Beamer took the laptop from Dr. Planck and we all stood there, breathlessly waiting for his reaction.
He smiled. “Excellent work,” he croaked. We all relaxed. “Excellent.”
“Sir,” Beamer said, “would you mind if I videotaped you discussing the presentation? For my film class?”
He waved a papery hand in the air. “Not at all,” he said. “I’ve been on TV before,” he added. “Many times.”
“I’m sure you have,” Beamer said, opening his tripod in record time and setting up his camera. “The light’s great,” he added to no one in particular, “the way it hits the side of his face.” Then he pressed the start button. “Okay.”
“So, Dr. Planck,” Prescott began, “you have just watched our presentation. Can you tell us what you thought of it?”
“You did an excellent job,” he said, nodding enthusiastically.
“I mean, about the information it revealed? About the chemicals being given to the students at the Allbright Academy to change their personalities and make them docile and accepting of authority?”
“Well, Horace is a brilliant chemist. I never doubted he could do it.”
Prescott stood there, his mouth hanging open, unable to say anything more. We had clearly miscalculated, where Dr. Planck was concerned. All the same, we might have just stumbled on a gold mine.
“Dr. Planck,” I said, stepping in as interviewer, since Prescott seemed down for the count, “did you help develop the compounds?”
“Oh, goodness, no! I’m a physicist, not a chemist. That’s Horace’s department. He won the Nobel Prize, you know.”
“Yes. We were aware of that.”
“I did too, of course.”
“Yes,” I said again. “And congratulations on that. But would you mind telling us—was it part of the original plan for Dr. Gallow to come up with chemicals that would be, um, useful at the school? Or was that something he came up with later?”
“Of course it was part of the plan,” Dr. Planck snapped. “And it wasn’t his idea, either, though he may like to take credit for it. It was mine. That’s why I went to Horace in the first place. I needed a top chemist.”
“But, sir—Dr. Planck—I was just wondering. With handpicked students, and all of them so smart and everything, why did you need the chemicals?”
“To control them—help us form their characters, and their ideas, and their habits, and their world views. I’ve explained this to you a thousand times, Clara.”
“Uh, sir—actually, I’m not…” Beamer poked me in the back and I shut up.
“Form their characters for what purpose, exactly?” Brooklyn asked.
“To save our country from democracy, which, as you know, doesn’t work.”
“Really!” I said, feeling like Alice after she fell down the rabbit hole.
“A ridiculous system. Everybody gets a vote, no matter who they are. Stupid people, uneducated people, crazy people, criminals, half-wits. The moderately stupid people vote their narrow self-interest. The really stupid people don’t even know what their self-interest is, so they just vote for the handsome guy with the good teeth or the candidate with the expensive ads. These people don’t know squat, of course, so they choose idiots to represent them, and those idiots just pander to the stupid ideas of the stupid people, in order to get reelected. That’s how we run this country. It’s abysmal, really.”
I was feeling this strange sense of déjà vu. Where had I heard that stuff before? And then it hit me: Dr. Gallow’s lectures! Of course, he expressed his ideas differently. Very elegant, very delicate, making scholarly references to the birth of democracy in Classical Greece, and how the voting population of Athens was only about the size of Lufkin, Texas, so it was manageable back then. Telling us how impractical it was nowadays, in a country the size of America, to manage even a representative form of democracy. And we just followed him down that philosophical path without realizing where we were headed.
Dr. Planck, on the other hand, practically hit you over the head with it. No pussyfooting around, no mincing of words—he gave you the Allbright agenda in all its ugliness. As my dad likes to say, he “put it out there where the cows could get at it.” I was momentarily speechless with horror.
“Excuse me,” Cal said. “I don’t mean to sound dense here, but what’s the connection between smart kids at Allbright and the, um, problems you have with democracy?”
“Well, we can’t overthrow the government!” he said. “Wish we could, but I honestly don’t think it can be done. So we have to do an end run. It’s the only way.”
“An end run?”
“Recruit the top students, educate them to perfection, form their ideas, and send them out into the world to hold key positions.”
“You mean, like president?” I asked.
“Not just president. We need people in science and technology, in economics and business, to build our economy. We need policy and government people, mostly behind the scenes, making the right decisions at the various agencies. Journalists and writers to help form public opinion—and, of course, politicians at the local and national level. One by one, our graduates are going to replace those idiots in Washington. No more peanut farmers like that yokel we’ve got in the White House now.”
“Peanut farmer…are you talking about Jimmy Carter?” I was thunderstruck.
“How many peanut farmers do we have in the White House?”
“But…!” I said, about to point out that Jimmy Carter was ancient history, presidentially speaking, only Beamer poked me in the back again and I came to my senses. We were trying to get Dr. Planck to talk, and he might get really upset if I told him he was drastically out of date as to who was currently in the White House.
“Please go on, sir,” Beamer said. “Sorry for the interruption.”
“Where was I?” Dr. Planck ran his fingers through his hair, giving it the wild look of the night before. “What was I talking about?”
“The failure of democracy,” I said helpfully. “Replacing peanut farmers.” When he gave me a blank look, I added, “The Allbright Academy.”
But he just dismissed me with an irritated wave. “Enough, Clara,” he said. “I’m tired. Tell Mother I want some tea.” Then, looking at me through half-closed eyes, he added, “And send your little friends home.”
“Did you get what you needed?” Gloria asked as she walked us to the door.
“Pretty much,” I said. “But, I have to ask, who’s Clara?”
“His sister,” Gloria said. “She died, I don’t know, in the late sixties, I’d guess. He talks to her a lot.”
“Ah,” I said.
“Like I told you, he’s confused about things, but I’ve worked in this house for more than twenty-five years, since before he got the Alzheimer’s and all, and in lots of ways he hasn’t changed a bit. Still his own, true self.”
“‘Stupid people?’”
She nodded. “You got it. Stupid people. Need to have a Ph.D. to have an opinion. He can’t understand why they let folks like me vote.”
“Wow,” I said, as she led us to the front door. “I’m amazed you stayed on.”
She shrugged. “Pay’s good. And Beatrice, his wife, she was a real sweet lady. Now he’s alone and he’s old and helpless. It doesn’t hurt me to hear those things. I know which of us is smart and which of us is crazy.” She looked away, with this private smile on her face. Then, almost under her breath, she added bitterly, “The great man.”