FIVE

At eight-thirty in the morning, Nicholas Appleton showed up at his job and prepared to begin the day.

The sun shone down on his shop, his little building. Therein he rolled up his sleeves, put on his magnifying glasses, and plugged in the heating iron.

His boss, Earl Zeta, stumped up to him, hands in the pockets of his khaki trousers, an Italian cigar dangling from his overgrown lips. ‘What say, Nick?’

‘We won’t know for a couple of days,’ Nick said. ‘They’re going to mail us the results.’

‘Oh yeah, your kid.’ Zeta put a dark, large paw on Nick’s shoulder. ‘You’re cutting the grooves too light,’ he said. ‘I want them down into the casing. Into the damn carcass.’

Nick, protestingly, said, ‘But if I go any deeper—’ The tire will blow if they back over a warm match, he said to himself. It’s equal to shooting them down with a laser rifle. ‘Okay,’ he said, the fighting strength oozing out of him; after all Earl Zeta was the boss. ‘I’ll go deeper,’ he said, ‘until the iron comes out the other side.’

‘You do that and you’re fired,’ Zeta said.

‘Your philosophy is that once they buy the squirt—’

‘When their three wheels hit the public pavement,’ Zeta said, ‘our responsibility ends. After that, whatever happens to them is their own business.’

Nick had not wanted to be a tire regroover… a man who took a bald tire and, with the red hot iron, carved new grooves deeper and deeper into the tire, making it look adequate. Making it look as if it had all the tread it needed. He had inherited the craft from his father, who had learned it from his own father. Down the years, father, to son; hating it as he did, Nick knew one thing: he was a superb tire regroover and always would be. Zeta was wrong; he already burned deeply enough. I’m the artist, he thought; I should decide how deep the grooves should go.

Leisurely, Zeta snapped on his neck radio. Cheap and noisy music – of a sort – blurred out of the seven or eight speaker-systems spread over the heavy man’s bulging body.

The music ceased. A pause, and then an announcer’s voice, speaking in professionally disinterested tones. ‘PSS spokesmen, representing Director Lloyd Barnes, announced a short while ago that police prisoner Eric Cordon, long imprisoned for acts hostile to the people, has been transferred from Brightforth Prison to the termination facilities in Long Beach, California. When asked if this meant that Cordon is to be executed, PSS spokesmen avowed that no decision as to that has been reached. Well-informed sources outside the PSS are openly saying that this heralds Cordon’s execution, pointing out that of the last nine hundred PSS prisoners transferred at various times to the Long Beach detention facilities, almost eight hundred were eventually executed. This has been a bulletin from—’

Convulsively, Earl Zeta clutched at the switch of his body radio; he missed it, clenched his fist spasmodically, shutting his eyes and rocking back and forth. ‘Those bastards,’ he said between his teeth. ‘They’re murdering him.’ His eyes opened; he grimaced, his face showing violent and deep pain… then, by degrees, he obtained control over himself; his anguish seemed to ease. But it did not go away; his tubby body remained tensed as he stared at Nick.

Nick said, ‘You’re an Under Man.’

‘For ten years you’ve known me,’ Zeta grated. He got out a red handkerchief and carefully mopped his forehead. His hands were shaking. ‘Listen, Appleton,’ he said, managing to make his voice more natural, now. More steady. Yet the shaking continued down deep in the man, out of sight. Nick sensed it, knew it was there. Hidden and buried, out of fear. ‘They’re going to get me, too. If they’re executing Cordon they’ll just go on and wipe all of us out, all the way down to minnows like me. And we’ll go into those camps, those damn, lousy, rotten detention camps on Luna. Did you know about them? That’s where we’re going. We – my people. Not you.’

‘I know about the camps,’ Nick said.

‘Are you going to turn me in?’

Nick said, ‘No.’

‘They’ll get me anyway,’ Zeta said bitterly. ‘They’ve been compiling lists for years. Lists a mile long, even on microtapes. They’ve got computers; they’ve got spies. Anyone could be a spy. Anyone you know or have ever talked to. Listen, Appleton – Cordon’s death means we’re not just fighting for political equality, it means we’re fighting for our actual physical lives. Do you understand that, Appleton? You may not like me very much – God knows we don’t get along with each other – but do you want to see me murdered?’

‘What can I do?’ Nick said. ‘I can’t stop the PSS.’

Zeta drew himself up, his dumpy body rigid with the agony of despair. ‘You could die along with us,’ he said.

‘Okay,’ Nick said.

‘“Okay”?’ Zeta peered at him, trying to understand him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ll do what I can,’ Nick said. He felt numbed by what he was saying. Everything was gone, now: the chance for Bobby had been effectively voided, and a race of tire regroovers would go on forever.

I should have waited, he thought. This just simply happened to me; I didn’t expect it – I don’t really understand it. It must be because Bobby failed. And yet I’m here saying this, telling Zeta this. It’s been done.

‘Let’s get over to my office,’ Zeta said hoarsely, ‘and open a pint of beer.’

‘You have liquor?’ He could not imagine it, the penalty was so terribly great.

‘We will drink to Eric Cordon,’ Zeta said, and led the way.