Subversive, Mack Reynolds [mobile ebook reader .TXT] 📗

"There's nothing different about it. It's the same as any other soap."

"I mean, how come you sell it for three cents a cake, and what's the fact it has no name got to do with it?"

Warren Dickens leaned forward and went into what was obviously a strictly routine pitch. "Mr. Coty, have you ever considered what you're buying when they nick you twenty-five cents on your credit card for a bar of soap in an ultra-market?"

There was an edge of impatience in the older man's voice. "I buy soap!"

"No, sir. That's your mistake. What you buy is a telly show, in fact several of them, with all their expensive comedians, singers, musicians, dancers, news commentators, network vice presidents, and all the rest. Then you buy fancy packaging. You'll note, by the way, that our product hasn't even a piece of tissue paper wrapped around it. Fancy packaging designed by some of the most competent commercial artists and motivational research men in the country. Then you buy distribution. From the factory all the way to the retail ultra-market where your wife shops. And every time that bar of soap goes from one wholesaler or distributor to another, the price roughly doubles. You also buy a brain trust whose full time project is to keep you using their soap and not letting their competitors talk you into switching brands. The brain trust, of course, also works on luring away the competitor's customers to their product. Shucks, Mr. Coty, practically none of that twenty-five cents you spend to buy a cake of soap goes for soap. So small a percentage that you might as well forget about it."

Mr. Coty was obviously taken aback. "Well, how do I know this nameless soap you're peddling is, well, any good?"

Warren Dickens sighed deeply, and in such wise that it was obvious that he had so sighed before. "Sir, there is no difference between soaps. Oh, they might use a slightly different perfume, or tint it a slightly different color, but for all practical purposes common hand soap, common bath soap, is soap, period. All the stuff the copy writers dream up about secret ingredients and health for your skin, and cosmetic qualities, and all the rest, is Madison Avenue gobbledygook and applies as well to one brand as another. As a matter of fact, often two different soap companies, supposedly keen competitors, and using widely different advertising, have their products manufactured in the same plant."

Mr. Coty blinked at him. Shifted in his chair. Rubbed his chin as though checking his morning shave. "Well ... well, then where do you get your soap?"

"The same place. We buy in fantastically large lots from one of the gigantic automated soap plants."

Mr. Coty had him now. "Ah, ha! Then how come you sell it for three cents a cake, instead of twenty-five?"

"I've been telling you. Our soap doesn't even have a name, not to mention an advertising budget. Far from spending fortunes redesigning our packaging every few months in attempts to lure new customers, we don't package the stuff at all. It comes to you, in the simplest possible wrapping, through the mails. A new supply every month. Three cents a cake. No middlemen, no wholesalers, distributors. No nothing except soap at three cents a cake."

Mr. Coty leaned back in his chair. "I'll be darned." He thought it over. "Listen, do you sell anything besides soap?"

"Not right now, sir. But soap flakes are coming up next week and I think we'll be going into bread in a month or two."

"Bread?"

"Yes, sir, bread. Although we'll have to distribute that by truck, and have to have almost hundred per cent coverage in a given section before it's practical. A nickel a loaf."

"Five cents a loaf! You can't make bread for that much."

"Oh, yes we can. We can't advertise it, package it, and pay a host of in-betweens, is all. From the bakery to you, period."

Mr. Coty seemed fascinated. He said, "See here, what's the address of your office?"

Warren Dickens shook his head. "Sorry, sir. That's all part of it. We have no swanky offices with big, expensive staffs. We operate on the smallest of shoestrings. No brain trust. No complaint department. No public relations. No literature on how to beautify yourself. No nothing, except good soap at three cents a cake, plus postage. Now, if you'll sign this contract, we'll put you on our mailing list. Ten bars of soap a month, Mrs. Coty said. I brought this first supply so you could test it and see that the whole thing is bona fide."

Mr. Coty had to test it, but then he had to admit he couldn't tell any difference between the nameless soap and the product to which he was used. Eventually, he signed, made the first payment, shook hands with young Dickens and saw him to the door. He said, in parting, "I still wonder why you do this, rather than dragging down unemployment insurance like most young men fresh out of school."

Warren Dickens screwed up his face. This was a question that wasn't routine. "Well, I make approximately the same, if I stick to it and get enough contracts. And, shucks they're not hard to get. And, well, I'm working, not just bumming on the rest of the country. I'm doing something, something useful."

Coty pursed his lips and shrugged. "It's been a long time since anybody cared about that." He looked after the young man as he walked down the walk.

Then he turned and headed for the phone, and ten years seemed to drop away from him. He lit the screen with a flick, dialed and said crisply, "That's him, Jerry. Going down the walk now. Don't let him out of your sight."

Jerry's face was in the screen but he was obviously peering down, from the helio-jet, locating the subject. "O.K., Tracy, I make him. See you later." His face faded.

The man who had called himself Mr. Coty, dialed again, not bothering to light the screen. "All right," he said. "Thank Mrs. Coty and let her come home now."

Frank Tracy worked his way down an aisle of automated phono-typers and other office equipment. The handful of operators, their faces bored, periodically strolled up and down, needlessly checking that which seldom needed checking.

He entered the receptionist's office, flicked a hand at LaVerne Sandell, one of the few employees it seemed impossible to automate out of her position, and said, "The Chief is probably expecting me."

"That he is. Go right in, Mr. Tracy."

"I'm expecting a call from one of the operatives. Put it through, eh LaVerne?"

"Righto."

Even as he walked toward the door to the sanctum sanctorum, he grimaced sourly at her. "Righto, yet. Isn't that a bit on the maize side? Doesn't sound very authentic to me."

"I can see you don't put in your telly time, Mr. Tracy. Slang goes in cycles these days. They simply don't dream up a whole new set of expressions every generation anymore because everybody gets tired of them so soon. Instead, older periods of idiom are revived. For instance, scram is coming back in."

He stopped long enough to look at her, frowning. "Scram?"

She took him in quizzically, estimating. "Possibly dust, or get lost, was the term when you were a boy."

Tracy chuckled wryly, "Thanks for the compliment, but I go back to the days of beat it."

In the inner office the Chief looked up at him. "Sit down, Frank. What's the word? Another exponent of free enterprise, pre-historic style?"

Frank Tracy found a chair and began talking even while fumbling for briar and tobacco pouch. "No," he grumbled. "I don't think so, not this time. I'm afraid there might be something more to it."

His boss leaned back in the massive old-fashioned chair he affected and patted his belly, as though appreciative of a good meal just finished. "Oh? Give it all to me."

Tracy finished lighting his pipe, flicked the match out and put it back in his pocket, noting that he'd have to get a new one one of these days. He cleared his throat and said, "Reports began coming in of house to house canvassers selling soap for three cents a bar."

"Three cents a bar? They can't manufacture it for that. Will the stuff pass the Health Department?"

"Evidently," Tracy said wryly. "The salesman claimed it's the same soap as reputable firms peddle."

"Go on."

"We had to go to a bit of trouble to get a line on them without raising their suspicion. One of the boys lived in a neighborhood that was being canvassed for new customers and his wife had signed up. So I took her place when the salesman arrived with her first delivery—they deliver the first batch. I let him think I was Bob Coty and questioned him, but not enough to raise his suspicions."

"And?"

"An outfit selling soap and planning on branching into bread and heavens knows what else. No advertising. No middlemen. No nothing, as the salesman said, except standard soap at three cents a bar."

"They can't package it for that!"

"They don't package it at all."

The Chief raised his chubby right hand and wiped it over his face in a stereotype gesture of resignation. "Did you get his home office address? Maybe there's some way of buying them out—indirectly, of course."

"No, sir. It seemed to be somewhat of a secret."

The other's eyes widened. "Ridiculous. You can't hide anything like that. There's a hundred ways of tracking them down before the day is out."

"Of course. I've got Jerome Wiseman following him in a helio-jet. No use getting rough, as yet. We'll keep it quiet ... assuming that meets with your approval."

"You're in the field, Frank. You make the decisions."

The phone screen had lighted up and LaVerne's piquant face faded in. "The call Mr. Tracy was expecting from Operative Wiseman."

"Put him on," the Chief said, lacing his plump fingers over his stomach.

Jerry's face appeared in the screen. He was obviously parked on the street now. He said, "Subject has disappeared into this office building, Tracy. For the past fifteen minutes he's kinda looked as though the day's work was through and since this dump could hardly be anybody's home, he must be reporting to his higher-up."

"Let's see the building," Tracy said.

The portable screen was directed in such manner that a disreputable appearing building, obviously devoted to fourth-rate businesses, was centered.

"O.K.," Tracy said. "I'll be over. You can knock off, Jerry. Oh, except for one thing. Subject's name is Warren Dickens. Just for luck, get a complete dossier on him. I doubt if he's got a criminal or subversive record, but you never know."

Jerry said, "Right," and faded.

Frank Tracy came to his feet and knocked the rest of his pipe out into the gigantic ashtray on his boss' desk. "Well, I suppose the next step's mine."

"Check back with me as soon as you know anything more," the Chief said. He wheezed a sigh as though sorry the interview was over and that he'd have to go back to his desk chores, but shifted his bulk and took up a sheaf of papers.

Just as Tracy got to the door, the Chief said, "Oh, yes. Easy on the rough stuff, Tracy. I've been hearing some disquieting reports about some of the overenthusiastic bullyboys on your team. We wouldn't want such material to get in the telly-casts."

Lard bottom, Tracy growled inwardly as he left. Did the Chief think he liked violence? Did anyone in his right mind like violence?

Frank Tracy looked up at the mid-century type office building. He was somewhat surprised that the edifice still remained. Where did the owners ever find profitable tenants? What business could be so small these days that it would be based in such quarters? However, here it was.

The lobby was shabby. There was no indication on the list of tenants of the firm he was seeking, nor was there a porter. The elevator was out of repair.

He did it the hard way, going from door to door, entering, hat in hand, apologetically, and saying, "Pardon me. You're the people who sell the soap?" They kept telling him no until he reached the third floor and a door to an office even smaller than usual. It was lettered Freer Enterprises and even as he knocked and entered, the wording rang a bell.

There was only one