweringly delicious smell reached my nostrils
and I shivered a little in my chair.
Mox got up. "I'll leave you while you fall in," he said. I didn't
answer him, being busy taking the covers off the serving dishes. I
suppose he meant "fall to," which I did, with a will.
My curiosity returned as I appeased my appetite. Having wolfed down the
meat and vegetables with hardly a conscious thought, I went through the
salad in more leisurely fashion, rehearsing questions to ask Mox. I
positively dawdled over the cake and coffee, it having just occurred to
me that this could be the equivalent of the doomed man's last meal.
"Look, Mox," I said when he came back. "Thanks all the same, but I
don't think I'll shave. Just give me my clothes and I'll go now. No;
don't bother. I'll go as I am. I don't live very far. Oh--and thanks
for the lunch."
Mox smiled and sat down. "You're a very amusing man, Mr. Kent. We
couldn't possibly let you go. We have great plans for you."
"Plans?" The well-being induced by the lunch began to seep away. "Like
what?"
"Details later. First we should discuss the terms of your employment.
The salary will be substantial, so there'll be no problem there, but
you might be interested in the fringe benefits, such as the size of
your paid-up life insurance policy, the beneficiaries...."
"Now, look. I haven't said I'd join your organization...."
"Ah, but you've already joined. We had planned to come to you, but you
saved us that trouble. You came to us voluntarily and have already
taken part in one of our minor missions--that of working for the
repeal of antiquated traffic laws."
"I did not. That wasn't me."
"Who would believe you? You previously espoused our cause on a
nationwide radio-and-television program."
"That wasn't me either, and you know it. I don't know how you did it,
but that double you rigged up isn't going to be able to get away with
it much longer."
"I think he can. You see, Sam, for all practical purposes that double,
as you call him, is you. There's nothing about you that he doesn't know
and everything he does or says is perfectly in character with what you
would do or say--presupposing one slight shift in motivation. And you
may be sure that adjustment has been made."
"You mean you've been picking my brains all the time you had me cooped
up in that cell?"
"You could put it that way. Not _all_ the time, of course. Only while
you slept. We know as much about you as you do about yourself. More,
probably, because we've probed your subconscious as well as your
surface self-awareness."
"Oh yeah? What was my mother's maiden name?"
"Clemens," Mox said instantly. "Hence your full name, with its literary
if not strictly genealogical connection--Samuel Langhorne Clemens Kent.
You know you are not directly related to Mark Twain, of course?"
"I was told I was," I said defensively. "Way back."
"Way, _way_ back, perhaps," Mox said. "Not in any modern sense."
"That's no proof that you read my mind. There must be genealogical
tables...."
"Certainly. But there are no written records of the time you stole
money from the newsstand outside the candy store in Ozone Park."
"I never ..." I started to say before I remembered. I'd been about ten.
The way to do it was to scoop up the coins boldly on your way into the
store and hand them to the owner while buying a candy bar or a roll
of caps. Of course you palmed a dime or so on the way. I'd never told
anybody about it and I felt suffocated in shame.
"Or the seventy-five wingless flies in the mayonnaise jar," Mox said
relentlessly. "You were trying for a hundred, weren't you? But you got
sick to your stomach. Or the time you sold your brother's bicycle and
claimed it had been stolen. Or the college exams with the dates written
in your palm. Or...."
"Stop it! That's enough!"
"I don't condemn you, Sam. No one is wholly free of blame. I have not
mentioned these things to bring you pain but to prove to you that
the Monolithian Sam Kent is as aware of your potentialities as you
are yourself. He has done nothing you would not do, given the proper
conviction or opportunity."
I couldn't look at him. "Swiping a dime off a newsstand isn't the same
thing as betraying your country," I said miserably.
"It would depend, wouldn't it, on which was the greater good? If the
dime you stole bought a quart of milk for your family during the
depression when your father was out of work--if the candy store man was
obviously better off--if your country were Nazi Germany----"
"The United States isn't Nazi Germany," I said. I could reject that
one, at least.
"True," Mox said. "But I said 'if.' You're a man of perception. You
don't need an overt act, such as six million deaths, to persuade you
that something is wrong. You see it every day in the news reports that
are your business--in the United Nations debates on nuclear testing, in
the reports on the strontium-90 in food, in the disfigured Hiroshima
women getting plastic surgery, in the perennial radiation scares."
"Is that what you're up to?" I asked him. "You think we're going to
wipe ourselves out and you're altruistically going to preserve us?
You're going to step in and run our world for us because you think
we're not capable of handling our own affairs?"
"If necessary," he said.
"The end justifies the means, you think. You have no faith in our
ability not to commit suicide."
"Not as much as you seem to have. Look, Sam, we've got a job for you to
do and we'd like you to take it because you want to. It would be better
for all of us that way. But if you are reconsidering your decision to
volunteer, we have ways of conscripting you."
"Torture?" I tried to speak calmly. "Brainwashing?"
"Neither you nor anyone else will ever be tortured. As for the other,
we'd prefer that you washed your own brain of its misconceptions about
us. Try to realize that what we are trying to do--and what we will
do--is for your own good and for the good of all of us."
He was the soul of sincerity, this Mox. I was relieved about the
torture. I was even half tempted to believe the other things. But I
wasn't going to brainwash myself or anybody else.
On the other hand, I could let him think I'd been won over and bore
from within whenever I got the chance. The standard injunctions to the
prisoner of war were no longer name-rank-and-serial-number. That had
gone out after the lessons of the Korean war. The new instructions were
to lie. Tell them whatever they wanted to hear. Confess to anything, no
matter how outrageous. Embrace the enemy with lies until he had no idea
where the truth lay. I decided to try it, but not so fast as to arouse
suspicion.
"If I do volunteer," I said, after a period of what I hoped appeared to
be profound thought, "will I be able to see my wife?"
"Of course," Mox said, beaming at me.
"I'm more worried about her than I am about strontium-90," I said
ingenuously. "She's going to have a baby."
"How marvelous."
"Her name is Mae," I said. "We haven't been married long and this will
be our first child."
"Congratulations."
"A man's got to think of his family first," I said, pouring it on,
"doesn't he?"
"Absolutely."
"I mean it's all very well to expect every man to do his duty, but
where does that duty lie? We've signed a treaty of peace and friendship
with you, haven't we? Through the UN, I mean. And if that's good enough
for the President, I guess it's good enough for me. Poor Mae. She must
be worried to death. I've got to see her."
"And so you shall, Sam."
"That's all I ask. I volunteer. We've got to stop this ridiculous
experimentation with the very seeds of our own destruction." I was
washing the old brain with everything I had. "What's the job you have
for me?"