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Analogue Men

( Hell’s Pavement)

Damon Knight

1955

OCR from !foi-proofpacks Knight, Damon - Analogue Men.tif. Spell-checked. Chapter 1. The Analogues

The creature was like an eye, a globular eye that could see in all directions, encysted in the gray, cloudy mind that called itself Alfie Strunk. In that dimness thoughts squirmed, like dark fish darting; and the eye followed them without pity.

It knew Alfie, knew the evil in Alfie; the tangled skein of impotence and hatred and desire; the equation: Love equals death. The roots of that evil were beyond its reach; it was only an eye. But now it was changing. Deep in its own center, little electric tingles came and went. Energy found a new gradient, and flowed.

A thought shone in the gray cloud that was Alfie—only half-formed, but unmistakable. And a channel opened. In-stantly, the eye thrust a filament of itself into that passage. Now it was free. Now it could act.

The man on the couch stirred and moaned. The doctor, who had been whispering into his ear, drew back and watched his face. At the other end of the couch, the technician glanced alertly at the patient, then turned again to his meters.

The patient’s head was covered to the ears by an ovoid shell of metal. A broad strap of webbing, buckled under his jaw, held it securely. The heads of screw-clamps protruded in three circles around the shell’s girth, and a thick bundle of insulated wires led from it to the control board at the foot of the couch. The man’s gross body was restrained by a rubber sheet, the back of his head resting in the trough of a rubber block.

“No!” he shouted suddenly. He mumbled, his loose features contorting. Then, “I wasn’t gonna—No!

Don’t—” He mut-tered again, trying to move his body; the tendons in his neck were sharply outlined.

“Please,” he said. Tears glittered in his eyes.

The doctor leaned forward and whispered. “You’re going away from there. You’re going away. It’s five minutes later.”

The patient relaxed and seemed to be asleep. A teardrop spilled over and ran slowly down his cheek. The doctor stood up and nodded to the technician, who slowly moved his rheostat to zero before he cut the switches. “A good run,” the doctor mouthed silently. The technician nodded and grinned. He scribbled on a pad, “Test him this aft.?” The doctor wrote, “Yes. Can’t tell till then, but think we got him solid.”

Alfie Strunk sat in the hard chair and chewed rhythmically, staring at nothing. His brother had told him to wait here, while he went down the hall to see the doctor. It seemed to Alfie that he had been gone a long time.

Silence flowed around him. The room was almost bare—the chair he sat in, the naked walls and floor, a couple of little tables with books on them. There were two doors; one, open, led into the long bare hall outside. There were other doors in the hall, but they were all closed and their bumpy-glass windows were dark. At the end of the hall was a door, and that was closed, too. Alfie had heard his brother close it behind him, with a solid snick, when he left. He felt very safe and alone. He heard something, a faint echo of movement, and turned his head swiftly. The noise came from beyond the second door in the room, the one that was just slightly ajar. He heard it again. He stood up cautiously, not making a sound. He tiptoed to the door, looked through the crack. At first he saw nothing; then the footsteps came again and he saw a flash of color: a blue print skirt, a white sweater, a glimpse of coppery hair.

Alfie widened the crack, very carefully. His heart was pound-ing and his breath was coming faster. Now he could see the far end of the room. A couch, and the girl sitting on it, opening a book. She was about eleven, slender and dainty. A reading lamp by the couch gave the only light. She was alone. Alfie’s blunt fingers went into his trousers pocket and clutched futilely. They had taken his knife away. Then he glanced at the little table beside the door, and his breath caught. There it was, his own switchblade knife, lying beside the books. His brother must have left it there and forgotten to tell him. He reached for it—

“ALFIE!”

He whirled, cringing. His mother stood there, towering twice his height, with wrath in her staring gray eyes; every line of her so sharp and real that he couldn’t doubt her, though he had seen her buried fifteen years ago.

She had a willow switch in her hand.

“No!” gasped Alfie, retreating to the wall. “Don’t—I wasn’t gonna do nothing.”

She raised the switch. “You’re no good, no good, no good,” she spat. “You’ve got the devil in you, and it’s just got to be whipped out.”

“Don’t, please—” said Alfie. Tears leaked out of his eyes. “Get away from that girl,” she said, advancing.

“Get clean away and don’t ever come back. Go on—”

Alfie turned and ran, sobbing in his throat.

In the next room, the girl went on reading until a voice said, “Okay, Rita. That’s all.”

She looked up. “Is that all? Well, I didn’t do much.”

“You did enough,” said the voice. “We’ll explain to you what it’s all about some day. Come on, let’s go.”

She smiled, stood up—and vanished as she moved out of range of the mirrors in the room below. The two rooms where Alfie had been tested were empty. Alfie’s mother was already gone—gone with Alfie, inside his mind where he could never escape her again, as long as he lived.

Martyn’s long, cool fingers gently pressed the highball glass. The glass accepted the pressure, a very little; the liquid rose almost imperceptibly inside it. This glass would not break, he knew; it had no sharp edges and if thrown it would not hurt anybody much.

The music of the five-piece combo down at the end of the room was the same—muted, gentle, accommodating. And the alcohol content of the whisky in his drink was twenty-four point five per cent. But men still got drunk, and men still reached for a weapon to kill. And, incredibly, there were worse things that could happen. The cure was sometimes worse than the disease. We’re witch doctors, he thought. We don’t realize it yet, most of us, but that’s what we are. The doctor who only heals is a servant; the doctor who controls life and death is a tyrant. The dark little man across the table had to be made to understand that. Martyn thought he could do it. The man had power—the power of millions of readers, of friends in high places—but he was a genuine, not a professional, lover of democracy.

Now the little man raised his glass, tilted it in a quick, automatic gesture. Martyn saw his throat pulse, like the knott-ing of a fist. He set the glass down, and the soft rosy light from the bar made dragon’s eyes of his spectacles.

“Well, Dr. Martyn?” His voice was sharp and rapid, but amiable. This man lived with tension; he was acclimated to it, like a swimmer in swift waters.

Martyn gestured with his glass, a slow, controlled move-ment. “I want you to see something before we talk. I had two reasons for asking you here. One is that it’s an out-of-the-way place, and, as you’ll understand, I have to be careful. If Dr. Kusko should learn I’m talking to you, and why—” Martyn moistened his lips. “I’m not ashamed to say I’m afraid of that man. He’s a paranoid—capable of anything. But more about that later.

“The other reason has to do with a man who comes here every night. His name is Ernest Fox; he’s a machinist, when he works. Over there at the bar. The big man in the checked jacket. See him?”

The other flicked a glance that way; he did not turn his head. “Yeah. The one with the snootful?”

“Yes. You’re right, he’s very drunk. I don’t think it’ll take much longer.”

“How come they serve him?”

“You’ll see in a minute,” Martyn said.

Ernest Fox was swaying slightly on the bar stool. His choleric face was flushed, and his nostrils widened visibly with each breath he took. His eyes were narrowed, staring at the man to his left—a wizened little fellow in a big fedora.

Suddenly he straightened and slammed his glass down on the bar. Liquid spread over the surface with a glittering flood. The wizened man looked up at him nervously.

Fox drew his fist back.

Martyn’s guest had half-turned in his seat. He was watch-ing, relaxed and interested. The big man’s face turned abruptly, as if someone had spoken to him. He stared at an invisible something a yard away, and his raised arm slowly dropped. He appeared to be listening. Gradually his face lost its anger and became sullen. He muttered something, looking down at his hands. Then he turned to the wizened man and spoke, apparently in apology; the little man waved his hand as if to say, Forget it, and turned back to his drink.

The big man slumped again on the bar stool, shaking his head and muttering. Then he scooped up his change from the bar, got up and walked out. Someone else took his place almost immediately.

“That happens every night, like clockwork,” said Martyn. “That’s why they serve him. He never does any harm, and he never will. He’s a good customer.”

The dark little man was facing him alertly once more. “And?”

“A year and a half ago,” Martyn said, “no place in the Loop would let him in the door, and he had a police record as long as your arm. He liked to get drunk, and when he got drunk he liked to start fights. Compulsive. No cure for it, even if there were facilities for such cases. He’s still incurable. He’s just the same as he was—just as manic, just as hostile. But—he doesn’t cause any trouble now:”

“All right, doctor, I check to you. Why not?”

“He’s got an analogue,” said Martyn. “In the classical sense, he is even less sane than he was before. He has auditory, visual and tactile hallucinations—a complete integrated set. That’s enough to get you entry to most institutions, crowded as they are. But, you see, these hallucinations are pro-societal. They were put there, deliberately. He’s an acceptable member of society, because he has them.”

The dark man looked half irritated, half interested. He said, “He see things. What does he see, exactly, and what does it say to him?”

“Nobody knows that except himself. A policeman, maybe, or his mother as she looked when he was a child. Someone whom he fears, and whose authority he acknowledges. The subconscious has its own mechanism for creating these false images; all we do is stimulate it—it does the rest. Usually, we think, it just warns him, and in most cases that’s enough. A word from the right person at the right moment is enough to prevent ninety-nine out of a hundred crimes. But in extreme cases, the analogue can actually oppose the patient physically—as far as he’s concerned, that is. The hallucination is complete, as I told you.”

“Sounds like a good notion.”

“A very good notion—rightly handled. In ten years it will cut down the number of persons institutionalized for insanity to the point where we can actually hope to make some pro-gress, both in study and treatment, with those that are left.”

“Sort of a personal guardian angel, tailored to fit,” said the dark man.

“That’s exactly it. The analogue always fits the patient because it is the patient—a part of his own mind, working against his conscious purposes whenever they cross the pro-hibition we lay down. Even an exceptionally intelligent man can’t defeat his analogue, because the analogue is just as in-telligent. Even knowing you’ve had the treatment doesn’t help, although ordinarily the patient doesn’t know. The analogue, to the patient, is absolutely indistinguishable from a real person—but it doesn’t have any of a real person’s weaknesses.”

The other grinned. “Could I get one to keep me from draw-ing to inside straights?”

Martyn did not smile. “That isn’t quite as funny as it sounds. There’s a very real possibility that you could, about ten years from now ... if Kusko has his way—and that’s exactly what I want you to help prevent.”

The tall, black-haired young man got out of the pickup and strolled jauntily into the hotel lobby. He wasn’t thinking about what he was going to do; his mind was cheerfully occupied with the decoration of the enormous loft he had just rented on the lower East Side. It might be better, he thought, to put both couches along one wall, and arrange the bar opposite. Or put the Capehart there, with an easy chair on either side?

The small lobby was empty except for the clerk behind his minuscule counter and the elevator operator lounging beside the cage. The young man walked confidently forward.

“Yes, sir?” said the clerk.

“Listen,” said the young man, “there’s a man leaning out of a window upstairs, shouting for help. He looks sick.”

“What? Show me.”

The clerk and the elevator operator followed him out to the sidewalk. The young man pointed to two open windows. “It was one of those, the ones in the middle on the top floor.”

“Thanks, mister.”

The young man said, “Sure,” and watched the two hurry into the elevator. When the doors closed behind them, he strolled in again and watched the indicator rise. Then, for the first time, he looked down at the blue carpet. It was almost new, not fastened down, and just the right size. He bent and picked up the end of it.

“Drop it,” said a voice.

The young man looked up in surprise. It was the man, the same man that had stopped him yesterday in the furniture store. Was he being followed?

He dropped the carpet. “I thought I saw a coin under there.”

“I know what you thought,” the man said. “Beat it.”

The young man walked out to his pickup and drove away.

He felt chilly inside. Suppose this happened every time he wanted to take something—?

The dark man looked shrewdly at Martyn. “All right doctor. Spill the rest of it. This Dr. Kusko you keep talking about—he’s the head of the Institute, right? The guy who developed this process in the first place?”

“That’s true,” said Martyn, heavily.

“And you say he’s a paranoid. Doesn’t that mean he’s crazy? Are you asking me to believe a crazy man could invent a thing like this?”

Martyn winced. “No, he isn’t crazy. He’s legally as sane as you or I, and even medically we would only call him dis-turbed. What we mean when we speak of a paranoid is simply that—well, here is a man who, if he did become insane, would be a paranoiac. He belongs to that type. Meanwhile, he has unreal attitudes about his own greatness and about the hostility of other people. He’s a dangerous man. He believes that he is the one man who is right—standing on a pinnacle of right-ness—and he’ll do anything, anything, to stay there.”

“For instance?” the dark man said.

“The Institute,” Martyn told him, “has already arranged for a staff of lobbyists to start working for the first phase of its program when the world legislature returns to session this fall. Here’s what they want for a beginning:

“One, analogue treatment for all persons convicted of crime ‘while temporarily insane,’ as a substitute for either institu-tionalization or punishment. They will argue that society’s real purpose is to prevent the repetition of the crime, not to punish.”

“They’ll be right,” said the dark man.

“Of course. Second, they want government support for a vast and rapid expansion of analogue services. The goal is to restore useful citizens to society, and to ease pressure on institutions, both corrective and punitive.”

“Why not?”

“No reason why not—if it would stop there. But it won’t.” Martyn took a deep breath and clasped his long fingers to-gether on the table. It was very clear to him, but he realized that it was a difficult thing for a layman to see—or even for a technically competent man in his own field. And yet it was inevitable, it was going to happen, unless he stopped it.

“It’s just our bad luck,” he said, “that this development came at this particular time in history. It was only thirty years ago, shortly after the war, that the problem of our wasted human resources really became so acute that it couldn’t be evaded any longer. Since then we’ve seen a great deal of pro-gress, and public sentiment is fully behind it. New building codes for big cities. New speed laws. Reduced alcoholic content in wine and liquor. Things like that. The analogue treatment is riding the wave.

“It’s estimated that the wave will reach its maximum about ten years from now. And that’s when the Institute will be ready to put through the second phase of its program. Here it is:

“One, analogue treatment against crimes of violence to be compulsory for all citizens above the age of seven.”

The dark man stared at him. “Blue balls of fire. Will it work, on that scale?”

“Yes. It will completely eliminate any possibility of a future war, and it will halve our police problem.”

The dark man whistled. “Then what?”

“Two,” said Martyn, “analogue treatment against pecula-tion, bribery, collusion and all the other forms of corruption to be compulsory for all candidates for public office. And that will make the democratic system foolproof, for all time.”

The dark man laid his pencil down. “Dr. Martyn, you’re confusing me. I’m a libertarian, but there’s got to be some method of preventing this race from killing itself off. If this treatment will do what you say it will do, I don’t care if it does violate civil rights. I want to go on living, and I want my grandchildren—I have two, by the way—to go on living. Unless there’s a catch you haven’t told me about this thing, I’m for it.”

Martyn said earnestly, “This treatment is a crutch. It is not a therapy, it does not cure the patient of anything. In fact, as I told you before, it makes him less nearly sane, not more. The causes of his irrational or antisocial behavior are still there, they’re only repressed—temporarily. They can’t ever come out in the same way, that’s true; we’ve built a wall across that particular channel. But they will express themselves in some other way, sooner or later. When a dammed-up flood breaks through in a new place, what do you do?”

“Build another levee.”

“Exactly,” said Martyn. “And after that? Another, and another, and another—”

Nicholas Dauth, cold sober, stared broodingly at the boulder that stood on trestles between the house and the orchard. It was a piece of New England granite, marked here and there with chalk lines. It had stood there for eight months, and he had not touched a chisel to it. The sun was warm on his back. The air was still; only the occasional hint of a breeze ruffled the treetops. Behind him he could hear the clatter of dishes in the kitchen, and beyond that the clear sounds of his wife’s voice.

Once there had been a shape buried in the stone. Every stone had its latent form, and when you carved it, you felt as if you were only helping it to be born.

Dauth could remember the shape he had seen buried in this one: a woman and child—the woman kneeling, half bent over the child in her lap. The balancing of masses had given it grace and authority, and the free space had lent it movement.

He could remember it; but he couldn’t see it any more.

There was a quick, short spasm in his right arm and side, painful while it lasted. It was like the sketch of an action: turning, walking to where there was whisky—meeting the guard who wouldn’t let him drink it, turning away again. All that had squeezed itself now into a spasm, a kind of tic. He didn’t drink now, didn’t try to drink. He dreamed about it, yes, thought of it, felt the burning ache in his throat and guts. But he didn’t try. There simply wasn’t any use.

He looked back at the unborn stone, and now, for an in-stant, he could not even remember what its shape was to have been. The tic came once more. Dauth had a feeling of pressure building intolerably inside him, of something restrained that demanded exit.

He stared at the stone, and saw it drift away slowly into grayness; then nothing. He turned stiffly toward the house. “Martha!” he called. The clatter of dishware answered him. He stumbled forward, holding his arms out. “Martha!” he shouted. “I’m blind! ”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” said the dark man. “It seems to me that you’d only run into that kind of trouble with the actual mental cases, the people who really have strong com-pulsions. And, according to you, those are the only ones who should get the treatment. Now, the average man doesn’t have any compulsion to kill, or steal, or what have you. He may be tempted, once in his life. If somebody stops him, that one time, will it do him any harm?”

“For a minute or two, he will have been insane,” said Martyn. “But I agree with you—if that were the end of it, there’d be no great harm. At the Institute, the majority believe with Kusko that that will be the end of it. They’re tragically wrong. Because there’s one provision that the Institute hasn’t included in its program, but that would be the first thought of any lawmaker in the world. Treatment against any attempt to overthrow the government. ”

The dark man sat silent.

“And from there,” said Martyn, “it’s only one short step to a tyranny that will last till the end of time.” For an instant his own words were so real to him that he believed it would happen in spite of anything he could do: he saw the ghostly figure or Kusko—big, red-haired, grinning, spraddle-legged over the whole earth.

The other nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “You are so right. What do you want me to do?”

“Raise funds,” said Martyn, feeling the beginning of a vast relief. “At present the Institute has barely enough to operate on a minimum scale, and expand very slowly, opening one new center a year. Offer us a charitable contribution—tax-deductible, remember—of two million, and we’ll grab it. The catch is this: the donors, in return for such a large contribu-tion, ask the privilege of appointing three members of the Institute’s board of directors. There will be no objection to that, so long as my connection with the donation isn’t known, because three members will not give the donors control. But they will give me a majority on this one issue—the second phase of the Institute’s program.

“This thing is like an epidemic. Give it a few years, and nothing can stop it. But act now, and we can scotch it while it’s still small enough to handle.”

“Good enough. I won’t promise to hand you two million tomorrow, but I know a few people who might reach into their pockets if I told them the score. I’ll do what I can. Hell, I’ll get you the money if I have to steal it. You can count on me.”

Smiling, Martyn caught the waiter as he went by. “No, this is mine,” he said, forestalling the dark man’s gesture. “I wonder if you realize what a weight you’ve taken off my shoulders?”

He paid, and they strolled out into the warm summer night. “Incidentally,” Martyn said, “there’s an answer to a point you brought up in passing—the weakness of the treatment in the genuinely compulsive cases, where it’s most needed. There are means of getting around that, though not of making the treatment into a therapy. It’s a crutch, and that’s all it will ever be. But for one example, we’ve recently worked out a technique in which the analogue appears, not as a guardian, but as the object of the attack—when there is an attack. In that way, the patient relieves himself instead of being fur-ther repressed, but he still doesn’t harm anybody—just a phantom.”

“It’s going to be a great thing for humanity,” said the dark man seriously, “instead of the terrible thing it might have been except for you, Dr. Martyn. Good night!”

“Good night,” said Martyn gratefully. He watched the other disappear into the crowd, then walked toward the El. It was a wonderful night, and he was in no hurry.

A big, red-haired guy came in just as the waiter was straight-ening the table. The waiter stiffened his spine automatically: the big guy looked like Somebody.

“Which table was he sitting at—the tall man with the glasses who just went out?” The red-haired guy showed him a folded bill, and the waiter took it smoothly.

“This one right here,” he said. “You a friend of his?”

“No. Just checking up.”

“Well,” said the waiter cheerfully, “they ought to keep him at home. See here?” He pointed to the two untouched drinks that stood at one side of the table, opposite where the tall man had been sitting. “Sits here for over half an hour—buys four drinks, leaves two of them setting there. And talks, like there was somebody with him. You know him? Is he crazy or what?”

“Not crazy,” said Dr. Kusko gently. “Some would call him ‘disturbed,’ but he’s harmless—now.”

Chapter 2. Horn Of Plenty

1990

The pressroom on the eightieth floor of the World Legis-lature Building was a bedlam, but it quieted the minute the big red-haired man walked in.

“You know what we want, Doctor,” somebody called. “Let’s have it.”

“Print this,” said Dr. Kusko, enunciating clearly. “The pas-sage by the World Legislature today, of the bill creating a universal analogue treatment program, not only gives me and my associates a very deep gratification, but should be a cause for rejoicing on the part of every citizen of this globe. This date marks the beginning of the world’s maturity. We have put an end to war, to crimes of violence, to conspiracy against the peace, to corruption in public office, to all the myriad insanities that have oppressed and divided us since the beginning of history. From now on, we go forward.”

Pencils scribbled busily for another second or two. “What are you going to do next, Doctor?” asked a reporter.

Kusko grinned. “Off the record—” A groan went up; the big man’s grin widened. “Off the record, I’ve spent the last twenty years, figuratively speaking, in building a bug-trap. Now that it’s built, I’m going to sleep for thirty-six hours, spend the next twelve getting reacquainted with my wife—and after that, praise God, I believe I can begin to get some real work done.”

“Some of us thought,” said a woman, “that Mr. Chou of the Civil Rights Commission might block the passage of the bill at his session and perhaps defeat it altogether. Have you any comment on that?”

“How could he?” Kusko asked. “Chou had the analogue treatment himself six years ago. He was developing a suicidal mania—off the record.”

After an uncertain pause, the woman said, “Dr. Kusko, forgive me if I’m misinterpreting you—do you mean that when you treated Mr. Chou for that condition, that you also deliber-ately made it impossible for him to interfere with the passage of this bill?”

“That’s what I mean,” said Kusko. “Just as all of you in this room have had the treatment to keep you from revealing anything your informant asks you to keep quiet—otherwise you wouldn’t be getting this story. The only difference is, Chou didn’t know what was being done to him. Neither did the fifty-odd world senators who came to us for one reason or another. And everything I have just said, by the way, is—very definitely—off the record.”

Most of the reporters laughed. They liked Kusko; you couldn’t help it.

“The end justifies the means, is that it, Doctor?” said a little man in the front row, who had not laughed.

“In this case,” said Kusko seriously, “it does.”

1993

“Gentlemen,” said the bulky, well-groomed man at the head of the table, “now that the mutual introductions are over, you undoubtedly realize that we have here a rather unique assemblage. Here in this room are representatives of some of the major interests in every field of production in North America, from food to steel. Together, the companies we represent can clothe Mr. Average North American Con-sumer, feed him, amuse him, keep him healthy, house him, and sell him everything he needs or wants. And we are all interested in that same consumer, yet we are not in competi-tion with one another. For that reason, I believe that everyone will be intensely interested in the proposition I have to lay before you here today.”

He glanced down the double line of faces, then consulted his notes. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “there is one amend-ment I should make to the statement I have just made. There is, in this room, no representative of the advertising industry. The reason for that will become apparent in a moment.

‘My corporation, gentlemen, spends seven million credits each year on advertising and promotion. I believe that figure is not greatly out of line with the average figure of our respective corporations. Now let me ask you this. How would you, as representatives of your corporations, like to increase the sales of your products and services, while at the same time reducing your advertising and promotion budgets to exactly zero?”

At his signal, two young men came forward, one on either side of the table, and began to pass out large rectangles of plastic. Mounted on each was a glossy sheet of paper bearing a three-color sketch of a young man and woman standing under a golden cornucopia from which a shower of jewelry, miniature automobiles, hams, food cartons and fur coats was descending into their outstretched arms. The bannerline was:

FREE! FOR A WHOLE YEAR!!

“That,” said the bulky man after a few moments, “is what I might refer to as the advertisement to end all advertisements. As you will note, the text here has been drawn up to represent sample brand names and lines of products from each of the corporations and associations represented at this table. You will note that some corporations have one brand name or line of products mentioned, while others have two or more.

“That has been done, in every case, to represent five percent of each corporation’s gross yearly sales. And also you will note that the total of the free goods and services amounts, pricewise, to the same percentage—five percent of the different items that the North American Consumer wants and needs. In other words, each corporation will take a one-hundred--percent loss for one year on five percent of its products, in order to induce the consumer to buy all the products of that corporation, exclusive of all other competitors. I have here—” the young men stepped forward again and distributed piles of documents—“a table of estimated profit and loss resulting from this offer, based on an enrollment of ten million heads of families the first year. I believe that in every case the capital reserves of each corporation represented here will be ample to cover that first year deficit.”

For the first time, one of the other men at the table spoke up. “I believe,” said a thin-faced oldster, “that this would be characterized as an association in restraint of trade, Mr. Dine.”

“Our legal department has covered this question very thoroughly, Mr. Hoyle, and they assure me that the offer is perfectly legal. Our respective corporations will be associ-ated only for the purpose of this offer. There will be no con-solidation of capital, no interlocking directorates—nothing whatever of that sort, at this time. There is no compulsion to accept the offer on the part of any person whatsoever. All we are doing is selling large quantities of merchandise at the same time and offering a premium—there will be a contract for the consumer to sign, over and above the analogue treat-ment. However, the contract is renewable at the end of five years. The treatment is permanent.”

The assembled gentlemen smiled the kind of smiles acquired at poker tables and board meetings.

“A more important question might be,” said a red-faced man with a clipped white mustache, “can you get the analogue facilities? I thought that was all owned by the government.”

“No, Colonel,” said the chairman, “I believe you will find that the Kusko Psychiatric Institute is a private, non-profit institution, licensed and subsidized by the government. The use of the analogue facilities is controlled by statute, but it is an interesting fact that according to the law, anyone can get analogue treatment, for a fee, to prevent him from doing anything he does not wish to, except of course for legally compulsory acts. Gentlemen—”

He spread his hands. “I have too much respect for your acumen to belabor the obvious to you. Let me be brutally frank: There it is. If we don’t take it first, somebody else will.”

Chapter 3. The Customer Is Always Wrong

2134

The robing room of the Junior Assistant Salesman, Third Level, Block Nine, Glenbrook Store, is the kind of place that is remembered in neophytes’ nightmares. The shower stalls are along one side; the opposite wall is lined with identical open closets; in between are cold metal benches. The over-head glow-lamps are dim; they have not been dusted for years. The air has an ineradicable smell of liniment and sweaty feet.

Thirty young men, most of them Consumers by birth and not far removed from it by training, can seem like a hundred in such a coop. Some behind the shower curtains, some fully dressed and others shapeless in their robing sacks, they were all talking, all shouting, all laughing at once, as gregarious and as deafening as a cageful of monkeys.

At the showers, half a dozen of the oldest were tormenting the newest and youngest in a traditional manner. The new-comer, a stunted pale-faced adolescent named Wilkins, was invisible but not inaudible inside one of the shower stalls; they had let him get inside and then had begun twitching the curtain open at intervals. Wilkins was afraid to take off his robing sack, and increasingly of being late to his post; he was beginning to howl.

Tall, bony Arthur Bass, JAS 2/C, listened with half an ear while he worked on one garment after another under his sack. His predominant sentiment toward Wilkins was one of gratitude; he felt there was good reason to hope that Eldridge, Yankowich and the rest would be so taken up with the sport that they wouldn’t remember him at all.

Eldridge and Yankowich were the ringleaders of the Junior Assistant Salesmen, Third Level, Block Nine—old veterans, thirty at least, with nothing to look forward to in the Store but superannuation to vergers’ or quarter-masters’ posts. Bass, in between neophytes, was their favorite butt. Whether it was his long, cranelike face and body that offended them—Eldridge and Yankowich were identically stocky, short and hairy-limbed—or whether it was his solemnity, his careful speech, or simply his prospects for promotion, they had never accepted him, never ceased to torment him. Bass took it with equanimity. For years it had been no more than a minor annoyance, one of the many discomforts to be suf-fered for their doubtless beneficial effect on the long road up to the dizzy heights of Senior Salesmanship. But lately Yankowich had seen him walking home from the Bakery with Gloria. Decently dressed, Arthur pulled the sack off over his head, rolled it up neatly and thrust it into its slot in his closet. He took down his stole, adjusted it over his shoulders. He glanced at his watch. He was early, as usual, but there was still only a few minutes to wait until the bell. He listened carefully. The unfortunate Wilkins’ howls had ceased; probably he had fainted. It was poor material they were sending up nowadays.

Sure enough, here came Yankowich shouldering across the room, his meaty face split in an idiot grin. Heads turned to follow him; bodies crowded for placement in the half-ring that was forming around Arthur.

“Lovey-dovey,” said Yankowich in his bull-roar. He leered. “Are you speaking to me, Mr. Yankowich?”

“Yes I am speaking to you, lovey-dovey,” said Yankowich in a cracking falsetto. The Junior Assistant Salesmen laughed heartily. Yankowich leaned tenderly closer, pursed his lips and made smacking sounds. The laughter surged again, with a note of hysteria in it. Yankowich, Eldridge and a few more of the older JAS’s were married; the rest, like Bass, were not, and like him, they had never kissed a woman.

“And that ain’t all,” said Yankowich with a sidewise leer. He blinked, changed expression, and said to no one in parti-cular, in an aggrieved whine, “I didn’t say what—I just said that wasn’t all!”

He glanced around the semicircle, then clasped his hands in front of him, bugged his eyes and sucked his cheeks in. The Junior Assistant Salesmen clutched their sides.

Arthur felt himself turning hot and cold by turns. It was absurd to let an ape like Yankowich bother him, but he couldn’t help it. The very crudity of the imitation made it harder to bear: was that really what he looked like to other people?

Yankowich, his voice burbling grotesquely through his pursed lips, was saying, “Wull y’ murry me, Gluria? Wull y’, wull yu’?”

The name gave Arthur an unexpected pang. “Gloria!” the young men shouted. “Gloria! Glo-oria!” Infinite knew how Yankowich had found that out—he must have gone sneaking around the Bakery in his off hours ....

Yankowich was crooning, “What’s wrong, lovey-dovey? You aren’t scared to get married, are you?

What for? Come on, tell us, what for?”

Some perversity in Arthur’s mind suddenly brought up the picture of Yankowich’s squat wife. He had seen her for a moment last year in a Founder’s Day Parade with Yankowich—hairy-faced, dull-eyed, a more disgusting animal than the Yankowich itself.

“Seventy-three-oh-eight-eight,” Arthur’s mind was murmur-ing to itself. That was all he had to say; it was the one perfect answer: 73088 was the number of the Store’s overdresses for excessively long-armed women.

His jaw and tongue formed the sibilant, then went slack. “Well, lovey-dovey?”

Arthur’s mouth was dry. “Marriage is a holy state,” he said thinly.

A disgusted sigh went up around the semicircle. In the JAS robing room, L 3, B 9, piety was the worst possible form.

The duty bell rang. Crowding out into the corridor with the rest, Arthur found himself thinking.

“Seventy-three-oh--eight-eight, ape-face ... seventy-three-oh-eight-eight! It was as if there were an imp in his mind, an imp of mischief. Arthur knew it well; when he least expected or wanted it, it would appear and whisper astonishing things in his mind—things that Arthur found hard to believe when he looked at his own solemn face in a mirror. If he could have brought himself to utter even a fraction of them, a hundredth as much as Yanko-wich got away with, it would have made all the difference in the robing room ..

But what was he to do? Disrespect to a superior was a sin. The way of virtue was the way of success. Who wills to do right is doubly blessed.

And Arthur, more than any man in L 3, in B 9 or in the whole of Glenbrook, knew the depths of hellfire that yawned under his feet.

Inside the multiple carapace formed by his two thin under-shirts, the overshirt, the vest, the surcoat and the weighted stole, Arthur itched intolerably.

Sweat trickled down his ribs across the exact focus of the itch, not relieving it but coaxing it to still greater virulence. Arthur clenched his teeth and stared stoically out across the massed hats of the Sunday crowd. Under the cod-like eye of Senior Salesman Leggett, he dared not scratch, wriggle or even change his expression.

Leggett was finishing off another customer. Arthur entered the amount of the last purchase on his machine, totaled it, and tore off the itemized tab, together with the customer’s credit card. The customer, a jaundiced, shriveled little woman, thrust out a liver-spotted hand for them, but Leggett’s voice stopped her.

“There is still time to alter your purchase, madam. This sweater—” he pointed to the image on the screen behind him—“is acceptable enough, I grant you, but this one-(thirty-seven-oh-nine-five, Bass, quickly)—is guaranteed to wear out in half the time.”

Arthur relaxed, sweating harder. He had felt an almost overpowering impulse to punch the code for Athletic Suppor-ter, Tan, Large, just to see what would happen; but he had managed all the same to finish punching the proper number just as Leggett ended his sentence. The customer stared timidly at the flimsy, bright pink gar-ment that was now displayed on the screen, and said something totally inaudible.

“You’ll take it, then,” said Leggett. “I thought so. You’re a Store-fearing woman. You don’t want your neighbors to call you a money-saver. Bass, if you please—”

“No,” the customer said in a louder voice. She had winced at the phrase “money-saver,” as Leggett meant her to, and there was a thin flush of shame on her old cheeks, but her eyes were stubborn. “I can’t

, Salesman. I jist can’t. ’V got m’ worsh-ing-machine payments to make and m’ houserent’s due, and m’

husband’s been crippled up with’s back all this month. And I can’t.”

Leggett achieved a noteworthy sneer simply by exposing an eighth of an inch more of his rabbity incisors.

“I understand perfectly, madam. There is no need to explain to me.” His cold eye raked her and passed on. “Next!”

Crushed, the little woman turned away without seeing the tab and credit card that Arthur held out to her, and he had to lean down from his platform and press them into her hand. In the process, as stole and surcoat swung away from his body, he plunged his free hand under them and raked his nails across his short ribs, once, twice, before he straightened again.

The relief was exquisite.

The next customer was a stout man in a plain unquilted sur-coat and breeks, with not more than a half-dozen bangles at his wrist. Beside him, as he climbed to the dais below Leggett, was a moon-faced boy of about eleven, dressed in blouse and knee-breeks so much too small for him that he could barely move.

“Onward, Salesman,” the fat man wheezed. “‘S m’ boy Tom, come to get ‘s first suit of man’s clothes.”

“Onward. High time, too, I should say,” Leggett rejoined frostily. “How old is the boy?”

“Jist ten, Salesman. Big for’s age.”

“How long since his birthday?”

“‘S jist ten, Salesman, hardly past it.”

“How long? ”

The fat man blinked. “Jist a few weeks, Salesman. ’S first chance ‘v had to bring him in, Salesman, I swear to y’.”

Leggett made a sound of disgust and glanced at Arthur: “Seventeen-eight-oh-one,” he said. Arthur, who knew his superior, had punched the number almost before Leggett spoke. The item which now appeared on the screen was the most expensive boys’ intermediate suit the Store carried; the fabric showed wear readily, the dye was light in color and not fast, and the stitching was treated to disintegrate after four months, rendering the garments completely useless.

Leggett stared at the man, silently daring him to object.

The customer read the price and licked his lips. “Yes, Sales-man,” he said miserably. “That’ll do main well.”

Bass entered the item.

“Ninety-one-two-seven-three,” said Leggett. That was over-shirts, of the same quality, in lots of five. The next item was undershirts, in lots of ten. Then under-pants; then socks; then neckscarves; then shoes.

“Step down, Tom,” said the fat man at last, wearily. “On-ward, Salesman.”

“A moment,” said Leggett. He leaned forward in his pulpit and peered with sudden interest at the fat man’s magenta overshirt.

“Your shirt, man, is fading,” he said. “You had better have a dozen new ones. (Fifty-three-one-oh-nine, Bass.)”

“‘Scuse me, Salesman. That’ll better wait till next time, ‘V bought so much for the boy, ‘v nut left to buy for m’self.” Leggett raised one gray eyebrow. “You surprise me,” he said. “Bass, what is the man’s credit balance?”

Arthur tapped keys. “One hundred ninety point fifty-three, Salesman Leggett.”

Leggett stared down his nose,” ‘Nothing left,’ I believe you said.”

“Two hundred’s legal,” the fat man said, his jowls quivering, “and’s not even the end of the month yet. I know m’ rights—y’ can’t intimidate me—I need that money for spenses. C’mon, Tom.”

A murmur of outrage arose from the crowd. Peering down slantwise without moving his head, Arthur watched the fat man and his son descending into a barrage of angry stares. And quite right, too, Arthur reminded himself dutifully. The very fatness of the two was offensive—the greasy swollen jowls, the necks folding over the collars, the barrel thighs. How could anyone get himself into that condition on an orthodox diet? Who did they think they were—Stockholders, or Execu-tives?

Leggett was silent, hands folded across his red-and-silver stole, staring down at the two through half-closed eyes. Here and there in the first ranks of the crowd, Arthur saw a man or a woman surge abruptly forward with red face and uplifted fist, and as suddenly fall back, listening to angelic voices audi-ble to him alone. If this were the bad old days, he thought with interest, there would be a riot. The fat man turned at the foot of the dais. “I know m’ rights,” he said angrily, and held up a balloon-fingered hand. “Give me m’ card.”

Arthur stood motionless, waiting.

Leggett said expressionlessly, “You may know your rights, man, but you have not yet learnt your duties. I therefore offer you a choice. Will you appear in Sumptuary Court with your boy and his birth certificate—and explain why you did not equip him with intermediate clothing until he had all but burst out of his last primaries—or will you make this additional purchase for the benefit of your soul?

(Eleven-five-two-six, Bass.)”

The item that appeared on the screen was a complete cos-tume in black pliovel from turkey-feathered hat to buckled sandals—gala clothing designed to be worn once, on an impor-tant occasion, and fall apart after. The price was Cr. 190.50.

Someone shouted, “Good for old Leggett!” A whisper of laughter swelled to a roar. Leggett did not even smile. He stared down with the faintest expression of boredom and disdain as the fat man, legs planted, bracing himself against the laughter that swept round his ears, raised his fists to the level of his scarlet jowls and then dashed them down again.

His expression did not change until the fat man, two tears of rage squeezed out of his eyes, opened a shapeless mouth and bellowed: “Die of a disease, y’ rotted vice-eaten mud-lick’n dogson!”

The laughter stopped. There was a scraping of shoes as the crowd moved radially away. Into the silence that followed Leggett’s voice dropped and burst:

“A demon! ”

His hand slapped the lectern control panel, and a fiendish clangor broke out, drowning the crowd’s noise as it surged away in panic. Arthur saw the fat man, fists still clenched at his sides, crouching a little, face all awry and as pale as a flour sack. He saw the moon-faced boy, mouth open to howl. Then the crowd split as three horrid black-masked men came bounding across, gas-tubes in their fists, lightnings at their heels.

Arthur turned his head aside automatically. The last glimpse he had was one of the fat man between two uniformed backs, pale face upturned in a desperate question, as they bore him away.

After a few moments came the rustle of turning bodies and the gathering murmur; the Guardsmen and their prisoners were gone. When Arthur turned to face the room again, he saw that the pulpit above him was vacant. Leggett had retired to make his report to the Guard.

The crowd was clotting at a few points where, apparently, people had fainted or been knocked down. A white-robed medic came in, made a circuit of the room and left. A few minutes later he was back with two assistants and an emer-gency cart, around which the crowd eddied briefly until the bodies were loaded aboard and carried out. The murmur of talk had increased to a loud, steady drone. Someone at the back of the room began to sing a hymn. Others took it up, and it contended for a while with the crowd-noise but finally sank, defeated. More people were entering constantly from both doorways. The sluggish flow past the platform gradually stopped; there was no longer any room to move. Arthur stood rigid, suppressing a torrent of excitement. This was the first time he had ever seen a man possessed, though cases were reported almost daily on the news channels. To him, as to the customers, hearing that man curse a Salesman—and knowing that if his analogue-angel had not been driven out, he could no more have uttered a word of that anathema than he could have committed murder—was like a sudden glimpse into the Pit.

The difference was that Arthur’s viewpoint was somewhat nearer. The customers had been taken to the Confirmation Chambers in Store at the age of seven and again at ten. So had Arthur. The customers had been treated by the sacred machines. So had Arthur. The customers had each one ac-quired an angel to shepherd him through life.

Arthur hadn’t.

It was the central fact of his life, something he could never talk about to anybody, but never dared forget for a moment. Somehow, somehow, the machines that worked on everybody else had not worked on him. But did they work on everybody else? Were there others like him? Others, perhaps near him now, pretending like him that they had angels to guide them?

So far his freedom had cost him more than it was worth; it was an awkward treasure that he must hoard up until some day ... some day, when he had raised himself to Executive’s rank, or even to that of a minor Stockholder—it wasn’t possible

But meanwhile there was one thing he passionately desired to know:

Was the fat Consumer a man like himself, and had he simply given himself away in a fit of anger?

Or were there really demons?

The door behind the pulpit opened and Leggett stepped through. Silence rippled back from the platform to the far-thest corners of the room.

Here, Arthur knew, was a ready-made opportunity for an impromptu sermon. The customers expected it; at least half of them were here for no other reason.

He felt a glow of pure admiration, then, as Leggett merely stared down at the front row of the crowd and said dryly, “Next!”

It was more effective than an hour’s oratory. The incident had told its own story, pointed its own moral; there was no more to be said.

The code numbers Arthur punched were all in the first-quality group now; not a garment among them that would not disintegrate after the fifth wearing. Again and again, he had to announce that a bemused customer’s credit card was sub-zeroed. By midafternoon he realized that Leggett was piling up a sales total unprecedented in the history of the clothing department.

At three o’clock, the hall still more than three-quarters filled,

Leggett stopped in the middle of a sale and said crisply, “Bass.”

“Yes, Salesman Leggett.”

To Arthur’s astonishment, Leggett turned his back, opened the door behind the pulpit and stepped through. Arthur followed.

Leggett was waiting in the corridor a pace beyond the door-way. Arthur shut the door.

“Bass,” said the Salesman coldly, “you are ordered to report to the chambers of Personnel Manager Wooten, in Block Eighteen, Level Five, at exactly three-twenty. It is now three o’clock. Before you go, since I shall probably not have a fur-ther opportunity, I wish to inform you that your demeanor and deportment today have been unspeakable. Five times, in the past hour alone, I have had to wait for you to punch a code number. You have slumped. You have shuffled your feet. You have scratched yourself when you supposed that I could not see you.”

“Salesman, I’m sorry,” said Arthur, recovering nimbly from his dismay. “The truth is—”

“I do not wish to hear your excuses, Bass,” said Leggett. “Attend me. If you still retain any ambition to become a Sales-man—an office for which you are grossly unfitted—let me advise you to remember this: a Salesman is the direct repre-sentative of his Store’s President, who in turn represents his District Executive, and so by an unbroken chain of authority to the Chairman himself. He is and must be the living symbol of rectitude, an example for others to follow to the limit of their abilities. Not a callow, fidgeting jackanapes.” He turned abruptly. “Onward, Bass.”

“Onward,” said Arthur, and stared at a rapidly diminishing strip of Leggett’s back through the closing door.

Whistling thoughtfully under his breath, he walked down the corridor to the robing room. It was empty, the long ranks of open closets dismally gaping. He removed his stole and cap, folded them and put them away. He put on his surcoat, hat, pouch-belt, wrist bangles and rings. Then, restraining an im-pulse to tie knots in Yankowich’s clothing, he left the room and walked down the long echoing corridor to the stair. Two levels below, he crossed a ramp into the Block Nine concourse and boarded the northbound slideway. It was not crowded; few people came to Store at this hour, for fear of using up their time before they ever got to a Salesman. And then there was Sunday dinner to be gotten over with in time to come back for evening services .... He caught himself. That was a little too much like Arthur Bass the Consumer talking. And no matter what happened, no matter what the risk, he wouldn’t go back to that. He hadn’t had time to think about it; the knowledge was simply there, as if he’d known all along he was going to be dis-missed from the Store. Whistling inaudibly but cheerfully, he got off the slideway and mounted the nearest upstair.

“Bass.”

The dun-robed secretary, with hair and face both so pale that they looked like one pasty mass, opened her mouth for the single syllable and shut it again like a trap. Her myopic eyes looked not at him, nor even through him, but beyond, at something indescribable in a nameless direction. Twice, in the half hour Arthur had been waiting, she had stood up, walked directly to the window that opened on an airshaft, lifted her hand to open it, and then frozen there, listening, before she turned and walked mechanically back.

A suicidal type, evidently; in the bad old days she would have jumped out. The inner office was paneled in white oak and ebony. Facing Arthur as he entered, behind the desk, were three tall casement windows through which he could see the sunlit Glenbrook hills; the hangings on either side were of green-flushed silver damask. On the walls, in ebony frames, were hung a few of the usual mottoes:

THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS WRONG

PARSIMONY IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL