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Contents

INSIDE JOHN BARTH

By William W. Stuart

Every man wants to see a Garden of Eden. John Barth agreed with his whole heart--he knew that he'd rather see than be one!

I

Take a fellow, reasonably young, personable enough, health perfect. Suppose he has all the money he can reasonably, or even unreasonably, use. He is successful in a number of different fields of work in which he is interested. Certainly he has security. Women? Well, maybe not any woman in the world he might want. But still, a very nice, choice selection of a number of the very finest physical specimens. The finest--and no acute case of puritanism to inhibit his enjoyment.

Take all that. Then add to it the positive assurance of continuing youth and vigor, with a solid life expectancy of from 175 to 200 more years. Impossible? Well--just suppose it were all true of someone. A man like that, a man with all those things going for him, you'd figure he would be the happiest man in the world.

Wouldn't you?

Sure. A man with all that would have to be the happiest--unless he was crazy. Right? But me, Johnny Barth, I had it.

I had all of it, just like that. I sure wasn't the happiest man in the world though. And I know I wasn't crazy either. The thing about me was, I wasn't a man. Not exactly.

I was a colony.

Really. A colony. A settlement. A new but flourishing culture, you might say. Oh, I had the look of a man, and the mind and the nerves and the feel of a man too. All the normal parts and equipment. But all of it existed--and was beautifully kept up, I'll say that--primarily as a locale, not a man.

I was, as I said before, a colony.

Sometimes I used to wonder how New England really felt about the Pilgrims. If you think that sounds silly--perhaps one of these days you won't.

The beginning was some ten years back, on a hunting trip the autumn after I got out of college. That was just before I started working, as far off the bottom as I could talk myself, which was the personnel office in my Uncle John's dry cleaning chain in the city.

That wasn't too bad. But I was number four man in the office, so it could have been better, too. Uncle John was a bachelor, which meant he had no daughter I could marry. Anyway, she would have been my cousin. But next best, I figured, was to be on good personal terms with the old bull.

This wasn't too hard. Apart from expecting rising young executives to rise and start work no later than 8:30 a.m., Uncle John was more or less all right. Humor him? Well, every fall he liked to go hunting. So when he asked me to go hunting with him up in the Great Sentries, I knew I was getting along pretty well. I went hunting.

The trip was nothing very much. We camped up in the hills. We drank a reasonably good bourbon. We hunted--if that's the word for it. Me, I'd done my hitch in the Army. I know what a gun is--and respect it. Uncle John provided our hunting excitement by turning out to be one of the trigger-happy types. His score was two cows, a goat, a couple of other hunters, one possible deer--and unnumbered shrubs and bushes shot at. Luckily he was such a lousy shot that the safest things in the mountains were his targets.

Well, no matter. I tried to stay in the second safest place, which was directly behind him. So it was a nice enough trip with no casualties, right up to the last night.

We were all set to pack out in the morning when it happened. Maybe you read about the thing at the time. It got a light-hearted play in the papers, the way those things do. "A one in a billion accident," they called it.

We were lounging by the campfire after supper and a few good snorts. Uncle John was entertaining himself with a review of some of his nearer, more thrilling misses. I, to tell the truth, was sort of dozing off.

Then, all of a sudden, there was a bright flash of blue-green light and a loud sort of a "zoop-zing" sound. And a sharp, stinging sensation in my thighs.

I hollered. I jumped to my feet. I looked down, and my pants were peppered with about a dozen little holes like buckshot. I didn't have to drop my pants to know my legs were too. I could feel it. And blood started to ooze.

I figured, of course, that Uncle John had finally shot me and I at once looked on the bright side. I would be a cinch for a fast promotion to vice president. But Uncle John swore he hadn't been near a gun. So we guessed some other hunter must have done it, seen what he had done and then prudently ducked. At least no one stepped forward.

It was a moonlight night. With Uncle John helping me we made it the two and a half miles back down the trail to Poxville, where we'd left our car and stuff. We routed out the only doctor in the area, old Doc Grandy.

He grumbled, "Hell, boy, a few little hunks o' buckshot like that and you make such a holler. I see a dozen twice's bad as this ever' season. Ought to make you wait till office hours. Well--hike yourself up on the table there. I'll flip 'em out for you."

Which he proceeded to do. If it was a joke to him, it sure wasn't to me, even if they weren't in very deep. Finally he was done. He stood there clucking like an old hen with no family but a brass doorknob. Something didn't seem quite right to him.

Uncle John gave me a good belt of the bourbon he'd been thoughtful enough to pack along.

"What was it you say hit you, boy?" Doc Grandy wanted to know, reaching absently for the bottle.

"Buckshot, I suppose. What was it you just hacked out of me?"

"Hah!" He passed the bottle back to Uncle John. "Not like any buckshot I ever saw. Little balls, or shells of metallic stuff all right. But not lead. Peculiar. M-mph. You know what, boy?"

"You're mighty liberal with the iodine, I know that. What else?"

"You say you saw a big flash of light. Come to think on it, I saw a streak of light up the mountainside about that same time. I was out on the porch. You know, boy, I believe you got something to feel right set up about. I believe you been hit by a meteor. If it weren't--ha-ha--pieces of one of them flying saucers you read about."

Well, I didn't feel so set up about it, then or ever. But it did turn out he was right.

Doc Grandy got a science professor from Eastern State Teachers College there in Poxville to come look. He agreed that they were meteor fragments. The two of them phoned it in to the city papers during a slow week and, all in all, it was a big thing. To them. To me it was nothing much but a pain in the rear.

The meteor, interviewed scientists were quoted as saying, must have almost burned up coming through the atmosphere, and disintegrated just before it hit me. Otherwise I'd have been killed. The Poxville professor got very long-winded about the peculiar shape and composition of the pieces, and finally carried off all but one for the college museum. Most likely they're still there. One I kept as a souvenir, which was silly. It wasn't a thing I wanted to remember--or, as I found later, would ever be able to forget. Anyway, I lost it.

All right. That was that and, except for a lingering need to sit on very soft cushions, the end of it. I thought. We went back to town.

Uncle John felt almost as guilty about the whole thing as if he had shot me himself and, in November, when he found about old Bert Winginheimer interviewing girl applicants for checker jobs at home in his apartment, I got a nice promotion.

Working my way up, I was a happy, successful businessman.

And then, not all at once but gradually, a lot of little things developed into problems. They weren't really problems either, exactly. They were puzzles. Nothing big but--well, it was like I was sort of being made to do, or not do, certain things. Like being pushed in one direction or another. And not necessarily the direction I personally would have picked. Like----

Well, one thing was shaving.

I always had used an ordinary safety razor--nicked myself not more than average. It seemed OK to me. Never cared too much for electric razors; it didn't seem to me they shaved as close. But--I took to using an electric razor now, because I had to.

One workday morning I dragged myself to the bathroom of my bachelor apartment to wash and shave. Getting started in the morning was never a pleasure to me. But this time seemed somehow tougher than usual. I lathered my face and put a fresh blade in my old razor.

For some reason, I could barely force myself to start. "Come on, Johnny boy!" I told myself. "Let's go!" I made myself take a first stroke with the razor. Man! It burned like fire. I started another stroke and the burning came before the razor even touched my face. I had to give up. I went down to the office without a shave.

That was no good, of course, so at the coffee break I forced myself around the corner to the barber shop. Same thing! I got all lathered up all right, holding myself by force in the chair. But, before the barber could touch the razor to my face, the burning started again.

I stopped him. I couldn't take it.

And then suddenly the idea came to me that an electric razor would be the solution. It wasn't, actually, just an idea; it was positive knowledge. Somehow I knew an electric razor would do it. I picked one up at the drug store around the corner and took it to the office. Plugged the thing in and went to work. It was fine, as I had known it would be. As close a shave? Well, no. But at least it was a shave.

Another thing was my approach to--or retreat from--drinking. Not that I ever was a real rummy, but I hadn't been one to drag my feet at a party. Now I got so moderate it hardly seemed worth bothering with at all. I could only take three or four drinks, and that only about once a week. The first time I had that feeling I should quit after four, I tried just one--or two--more. At the first sip of number five, I thought the top of my head would blast off. Four was the limit. Rigidly enforced.

All that winter, things like that kept coming up. I couldn't drink more than so much coffee. Had to take it easy on smoking. Gave up ice skating--all of a sudden the cold bothered me. Stay up late nights and chase around? No more; I could hardly hold my eyes open after ten.

That's the way it went.

I had these feelings, compulsions actually. I couldn't control them. I couldn't go against them. If I did, I would suffer for it.

True, I had to admit that probably all these things were really good for me. But it got to where everything I did was something that was good for me--and that was bad. Hell, it isn't natural for a young fellow just out of college to live like a fussy old man of seventy with a grudge against the undertaker. Life became very dull!

About the only thing I could say for it was, I was sure healthy.

It was the first winter since I could remember that I never caught a cold. A cold? I never once sniffled. My health was perfect; never even so much as a pimple. My dandruff and athlete's foot disappeared. I had a wonderful appetite--which was lucky, since I didn't have much other recreation left. And I didn't even gain weight!

Well, those things were nice enough, true. But were they compensation for the life I was being forced to live? Answer: Uh-uh. I couldn't imagine what was wrong with me.

Of course, as it turned out the following spring, I didn't have to imagine it. I was told.

II

It was a Friday. After work I stopped by Perry's Place with Fred Schingle and Burk Walters from the main accounting office. I was hoping it would turn out to be one of my nights to have a couple--but no. I got the message and sat there, more or less sulking, in my half of the booth.

Fred and Burk got to arguing about flying saucers. Fred said yes; Burk, no. I stirred my coffee and sat in a neutral corner.

"Now look here," said Burk, "you say people have seen things. All right. Maybe some of them have seen things--weather balloons, shadows, meteors maybe. But space ships? Nonsense."

"No nonsense at all. I've seen pictures. And some of the reports are from airline pilots and people like that, who are not fooled by balloons or meteors. They have seen ships, I tell you, ships from outer space. And they are observing us."

"Drivel!"

"It is not!"

"It's drivel. Now look, Fred. You too, Johnny, if you're awake over there. How long have they been reporting these things? For years. Ever since World War II.

"All right. Ever since the war, at least. So. Suppose they were space ships? Whoever was in them must be way ahead of us technically. So why don't they land? Why don't they approach us?"

Fred shrugged. "How would I know? They probably have their reasons. Maybe they figure we aren't worth any closer contact."

"Hah! Nonsense. The reason we don't see these space people, Fred my boy, admit it, is because there aren't any. And you know it!"

"I don't know anything of the damned sort. For all any of us know, they might even be all around us right now."

Burk laughed. I smiled, a little sourly, and drained my coffee.

I felt a little warning twinge.

Too much coffee; should have taken milk. I excused myself as the other two ordered up another round.

I left. The conversation was too stupid to listen to. Space creatures all around me, of all things. How wrong can a man get? There weren't any invaders from space all around me.

I was all around them.

All at once, standing there on the sidewalk outside Perry's Bar, I knew that it was true. Space invaders. The Earth was invaded--the Earth, hell! I was invaded. I didn't know how I knew, but I knew all right. I should have. I was in possession of all the information.

I took a cab home to my apartment.

I was upset. I had a right to be upset and I wanted to be alone. Alone? That was a joke!

Well, my cab pulled up in front of my very modest place. I paid the driver, overtipped him--I was really upset--and ran up the stairs. In the apartment, I hustled to the two by four kitchen and, with unshakable determination, I poured myself a four-finger snort of scotch.

Then I groaned and poured it down the sink. Unshakable determination is all very well--but when the top of your head seems to rip loose like a piece of stubborn adhesive coming off a hairy chest and bounces, hard, against the ceiling, then all you can do is give up. I stumbled out to the front room and slumped down in my easy chair to think.

I'd left the door open and I was sitting in a draft.

So I had to--that compulsion--go close the door. Then I sat down to think.

Anyway I thought I sat down to think. But, suddenly, my thoughts were not my own.

I wasn't producing them; I was receiving them.

"Barth! Oh, Land of Barth. Do you read us, oh Barthland? Do you read us?"

I didn't hear that, you understand. It wasn't a voice. It was all thoughts inside my head. But to me they came in terms of words.

I took it calmly. Surprisingly, I was no longer upset--which, as I think it over, was probably more an achievement of internal engineering than personal stability.

"Yeah," I said, "I read you. So who in hell--" a poor choice of expression--"are you? What are you doing here? Answer me that." I didn't have to say it, the thought would have been enough. I knew that. But it made me feel better to speak out.

"We are Barthians, of course. We are your people. We live here."

"Well, you're trespassing on private property! Get out, you hear me? Get out!"

"Now, now, noble Fatherland. Please, do not become upset and unreasonable. We honor you greatly as our home and country. Surely we who were born and raised here have our rights. True, our forefathers who made the great voyage through space settled first here in a frightful wilderness some four generations back. But we are neither pioneers nor immigrants. We are citizens born."

"Invaders! Squatters!"

"Citizens of Barthland."

"Invaded! Good Lord, of all the people in the world, why me? Nothing like this ever happened to anyone. Why did I have to be picked to be a territory--the first man to have queer things living in me?"

"Oh, please, gracious Fatherland! Permit us to correct you. In the day of our fathers, conditions were, we can assure you, chaotic. Many horrible things lived here. Wild beasts and plant growths of the most vicious types were everywhere."

"There were----?"

"What you would call microbes. Bacteria. Fungi. Viruses. Terrible devouring wild creatures everywhere. You were a howling wilderness. Of course, we have cleaned those things up now. Today you are civilized--a fine, healthy individual of your species--and our revered Fatherland. Surely you have noted the vast improvement in your condition!"

"Yes, but----"

"And we pledge our lives to you, oh Barthland. As patriotic citizens we will defend you to the death. We promise you will never be successfully invaded."

Yeah. Well, that was nice. But already I felt as crowded as a subway train with the power cut out at rush hour.

But there was no room for doubt either. I'd had it. I still did have it; had no chance at all of getting rid of it.

They went on then and told me their story.

I won't try to repeat it all verbatim. I couldn't now, since my memory--but that's something else. Anyway, I finally got the picture.

But I didn't get it all the same evening. Oh, no. At ten I had to knock it off to go to bed, get my sleep, keep up my health. They were insistent.

As they put it, even if I didn't care for myself I had to think about an entire population and generations yet unborn. Or unbudded, which was the way they did it.

Well, as they said, we had the whole weekend to work out an understanding. Which we did. When we were through, I didn't like it a whole lot better, but at least I could understand it.

It was all a perfectly logical proposition from their point of view--which differed in quite a number of respects from my own. To them it was simply a matter of survival for their race and their culture. To me it was a matter of who or what I was going to be. But then, I had no choice.

According to the Official History I was given, they came from a tiny planet of a small sun. Actually, their sun was itself a planet, still incandescent, distant perhaps like Jupiter from the true sun. Their planet or moon was tiny, wet and warm. And the temperature was constant.

These conditions, naturally, governed their development--and, eventually, mine.

Of course they were very small, about the size of a dysentery amoeba. The individual life span was short as compared to ours but the accelerated pace of their lives balanced it out. In the beginning, something like four of our days was a lifetime. So they lived, grew, developed, evolved. They learned to communicate. They became civilized--far more so than we have, according to them. And I guess that was true. They were even able to extend their life span to something like two months.

"And to what," I inquired--but without much fire, I'm afraid; I was losing fight--"to what am I indebted for this intrusion?"

"Necessity."

It was, to them. Their sun had begun to cool. It was their eviction notice.

They had to move or adapt themselves to immeasurably harsher conditions; and they had become so highly developed, so specialized, that change of that sort would have been difficult if not impossible. And they didn't want to change, anyway. They liked themselves as they were.

The only other thing was to escape. They had to work for flight through space. And they succeeded.

There were planets nearer to them than Earth. But these were enormous worlds to them, and the conditions were intolerably harsh. They found one planet with conditions much like those on Earth a few million years back. It was a jungle world, dominated by giant reptiles--which were of no use to the folk. But there were a few, small, struggling, warm-blooded animals. Small to us, that is--they were county size to the folk.

Some genius had a great inspiration. While the environment of the planet itself was impossibly harsh and hostile, the conditions inside these warm little animals were highly suitable!

It seemed to be the solution to their problem of survival. Small, trial colonies were established. Communication with the space ships from home was achieved.

The experiment was a success.

The trouble was that each colony's existence depended on the life of the host. When the animal died, the colony died.

Life on the planet was savage. New colonies would, of course, be passed from individual to individual and generation to generation of the host species. But the inevitable toll of attrition from the violent deaths of the animals appalled this gentle race. And there was nothing they could do about it. They could give protection against disease, but they could not control the hosts. Their scientists figured that, if they could find a form of life having conscious power of reason, they would be able to establish communication and a measure of control. But it was not possible where only instinct existed.

They went ahead because they had no choice. Their only chance was to establish their colonies, accepting the certainty of the slaughter of hundreds upon hundreds of entire communities--and hoping that, with their help, evolution on the planet would eventually produce a better host organism. Even of this they were by no means sure. It was a hope. For all they could know, the struggling mammalian life might well be doomed to extermination by the giant reptiles.

They took the gamble. Hundreds of colonies were planted.

They did it but they weren't satisfied with it. So, back on the dying home moon, survivors continued to work. Before the end came they made one more desperate bid for race survival.

They built interstellar ships to be launched on possibly endless journeys into space. A nucleus of select individuals in a spore-like form of suspended animation was placed on each ship. Ships were launched in pairs, with automatic controls to be activated when they entered into the radius of attraction of a sun. Should the sun have planets such as their own home world--or Earth type--the ships would be guided there. In the case of an Earth type planet having intelligent life, they would----

They would do just what my damned "meteor" had done.

They would home in on an individual, "explode," penetrate--and set up heavy housekeeping on a permanent basis. They did. Lovely. Oh, joy!

Well. We would all like to see the Garden of Eden; but being it is something quite else again.

Me, a colony!

My--uh--population had no idea where they were in relation to their original home, or how long they had traveled through space. They did hope that someplace on Earth their companion ship had established another settlement. But they didn't know. So far on our world, with its masses of powerful electrical impulses, plus those of our own brains, they had found distance communication impossible.

"Well, look, fellows," I said. "Look here now. This is a noble, inspiring story. The heroic struggle of your--uh--people to survive, overcoming all odds and stuff, it's wonderful! And I admire you for it, indeed I do. But--what about me?"

"You, Great Land of Barth, are our beloved home and fatherland for many, many generations to come. You are the mighty base from which we can spread over this enormous planet."

"That's you. What I mean is, what about me?"

"Oh? But there is no conflict. Your interests are our interests."

That was how they looked at it. Sincerely. As they said, they weren't ruthless conquerors. They only wanted to get along.

And all they wanted for me were such fine things as good health, long life, contentment. Contentment, sure. Continued irritation--a sour disposition resulting in excess flow of bile--did not provide just the sort of environment in which they cared to bring up the kiddies. Smoking? No. It wasn't healthy. Alcohol? Well, they were willing to declare a national holiday now and then. Within reason.

Which, as I already knew, meant two to four shots once or twice a week.

Sex? Themselves, they didn't have any. "But," they told me with an attitude of broad tolerance, "we want to be fair. We will not interfere with you in this matter--other than to assist you in the use of sound judgment in the selection of a partner."

But I shouldn't feel that any of this was in any way real restrictive. It was merely practical common sense.

For observing it I would get their valuable advice and assistance in all phases of my life. I would enjoy--or have, anyway--perfect health. My life, if that's what it was, would be extended by better than 100 years. "You are fortunate," they pointed out, a little smugly I thought, "that we, unlike your race, are conservationists in the truest sense. Far from despoiling our homeland and laying waste its resources and natural scenic wonders, we will improve it."

I had to be careful because, as they explained it, even a small nick with a razor might wipe out an entire suburban family.

"But fellows! I want to live my own life."

"Come now. Please remember that you are not alone now."

"Aw, fellows. Look, I'll get a dog, lots of dogs--fine purebreds, not mongrels like me. The finest. I'll pamper them. They'll live like kings.... Wouldn't you consider moving?"

"Out of the question."

"An elephant then? Think of the space, the room for the kids to play----"

"Never."

"Damn it! Take me to--no, I mean let me talk to your leader."

That got me no place. It seemed I was already talking to their highest government councils. All of my suggestions were considered, debated, voted on--and rejected.

They were democratic, they said. They counted my vote in favor; but that was just one vote. Rather a small minority.

As I suppose I should have figured, my thoughts were coming through over a period that was, to them, equal to weeks. They recorded them, accelerated them, broadcast them all around, held elections and recorded replies to be played back to me at my own slow tempo by the time I had a new thought ready. No, they wouldn't take time to let me count the votes. And there is where you might say I lost my self control.

"Damn it!" I said. Or shouted. "I won't have it! I won't put up with it. I'll--uh--I'll get us all dead drunk. I'll take dope! I'll go out and get a shot of penicillin and--"

I didn't do a damned thing. I couldn't.

Their control of my actions was just as complete as they wanted to make it. While they didn't exercise it all the time, they made the rules. According to them, they could have controlled my thoughts too if they had wanted to. They didn't because they felt that wouldn't be democratic. Actually, I suppose they were pretty fair and reasonable--from their point of view. Certainly it could have been a lot worse.

III

I wasn't as bad off as old Faust and his deal with the devil. My soul was still my own. But my body was community property--and I couldn't, by God, so much as bite my own tongue without feeling like a bloody murderer--and being made to suffer for it, too.

Perhaps you don't think biting your tongue is any great privilege to have to give up. Maybe not. But, no matter how you figure, you've got to admit the situation was--well--confining.

And it lasted for over nine years.

Nine miserable years of semi-slavery? Well, no. I couldn't honestly say that it was that bad. There were all the restrictions and limitations, but also there was my perfect health; and what you might call a sort of a sense of inner well-being. Added to that, there was my sensationally successful career. And the money.

All at once, almost anything I undertook to do was sensationally successful. I wrote, in several different styles and fields and under a number of different names; I was terrific. My painting was the talk of the art world. "Superb," said the critics. "An astonishing other-worldly quality." How right they were--even if they didn't know why. I patented a few little inventions, just for fun; and I invested. The money poured in so fast I couldn't count it. I hired people to count it, and to help guide it through the tax loopholes--although there I was able to give them a few sneaky little ideas that even our sharpest tax lawyers hadn't worked out.

Of course the catch in all that was that, actually, I was not so much a rich, brilliant, successful man. I was a booming, prosperous nation.

The satisfaction I could take in all my success was limited by my knowledge that it was a group effort. How could I help being successful? I had a very fair part of the resources of a society substantially ahead of our own working for me. As for knowledge of our world, they didn't just know everything I did. They knew everything I ever had known--or seen, heard, read, dreamed or thought of. They could dig up anything, explore it, expand it and use it in ways I couldn't have worked out in a thousand years. Sure, I was successful. I did stay out of sports--too dangerous; entertainment--didn't lend itself too well to the group approach; and music--they had never developed or used sound, and we agreed not to go into it. As I figured it, music in the soul may be very beautiful; but a full-size symphony in a sinus I could do without.

So I had success. And there was another thing I had too. Company.

Privacy? No, I had less privacy than any man who ever lived, although I admit that my people, as long as I obeyed the rules, were never pushy or intrusive. They didn't come barging into my thoughts unless I invited them. But they were always ready. And if those nine years were less than perfect, at least I was never lonesome. Success, with me, was not a lonely thing.

And there were women.

Yes, there were women. And finally, at the end of it, there was a woman--and that was it.

As they had explained it, they were prepared to be tolerant about my--ah--relations with women as long as I was "reasonable" in my selection. Come to find out, they were prepared to be not just tolerant but insistent--and very selective.

First there was Helga.

Helga was Uncle John's secretary, a great big, healthy, rosy-cheeked, blonde Swedish girl, terrific if you liked the type. Me, I hadn't ever made a move in her direction, partly because she was so close to Uncle John, but mostly because my tastes always ran to the smaller types. But tastes can be changed.

Ten days after that first conversation with my people I'd already cleared something like $50,000 in a few speculations in the commodity market. I was feeling a little moody in spite of it, and I decided to quit my job. So I went up that afternoon to Uncle John's office to tell him.

Uncle John was out. Helga was in. There she was, five foot eleven of big, bouncy, blonde smorgasbord. Wow! Before, I'd seen Helga a hundred times, looked with mild admiration but not one real ripple inside. And now, all at once, wow! That was my people, of course, manipulating glands, thoughts, feelings. "Wow!" it was.

First things first. "Helga, Doll! Ah! Where's Uncle John?"

"Johnny! That's the first time you ever called me--hm-m--Mr. Barth has gone for the day ... Johnny."

She hadn't even looked at me before. My--uh--government was growing more powerful. It was establishing outside spheres of influence. Of course, at the time, I didn't take the trouble to analyze the situation; I just went to work on it.

As they say, it is nice work if you can get it.

I could get it.

It was a good thing Uncle John didn't come bustling back after something he'd forgotten that afternoon.

I didn't get around to quitting my job that afternoon. Later on that evening, I took her home. She wanted me to come in and meet her parents, yet! But I begged off that--and then she came up with a snapper. "But we will be married, Johnny darling. Won't we? Real soon!"

"Uh," I said, making a quick mental plane reservation for Rio, "sure, Doll. Sure we will." I broke away right quick after that. There was a problem I wanted to get a little advice on.

What I did get, actually, was a nasty shock.

Back in my apartment--my big, new, plush apartment--I sat down to go over the thing with the Department of the Interior. The enthusiastic response I got surprised me. "Magnificent," was the word. "Superb. Great!"

Well, I thought myself that I had turned in a pretty outstanding performance, but I hadn't expected such applause. "It is a first step, a splendid beginning! A fully equipped, well-armed expedition will have the place settled, under cultivation and reasonably civilized inside of a day or two, your time. It will be simple for them. So much more so than in your case--since we now know precisely what to expect."

I was truly shocked. I felt guilty. "No!" I said. "Oh, no! What a thing to do. You can't!"

"Now, now. Gently," they said. "What, after all, oh Fatherland, might be the perfectly natural consequences of your own act?"

"What? You mean under other--that is----"

"Exactly. You could very well have implanted a new life in her, which is all that we have done. Why should our doing so disturb you?"

Well, it did disturb me. But then, as they pointed out, they could have developed less pleasant methods of spreading colonies. They had merely decided that this approach would be the surest and simplest.

"Well, maybe," I told them, "but it still seems kind of sneaky to me. Besides, if you'd left it to me, I'd certainly never have picked a great big ox like Helga. And now she says she's going to marry me, too!"

"You do not wish this? We understand. Do not be concerned. We will--ah--send instructions to our people the next time. She will change her feelings about this."

She dropped the marriage bit completely.

We had what you might call an idyllic association, in spite of her being such a big, husky model--a fact which never bothered me when I was with her. "She is happy," I was assured, "very happy." She seemed pleased and contented enough, even if she developed, I thought, a sort of an inward look about her. She and I never discussed our--uh--people. We had a fast whirl for a couple of weeks. And then I'd quit my job with Uncle John, and we sort of drifted apart.

Next thing I heard of her, she married Uncle John.

Well. I have my doubts about how faithful a wife she was to him, but certainly she seemed to make him happy. And my government assured me Uncle John was not colonized. "Too late," they said. "He is too old to be worth the risk of settling." But they respected my scruples about my uncle's wife and direct communication with Helgaland was broken off.

But there were others.

IV

For the next nine years--things came easy for me. I suppose the restrictions, the lack of freedom should have made me a lot more dissatisfied than I was. I know, though they didn't say so, that my people did a little manipulating of my moods by jiggering the glands and hormones or something. It must have been that with the women.

I know that after Helga I felt guilty about the whole thing. I wouldn't do it again. But then one afternoon I was painting that big amazon of a model and--Wow!

I couldn't help it. So, actually, I don't feel I should be blamed too much if, after the first couple of times, I quit trying to desert, so to speak.

And time went by, although you wouldn't have guessed it to look at me. I didn't age. My health was perfect. Well, there were a couple of very light headaches and a touch of fever, but that was only politics.

There were a couple of pretty tight elections which, of course, I followed fairly closely. After all, I had my vote, along with everyone else and I didn't want to waste it--even though, really, the political parties were pretty much the same and the elections were more questions of personality than anything else.

Then one afternoon I went to my broker's office to shift around a few investments according to plans worked out the night before. I gave my instructions. Old man Henry Schnable checked over the notes he had made.

"Now that's a funny thing," he said.

"You think I'm making a mistake?"

"Oh, no. You never have yet, so I don't suppose you are now. The funny thing is that your moves here are almost exactly the same as those another very unusual customer of mine gave me over the phone not an hour ago."

"Oh?" There was nothing very interesting about that. But, oddly enough, I was very interested.

"Yes. Miss Julia Reede. Only a child really, 21, but a brilliant girl. Possibly a genius. She comes from some little town up in the mountains. She has been in town here for just the past six months and her investments--well! Now I come to think about it, I believe they have very closely paralleled yours all along the line. Fabulously successful. You advising her?"

"Never heard of the girl."

"Well, you really should meet her, Mr. Barth. You two have so much in common, and such lovely investments. Why don't you wait around? Miss Reede is coming in to sign some papers this afternoon. You two should know each other."

He was right. We should know each other. I could feel it.

"Well, Henry," I said, "perhaps I will wait. I've got nothing else to do this afternoon."

That was a lie. I had plenty of things to do, including a date with the captain of a visiting women's track team from Finland. Strangely, my people and I were in full agreement on standing up the chesty Finn, let the javelins fall where they may.

Henry was surprised too. "You are going to wait for her? Uh. Well now, Mr. Barth, your reputation--ah--that is, she's only a child, you know, from the country."

The buzzer on his desk sounded. His secretary spoke up on the intercom. "Miss Reede is here."

Miss Reede came right on in the door without waiting for a further invitation.

We stood there gaping at each other. She was small, about 5'2" maybe, with short, black, curly hair, surface-cool green eyes with fire underneath, fresh, freckled nose, slim figure. Boyish? No. Not boyish.

I stared, taking in every little detail. Every little detail was perfect and--well, I can't begin to describe it. That was for me. I could feel it all through me, she was what I had been waiting for, dreaming of.

I made a quick call on the inside switchboard, determined to fight to override the veto I was sure was coming. I called.

No answer.

For the first time, I got no regular answer. Of course, by now I always had a kind of a sense or feeling of what was going on. This time there was a feeling of a celebration, rejoicing, everybody on a holiday. Which was exactly the way I felt as I looked at the girl. No objections? Then why ask questions?

"Julia," old Henry Schnable was saying, "this is Mr. John Barth. John, this is--John! John, remember----"

I had reached out and taken the girl's hand. I tucked her arm in mine and she looked up at me with the light, the fire in the green depths swimming toward the surface. I didn't know what she saw in me--neither of us knew then--but the light was there, glowing. We walked together out of Henry Schnable's office.

"John! Julia, your papers! You have to sign----"

Business? We had business elsewhere, she and I.

"Where?" I asked her in the elevator. It was the first word either of us had spoken.

"My apartment," she said in a voice like a husky torch song. "It's close. The girl who rooms with me is spending the week back home with her folks. The show she was in closed. We can be alone."

We could. Five minutes in a cab and we were.

I never experienced anything remotely like it in all my life. I never will again.

And then there was the time afterwards, and then we knew.

It was late afternoon, turning to dusk. She lifted up on one elbow and half turned away from me to switch on the bedside lamp. The light came on and I looked down at her, lovingly, admiringly. Idly, I started to ask her, "How did you get those little scars on your leg there and ... those little scars? Like buckshot! Julia! Once, along about ten years ago--you must have been a little girl then--in the mountains--sure. You were hit by a meteor, weren't you??"

She turned and stared at me. I pointed at my own little pockmark scars.

"A meteor--about ten years ago!"

"Oh!"

"I knew it. You were."

"'Some damn fool, crazy hunter,' was what Pop said. He thought it really was buckshot. So did I, at first. We all did. Of course about six months later I found out what it was but we--my little people and I--agreed there was no sense in my telling anyone. But you know."

It was the other ship. There were two in this sector, each controlled to colonize a person. My own group always hoped and believed the other ship might have landed safely. And now they knew.

We lay there, she and I, and we both checked internal communications. They were confused, not clear and precise as usual. It was a holiday in full swing. The glorious reunion! No one was working. No one was willing to put in a lot of time at the communications center talking to Julia and me. They were too busy talking to each other. I was right. The other ship.

Of course, since the other ship's landfall had been a little girl then, the early movements of the group had been restricted. Expansion was delayed. She grew up. She came to the city. Then--well, I didn't have to think about that.

We looked at each other, Julia and I. A doll she was in the first place and a doll she still was. And then on top of that was the feeling of community, of closeness coming from our people. There was a sympathy. The two of us were in the same fix. And it may be that there was a certain sense of jealousy and resentment too--like the feeling, say, between North and South America. How did we feel?

"I feel like a drink."

We said it together and laughed. Then we got up and got the drinks. I was glad to find that Julia's absent roommate, an actress, had a pretty fair bar stock.

We had a drink. We had another. And a third.

Maybe nobody at all was manning the inner duty stations. Or maybe they were visiting back and forth, both populations in a holiday mood. They figured this was a once in a millennium celebration and, for once, the limits were off. Even alcohol was welcome. That's a line of thought that kills plenty of people every day out on the highway.

We had a couple more in a reckless toast. I kissed Julia. She kissed me. Then we had some more drinks.

Naturally it hit us hard; we weren't used to it. But still we didn't stop drinking. The limits were off for the first time. Probably it would never happen again. This was our chance of a lifetime and there was a sort of desperation in it. We kept on drinking.

"Woosh," I said, finally, "wow. Let's have one more, wha' say? One more them--an' one more those."

She giggled. "Aroun' an aroun', whoop, whoop! Dizzy. Woozy. Oughta have cup coffee."

"Naw. Not coffee. Gonna have hangover. Take pill. Apsirin."

"Can-not! Can-not take pill. Won' lemme. 'Gains talla rules."

"Can."

"Can-not."

"Can. No rules. Rule soff. Can. Apsirin. C'mon."

Clinging to each other, we stumbled to the bathroom. Pills? The roommate must have been a real hypochondriac. She had rows and batteries of pills. I knocked a bottle off the cabinet shelf. Aspirin? Sure, fancy aspirin. Blue, special. I took a couple.

"Apsirin. See? Easy."

Her mouth made a little, red, round "O" of wonder. She took a couple.

"Gosh! Firs' time I c'd ever take a pill."

"Good. Have 'nother?"

It was crazy, sure. The two of us were drunk. But it was more than that. We were like a couple of wild, irresponsible kids, out of control and running wild through the pill boxes. We reeled around the bathroom, sampling pills and laughing.

"Here's nice bottla red ones."

There was a nice bottle of red ones. I fumbled the top off the bottle and spilled the bright red pills bouncing across the white tile bathroom floor. We dropped to our knees after them, after the red pills, the red dots, the red, fiery moons, spinning suddenly, whirling, twirling, racing across the white floor. And then it got dark. Dark, and darker and even the red, red moons faded away.

Some eons later, light began to come back and the red moons, dim now and pallid, whirled languidly across a white ceiling.

Someone said, "He's coming out of it, I think."

"Oh," I said. "Ugh!"

I didn't feel good. I'd almost forgotten what it was like, but I was sick. Awful. I didn't particularly want to look around but I did, eyes moving rustily in their sockets. There was a nurse and a doctor. They were standing by my bed in what was certainly a hospital.

"Don't ask," said the doctor. I wasn't going to. I didn't even care where I was, but he told me anyway, "You are in the South Side Hospital, Mr. Barth. You will be all right--which is a wonder, considering. Remarkable stamina! Please tell me, Mr. Barth, what kind of lunatic suicide pact was that?"

"Suicide pact?"

"Yes, Mr. Barth. Why couldn't you have settled for just one simple poison, hm-m? The lab has been swearing at you all day."

"Uh?"

"Yes. At what we pumped from your stomach. And found in the girl's. Liquor, lots of that--but then, why aspirin? Barbiturates we expect. Roach pellets are not unusual. But aureomycin? Tranquilizers? Bufferin? Vitamin B complex, vitamin C--and, finally, half a dozen highly questionable contraceptive pills? Good Lord, man!"

"It was an accident. The girl--Julia----?"

"You are lucky. She wasn't."

"Dead?"

"Yes, Mr. Barth. She is dead."

"Doctor, listen to me! It was an accident, I swear. We didn't know what we were doing. We were, well, celebrating."

"In the medicine cabinet, Mr. Barth? Queer place to be celebrating! Well, Mr. Barth, you must rest now. You have been through a lot. It was a near thing. The police will be in to see you later."

With this kindly word the doctor and his silently disapproving nurse filed out of the room.

The police? Julia, poor Julia--dead.

Now what? What should I do? I turned, as always, inward for advice and instructions. "Folks! Why didn't you stop me? Why did you let me do it? And now--what shall I do? Answer me, I say. Answer!"

There was only an emptiness. It was a hollow, aching sensation. It seemed to me I could hear my questions echoing inside me with a lonely sound.

I was alone. For the first time in nearly ten years, I was truly alone, with no one to turn to.

They were gone! At last, after all these years, they were gone. I was free again, truly free. It was glorious to be free--wasn't it?

The sheer joy of the thing brought a tightness to my throat, and I sniffled. I sniffled again. My nose was stuffy. The tightness in my throat grew tighter and became a pain.

I sneezed.

Was this joy--or a cold coming on? I shifted uneasily on the hospital bed and scratched at an itch on my left hip. Ouch! It was a pimple. My head ached. My throat hurt. I itched. Julia was dead. The police were coming. I was alone. What should I do?

"Nurse!" I shouted at the top of my voice. "Nurse, come here. I want to send a wire. Rush. Urgent. To my aunt, Mrs. Helga Barth, the address is in my wallet. Say, 'Helga. Am desperately ill, repeat, ill. Please come at once. I must have help--from you.'"

She'll come. I know she will. They've got to let her. It was an accident, I swear, and I'm not too old. I'm still in wonderful shape, beautifully kept up.

But I feel awful.

Well--how do you suppose New England would feel today, if suddenly all of its inhabitants died?

 

 

---

Contents

THE JUNKMAKERS

By Albert Teichner

 

I

Wendell Hart had drifted, rather than plunged, into the underground movement. Later, discussing it with other members of the Savers' Conspiracy, he found they had experienced the same slow, almost casual awakening. His own, though, had come at a more appropriate time, just a few weeks before the Great Ritual Sacrifice.

The Sacrifice took place only once a decade, on High Holy Day at dawn of the spring equinox. For days prior to it joyous throngs of workers helped assemble old vehicles, machine tools and computers in the public squares, crowning each pile with used, disconnected robots. In the evening of the Day they proudly made their private heaps on the neat green lawns of their homes. These traditionally consisted of household utensils, electric heaters, air conditioners and the family servant.

The wealthiest--considered particularly blessed--even had two or three automatic servants beyond the public contribution, which they destroyed in private. Their more average neighbors crowded into their gardens for the awesome festivities. The next morning everyone could return to work, renewed by the knowledge that the Festival of Acute Shortages would be with them for months.

Like everyone else, Wendell had felt his sluggish pulse gaining new life as the time drew nearer.

A cybernetics engineer and machine tender, he was down to ten hours a week of work. Many others in the luxury-gorged economy had even smaller shares of the purposeful activities that remained. At night he dreamed of the slagger moving from house to house as it burned, melted and then evaporated each group of junked labor-blocking devices. He even had glorious daydreams about it. Walking down the park side of his home block, he was liable to lose all contact with the outside world and peer through the mind's eye alone at the climactic destruction.

Why, he sometimes wondered, are all these things so necessary to our resurrection?

Marie had the right answer for him, the one she had learned by rote in early childhood: "All life moves in cycles. Creation and progress must be preceded by destruction. In ancient times that meant we had to destroy each other; but for the past century our inherent need for negative moments has been sublimated--that's the word the news broadcasts use--into proper destruction." His wife smiled. "I'm only giving the moral reason, of course. The practical one's obvious."

Obvious it was, he had to concede. Men needed to work, not out of economic necessity any more but for the sake of work itself. Still a man had to wonder....

* * * * *

He had begun to visit the Public Library Archives, poring over musty references that always led to maddeningly frustrating dead ends. For the past century nothing really informative seemed to have been written on the subject.

"You must have government authorization," the librarian explained when he asked for older references. Which, naturally, made him add a little suspicion to his already large dose of wonder.

"You're tampering with something dangerous," Marie warned. "It would make more sense for you to take long-sleep pills until the work cycle picks up."

"I will get to see those early references," he said through clenched teeth.

He did.

All he had needed to say at the library was that his work in sociology required investigation of some twentieth century files. The librarian, a tall, gaunt man, had given him a speculative glance. "Of course, you don't have government clearance.... But we get so few inquiries in sociology that I'm willing to offer a little encouragement." He sighed. "Don't get many inquiries altogether. Most people just can't stand reading. You might be interested to know this--one of the best headings to research in sociology is Conspicuous consumption."

Then it was Wendell's turn to glance speculatively. The older man, around a healthy hundred and twenty-five, had a look of earnest dedication about him that commanded respect as well as confidence.

"Conspicuous consumption? An odd combination of words. Never heard of that before. I will look it up."

The librarian was nervous as he led his visitor into a reference booth. "That's about all the help I can offer. If anything comes up, just ring for me. Burnett's the name. Uh--you won't mention I put you on the file without authorization, I hope."

"Certainly not."

As soon as he was alone he typed Conspicuous consumption into the query machine.

It started grinding out long bibliographical sheets as well as cross-references to Obsolescence, Natural; Obsolescence, Technological; Obsolescence, Planned, plus even odder items such as Waste-making, Art of and Production, Stimulated velocity of. How did such disparate subjects tie in with each other?

* * * * *

By the end of the afternoon he began to see, if only dimly, to what the unending stream of words on the viewer pointed.

For centuries ruling classes had made a habit of conspicuously wasting goods and services that were necessities for the mass of men. It was the final and highest symbol of social power. By the time of Louis XIV the phenomenon had reached its first peak. The second came in the twentieth century when mass production permitted millions to devote their lives to the acquisition and waste of non-essentials. Hart's twenty-second century sensibilities were repelled by the examples given. He shuddered at the thought of such anti-social behavior.

But a parallel development was more appealingly positive in its implications. As the technological revolution speeded up, devices were superseded as soon as produced. The whole last half of the 1900's was filled with instances where the drawing board kept outstripping the assembly line.

Hart remembered this last change from early school days but the later, final development was completely new and shocking to him. Advertising had pressured more and more people to replace goods before they wore out with other goods that were, essentially, no improvement on their predecessors! Eventually just the word "NEW" was enough to trigger buying panics.

There had been growing awareness of what was happening, even sporadic resistance to it by such varied ideologies as Conservative Thrift, Asocial Beatnikism and Radical Inquiry. But, strangely enough, very few people had cared. Indeed, anything that diminished consumption was viewed as dangerously subversive.

"And rightly so!" was his first, instinctive reaction. His second, reasoned one, though, was less certain.

The contradiction started to give him a headache. He hurried from the scanning room, overtaxed eyes blinking at the rediscovery of daylight.

Burnett walked him to the door. "Not feeling well?" he inquired.

"I'll be all right. I just need a few days real work." He stopped. "No, that's not why. I'm confused. I've been reading crazy things about obsolescence. They used to have strange reasons for it. Why, some people even said replacements were not always improvements and were unnecessary!"

Burnett could not completely hide his pleasure. "You've been getting into rather deep stuff."

"Deep--or nonsensical!"

"True. True. Come back tomorrow and read some more."

"Maybe I will." But he was happy to get away from the library building.

Marie was horrified when he told her that evening about his studies. "Don't go back there," she pleaded. "It's dangerous. It's subversive! How could people say such awful things? You remember that Mr. Johnson around the corner? He seemed such a nice man, too, until they arrested him without giving a reason ... and how messed up he was when he got out last year. I'll bet that kind of talk explains the whole thing. It's crazy. Everyone knows items start wearing out and they have to be replaced."

"I realise that, honey, but it's interesting to speculate. Don't we have guaranteed freedom of thought?"

She threw up her hands as if dealing with a child. "Naturally we have freedom of thought. But you should have the right thoughts, shouldn't you? Wendell, promise me you won't go back to that library."

"Well--"

"Reading's a very risky thing anyway." Her eyes were saucer-round with fright. "Please, darling. Promise."

"Sure, you're right, honey. I promise."

* * * * *

He meant it when he said it. But that night, tossing from side to side, he felt less certain. In the morning, as he went out, Marie asked him where he was going.

"I want to observe the preparations for the Preliminary Rites."

"Now that," she grinned, "is what I call healthy thinking."

For a while he did stand around the Central Plaza along with thousands of other idlers, watching the robot dump trucks assemble the piles of discarded equipment. The crowd cheered loudly as an enormous crane was knocked over on its side.

"There's fifty millions worth out there!" a bystander exulted. "It's going to be the biggest Preliminary I've ever seen."

"It certainly will be!" he said, catching a little of the other man's enthusiasm despite his previous doubts.

Preliminary Rites were part of the emotion-stoking that preceded the Highest Holy Day. Each Rite was greater and more destructive than those that had gone before. As tokens of happy loyalty, viewers threw hats and watches and stickpins onto the pile just prior to the entry of the slaggers. What better way could be found for each man to manifest his common humanity?

After a while doubt started assailing him again, and Hart found himself returning almost against his will to the Library Building. Burnett greeted him cordially. "To-day's visit is completely legal," he said. "Anyone doing olden time research is automatically authorized if he has been here before."

"I hope my thought can be as legal," Hart blurted out. "Well--that was just a joke."

"Oh, I can recognize a joke when I hear one, my friend."

Hart went to his booth, feeling the man's eyes measuring him more intently than ever. It was almost a welcome relief to start reading the reference scanner once more.

But not for long. As the wider pattern unfolded, his anxiety state intensified.

It was becoming perfectly obvious that many, many replacements used to be made long before they were needed. And it was still true. I should not be thinking such thoughts, he told himself, I should be outside in the Plaza, being normal and human.

But he could see how it had come about, step by step. First there had been pressure from the ruling echelons, many of whose members only maintained their status through excessive production. Then, much more important, there had been the willful blindness of the masses who wanted to keep their cozy, familiar treadmills going.

He slammed down the off button and went out to the librarian's desk. "Do people want to work all the time," he said, "for the sake of work alone?"

He immediately regretted the question. But Burnett did not seem to mind. "You've only stated the positive reason, Mr. Hart. The negative one could be stronger--the fear of what they would have to do if they did not have to work much over a long period."

"What would it mean?"

"Why, they would have to start thinking! Most people don't mind thought if it's concentrated in a narrow range. But if they have to think in a broad range to keep boredom away--no, that's too high a price for most of them! They avoid it when they can. And under present circumstances they can." He stopped. "Of course that's a purely hypothetical fiction I'm constructing."

Hart shook his head. "It sounds awfully real to be purely--" He, too, caught himself up. "Of course, you're only positing a fiction."

Burnett started putting his desk papers away. "I'm leaving now. The Preliminary begins soon. Want to come?"

The man's face was stolidly blank except for his brown eyes which burned like a zealot's. Fascinated by them, Hart agreed. It would be best to return anyway. Some of the bystanders had looked too curiously at him when he had left. Who would willingly leave a Rite when it was approaching its climax?

II

The Plaza was now thronged and the sacrificial pile towered over a hundred feet in the cleared center area. Then, as the first collective Ah! arose, a giant slagger lumbered in from the east, the direction prescribed for such commencements. Long polarity arms glided smoothly out of the central mechanism and reached the length for Total Destruction.

"That's the automatic setting," parents explained to their children.

"When?" the children demanded eagerly.

"Any moment now."

Then the unforeseen occurred.

There was a rumbling from inside the pile and a huge jagged patchwork of metal shot out, smashing both arms. The slagger teetered, swaying more and more violently from side to side until it collapsed on its side. The rumbling grew. And then the pile, like a mechanical cancer, ripped the slagger apart and then absorbed it.

The panicking crowd fell back. Somewhere a child began crying, provoking more hubbub. "Sabotage!" people were crying. "Let's get away!"

Nothing like this had ever happened before. But Hart knew instantly what had caused it. Some high-level servo mechanisms had not been thoroughly disconnected. They had repaired their damages, then imposed their patterns on the material at hand.

A second slagger came rushing into the square. It discharged immediately; and the pile finally collapsed and disintegrated as it was supposed to.

The crowd was too shocked to feel the triumph it had come for, but Hart could not share their horror. Burnett eyed him. "Better look indignant," he said. "They'll be out for blood. Somebody must have sabotaged the setup."

"Catch the culprits!" he shouted, joining the crowd around him. "Stop anti-social acts!"

"Stop anti-social acts!" roared Burnett; and, in a whisper: "Hart, let's get out of here."

As they pushed their way through the milling crowd, a loudspeaker boomed out: "Return home in peace. The instincts of the people are good. Healthy destruction forever! The criminals will be tracked down ... if they exist."

"A terrible thing, friend," a woman said to them.

"Terrible, friend," Burnett agreed. "Smash the anti-social elements without mercy!"

Three children were clustered together, crying. "I wanted to set the right example for them," said the father to anyone who would listen. "They'll never get over this!"

Hart tried to console them. "Next week is High Holy Day," he said, but the bawling only increased.

The two men finally reached a side avenue where the crowd was thinner. "Come with me," Burnett ordered, "I want you to meet some people."

* * * * *

He sounded as if he were instituting military discipline but Hart, still dazed, willingly followed. "It wasn't such a terrible thing," he said, listening to the distant uproar. "Why don't they shut up!"

"They will--eventually." Burnett marched straight ahead and looked fixedly in the same direction.

"The thing could have gobbled up the city if there hadn't been a second slagger!" said a lone passerby.

"Nonsense," Burnett muttered under his breath. "You know that, Hart. Any self-regulating mechanism reaches a check limit sooner than that."

"It has to."

They turned into a large building and went up to the fiftieth floor. "My apartment," said Burnett as he opened the door.

There were about fifteen people in the large living room. They rose, smiling, to greet their host. "Let's save the self-congratulations for later," snapped Burnett. "These were merely our own preliminaries. We're not out of the woods yet. This, ladies and gentlemen, is our newest recruit. He has seen the light. I have fed him basic data and I'm sure we're not making a mistake with him."

Hart was about to demand what was going on when a short man with eyes as intense as Burnett's proposed a toast to "the fiasco in the Plaza." Everyone joined in and he did not have to ask.

"Burnett, I don't quite understand why I am here but aren't you taking a chance with me?"

"Not at all. I've followed your reactions since your first visit to the library. Others here have also--when you were completely unaware of being observed. The gradual shift in viewpoint is familiar to us. We've all been through it. The really important point is that you no longer like the kind of world into which you were born."

"That's true, but no one can change it."

"We are changing it," said a thin-faced young woman. "I work in a servo lab and--."

"Miss Wright, time enough for that later," interrupted Burnett. "What we must know now, Mr. Hart, is how much you're willing to do for your new-found convictions? It will be more work than you've ever dreamed possible."

He felt as exhilarated as he did in the months after High Holy Day. "I'm down to under ten hours labor a week. I'd do anything for your group if I could get more work."

Burnett gave him a hearty handshake of congratulation ... but was frowning as he did so. "You're doing the right thing--for the wrong reason. Every member of this group could tell you why. Miss Wright, since you feel like talking, explain the matter."

"Certainly. Mr. Hart, we are engaged in an activity of so-called subversion for a positive reason, not merely to avoid insufficient work load. Your reason shows you are still being moved by the values that you despise. We want to cut the work-production load on people. We want them to face the problem of leisure, not flee it."

"There's a heart-warming paradox here," Burnett explained. "Every excess eventually undermines itself. Everybody in the movement starts by wanting to act for their beliefs because work appears so attractive for its own sake. I was that way, too, until I studied the dead art of philosophy."

"Well--" Hart sat down, deeply troubled. "Look, I deplore destroying equipment that is still perfectly useful as much as any of you do. But there is a problem. If the destruction were stopped there would be so much leisure people would rot from boredom."

* * * * *

Burnett pounced eagerly on the argument. "Instead they're rotting from artificial work. Boredom is a temporary, if recurring phenomenon of living, not a permanent one. If most men face the difficulty of empty time long enough they find new problems with which to fill that time. That's where philosophy showed me the way. None of its fundamental mysteries can ever be solved but, as you pit yourself against them, your experience and capacity for being alive grows."

"Very nice," Hart grinned, "wanting all men to be philosophers. They never have been."

"You shouldn't have brought him here," growled the short man. "He's not one of us. Now we have a real mess."

"Johnson, I'm leader of this group!" Burnett exploded. "Credit me with a little understanding. All right, Hart, what you say is true. But why? Because most men have always worked too hard to achieve the fruits of curiosity."

"I hate to keep being a spoil-sport, but what does that prove? Some men who had to work as hard as the rest have been interested in things beyond the end of their nose."

They all groaned their disapproval.

"A good point, Hart, but it doesn't prove what you think. It just shows that a minority enjoy innate capacities and environmental variations that make the transition to philosopher easier."

"And you haven't proven anything about the incurious majority."

"This does, though: whenever there was a favorable period the majority who could, as you put it, see beyond the ends of their noses increased. Our era is just the opposite. We are trapped in a vicious circle. Those noses are usually so close to the grindstone that men are afraid to raise their heads. We are breaking that circle!"

"It's a terribly important thing to aim for, Burnett, but--" He brought up another doubt and somebody else answered it immediately.

For the next half hour, as one uncertainty was expressed after another, everybody joined in the answers until inexorable logic forced his surrender.

"All right," he conceded, "I will do anything I can--not to make work for myself, but to help mankind rise above it."

* * * * *

Except for a brief, triumphant glance in Johnson's direction, Burnett gave no further attention to what had happened and plunged immediately into practical matters.

To halt the blind worship of work, the Rites had first to be discredited. And to discredit the Rites, the awe inspired by their infallible performance had to be weakened. The sabotage of the Preliminary had been the first local step in that direction. There had been a few similar, if smaller, episodes, executed by other groups, but they had received as little publicity as possible.

"Johnson, you pulled one so big this time that they can't hide it. Twenty thousand witnesses! When it comes to getting things done you're the best we have!"

The little man grinned. "But you're the one who knows how to pick recruits and organize our concepts. This is how it worked. I re-fed the emptied cryotron memory box of a robot discard with patterns to deal with anything it was likely to encounter in a destruction pile. I kept the absolute-freeze mechanism in working order, but developed a shield that would hide its activity from the best pile detector." He spread a large tissue schematic out on the floor and they all gathered around it to study the details. "Now, the important thing was to have an external element that could resume contact with a wider circuit, which could in turn start meshing with the whole robot mechanism and then through that mechanism into the pile. This little lever made the contact at a pre-fed time."

Miss Wright was enthusiastic. "That contact is half the size of any I've been able to make. It's crucially important," she added to Hart. "A large contact can look suspicious."

While others took miniphotos of the schematic, Hart studied the contact carefully. "I think I can reduce its size by another fifty per cent. Alloys are one of my specialties--when I get a chance to work at them."

"That would be ideal," said Burnett. "Then we could set up many more discarded robots without risk. How long will it take?"

"I can rough it out right now." He scribbled down the necessary formulas and everyone photographed that too.

[Illustration]

"Maximum security is now in effect," announced Burnett. "You will destroy your copies as soon as you have transferred them to edible base copies. At the first hint of danger you will consume them. Use home enlargers for study. In no case are you to make permanent blowups that would be difficult to destroy quickly." He considered them sternly. "Remember, you are running a great risk. You're not only opposing the will of the state but the present will of the vast majority of citizens."

"If there are as many other underground groups as you indicate," said Hart, "they should have this information."

"We get it to them," answered Burnett. "I'm going on health leave from my job."

"And what will be your excuse?" Wright demanded anxiously.

"Nervous shock," smiled their leader. "After all, I did see today's events in the Plaza."

* * * * *

When Hart reached home his wife was waiting for him. "Why did you take so long, Wendell. I was worried sick. The radio says anti-socials are turning wild servos loose. How could human beings do such a thing?"

"I was there. I saw it all happen." He frowned. "The crowd was so dense I couldn't get away."

"But what happened? The way the news was broadcast I couldn't understand anything."

He described the situation in great detail and awaited Marie's reaction. It was even more encouraging than he had hoped for. "I understand less than before! How could anything reactivate that rubble? They put everything over five years old into the piles, and the stuff's supposed to be decrepit already. You'd almost think we were destroying wealth before its time, because if those disabled mechanisms reactivate--" She came to a dead halt. "That's madness! Oh, I wish High Holy Day were here already so I could get back to work and stop this empty thinking!"

Her honest face was more painfully distorted than he had ever seen it before, even during the universal pre-Rite doldrums. "Only a few more days to go," he consoled. "Don't worry, honey. Everything's going to be all right. Now I'd like to be alone in the study for a while. I've been through an exhausting time."

"Aren't you going to eat?"

The last word triggered the entry of Eric, the domestic robot, pushing the dinner cart ahead of him. "No food to-night," Hart insisted. The shining metal head nodded its assent and the cart was wheeled out.

"That's not a very humane thing to do," she scolded. "Eric's not going to be serving many more meals--"

"Good grief, Marie, just leave me alone for a while, will you?" He slammed the study door shut, warning himself to display less nervousness in the future as he listened to her pacing outside. Then she went away.

The projector gave him a good-sized wall image to consider. He spent most of the night calculating where he could place tiny self-activators in the "obsolescent" robots that were to be donated by his plant. Then he set up the instruction tapes to make the miniature contacts. Production then would be a simple job, only taking a few minutes, and during a working day there were always many periods longer than that when he was alone on the production floor.

But thinking the matter out without computers was much more difficult. Human beings ordinarily filled their time on a lower abstracting level.

When he unlocked the study door in the morning he was startled to see Marie bustling down the corridor, pushing the food service cart herself. That did not make sense, especially considering last night's statement about Eric.

"I thought you'd want breakfast early," she coughed.

"You didn't have to bother, honey. Eric could have done it."

If she had been prying, the cart might have been a prop to take up as soon as he came out. On the other hand, what could she in her technical ignorance make of such matters anyway?

It was best not to rouse any deeper suspicions by openly noticing her wifely nosiness. At breakfast they pretended nothing had happened, devoting the time to mutually disapproved cousins, but all day long he kept wondering whether ignorant knowledge couldn't be as dangerous as the knowing kind.

* * * * *

The next morning, after a long sleep, he went to the factory for the first of his semi-weekly work periods.

He sat before a huge console, surveying scores of dials, at the end of a machine that was over five hundred yards long. Today it was turning out glass paper the color of watered blood, made only for Ritual publications, packing it in sheets and dispatching them in automatic trucks; but the machine could be adjusted to everything from metal sheeting to plastic felts. At the far end sat another man, diminished by distance, busily tending more dials that could really take care of themselves.

After a while the man went out for a break. Hart ran a hundred yards to a section that was not working. He snapped it into the alloy supply and fed in the tape. In a minute, several dozen tiny contacts came down a chute. He pocketed them and disconnected the section just before his fellow worker reappeared.

The man walked down the floor to him, looking curious.

"Anything the matter?" he asked, hopeful for some break in routine.

"No, just felt like a walk."

"Know what you mean--I feel restless too. Too bad this plant's only two years old. Boy, wouldn't she make a great disintegration!" He grinned, slapping a fender affectionately.

Hart joined in the joke. "Gives us something to look forward to in ten years."

"A good way to look at things," said the other man.

At home he locked the contacts in a desk drawer. Tomorrow he would deliver most of them to Burnett's apartment.

But the next morning an emergency letter came from his group leader, warning him not to appear there. I am going completely underground. I think they may suspect my activities. The dispersion plan must go into effect. You know how to reach Johnson and Wright and they each in turn can get to two others. Good luck!

He had just put the letter in his pocket when Eric announced the arrival of a Rituals Inspector.

The man had nervous close-set eyes and seemed embarrassed by his need to make such a visit. Hart took the offensive as his best defense. "I don't understand this, Inspector," he protested. "You people should be busy with High Holy preparations. Are you losing your taste for work?"

"Now, now, Mr. Hart, that's a very unkind remark. I dislike this nonsense as much as anyone." His square jaw chewed into each word as he opened his scanning box. "It's the anti-social sabotage."

"Do you mean to say I am under suspicion?" Marie was now loitering in the doorway, worse luck.

"Oh, no. Nothing so insulting. This is strictly impersonal. The Scanning Center has picked apartments at complete random and we're to make spot checks."

The eye at one end of the box blinked wickedly, waiting for an information feed. "Now, sir, if you'll pardon me, I'll just take the records from one of those desk drawers--any drawer--and put them in the box." Hart slid open a drawer. "No, sir, I think I'll try the next one. It's regulation not to accept suggestions."

With a hand made deft by practise he scooped out all the sheets and tapes and put them in the box. The scanner's fingers rapidly sorted them past the eye. Hart exhaled, relieved that an innocuous drawer had been selected, and the inspector handed back the material to him. "Well, Inspector, that's that."

"Not quite." The Inspector selected another drawer at the other end of the desk and dumped everything before the scanner. His examination was speeding up and that was not good; he would have time to take more sample readings.

"Now if you'll empty your left pocket--"

* * * * *

"Oh, this is too much!" Marie exploded. "My husband struggles all night on secret work, studying to find ways to stop the anti-socials, and you treat him like one of them!"

"You're working on the problem?" the Inspector said respectfully. "What are you doing?"

Frying pan to fire. Hart preferred the pan and pulled open a drawer. "It's too complicated, too much time needed to explain!"

The Inspector glanced at his watch. "I'm falling behind schedule." He closed up his box. "Sorry, but I have to leave. Heavy time sheet today."

As soon as he was gone, Hart breathed easier. Nothing incriminating would be fed into the Central Scanner.

Marie became apologetic. "I'm sorry I said it, Wendell, but I couldn't keep quiet. All I did last night was peek in once or twice."

He shrugged. "I'm just on a minor project."

"Every bit counts." She shook her head. "Only you have to wonder--I mean, don't think I'm treasoning, but while I was shopping an hour ago a lot of women said you have to think--how come all that obsolescent junk could work so well, after being thoroughly wrecked, too? You almost wonder whether some of it was too good for disintegration."

Wendell pretended to be shocked. "Just a fluke of circumstance. If something like that happened again you'd be right to wonder. But it could not ever happen again."

"Don't get me wrong, Wendell. None of the women attacked anything. It was more like what you just said. They said if it happened again, then you'd have to wonder. But of course it couldn't happen again."

How well the tables had turned! Not only had Marie's ignorant knowledge proven helpful but she had now given him a positive idea also.

When he met Wright and Johnson at the latter's apartment that evening he explained it to them. "We can propagate 'dangerous' thoughts and yet appear completely loyal. We can set up the reaction to next High Holy Day."

"How?" demanded Johnson. "That's having your cake and eating it."

"Nothing's impossible in the human mind," Wright said. "Let's listen."

"Here's the point. Wherever you go there will be people tsk-tsking about the Preliminary fiasco. Just reassure them, say it meant nothing at all by itself. If it ever happened again, then there would be room for doubt but, of course, it could not happen again!"

Wright smiled. "That's almost feminine in its subtlety."

He smiled back. "My wife inspired it. Don't get nervous--it was unconscious, sheerly by accident."

"Whatever the cause, it's the perfect result," Johnson conceded. "We'll spread it through the net."

"Along with this, I hope." Wendell dumped the contacts on a table top. "It's the smallest size possible. A lot should get by unnoticed. Find cell members who can set up cryotrons with a wide range of instructions to cope with anything in the piles. Some weirdly alive concoctions of 'obsolescent' parts ought to result."

"Some day the world's going to know what you've done for it," said Johnson solemnly.

"That could happen too soon!" Miss Wright's face, honest and open in its horse-like length, broke into a wide grin.

"Amen," said Hart, adding the private hope that Marie, blessed with superior looks, might be able to show as much superior wisdom some day.

* * * * *

The hope was not immediately fulfilled. When he reached home Marie was in a tizzy of excitement. "You're just in time, darling. They just caught three subversives. One of them was a woman," she added as this were compounding an improbability with an impossibility. "They're going to show them."

He gripped his belt tightly. "A woman?"

"That's right. There she is now."

A uniformed officer was gently helping a pale little old woman sit down before the camera, as if she were more an object of pity than of fear. Hart relaxed.

"--caught red-handed with the incriminating papers," shouted an offstage announcer. "Handbills asserting objects declared obsolescent could actually last indefinitely!"

"What do you have to say for yourself?" the officer asked gently. "You must realize, of course, that such irreligious behavior precludes your moving in general society for a long time to come."

"I don't know what came over me," she sobbed in a tired voice. "Curiosity. Yes, curiosity, that's what it was. I saw these sheets of paper in the street and they said we should stop working so hard at compulsory tasks and start working to expand our own interests and personalities."

"Self-contradictory nonsense!" said the voice.

"Yes, I know that. But it made me curious and I took it home to read, and it said our compulsory tasks were artificially manufactured and, if you didn't believe that, look at the pile that reactivated itself the other day." She stopped, reorganizing her thoughts. "Of course, though, that thing in the Plaza was unique, you know. I don't think it could mean a thing ... unless it happened a few times. And the fact is it won't ever happen again."

"Well, that much makes very good sense," said Marie. "You said the same thing, Wendell. I don't think that poor woman knew what she was doing--just a dupe for subversive propaganda."

"--a dupe for subversive propaganda," the announcer was saying.

"See, exactly what I said."

"Yes, dear."

How swiftly the decentralized underground was working! Hart could not tell whether the old woman was an active member or just a passive responder, but it did not matter. She was now spreading the seeds for future doubt across the land.

Two old men were brought in and they mumbled the same disconnected story as their sister.

"We have intensively interrogated these prisoners," boomed the announcer, "and know there is nothing more to the rumored anti-social plot than this stupid chatter. Remain vigilant and you have nothing to fear!"

"You are sentenced to five years isolation from general society," said the officer, in a voice dulcet enough to sell advance orders for replacement products that had not yet been made. "Our intention is to protect you from bad influences. Our hope is that others will take your lesson to heart."

"God bless you," said the woman and her brothers joined in effusive thanks.

"Makes you proud to be a human being," Marie said. "I was getting some stupid doubts myself, dear. I must admit it. But that's all past. I can hardly wait for the Highest Holy Day."

"Neither can I," sighed her husband.

III

The next day at noon Eric came to him, functioning on the final set of servo instructions that had been installed in him at the factory of his birth eight years before. He shook hands with the two of them and said: "Now I am prepared for death."

Marie was tearful. "I will miss you, Eric. If you were only under five years old your span could be extended."

"Everything that happens is right," Eric said impassively.

He clambered on to the operation table, instinctively knowing which flat surface was for him, and, breaking all his major circuits, gave up the ghost that only man could restore to him.

Hart found his wife's grief easy to bear. The day after tomorrow she would join in the general exultation of High Holy Day, with Eric well forgotten. He methodically began smashing the surface of the limbs and torso; the greater the visible damage, the greater the honor redounding to the sacrifice donor. "This will be our gift to the general pile," he said.

"I thought we could keep him for our garden sacrifice," Marie protested meekly. "Most people do."

"But the other way is the greater sacrifice."

There was no reply, because she knew he spoke for the deeper, more moving custom. But suddenly he began to act depressed himself. "I know we say it every ten years, but Eric was really the best companion we ever had." He gestured toward the table. "I want to sit here with him for a while--alone."

"That's carrying things too far, Wendell. A little grief is proper--but this much is actually morbid."

"It's all within my rights."

She tossed her head petulantly. "Well, I've done my share. I can't stand any more. It makes a person think and get depressed. I don't care what you're going to do. I'm going out to enjoy a Preliminary."

"Can't blame you for that," he nodded.

When she had gone he started to work on new instruction tapes for activating the servo-cryotron. Nothing could be surrendered to chance. Every possible circumstance in the pile had to be anticipated. There had to be instructions for action if Eric was crushed below fifty feet of metal, for assembling any kind of scrambled wiring, for adapting all types of parts in its immediate surroundings, for using these parts to absorb parts further away and for timing the operation to the start of the Highest Rite.

Some tapes had been prepared earlier, so it was possible to put everything in the cryotron box before Marie returned, as well as to attach the tiny contact that would reach out from the box until it reached its first external scrap of wire or metal.

"You poor darling," she pouted. "You missed the most wonderful thing! They demolished a whole thirty-story building!"

His blood, atavistically effected, pulsed faster until his new creed came to grips with his old emotions. "They usually don't bother with buildings for the Rites."

"I know--that's what was so wonderful! The State has decided to make this one the biggest Day of all time. We'll have enough work to fill the whole ten years! Everybody was so happy."

"I'm sure they were." He caught himself in mid-sarcasm and said, "I'm sorry I missed it."

"And I'm sorry I've been so selfishly self-centered." She frowned. "I forgot about it, but there were people in the crowd boasting they had been assigned to fight anti-social movements. I had to boast back that my husband had been honored too."

He tensed. "Oh? What did they say to that?"

"Frankly, they laughed."

"I should think so. The Central Scanner didn't pick up anything except a lot of ineffective propaganda. The sabotage business was all hysteria."

"That's just what they said--the assignments were an empty honor." She coldly considered Eric. "I want to wreck him too."

"I've smashed the insides," he said. "You'd better just work the surface."

"That's all I want to do," she answered, starting to scratch traditional marks all over the dead robot. It gave her a full afternoon of happy, busy labor.

* * * * *

The next day a large open truck came around and the street echoed to the appeal for contributions. Festival spirit was running high everywhere and when the neighborhood crowd saw the young robot porters carry Eric out there was a loud cheer of appreciation.

"My husband decided on a major contribution right away," Marie announced to them.

"It's the least we could do," he said modestly.

Many onlookers, swept away by their example, rushed indoors to bring out additional items of sacrifice. But only two others gave up their robots. The rest clung to them for private Holy Night ceremonies. Soon Eric disappeared under the renewed deluge of egg-beaters and washers.

"The best collection I have seen today," said the inspector accompanying the truck. "You people are to be congratulated for your exceptional patriotism."

"Destroy!" they shouted back joyously. "Make work!"

At dawn the Central Plaza was already crowded and new hordes kept pouring in from outlying areas. Wendell and his wife had been among the first to arrive. They waited, impatient in their separate ways, on the borderline five hundred yards from the ten-story pyre.

Martial music roared from loudspeakers, interrupted by the mellifluous boom of a merchandising announcer: "New product! Better models! One hundred years of High Holy Days! New! New! NEW!"

"Destroy!" came the returning shout. "Make work! Work! Work!"

All the sounds echoed back and forth until baffled away by the open area across the Plaza, where one large structure had already been destroyed. Three others were slated for collapse today.

"The biggest Holy Day ever," a restless old woman said to Marie. "I've seen all nine of them."

"Eric's in there," Marie chatted back, superficially sad, deeply happy.

"Who?"

"Our house robot."

"Imagine that! Did you hear that?" People gathered round them and cheered. The good-natured jostling continued until someone said: "Five minutes to go!"

Wendell checked his watch. Somewhere in the pile at least one element was coming to life, a metal arm reaching out for brother metal to engulf in its cybernetic sweep.

"They're coming!" A line of six shiny new slaggers came rumbling into the open with military precision. They moved along slowly, prolonging the pleasures of anticipation, then broke rank, each seeking its assigned point around the pile of appliances gathered for destruction.

"The latest improved models," said the loudspeakers. "They will first perform fifteen minutes of automatic maneuvers." The military music resumed and each slagger turned, as if circling a coin, in clanking rhythm to it.

"The three hundred and sixty degree turn. Next, making a box on the Plaza floor...."

The voice stopped, appalled.

* * * * *

An avalanche of metal slid down one side of the pile and the crowd gasped. The downward movement viscously slowed; then the metal, suddenly alive with the capacity to defy gravity, circled upward. Jagged limbs started flailing about.

"Disintegrator attack!" screamed the loudspeakers. "Attack!"

The maneuvers stopped. For one brief moment prior to changeover the Plaza was dead still, except for the deafening rumble in the pile. The slaggers broke the spell, rushing full speed toward the pile, evaporator beams working.

One by one they faltered and were sucked into the destructive pyre.

The crowd fell further back. The whole pile came alive like a mineral octopus. Then the squirming thing collapsed, every makeshift circuit irreparably broken and dead. Everything had been happening too fast for any pronounced reaction to accompany it; but now the world went crazy.

"Stand firm!" pleaded the loudspeakers. "We will get reinforcements as soon as celebrations are finished elsewhere."

A barrage of enormous boos came from the disintegrating mob. "Never again! Fakes! It's finished, done for!"

"Stand firm!"

But the breakup down side avenues continued. "I don't understand," Marie shuddered. "Everything's crazy. We've been deceived, Wendell. Who's been deceiving us?"

"Nobody--unless it's ourselves."

"I don't understand that either." Saucer-eyed she watched a great clump of disgruntled people push past. "I have to think!"

Suddenly, as they came around a corner, they were facing Burnett.

Hart tried to disregard him but the group leader would have none of that. He rushed up to Hart. "Good to see a friendly face. Shocking developments!" His face was grim, but tiny wrinkles at the corners of his eyes betrayed an amusement that could only be discovered by those who looked for it.

"Mr. Burnett," he explained to Marie. "A librarian at the main building. Mr. Burnett, my wife Marie."

"I am most happy to meet you, Mrs. Hart. Have you heard the latest?"

"No, Mr. Burnett."

"The same things have been happening everywhere! They announced it on the radio and they're saying it's due to anti-social elements. Shocking!"

She shook her head stubbornly. "I don't know what to think. Maybe we shouldn't be shocked, maybe we should be. I just don't know, Mr. Burnett. I came to enjoy myself and look how it's ended." She bravely held back a sob, "Maybe we'd have been better off if we've never heard about High Holy Days!"

Burnett looked about with feigned apprehension. "You have to be careful what you say. The government says there's even talk--subversive handbills--about trying to rehabilitate some of the stuff in the piles."

"The government ought to keep quiet!" she exploded. "They said this couldn't happen. You can't believe anything they say any more. The people decide and the government will have to listen, that's what I say! And I'm a pretty typical person, not one of your intellectual kind. No criticism of present company intended."

"None taken, Mrs. Hart. Our human future," said Burnett, exchanging a grin with his aide, "remains, as it always has really been. Interesting--to say the least!"

END

 

 

---

Contents

HIGH DRAGON BUMP

By Don Thompson

 

If it took reduction or torch hair, the Cirissins wanted a bump. Hokum, thistle, gluck.

 

A young and very beautiful girl with golden blond hair and smooth skin the color of creamed sweet potatoes floated in the middle of the windowless metal room into which Wayne Brighton drifted. The girl was not exactly naked, but her few filmy clothes concealed nothing.

Wayne cleared his throat, his apprehension changing rapidly to confusion.

"You are going to reduce me?" he asked.

"The word is seduce, mister," the girl said. "They told me reduce, too, but they don't talk real good, and I think I'm supposed to seduce you so you'll tell 'em something, and then they'll let me go. I guess. I hope. What is it they wantcha to tell 'em?"

Wayne cleared his throat again, striving merely to keep a firm grip on his sanity. Things had been happening much too fast for him to have retained anything like his customary composure.

He said, "Well, they want me to get them a, uh--well, a high dragon bump." He pronounced the words carefully.

"So why dontcha?" the girl asked.

Wayne's voice rose. "I don't even know what it is. I told them and they don't believe me. Now you're here! I suppose if I can't be reduced--seduced--into getting them one, it will wind up with torch hair. Believe me, I never heard of a high dragon bump."

"Now, don't get panicky!" the girl pleaded. "After all, I'm scared too."

"I am not scared!" Wayne replied indignantly. But he realized that he was.

So far, in the hour or so he'd been a captive of the Cirissins, he'd managed to keep his fright pretty well subdued. He'd understood almost at once what had happened, and his first reaction had not been terror or even any great degree of surprise.

He was a scientist and he had a scientist's curiosity.

And at first the Cirissins--or the one that had done all the talking--had been cooperative in answering his questions. But then, when he wasn't able to comprehend what they meant by high dragon bump, they'd started getting impatient.

"What's your name?" he asked the girl. She was making gentle swimming motions with her hands and feet, moving gradually closer to him.

"Sheilah," she said. "Sheilah Ralue. I'm a model. I pose for pitchers. You know--for sexy magazines and calendars and stuff like that."

"I see. You were posing when--?"

"When they snatched me, yeah. Couple hours ago, I guess. The flash bulb went off and blinded me for a second like it always does, and I seemed to be falling. Then I was here. Only I still don't even know where here is. Do you? How come we don't weigh nothing? It's ghastly!"

"We're in a space ship," Wayne told her. "In free fall, circling earth a thousand miles or so out. I thought you at least knew we were in a space ship."

The girl said, "Oh, bull. We can't be in no space ship. How'd we get here so fast?"

"They have a matter transmitter, but I haven't the slightest idea of how it works. Obviously it's limited to living creatures or they could just as well have taken whatever it is they want instead of ... You don't happen to know what a high dragon bump is, do you?"

"Don't be dumb. Of course I ... well, unless it's a dance or something. I use to be a dancer, ya know. Sort of."

"With bubbles, I imagine," Wayne said.

"Tassels. They was my specialty. But there's more money in posing for pitchers, and the work ain't quite so--"

"I doubt that a high dragon bump is a dance," Wayne said.

Then he rubbed his chin. High dragon bump? Bumps and grinds? Highland fling? Chinese dragon dances? Hell, why not?

The idea of space travelers visiting earth to learn a new dance was no more fantastic than the idea of them being here at all.

Wayne turned his face to the door and shouted, "Hey, is that it? A dance? You want us to teach you a dance called the high dragon bump?"

A muffled metallic voice from the other side said, "Nod danz. Bump. Huguff quig."

Wayne shrugged and grinned weakly at Sheilah. "Well, we're making headway. We know one thing that it isn't."

The girl had drifted so close to him now that he could feel the warmth of her body and smell the overwhelming fragrance of her perfume.

She put one hand on his arm, and Wayne found that he had neither the strength nor the inclination to jerk away.

But he protested weakly, "Now, listen, there's no point in you--I mean--even if we did, I couldn't produce a high dragon bump."

"What kind of work do you do, mister?" Sheilah asked softly, drawing herself even closer. "You know, you ain't even told me your name yet."

"It's Wayne," he said, fumbling in an effort to loosen his tie so he could breath more easily. "I'm an instructor. I teach physics at Kyler College, and I've got a weekly science show on TV. In fact I'd just finished my show when they got me. I was leaving the studio, starting down the stairs. Thought at first I'd missed a step and was falling, but I just kept falling. And I landed here, and ... Now, don't do that!"

"Why, I wasn't doing nothing. Whaddya do on your TV show?"

"I talk. About science. Physics. Like today, I was discussing the H-bomb. How it works, you know, and why the fallout is dangerous, and ... Oh, good Gawd! Seduce, reduce! High dragon bump!"

He shoved her away from him abruptly and violently and he went hurtling in the opposite direction.

"Well, hey!" Sheilah protested. "You don't need to get so rough. I wasn't going to--"

"Shut up," Wayne said. "I think I've figured out what the Cirissins want!

"Hey! Hey, open the door," he shouted. "I've got to talk to you."

The door opened and a Cirissin floated in.

Sheilah turned her head away, shuddering, and Wayne found it wise to close his eyes and open them little by little to grow re-accustomed to the sight gradually.

The only thing he could think of with which to compare the Cirissins was the intestinal complex of an anemic elephant.

It was not an entirely satisfactory comparison; but then, from his point of view, the Cirissins were entirely unsatisfactory creatures.

Each of the four he had seen was nearly twice his size. They had no recognizable features such as eyes, ears, nose, head, arms or legs.

Tentacle-like protrusions of various size and length seemed to serve as the sensory and prehensile organs. Wayne had identified one waving, restless flexible stalk as the eye. He suspected another of being the mouth, except that it apparently wasn't used for talking. The voice came from somewhere deep inside the convoluted mass of pastel-streaked tissue.

"Wand tog?" the Cirissin rumbled.

Wayne said, "Yes. Do you mind telling me what you want a high dragon bump for?"

"Blast away hearth," the Cirissin replied unhesitatingly.

Wayne swallowed and found it unnaturally difficult to do so.

"To blast away earth?" he said. "You can do that with just one high dragon bump?"

"Certificate. Alteration energy maguntoot. Compilated, though. Want splain?"

Wayne said, "Never mind. I believe you. Just tell me this: Why? Who do you feel it's necessary to do it?"

"Cause is necessary," the Cirissin explained. "Hearth no good. Whee dun lake. Godda gut red oft."

Sheilah gasped, "Why the inhuman beasts!"

Wayne expended one sidelong silencing glance on her and then said, "I see. And just suppose now that I don't give you a high dragon bump? What do you do then?"

"Use hot tummy ache your arnium fishing bumps. Got them us elves. Tooking longthier, more hurtful, but can. Few don't gives high dragon bump tweddy far whores, thin godda."

Wayne was silent for a while, staring at the alien creature, aware of Sheilah staring at him.

"Twenty-four hours," he muttered. "Then they use uranium fission bombs. Oh, hell!"

Finally he shrugged. "All right, I'll do it. Anyway, I'll try. I'll do what I can."

Sheilah said, "Hey, listen mister, you can't ..."

"Shut up!" Wayne snapped. "How do you know what I can do? You just let me handle this."

"No sea juicing?" the Cirissin asked, waving his eye stem at Sheilah.

"No. No sea juicing, and no torch hair either, please. I just didn't understand what you wanted at first. Now, if I could talk to your captain--or, are you the captain?"

The Cirissin replied, "I spoke man. Name Orealgrailbliqu. Capitate nod sparking merry can languish. I only earning languish. Gut, hah? Tree whacks."

"Uh, yeah, very good indeed," Wayne said. "And in only three weeks! Now, Mr.--you don't mind if I call you O'Reilly, do you? Well, then, O'Reilly, do you have any suggestions as to how I should go about getting you a high dragon bump? You want me to make you one? Or--"

"Yukon mike?" O'Reilly asked.

Wayne shrugged modestly. "Of course. With proper materials and equipment--and enough time." He wondered if there was any chance at all of convincing O'Reilly of that.

"Nod mush timeless," O'Reilly said doubtfully. "God gut lab tarry, few wand lug."

Wayne hesitated, partly to translate O'Reilly's rumblings and partly to marvel at an audacious idea taking shape in his mind.

He said, "Uh, yes, by all means. I do want to look at your laboratory. Let's go."

The Cirissin offered no objections to Sheilah accompanying them, so they followed him, pulling themselves along the tubular corridor by means of metal rings set in the walls, apparently for that specific purpose.

It was the same means of propulsion employed by their guide, except that he used tentacles instead of hands.

They were more awkward than he, and so they fell behind.

"Listen, mister," Sheilah said. "You're not really gonna help these creeps, are ya? Cause, I mean, if you are I'm gonna stop you--one way or another."

Wayne looked at her, feeling a deep sadness that anything so gorgeous could be so stupid. Stirred to self-consciousness by her near-nudity, he glanced quickly away.

"Why don't you quit trying to think?" he advised her. "I may not be able to make a high dragon bump, but so help me I'm going to do my damnedest to see that they get one. And don't you get any stupid patriotic ideas. You just keep out of it. Understand?"

O'Reilly had thrown open a door and was waiting for them.

Wayne looked inside.

"Smatter? Dun lake lab tarry?" the Cirissin asked after waiting nearly a minute for some comment.

The laboratory probably wasn't adequate to produce a hydrogen bomb, Wayne realized; but he wasn't at all sure. It was the most complex, complete and compact laboratory he had ever seen. Its sheer size forced him to revise upward his estimate of the overall size of the ship.

Much of the equipment was totally alien to him, but there was also a great deal that he could at least guess the purpose of. Including a fabulous array of electronic equipment.

When Wayne still didn't say anything, the Cirissin closed the door. "Batter blan," he announced. "Wheeze india buck terth. Cup girlish ear. Torch herf youdon brink high dragon bump."

Wayne said, "Huh?"

"Flow me." O'Reilly led Wayne and Sheilah through a maze of corridors, tunnels and hatchways, stopping at last to throw open a door and let Wayne peer into the control cabin of a miniature space ship.

O'Reilly jumblingly explained that it was a reconnaissance ship, used for visiting the surface of a planet when it was impractical to land the mother ship.

The control board was simple: a few dials, one or two buttons, several switches and a view plate. It looked too simple.

Wayne said, "Now, wait. Let's see if I have this straight. You want me to take this ship to earth and swipe you a high dragon bump. And you're going to keep Sheilah here and torture her if I don't deliver the goods, huh?"

The Cirissin said that was right. "Kwiger butter. Jus bush piggest putton. Token ley tours gutther."

"I see. And what about communications?" Wayne asked. "Is the boat equipped with radio? How can I let you know when I have your high dragon bump?"

O'Reilly said, "Can't. Combundlecations Cirissin only."

From his further explanation Wayne gathered that communications between the two ships was on the basis of some sort of amplified brain waves, and could carry only the brain waves of Cirissins.

Wayne considered the situation.

Two hours to get to earth. No radio. The big Cirissin ship was circling earth at an unknown distance, unknown speed and unknown direction. And although the ship was enormous, it would be impossible to spot it from earth unless you knew exactly where to look.

He said, "It would really be better, wouldn't it, if I could make the high dragon bump right here?"

O'Reilly agreed that it would be better.

"Well, let me try. You've got a good lab, and we have plenty of time. Twenty-four hours, you said? Well, give me about ten hours in the laboratory. If I can't produce a high dragon bump in that time I'll take the small ship down and get you one. Okay?"

While the Cirissin thought it over in meditative silence Wayne was aware of Sheilah watching him with cold, hostile eyes. He wished he could explain things to her, but he didn't dare try.

Finally O'Reilly said, "Hokum. Tenners in lab. Thistle."

"It'll be enough," Wayne assured him.

* * * * *

Sheilah was taken back to the room where Wayne had met her and the Cirissin instructed her to stay there. He closed the door but did not lock it. Then he took Wayne back to the lab.

"Neediest hulp?" he asked.

"Hulp? Help? Uh ... Why, no. No, thanks. I can manage fine by myself. In fact I'd rather work alone. Fewer distractions the better, you know."

"Hack saw lent. Wheel buzzy preparation. In trol room few deriding hulp needed." Then O'Reilly floated out the door.

Wayne was astounded. He'd taken it for granted that the Cirissin would insist on supervising him, and he'd been evolving elaborate plans for escaping his attention.

But Wayne thought he had the explanation for the Cirissins' idiotic behavior.

This ship and everything about it indicated an extremely high intelligence and an advanced culture.

Everything, that is, but the Cirissins themselves.

The idea of kidnapping him from earth to provide them with a weapon to destroy earth; kidnapping Sheilah to seduce him; the idea of even expecting him to be able to produce such a weapon--it was all idiotic.

There was only one explanation that he could see.

The Cirissins were idiots.

Some other race had produced this ship. These cosmic degenerates had somehow gotten hold of it and were on a mad binge through the universe, destroying all the worlds they didn't like.

He wondered how many they'd already wiped out. They had to be stopped.

Wayne immediately started constructing a radio transmitter from convenient materials in the laboratory. It was fairly simple.

He was not interrupted for nearly two hours. At which time he was saying into his improvised microphone:

"Seven hours? That long? Can't make it any sooner than that? Five hours? Six?"

And then it was not a Cirissin voice behind him which said: "Drop that. Put up your hands and turn around!"

It was Sheilah.

Wayne turned and saw her floating at the doorway pointing a long, tubular metal object at him, her finger poised on a protruding lever.

"What's that?" Wayne asked.

Sheilah said, "It's a gun I found after lookin' all over the damn ship. I'm going to kill you. And then I'm going to kill your Cirissin friends. You're nothing but a dirty traitor, and I wouldn't seduce you if--I never did trust you scientists. Maybe I'll be killed, too, but I don't care." She was close to tears.

"You're going to kill me?" Wayne said. "With that? How do you know it's even a gun? Looks more like a fire extinguisher to me. Aw, you poor little imbecile, I haven't had a chance to explain yet, but--"

Sheilah said, "You make me sick." She pulled the trigger.

The object was not a fire extinguisher, after all. It was quite obviously a weapon of some kind.

Also it seemed obvious that Sheilah had been pointing the wrong end of the weapon toward Wayne.

One more obvious fact that Wayne had time to comprehend was that the weapon was not a recoilless type.

But by then Sheilah had gone limp and the gun had rebounded from her grasp and was sailing at Wayne's head.

He ducked but not fast enough. The object whacked him solidly on top of his head.

His brain exploded into a display of dazzling lights, excruciating pain and deafening noise.

Then the lights went out and a long, dense silence set in.

When Wayne fought through the layers of renewed pain and opened his eyes, he was still floating near his makeshift radio equipment in the laboratory.

Sheilah still hung limply in mid-air near the door. The tubular weapon wavered near the ceiling. The radio transmitter was still open.

It was just as though he'd been unconscious no more than a few minutes. But Wayne had a strong feeling that it had been more than that.

Therefore he was only shocked, rather than stunned, when a glance at his wristwatch indicated six hours and forty minutes had elapsed.

He held his head tightly in both hands to keep it from flying off in all directions at once, and he tried to think.

He knew it was important to think--fast and straight.

Six hours and forty minutes.

That was too long to be unconscious from a simple blow on the head, and his head didn't really hurt that bad.

Probably the weapon had still been firing whatever mysterious ammunition it used when it struck him; and when it bounced off his head it had turned, and he'd been caught in its blast.

But that didn't matter. That wasn't the important thing.

Six hours and forty minutes he'd been out.

Seven hours!

The Defense Department official he'd spoken to had told him seven hours.

And thank God it wasn't five hours or six, as he'd been urging them to make it.

Anyway he had only twenty minutes now. Possibly a little more, but just as likely less.

That realization should have spurred him to instantaneous and heroic action, but instead it paralyzed him for several minutes. He couldn't think what to do. He couldn't get his muscles and nerves functioning and coordinated.

The absence of gravity didn't help. He thrashed about futilely.

But at last, almost by accident, his feet touched a metal support beam, and he pushed himself toward Sheilah. He grabbed her around the waist with one arm and with his free hand pulled both of them through the door.

It seemed a long, long time before he got Sheilah to the reconnaissance ship. By then the twenty minutes were up. His life was going into overtime.

Sheilah was conscious but still disorganized and limp, struggling weakly and ineffectually. Wayne fumbled with the door, got it open and shoved her inside.

Then he pulled himself in and closed the door.

They might make it yet. They still had a chance.

He studied the control board, deciding on the proper button to push.

From behind him Sheilah screamed, "The bomb! You've got the bomb and you're going to--Well, you're not!"

Her body slammed against his shoulders and her arms encircled his neck. Her fingers clawed at his eyes.

Wayne struggled, not to free himself, but only to get one hand loose, to reach the control board. When he did get a hand free, they had floated too far from the controls.

"Stop it, you stupid bitch!" Wayne snarled. "You're going to kill us both!"

Wayne said, "Listen, there's a guided missile from earth heading straight for this ship, and it has a hydrogen bomb warhead. It'll get here any minute now and when it--"

His words were broken off by the tremendous roar and concussion of the hydrogen bomb.

Wayne's last thought before oblivion swallowed him was that they wouldn't have had time to escape, anyway.

But that wasn't the end. Wayne woke up enough to refuse to believe he was alive, and O'Reilly was somewhere near, telling him:

"Cirissins full of grate your forts. Radio eggulant blan. Thankel normous. Rid of earth now. Blasted away. Givish good high dragon bump. Yukon gome now."

Wayne groaned. The meaning of O'Reilly's words was trying to get through to his brain, and he was trying desperately to keep the meaning out.

O'Reilly's voice receded into a thick gray fog. "Keep shib. Shores. Presirent felpings. Gluck."

Metal slammed against metal. Wayne slammed against something hard. And darkness closed in once again.

But this time it wasn't so smothering and didn't last nearly so long.

When he opened his eyes his head was clear. He wasn't floating. He was lying on something hard--a floor surface of the Cirissin landing ship. He didn't ache anywhere.

All in all he felt pretty good.

For the first few seconds.

Then he started remembering things, and he wished he hadn't bothered to wake up.

Sheilah was standing by the control panel, her back to him. She blocked the view screen, but Wayne didn't want to see it anyway. He wasn't even curious.

Sheilah turned, saw him, smiled broadly.

She said, "Gee, mister, I guess you're a hero. I dunno how you done it, but you made 'em go away, and you made 'em turn us loose." Wayne could detect no mockery or bitterness in her voice.

"Aw, shut up," he growled.

"You still mad at me cause of what I done? Well, gee, I'm sorry. I didn't get whatcha were up to. I guess I still don't, but ... Oh, hell, let's don't fight about it. It don't matter now, does it?"

Wayne shook his head wearily. "No," he agreed. "It doesn't matter now."

Sheilah moved away from the control board and came toward him. In her filmy, transparent costume, she was the quintessence of womanly allure.

Wayne gasped and stared, but not at her.

The view screen had become visible when she'd moved.

It showed earth.

Or a curved, cloud-veiled slice of earth. Intact, serene and growing steadily larger.

"What the hell! Why, I thought ..." Wayne jumped to his feet, brushed past Sheilah and peered more closely at the view plate. There was no mistaking it. Earth.

"What's a matter with you, mister?" Sheilah asked.

Wayne felt dizzy. O'Reilly had said, "Earth blasted away," hadn't he? And the H-bomb hadn't destroyed the Cirissin ship. Therefore ... Well, therefore what?

In the first place what O'Reilly had actually said was, "Rid of earth now. Blasted away." It wasn't quite the same as ...

O'Reilly had never said anything about destroying earth.

Quite a sizeable re-evaluation project was taking place in Wayne's mind. It took several minutes for all the pieces to fall into their proper places. But once he was willing to realize that the Cirissins had known what they were doing, everything seemed obvious.

"Oh, good Gawd!" he muttered. "What utter idiots!"

"The Cirissins?" Sheilah asked.

"No, I mean us. Me. Good Lord, just because O'Reilly's English wasn't perfect! What did I expect for only three weeks? Hummm. The atomic structure of the entire ship must be uniformly charged to ... Damn! High dragon bump!"

"I don't getcha," Sheilah said. "What's with this high dragon bump business? I thought they wanted a hydrogen bomb to destroy earth, and I thought you'd agreed to help 'em, and so I thought ..."

"Oh, never mind," Wayne said. "I know what you thought, and you weren't any more stupid than I was. We were both wrong.

"Look, the Cirissins must have been stalled--out of gas, sort of. Something had gone wrong with their nuclear drive units. They had some emergency fuel, but they didn't want to use it. Like having a can of kerosene in the car when the tank runs dry, I suppose. It will work, but it messes up the engine. You understand so far?"

"Sure."

"Okay then. They happened to be close to earth, so they went into an orbit around it and studied it for a while on radio and TV bands, and realized they might be able to get help without using their emergency fuel--uranium, incidentally, not kerosene.

"So they grabbed us. Me, I suppose because they'd seen my TV science program. They must have gotten the idea from some stupid spy show that scientists have to be seduced into revealing information. That's why they picked up you."

Sheilah interrupted, "But what did they want? I thought ..."

Patiently, Wayne said, "Just what they said. A high dragon bump. A bump, not a bomb. A boost, a push. Not to blast away earth, but to blast away from earth. That's all."

END