Short Fiction, Mack Reynolds [best book reader txt] 📗

teachers, laden with social-labels, teach our youth. Our young people are going to college to secure a degree, not an education. It’s the label that counts, not the reality.

“Voss contends that it’s getting progressively worse. That we’re sinking into an equivalent of a ritual-taboo, tribal social-like situation. This is the system the low-level human being wants, yearns for and seeks. A situation in which no one’s judgment is of any use. Then his lack of judgment is no handicap.

“According to members of the Movement, today the tribesman type is seeking to reduce civilization back to ritual-taboo tribalism wherein no one man’s judgment is of any value. The union wants advancement based on seniority, not on ability and judgment. The persons with whom you associate socially judge you by the amount of money you possess, the family from which you come, the degrees you hold, by social-labels⁠—not by your proven abilities. Down with judgment! is the cry.”

“It sounds awfully weird to me,” Larry grumbled in deprecation.

Sam shrugged. “There’s a lot of sense in it. What the Movement wants is to develop a socioeconomic system in which judgment produces a maximum advantage.”

Larry said, “What gets me is that you talk as though half the country was all caught up in debating this Movement. But I haven’t even heard of it, neither has my department chief, nor any of my colleagues, so far as I know. Why isn’t anything about it in the papers or on the Tri-D?”

Sam said mildly, “As a matter of fact, I took in Mort Lenny’s show the other night and he made some cracks about it. But it’s not the sort of thing that’s even meant to become popular with the man in the street. To put it bluntly, Voss and his people aren’t particularly keen about the present conception of the democratic ideal. According to him, true democracy can only be exercised by peers and society today isn’t composed of peers. If you have one hundred people, twenty of them competent, intelligent persons, eighty of them untrained, incompetent and less than intelligent, then it’s ridiculous to have the eighty dictate to the twenty.”

Larry looked accusingly at his longtime friend. “You know, Sam, you sound as though you approve of all this.”

Sam said patiently, “I listen to it all, Larry my boy. I think Voss makes a lot of sense. There’s only one drawback.”

“And that is?”

“How’s he going to put it over? This social-label system the Movement complains about was bad enough ten years ago. But look how much worse it is today. It’s a progressive thing. And, remember, it’s to the benefit of the incompetent. Since the incompetent predominates, you’re going to have a hard time starting up a system based on judgment and ability.”

Larry thought about it for a moment.

Sam said, “Look, I’m working, Larry. Was there anything else?”

Larry said, “You wouldn’t know where I could get hold of Voss, would you?”

“At his home, I imagine, or at the University.”

“He’s disappeared. We’re looking for him.”

Sam laughed. “Gone underground, eh? The old boy is getting romantic.”

“Does he have any particular friends who might be putting him up?”

Sam thought about it. “There’s Frank Nostrand. You know, that rocket expert who was fired when he got in the big hassle with Senator McCord.”

When Sam Sokolski had flicked off, Larry stared at the vacant phone screen for a long moment, assimilating what the other had told him. He was astonished that an organization such as the Movement could have spread to the extent it evidently had through the country’s intellectual circles, through the scientifically and technically trained, without his department being keenly aware of it.

One result, he decided glumly, of labeling everything contrary to the status quo as weird and dismissing it with contempt. Admittedly, that would have been his own reaction only a week ago.

Suppose that he’d been at a cocktail party, and had drifted up to a group who were arguing about social-label judgments and the need to develop a movement to change society’s use of them. The discussion would have gone in one ear, out the other, and he would have muttered inwardly, “Weirds,” and have drifted on to get himself another vodka martini.

Larry snorted and dialed the Department of Records. He’d never heard of Frank Nostrand before, so he got Information.

The bright young thing who answered seemed to have a harried expression untypical of Records employees. Larry said to her, “I’d like the brief on a Mr. Frank Nostrand who is evidently an expert on rockets. The only other thing I know about him is that he recently got in the news as the result of a controversy with Senator McCord.”

“Just a moment, sir,” the bright young thing said.

She touched buttons and reached into a delivery chute. When her eyes came up to meet his again, they were more than ever harried. They were absolutely confused.

“Mr. Franklin Howard Nostrand,” she said, “currently employed by Madison Air as a rocket research technician.”

“That must be him,” Larry said. “I’m in a hurry, Miss. What’s his background?”

Her eyes rounded. “It says⁠ ⁠… it says he’s an Archbishop of the Anglican Church.”

Larry Woolford looked at her.

She looked back, pleadingly.

Larry scowled and said, “His university degrees, please.”

Her eyes darted to the report and she swallowed. “A bachelor in Home Economics, sir.”

“Look here, Miss, how could a Home Economics degree result in his becoming either an Archbishop or a rocket technician?”

“I’m sorry, sir. That’s what it says.”

Larry was fuming but there was no point in taking it out on this junior employee of the Department of Records. He snapped, “Just give me his address, please.”

She said agonizingly, “Sir, it says, Lhasa, Tibet.”

A red light flicked at the side of his phone and he said to her, “I’ll call you back. I’m getting a priority call.”

He flicked her off, and flicked the incoming call in. It was LaVerne Polk. She seemed to be on the harried side, too.

“Larry,” she said, “you better get over here right away.”

“What’s up, LaVerne?”

“This Movement,” she said, “it seems to have