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 a 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?
COMPOUNDED INTEREST
by Mack Reynolds
Mr. Reynolds is an elusive man. I met him once in Chicago, on his way from New Mexico to Florida. A letter to his Florida address, some months after, followed him to Mexico, and I received a reply from Algiers. My queries about the Foreign Legion elicited an explanation (from Tangiers) about pretty girls, the Casbah, and his lifelong ambitions.
To the best of my knowledge, Reynolds does not possess a time machine, and uses only orthodox methods of travel.
The stranger said in miserable Italian, “I wish to see Sior Marin Goldini on business.”
The concierge’s manner was suspicious. Through the wicket he ran his eyes over the newcomer’s clothing. “On business, Sior?” He hesitated. “Possibly, Sior, you could inform me as to the nature of your business, so that I might inform his Zelenza’s secretary, Vico Letta . . .” He let his sentence dribble away.
The stranger thought about that. “It pertains,” he said finally, “to gold.” He brought a hand from his pocket and opened it to disclose a half dozen yellow coins.
“A moment, Lustrissimo,” the servant blurted quickly. “Forgive me. Your costume, Lustrissimo ...” He let his sentence dribble away again and was gone.
A few moments later he returned to swing the door open wide. “If you please, Lustrissimo, his Zelenza awaits you.”
He led the way down a vaulted hall to the central court, to the left past a fountain well to a heavy outer staircase supported by Gothic arches and sided by a carved parapet. They mounted, turned through a dark doorway and into a poorly lit corridor. The servant stopped and drummed carefully on a thick wooden door. A voice murmured from within and the servant held the door open and then retreated.
Two men were at a rough-hewn oak table. The older was heavy-set, tight of face and cold, and the other tall and thin and ever at ease. The latter bowed gently. He gestured and said, “His Zelenza, the Sior Marin Goldini.”
The stranger attempted a clumsy bow in return, said awkwardly, “My name is ... Mister Smith.”
There was a moment of silence which Goldini broke finally by saying, “And this is my secretary, Vico Letta. The servant mentioned gold, Sior, and business.”
The stranger dug into a pocket, came forth with ten coins which he placed on the table before him. Vico Letta picked one up in mild interest and examined it. “I am not familiar with the coinage,” he said.
His master twisted his cold face without humor. “Which amazes me, my good Vico.” He turned to the newcomer. “And what is your wish with these coins, Sior Mister Smith? I confess, this is confusing.”
“I want,” Mister Smith said, “to have you invest the sum for me.”
Vico Letta had idly weighed one of the coins in question on a small scale. He cast his eyes up briefly as he estimated. ‘The ten would come to approximately forty-nine zecchini, Zelenza,” he murmured.
Marin Goldini said impatiently, “Sior, the amount is hardly sufficient for my house to bother with. The bookkeeping alone—”
The stranger broke in. “Don’t misunderstand. I realize the sum is small. However, I would ask but ten per cent, and would not call for an accounting for . . . for one hundred years.”
The two Venetians raised puzzled eyebrows. “A hundred years, Sior? Perhaps your command of our language . . .” Goldini said politely.
“One hundred years,” the stranger said.
“But surely,” the head of the house of Goldini protested, “it is unlikely that any of we three will be alive. As God desires, possibly even the house of Goldini will be a memory only.”