She was still staring at her cigarette, but plainly was not seeing it, because the ash was growing and trembling and she made no move to disturb it. Her voice became taut and a little harsh.
“Vados, with advice from Mayor who had become a friend of his, employed this knowledge. He broadcast very often in this technique a picture of his opponent copulating with a donkey, and — since television was rather new to us and very many people watched very much of the time — his opponent was called foul names as he went through the streets, his house was stoned daily, and — and in the end he killed himself.”
There was a pause.
At length Señora Posador recollected herself, shifted a little on her perch, and threw the ash from her cigarette aside.
“And so, my friend, it has continued. Those of us who know what we know — and object — never go to the movies; we never watch the television without a blinker. With practice has come skill, and what you have seen here is typical of the technique as it is employed today.
“It is now known for certain to many of our citizens that the squatters in the shantytowns practice bestial cruelty to their children, that they offend the morals of the young, that they elaborately blaspheme against the Christian religion. It is likewise known that you are a good man, a good Catholic, and a close friend of the president, whom you may never have seen in your life.”
“Once, in a car the other day,” I said. “That’s all.” She shrugged. “I saw you smile at the picture of yourself as an avenging angel,” she went on. “Yet even that is carefully planned. Many persons watching the program may have been children who believe in such things. Others — many, many more in the small towns and villages and even in Cuatrovientos and Puerto Joaquín — are simple and uneducated, and likewise hold such things to be literally true. You are a free man, Señor Hakluyt, compared to anyone walking the streets of Vados. You come here; you can go away again; it will not matter that your thinking has been influenced in Aguazul. But it would be better to watch no more television.”
“Are you trying to tell me that all the TV programs are loaded with this kind of crap?” I demanded.
She slipped from her perch and bent to open a sliding door set under the bench where she was sitting. “Choose any of these,” she invited, indicating a row of tape spools filed on a shelf. “They are programs transmitted during the last few months. I will do the same again for you.”
“Don’t trouble,” I said distractedly.
She looked at me with something approaching pity. “As I imagined, Señor Hakluyt, you are a good man. It shocks you to discover what methods are employed in the most governed country in the world!”
I lit a cigarette, staring at her. “I was talking to Dr. Mayor last night,” I said after a pause. “He used that same phrase. What does it mean? What does it really mean?”
“To the ordinary citizen? Oh, not very much. Our government is subtle as governments go — always it is the velvet glove where possible. For most of our people, the twenty years of Vados’s rule may truly be described as happy. Never before was Aguazul so prosperous, so peaceful, so satisfied. But we who know — and there are not many of us, señor — what long invisible chains we carry, fear for the future. If Mayor were to die, for example, who can predict the consequences? For all his elaborate theories, he is still a brilliant improvisateur; his gift is to trim his sails to the wind of change a moment before it begins to blow. With him, Vados, who is growing old — who can tell whether he has planned well enough for another to take the controls when he has gone, and keep our country on a steady forward course? And there is a still further danger: the danger that this disguised control may have worked all too well, that if change becomes necessary, we may have been too skillfully guided for too long to respond, so that before we can again forge ahead we must fall back in chaos.”
She made a helpless gesture with one superbly manicured hand and cast down the butt of her cigarette.
“I try not to speak politics to you, Señor Hakluyt. I know you are a foreigner and a good man. But it is of concern to all the world what happens here in Aguazul; we have laid claim to a government of tomorrow to match our city of tomorrow, and if we have gone wrong, then the world must take notice and avoid the same mistakes. Your hour is up, señor. I will drive you wherever you wish to go.”
IX
I didn’t say a word as the big Pegasos carried me back to the traffic department, where I had to call and see Angers for my daily visit. My state of mind approached consternation.
I had come to Vados to do a standard kind of job, one carrying far more kudos than anything I had yet attempted, owing to the special status of the city, but to outward appearance otherwise routine.
And now I found myself faced with a task of moral judgment instead. Or as well.
What Señora Posador had shown me had shaken me badly.
Aside from the questionable ethics of using subliminal perception for political purposes, there was the purely personal reaction against being lied about to the public. That the lies were intended to make me a popular figure merely aggravated the situation. And yet…
For twenty years Vados had ruled his country without revolution, civil war, slump, panic, or any other disaster. He had created peace unprecedented in the century and a half of the country’s checkered history. While his neighbors were wasting time and energy in internecine disturbances, he had managed to build Ciudad de Vados, to raise living standards almost everywhere, to make inroads on the problems of disease, hunger, illiteracy, and poverty. His people respected him for that; probably in the minds of most Vadeanos this city alone excused whatever else he might have done. What was I to do? Quit cold?
If I did that, it would permanently mar my reputation; I had worked for a long time to reach my present level in my specialized profession, and to reject this much-envied job would be construed as a confession of inadequacy, no matter how sound my reasons — because those reasons were not professional ones.
From the financial viewpoint, I couldn’t afford to quit, anyway.
Well, I could get around the last objection somehow. The competition in the field of traffic analysis is seldom so strong that an expert (and I class myself as an expert) can’t make himself employment.
But what weighed heaviest with me at the moment, when I’d reviewed the matter from beginning to end, was this: that if I threw in the job now, it was certain that Angers or someone in the traffic department with a direct emotional involvement in the situation would be ordered to solve the problem to the taste of the government — or rather, of their well-to-do supporters. And Angers for a certainty would botch it.
Ultimately, I told myself, my only responsibility was to my own conscience. Whatever the other circumstances that affected me only indirectly, my job was to do the very best I could and ensure that no one suffered by my actions — or, if not no one, then the least possible number of people.
Carrying the memory of Señora Posador’s bittersweet smile, I went into the traffic department.
Angers’ greeting was curt, and after it he wasted no more time in preamble. “Where have you been, Hakluyt?” he demanded.
I looked at him in amazement. “Visiting a friend,” I said shortly. “Why?”
“Since when has Maria Posador qualified as a friend of yours? I thought I told you she was bad company for you.”
“So you’ve been having me watched,” I said coldly. “I rather thought so. You think I’ve been spending my time in bars, maybe? Think I’m not capable of doing my job unless someone keeps an eye on me? If that’s your opinion, you can damn well hire someone else — and I’ll personally see to it no reputable traffic analyst will come within a mile of the job!”