The Best of Fritz Leiber by Fritz Leiber Page B

known that, except for flashes, Phy was hopeless as the rest. Still—
    “You don’t need to worry about your office floor, Phy,” he said with a listless kindliness. “Never any more. Your successor will have to see about cleaning it up. Already, you know, to all intents and purposes, you have been replaced.”
    “That’s just it!” Carrsbury started at Phy’s explosive loudness. The World secretary jumped up and strode toward him, pointing an excited hand. “That’s what I came to see you about! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! I can’t be replaced like that! None of the others can, either! It won’t work! You can’t do it!”
    With a swiftness born of long practice, Carrsbury slipped behind his desk. He forced his features into that expression of calm, smiling benevolence of which he had grown unutterably weary.
    “Now, now, Phy,” he said brightly, soothingly, “if I can’t do it, of course I can’t do it. But don’t you think you ought to tell me why? Don’t you think it would be very nice to sit down and talk it all over and you tell me why?”
    Phy halted and hung his head, abashed.
    “Yes, I guess it would,” he said slowly, abruptly falling back into the low, effortful tones. “I guess I’ll have to. I guess there just isn’t any other way. I had hoped, though, not to have to tell you everything.” The last sentence was half question. He looked up whee-dlingly at Carrsbury. The latter shook his head, continuing to smile. Phy went back and sat down.
    “Well,” he finally began, gloomily kneading the gasoid, “it all began when you first wanted to be World manager. You weren’t the usual type, but I thought it would be kind of fun—yes, and kind of helpful.” He looked up at Carrsbury. “You’ve really done the world a lot of good in quite a lot of ways, always remember that,” he assured him. “Of course,” he added, again focusing the tortured gasoid, “they weren’t exactly the ways you thought.”
    “No?” Carrsbury prompted automatically.
Humor him. Humor him
. The wornout refrain droned in his mind.
    Phy sadly shook his head. “Take those regulations you promulgated to soothe people—”
    “Yes?”
    “—they kind of got changed on the way. For instance, your prohibition, regarding reading tapes, of all exciting literature… oh, we tried a little of the soothing stuff you suggested at first. Everyone got a great kick out of it. They laughed and laughed. But afterwards, well, as I said, it kind of got changed—in this case to a prohibition of all
unexciting
literature.”
    Carrsbury’s smile broadened. For a moment the edge of his mind had toyed with a fear, but Phy’s last remark had banished it.
    “Every day I coast past several reading stands,” Carrsbury said gently. “The fiction tapes offered for sale are always in the most chastely and simply colored containers. None of those wild and lurid pictures that one used to see everywhere.”
    “But did you ever buy one and listen to it? Or project the visual text?” Phy questioned apologetically.
    “For ten years I’ve been a very busy man,” Carrsbury answered. “Of course I’ve read the official reports regarding such matters, and at times glanced through sample resumes of taped fiction.”
    “Oh, sure, that sort of official stuff,” agreed Phy, glancing up at the wall of tape files beyond the desk. “What we did, you see, was to keep the monochrome containers but go back to the old kind of contents. The contrast kind of tickled people. Remember, as I said before, a lot of your regulations have done good. Cut out a lot of unnecessary noise and inefficient foolishness, for one thing.”
    That sort of official stuff
. The phrase lingered unpleasantly in Carrsbury’s ears. There was a trace of irrepressible suspicion in his quick over-the-shoulder glance at the tiered tape files.
    “Oh, yes,” Phy went on, “and that prohibition against yielding to unusual or indecent impulses, with a