Word of Honor

At 2:27 in the afternoon, Homer Gans, cashier, entered the office of his employer, the President of the First National Bank.

"I've got something to tell you," he murmured. "It's about the reserve fund. I'm into it for 40,000 dollars."

"You're what?"

"I embezzled from the reserve fund," Homer said. "Been doing it for years now, and nobody ever caught on. Some of the money went to play the races, and a lot of it has been paying somebody's rent. You wouldn't think to look at me that I'd be keeping a blonde on the side. But then, you don't know how it is at home."

The President frowned. "Oh yes I do," he answered, taking a deep breath. "As a matter of fact, I happen to be keeping a blonde myself. Though to tell the truth, she isn't a natural blonde."

Homer hesitated, then sighed. "To tell the truth," he said, "neither is mine."

Between 2:28 and 2:43, quite a number of things happened. A model nephew told his rich and elderly uncle to go to hell and quit trying to run his life. An equally model husband told his wife he had hated her and their children for years and frequently wished they'd all drop dead. A star shoe salesman told a female customer to quit wasting time trying on small sizes and go out and buy a couple of rowboats. At one of the embassies, a visiting diplomat paused in the midst of a flattering toast and abruptly emptied the contents of his glass upon the bald head of the American Ambassador.

And----

"Holy Toledo!" howled Wally Tibbets, Managing Editor of the Daily Express. "Has everybody flipped?"

Reporter Joe Satterlee shrugged.

"In nine years on this rag, I've never pulled that 'Stop the presses!' stuff. But we're standing by for a replate right now -- and we're going to stand by until we find out what gives. Got enough lead copy for a dozen front pages right now, and none of it makes sense."

"Such as?" Satterlee gazed calmly at his boss.

"Take your pick. Our senior Senator just issued a statement of resignation--says he's unfit to hold office. That labor leader who built the big new union headquarters uptown went and shot himself. Police headquarters can't keep up with the guys who are coming in and confessing everything from murder to mopery. And if you think that's something, you ought to hear what's going on down in the advertising department. Clients are canceling space like mad. Three of the biggest used-car dealers in town just yanked their ads."

Joe Satterlee yawned. "What goes on here?"

"That's just what I want you to find out. And fast." Wally Tibbets stood up. "Go see somebody and get a statement. Try the University. Tackle the science department."

Satterlee nodded and went downstairs to his car.

Traffic seemed to be disrupted all over the city, and something had happened to the pedestrians. Some of them were running and the others moved along in a daze or merely stood silently in the center of the sidewalk. Faces had lost their usual mask of immobility. Some people laughed and others wept. Over in the grass of the University campus, a number of couples lay locked in close embrace, oblivious of still other couples who were fighting furiously. Joe Satterlee blinked at what he saw and drove on.

At 3:02 he drove up to the Administration Building. A burly man stood on the curb, doing a little dance of impatience. He looked as though he wanted either a taxi or a washroom, but fast.

"Pardon me," Satterlee said. "Is Dean Hanson's office in this building?"

"I'm Hanson," the burly man snapped.

"My name's Satterlee, I'm with the Daily Express ----"

"Good Lord, do they know already?"

"Know what?"

"Never mind." Dean Hanson shook his head. "Can't talk to you now. Got to find a cab. I suppose I'll never get to the airport."

"Leaving town?"

"No. I've got to get my hands on Doctor Lowenquist. He's at the bottom of all this ----"

Satterlee opened the door. "Come on, get in," he said. "I'll drive you to the airport. We can talk on the way."

A wind came out of the west and the sun disappeared to cower behind a cloud.

"Storm coming up," Dean Hanson muttered. "That damned fool better land before it hits."

"Lowenquist," Satterlee said. "Isn't he head of the School of Dentistry?"

"That's right." Hanson signed. "All this nonsense about mad scientists is bad enough, but a mad dentist ----"

"What did he do?"

"He chartered a plane this afternoon, all by himself, and took it up over the city. He's been spraying the town with that gas of his." Hanson sighed. "I don't know anything about science. I'm just a poor University Dean, and my job is to get money out of rich alumni. But the way I hear it, Lowenquist was monkeying around with chemical anesthetics. He mixed up a new combination -- like pentothal sodium, sodium amytal -- only a lot stronger and more concentrated."

"Aren't those used in psychotherapy, for narcohypnosis?" Satterlee asked. "What they call truth serums?"

"This isn't a serum. It's a gas."

"You can say that again," Satterlee agreed. "So he waited for a clear, windless day and went up in a plane to dust the city with a concentrated truth gas. Is that a fact?"

"Of course it is," Hanson replied. "You know I can't lie to you." He sighed again. "Nobody can lie any more. Apparently the stuff is so powerful that one sniff does the trick. Psychiatry department gives me a lot of flap about inhibitory release and bypassing the superego and if a man answers, hang up. But what it all boils down to is the gas works. Everybody who was outside, everybody with an open window or an air-conditioning unit, was affected. Almost the entire city. They can't lie any more. They don't even want to lie."

"Wonderful!" Satterlee exclaimed, glancing up at the gathering storm clouds.

"Is it? I'm not so sure. When the story hits the papers, it'll give the whole school a bad name. I shouldn't even have told you, but I can't help myself. I just feel the need to be frank about everything. That's what I was telling my secretary, before she slapped my face----"

Satterlee wheeled into the airport. "That your boy up there?" He pointed upward, at a small plane careening between the clouds in the sudden gale.

"Yes," Hanson shouted. "He's trying to come in for a landing, I think. But the wind's too strong ----"

A sudden lance of lightning pierced the sky. The plane wobbled and began to spin.

Satterlee gunned the motor and turned off onto the field. In the distance a siren wailed, and through the rushing rain he could see the plane spiraling down in a crazy dive ...

• • •

Wally Tibbets leaned back and pushed his chair away from the desk.

"That's how it happened," Satterlee told him. "The poor guy was dead before they pulled him out of the wreckage. But they found the tanks and equipment. He had the papers on him, and I persuaded Hanson to turn the stuff over to me; he was in such a daze he didn't even think to object. So now we can back up the story with proof. I've got copies of the formula he discovered. I suppose we'll feed the dope in to the wire services, too."

Tibbets shook his head. "Nope. I'm going to answer all inquiries with a flat denial."

"But the story ----"

"Isn't going to be any story. All over now, anyway. Didn't you notice how people changed after that storm hit? Wind must have blown the gas away. Everyone's back to normal. Most of them have already convinced themselves that nothing ever happened."

"But we know it did! What about all those story leads you got this afternoon?"

"Killed. Ever since the storm, we've been getting denials and retractions. Turns out the Senator isn't resigning after all -- he's running for Governor. The labor boy's shooting himself was an accident. The police can't get anyone to sign their confessions. The advertisers are placing new copy again. Mark my words, by tomorrow morning this whole town will have forgotten -- they'll will themselves to forget. Nobody can face the truth and remain sane."

"That's a terrible way to think," Satterlee said. "Doctor Lowenquist was a great man. He knew his discovery could work -- not just here, but everywhere. After this trial run he meant to take a plane up over Washington, fly over Moscow, all the capitals of the world. Because this truth gas could change the world. Don't you see that?"

"Of course I see it. But the world shouldn't be changed."

"Why not?" Satterlee squared his shoulders. "Look here. I've been thinking. I have the formula. I could carry on where Lowenquist left off. I've saved some money. I could hire pilots and planes. Don't you think the world needs a dose of truth?"

"No. You saw what happened here today, on just a small scale."

"Yes. Criminals confessed, crooks reformed, people stopped lying to one another. Is that so bad?"

"About the criminals, no. But for ordinary human beings this could be a terrible thing. You don't see what happens when the doctor tells his patient that he's dying of cancer, when the wife tells her husband he's not actually the father of their son. Everybody has secrets, or almost everybody. It's better not to know the whole truth -- about others, or (concluded on page 68)World of honor(continued from page 56) about yourself."

"But look at what goes on in the world today."

"I am looking. That's my job -- to sit at this desk and watch the world go round. Sometimes it's a dizzy spin, but at least it keeps going. Because people keep going. And they need lies to help them. Lies about abstract justice, and romantic love everlasting. The belief that right always triumphs. Even our concept of democracy may be a lie. Yet we cherish these lies and do our best to live by them. And maybe, little by little, our belief helps make these things come true. It's a slow process, but in the long run it seems to work. Animals don't lie, you know. Only human beings know how to pretend, how to make believe, how to deceive themselves and others. But that's why they're human beings."

"Maybe so," Satterlee said. "Yet think of the opportunity I have. I could even stop war."

"Perhaps. Military and political leaders might face up to the truth about their motives and change--temporarily."

"We could keep on spraying," Satterlee broke in, eagerly. "There are other honest men. We'd raise funds, make this a long-term project. And who knows? Perhaps after a few doses, the change would become permanent. Don't you understand? We could end war!"

"I understand," Tibbets told him. "You could end war between nations. And start hundreds of millions of individual wars instead. Wars waged in human minds and human hearts. There'd be a wave of insanity, a wave of suicides, a wave of murders. There'd be a tidal inundation of truth that would drown the home, the family, the whole social structure."

"I realize it's a risk. But think of what we all might gain."

Tibbets put his hand on the younger man's shoulder. "I want you to forget this whole business," he said, soberly. "Don't plan to manufacture this gas and spray it over the Capitol or the Kremlin. Don't do it, for all our sakes."

Satterlee was silent, staring out into the night. Far in the distance a jet plane screamed.

"You're an honest man," Tibbets said. "One of the few. I dig that, and I admire you for it. But you've got to be realistic and see things my way. All I want is for you to tell me now that you won't try anything foolish. Leave the world the way it is." He paused. "Will you give me your word of honor?"

Satterlee hesitated. He was an honest man, he realized, and so his answer was a long time coming. Then, "I promise," Satterlee lied.

A strange thing took hold of the city.