Prescription for Chaos (13 page)

Banner shoved open another door, walked down a short hall past the open door of an office where a stack of mail lay unopened on a chair, pushed open another door, and he and Hommel walked past a counter where parts were sold, into the garage itself.

Here they were momentarily struck speechless by a roomful of cars with the hoods up, the mechanics seated at a bench where all the tools had been shoved off onto the floor. The men, comfortably seated at the bench, had books open, writing furiously.

Banner eased through the jam of cars, and peered over their shoulders. They were all working on different pages of separate copies of the same book, a text on calculus. As they filled up the sheets of paper with finished problems, they put them on top of a large stack of such papers, and tore off fresh sheets. Several unopened packs of paper, containing five hundred sheets to the pack, sat on the back of the bench.

From the service manager's cubicle across the room came the ring of a phone, then an obliging voice:

"Sure, bring it right in. We'll get at it first chance we get."

Banner stared across the room, to see the service manager put down the phone, and turn to contemplate a skeleton on a stand. His voice came faintly across the room:

"Clavicle, scapula, sternum, rib: frontal, parietal, occipital, squamous temporal, mastoid temporal, nasal, zygomatic, maxilla, mandible . . ."

Banner eased through the jammed cars, motioned the stupefied Hommel to follow, shoved open the door to the short hall, walked through, shoved open the door to the salesroom, and was greeted by the words, "Was it ethyl ether, or was it a preparation consisting of ethyl ether? In the one case, what they'd run into . . ."

Banner stiff-armed the outer door, to find the same salesman and customer standing by the car. The customer, red-faced, was saying heatedly, ". . . All I'm
in
here for is a car I can use to get to work!"

The salesman nodded.

"But of course you can select a car more intelligently after you learn how they operate. And it's a fascinating study. You'll be surprised, as I was, once you get into it. For instance, were you aware that the present infinitely-variable transmission is a descendant, in a sense, of a development of the 1920s . . ."

Banner walked past to his car, got in, opened Hommel's door, then nursed the engine to life.

"Let's hope, Mort, that this place isn't typical."

"It couldn't be."

"You're right. If it was, the country would have collapsed by now."

They finally found a garage that could do the job, but the mechanic was overloaded with work, and it took a long time.

Somehow, the day's experience didn't seem to augur well for the future.

As time passed, the men working on the antidote began to see the importance of it, and developed a fervor that only Peabody had had before. But it took a long time for this fervor to produce any results.

"I hate to say it," said Hommel, "but it seems to me that this Cerebrocreatine of ours helps study, but somehow prevents
work
."

Banner handed over a newspaper. "Take a look at this, Mort."

Hommel glanced at the paper, to find an article marked in pencil:

 
SAUGASH AREA BOASTS FOUR COLLEGES!
Saugash, April 22. Work began today on a new neighborhood college, to supplement the Saugash Community College completed here last fall. This brings to four the total of higher educational facilities in the Saugash area, counting Saugash University and Saugash Teachers College.
Dr. Rutherford Dollard Ganst, VI, President of Saugash University, presided at the ground-breaking ceremonies, which were attended by the mayor and many other notables, and a crowd of interested persons estimated at over four thousand.
President Ganst, in a short and memorable address, stated: "Nothing is more important in this day of rapid scientific advance and complex societal change than an informed citizenry. Education alone can create an informed citizenry. Thus the need for education becomes no less vital and urgent than the need for air or water, for food or any other necessity of life. Education has become the basic prerequisite for life today. Nothing is more important. Today, educational qualifications are vital to everyone, from the manual laborer at the bottom, to the head of the great educational system at the top. Employers will not accept the unqualified, because they are seriously lacking in qualifications. Without qualifications there can be no success. Mere ability is no longer enough. Indeed, with sufficient qualifications, one may dispense with ability. It is the
qualifications
that are vital, and only educational institutions may grant qualifications. Thus Education is no longer the necessity of youth alone. Education is now the essential and inescapable concomitant of progress and indeed of existence for every man and every woman of each and every age and condition of life, without exception, from the cradle to the grave. The gigantic dominating growth of our education system, swelling like a tide to overwhelming proportions never before conceived by the mind of man in all recorded history, cannot be resisted! Nothing can stop it. Nothing can stay it.
Education will be served
! Science requires it. Technology demands it. The towering giants in the field of the hierarchy of education itself mandate it!
Education will conquer all
!"

* * *

Hommel looked up dizzily.

Banner said, "When you first told me about this pill, Mort, you said, 'It stimulated intellectual activity. It channels energy from gross physical pursuits into imaginative creativity.' The trouble seems to be that it channels a little too
much
energy."

"But what can we do?"

Banner shook his head.

"Keep working on that antidote."

As the days passed, the situation didn't stand still. On a drive to town one afternoon, Banner and Hommel were nearly run off the road by a truck whose driver was studying at sixty miles an hour. A few minutes later, on the flat farmland below the highway, Hommel saw a farmer driving a tractor, reading a book strapped to the steering wheel in front of him. The tractor ran into an electric pole, the book and the farmer were knocked off. The farmer picked up the book and went on reading.

Banner parked on the shoulder of the road behind a car with a flat tire, and looked where Hommel pointed.

He shook his head, then glanced up, and murmured, "Now, what's
this
?"

The car in front had the left rear tire flat, and three men were standing around the open trunk of the car. They seemed to be arguing in a languid way.

"Oh, no," one of them was saying, "I'm sure the essential thing is to
first
jack up the car."

"You mean,
elevate the car on a jack
."

"Well, my terminology may have been a little imprecise, but—"

The third man broke in. "It's incorrect, in any case. The essential prerequisite is removal of the bolts while application of vehicular weight precludes rotation of the wheel."

"Rotation of the wheel? Yes, yes, we're overlooking something. Due to the fact that the wheels are fastened on opposite sides of the car, they rotate in opposite senses, and to prevent inertial loosening of the fastening nuts or cap screws—cap screws in this case, I presume—the 'handedness' of the screw threads is reversed on opposite sides of the vehicles. Now, to loosen a cap screw successfully, it must be rotated in the proper direction. Yet, the thread is screwed in out of sight in the brake drum.
It is not subject to visual observation
."

"That
is
important. How can we determine the handedness of the threads?"

A perspiring woman stuck her head out the car window.

"Oh, hurry.
Please
hurry."

One of the men sluggishly got out the jack and stood holding it.

"Does anyone have a text, or repair manual, that might clarify this point?"

The woman put her head out the window again.

"
Please
hurry! The pains are coming closer together!"

One of the men looked around severely.

"Now, don't interrupt. We have a difficult problem here."

The man with the jack leaned it against the bumper, then all three men knelt to scratch diagrams in the dirt on the shoulder of the road.

Banner and Hommel hadn't changed a tire in years, but they could stand it no longer, and got out.

Banner grabbed the jack, and fitted it under the rear bumper. Hommel pulled out a combination tire iron and lug wrench, popped off the wheel cover, and loosened the wheel. Banner jacked the car up. Hommel took the wheel off. Banner got out the spare, and Hommel put it on while Banner put the flat into the trunk, then let down the jack. Hommel banged the wheel cover into place. Banner put the jack in the trunk. Hommel tossed the tire iron inside, and they turned away.

The other three men stood staring. One of them shook a yellow capsule out of a bottle, tossed it into his mouth and swallowed.

"Would you be prepared to do that again? I'm not sure that we've learned all the essential manipulations."

The woman put her head out the window. There was a note of desperate urgency in her voice.

"
The pains are getting closer together!
"

As the car disappeared down the highway, Banner and Hommel stood staring after it.

"How near, Mort, are we to that antidote?"

Hommel had a haunted look.

"No one could say. Peabody seems to be closest. But he could run into trouble any time. Besides, his solution seems to be the least desirable."

"Don't worry about that," said Banner with feeling. "Just as long as we get it while there's time to use it."

Several more weeks crawled by, so slowly that they seemed like months or years. Meanwhile, the gradual overall disintegration turned into specific failures in production and distribution. Little notice of this appeared in newspapers, general magazines, or on radio or television, which were preoccupied with more intellectual matters, particularly "adjusted voting." Under "adjusted voting" each person would cast a number of votes in accordance with his "intellectual level." The more degrees, the more votes. Television networks were carrying the "Debate of the Century" on this plan, the object of the most acrimonious dispute being how many votes should be allowed for publication in professional journals. No one dared to disagree with the principle of the plan, lest he label himself as "undereducated." To be "undereducated" was a serious business. The social stigma attached to it was about equivalent to having served two terms in prison for robbing gas stations and grocery stores.

In the midst of all this, with consumption of Cerebrocreatine mounting from week to week, with gigantic new campuses looming over the landscape, with the airwaves thick with learned discussions as the means of existence crumbled, Hommel and Peabody walked into Banner's office.

"Well, we've got it. It's practically a stupidity drug, but it
works
."

Banner got the new drug on the market in record time. Advertised as "Super
Ak
tion, for active people—instant-acting stimulant to healthful practical activity," it was wholesaled at a very modest profit in "superinhalator bottles," supposed to be used by spraying into the nose and throat.

"For the love of Heaven," said Hommel, "why don't we sell it in
capsules
?"

"It isn't going to sell like wildfire, Mort. Not in the present state of affairs. What one-hundred-percent intellectual is
interested
in healthful practical activity? And what is Cerebrocreatine turning the average person into?"

"I know. We should sell it in some different form. If only—"

Banner shook his head. "Since it will have only a very limited sale, we've got to make the most of it." He picked up a sample inhalator. It was shaped like a small gun, made of violet plastic, with the label on the side of the grip. Banner aimed it across the room, and squeezed the trigger. There was a
squish
sound, and a fine jet of liquid shot out, to leave an oval of tiny droplets on the wall.

Hommel frowned, and looked at the "superinhalator" again.

"When in doubt," said Banner, "rely on human nature.
Real
human nature, with its high points and its low points. Bear in mind, there are likely to be a few unregenerate bullheaded individualists around, regardless of anything formal education can do, even backed up by a thing like Cerebrocreatine."

"I still don't—"

From the window came a rude roar of exhaust, and a screech of brakes.

Banner looked out, to see a truck marked "Central Plumbing" slam to a stop in the drive below. Three men in coveralls jumped out, went around to the rear, yanked out a blow torch, a suction plunger, a coil of wire, and a tool case, and headed for the front door.

Hommel looked out.

"About time. That drain has been plugged for three months." He shook his head dispiritedly. "But I still don't see any way that we can hope—"

From a window down below boomed a rough profane voice:

"Where's the drain? We haven't got the whole ___ __ _ ___ day! Great _____ ! Look at all these stupid ________ !"

There was a faint but distinct
squish squish squish
sound.

Hommel stared at Banner, then at the "superinhalator" on his desk.

Banner said, "Practical men use practical means, Mort."

There was a thunder of feet on the staircase down the hall.

Banner and Hommel went into the hallway, to find a research chemist named Smyth looking around dazedly as he tossed yellow capsules into his mouth and contemplated some complex theoretical problem.

Up the stairs burst a couple of brisk men in gray lab coats, followed by three more in coveralls.

Smyth looked at this crew as at a colony of tame ants that has gotten out of its jar.

One of the men in overalls shifted his blowtorch to the other hand, and aimed a small violet gun at Smyth.

"
Squish!
"

Smyth staggered back against the wall. He sucked in a deep breath, and suddenly his expression changed from dreamy contemplation to astonishment. He banged his fist into his open hand.