Chapter One
BACKGROUND MATERIAL, FOR FURTHER READING AND DISCUSSION
1. mento/ 'mento / vb: activation of a mechanical device through thought transmission.
2. mento/ 'mento / adj: used as modifier, as in “mento thought transmitter” or “mento brain implant.”
From the New AmFed Dictionary (Seventy-First Edition)
Thursday, August 24, 2605
At shortly past noon on Garbage Day minus eight, General Arturo Munoz slapped on his gold-brimmed military cap angrily as he and a larger man moto-shoed toward the door of Munoz’s private lunchroom. The windowless little room was chrome and white plastic, illuminated by rows of overhead fluorescent cubes. Some said the room was too austere, particularly for a council minister. “Council ministers should be models of consumption,’ they said. But the General did not listen to such talk. A plate of aromatic syntho-steaklets lay untouched on the table behind him. Despite hunger pangs, he felt too upset to eat. The President had called an emergency council meeting, and General Munoz did not know why.
“I don’t have time to discuss the Black Box of Democracy with you now!” Munoz snapped as he mentoed the hall door. He felt a click-thud in the back of his brain, waited impatiently for the door to open. ‘The Black Box is bluffery, I tell you! The most monstrous bluffery imaginable!”
Munoz slammed, a clenched fist against the stubbornly immobile door, heard the other man mumble something. Then Munoz snarled, “Dammit, Dick. This brain implant you gave me is acting up again!”
The much tidier and consumptively heavy Dr. Richard Hudson was in his usual place at the heels of his superior. Hudson held two typed sheets. His gaze flitted away nervously under Munoz’s ferocious glare. “The implant is not standard consumer issue, as you know, Arturo,” Hudson said. “That’s why you and I can read one another’s thoughts . . . and those of anyone else.”
“I know, I know. . . . ”
Hudson wore a hoodless white, gold-sashed ministerial robe with a gold cross and chain about the neck. General Munoz’s robe was identical, except his garment had multi-colored battle ribbons across one side of the chest. Both men were in their early forties.
“There were bound to be bugs,” Hudson said.
“Yes, but why me? You installed twelve of these ‘special’ devices . . . in our brains and in the brains of my most trusted people. But my implant is the only one to act up! I’M THE LEADER, DAMMIT, AND I CAN’T EVEN MENTO DOORS LIKE THE LOWLIEST CONSUMER!”
“I’ll laser-set the frequency for you again, Arturo.” Hudson fumbled in a robe pocket with his free hand. “Now where did I put that laser pen? . . . Must be in the other pocket. . . . ”
Munoz glared at the still-closed door.
“Just listen to this Bu-Med report for a minute,” Hudson said. “It is most unusual.” He smelled heavily spiced steaklets.
General Munoz shook his head slowly in exasperation. To Hudson, the cap worn by the orange-mustachioed General appeared laughably large on such a small man, but he suppressed the thought.
“Make it fast,” Munoz said, glaring sidelong at Hudson. “We’re due at an emergency meeting.”
Hudson was a nervous, bespectacled man with a bald pate and a fringe of black hair. His influential position as Minister of Bu-Tech had been arranged by Bu-Mil’s powerful minister, General Munoz. Hudson shifted uneasily on his mento-locked moto-shoes as he glanced down at the report.
“There is great power in the Black Box of Democracy,” Hudson read. “Uncle Rosy may still be alive and living inside the structure.”
“We’ve heard this nonsense before,” Munoz scoffed. “The Black Box is our ‘guardian of democracy.’ It will respond to any threat, ‘internal or external.’ It’s all conjecture, Dick. Wild conjecture.”
“Maybe not. Bu-Med says they brought in an unusual client two weeks ago . . . a fellow who said he had once been a Sayerman inside the Black Box. He wrote an article on the subject, was trying to get it published.”
“A Sayerman?”
“According to the report, Sayermen are those brown-robed fellows who never speak . . . the ones who come out of the Black Box to perform mysterious rites at the electronic security monitors. As you know, Uncle Rosy mandated the placement of these monitors at the entrances to all government buildings.”
“More fakery,” Munoz said with a sneer. “Those ‘legendary and impenetrable’ security units they assemble inside the Black Box . . . I say it’s all for show.”
“Listen to this,” Hudson said, looking down at the report as he flipped to the second sheet. “Their client’s exact words: ‘Uncle Rosy has a great chair in the central chamber of the Black Box of Democracy. Adjacent to this chair are three chrome handles. If actuated, the first handle is capable of blowing Earth apart. . . . ’”
“Oh, come now!”
“‘. . .The second can alter the planet’s orbital trajectory and speed. The third would release an army of ten thousand armadillo killer meckies to do Uncle Rosy’s sacred bidding.’”
General Munoz tilted his head back and laughed squeakily. Holding his oversized cap to keep it from falling off, he said, “Sounds like they’ve got a real live one over there, Dick. We’ll visit the Bu-Med psycho ward to consult with him, of course.”
“According to the report, this man does not appear to be deranged. They’ve done brain-chem tests for schizophrenia and other disorders. Additionally, a complete memory scan was performed. He has full and coherent recollections of all the events described.”
“There must be a logical explanation for this.” General Munoz caressed his mustache as he thought.
Hudson met Munoz’s gaze, said: “The fellow claimed a ‘selective memory erasure’ procedure was performed on him when Uncle Rosy released him from the Sayerhood for relocation in mainstream society. But unknown to Uncle Rosy, something apparently went wrong with the erasing equipment and the memories remained intact.”
Munoz’s dark eyes brightened. “Couldn’t this have been a dream that was very real to the man? So real that he thought it actually occurred?”
Hudson’s brow furrowed. “I don’t think so.”
“My intuition tells me you aren’t so certain.” Munoz smiled as he read Hudson’s thoughts.
Flustered, Hudson said, “In large part, the human brain remains a mystery to us. We’re always learning new—”
“I thought as much!” General Munoz snatched the report. He rolled it up and hurled it across the lunchroom. “NOW RESET MY TRANSMITTER!” Munoz removed his cap.
Hurriedly, Hudson folded the report and slipped it into a robe pocket. Then he brought forth a white, pen-shaped device, placing the tiny silver tip of it against the back of Munoz’s head.
“Wonder what that fool President wants now,” Munoz said.
“Don’t talk for a minute.” Hudson mentoed the device, saw a tiny lance of red light flash against Munoz’s head.
Munoz jerked.
“All right,” Hudson said, replacing the unit in his robe pocket. “You can open the door now.”
Sidney Malloy’s galaxy blue autosedan accelerated up the onramp to the Campobello Expressway, pressing him against the back of his bucket seat as the car picked up speed. Following the magnetic lure of buried wire, the car fell silently and smoothly into place in midday traffic. Sidney glanced over his shoulder, watched the grey-glass tower of his condominium building disappear behind other similar structures.
The sameness of his lifestyle with that of most other people depressed him momentarily. Sidney knew this was a bad thought, a selfish thought. He turned forward, trying to think of something else.
As Sidney turned his head, a yellow autosport darted past on the left and cut in front of him. This activated the collision sensor on Sidney’s vehicle, and his car braked suddenly, slamming him against his shoulder harness.
“Damned hot dog,” Sidney cursed softly. “His manual override ought to be jammed down his throat!” Sidney mentoed his rooftop signboard, flashing an angry message to the offending driver: “SLOW DOWN, YOU FOOL!”
The reply came quickly, in bright green letters half a meter high:
“EAT MY DUST!”
The yellow autosport darted to the right, taking an exit into New City’s central shopping district.
Sidney’s pre-programmed car took the next exit, negotiating a spiral offramp onto American Boulevard, a broad avenue dotted with pink, lavender and yellow synthetic flowers and plastic maple trees. On each side of the boulevard, miniature expressways for moto-shoeing people carried four lanes in each direction. Sidney saw moto-shoers entering and leaving the skating thoroughfares via ramps. They traveled in lanes of varying speeds, from a slow right-hand lane to faster lanes at the left. Many wore multiphonic headphones over their ears, and Sidney saw their pudgy bodies undulate to the music he could not hear.
They shouldn’t move like that, Sidney thought. The Conservation of Motion Doctrine. . . . I’m not the only one with shortcomings!
At a stoplight, Sidney watched a maple tree shed plastic leaves and sprout new ones. Workcrews in bright orange windbreakers carried plastic bags emblazoned with the Bu-Maintenance crest, which they filled with leaves and litter. The air was still.
The car accelerated, gliding on its air cushion past the Black Box of Democracy, an opaque doorless and windowless megalith surrounded by rolling green plastic lawn. There were people reading an inscription plaque on the structure, and others taking pictures. Children played on the lawn.
In the next block, the Uncle Rosy Tower fronted a curving section of the boulevard. Sidney looked up through the glassplex top of his autocar as it rolled by the tower, he could barely make out the ring of the revolving Sky Ballroom on top of the structure.
It’s Thursday, he thought. Only two more days until my reunion. Just think . . . twenty years.
Now Technology Square was directly ahead, and Sidney saw the sun peeking through a swirling cloud over New City’s skyline, reflecting off tinted glass windows on the government office towers that ringed the square. A Bu-Cops car sped by, its purple lights flashing and siren wailing. Other sirens screamed in the distance. Throngs of people stood in the square, and more streamed in from all directions.
Something big’s going on, Sidney thought.
His car stopped as programmed several hundred meters from the square, and he short-stepped out onto a platform. As his car disappeared into an underground parking tube, Sidney mentoed his moto-shoes. They flipped out of their plastic ankle cases and lifted him gently onto their wheels, and he began to roll down a ramp to the skatewalk. A warm breeze blew across his face as he picked up speed. Changing lanes expertly on the crowded skatewalk, he moved to the slow lane and took an exit designated TECHNOLOGY SQUARE.”
The square was dotted with planter boxes, white plastic benches and modernistic government-commissioned sculptures. A large fountain at the center adjacent to Uncle Rosy’s towering mechanical likeness sprayed the air with a thin, metallic moisture. The air was alive with people noises. Angry noises, Sidney realized.
Recognizing his regular datemate in the crowd of jeering onlookers watching a demonstration, Sidney rolled up beside her. As he came to a stop, Sidney focused upon Carla Weaver’s high cheekbones with a red painted beauty mark on one side. Her nose was distinctly Roman and classically perfect. Curly, golden brown hair swirled about the shoulders of her carmine red pantsuit.
“What’s going on, Carla?” he asked.
“Doomies,” Carla said with a glance in Sidney’s direction. “Real freakos. They say a comet is coming!” She laughed, looked full at Sidney with heavy-lidded lavender eyes. “It’s supposed to destroy us all!”
Carla studied Sidney, noted fat pouches and chubby cheeks beneath large round hazel eyes which stared back innocently. Dark, curly lashes framed the eyes, overhung by thick, dark eyebrows, a high forehead and curly black hair that was thinning at the temples. He’s not very good-looking, she thought, concentrating upon Sidney’s pug nose and ears which protruded like wings. And he couldn’t he as good in bed as my new pleasie-meckie.
“We’ve all heard rumors the past few days,” Sidney said, wondering why Carla continued to stare at him.
“Lies,” she shot back without a shade of doubt in her tone. “You saw the President speak last night, of course.”
“Yeah. I saw.” Sidney shook his head negatively as a young girl with straw-blond hair attempted to hand him a pamphlet. On the cover he saw a picture of a terrifying fireball streaking toward New City while people panicked in the streets below. Large red and yellow letters on the pamphlet proclaimed: “ARRIVAL OF THE GREAT COMET!”
“Go on, get out of here,” Carla said to the girl. Then Carla touched a button on her belt to activate a synchronized autoclapper recording and joined in as a group of onlookers jeered, “Chicken Little! Chicken Little! The sky is falling!”
Uncomfortable in the crowd of jeerers, Sidney considered an excuse that would permit him to leave. But a sudden numbness hit his brain. With it he heard the echoes of distant, murmuring voices. It was an angry cacophony of sound, and Sidney thought he heard the words “filth” and “unfit.” As he rubbed his forehead, the murmuring receded, and he peered through the crowd at the focus of their attention.
A tall man with pale skin and high cheekbones stood at the base of Uncle Rosy’s mechanical likeness, speaking through a bullhorn. Thick clusters of standing supporters protected him on all sides, their arms locked in defense against a contingent of electro-stick-wielding Bu-Cops. As each supporter fell to the onslaught, others rushed to close the hole. Sidney saw them bear their pain heroically, silently. Other doomies attempted unsuccessfully to distribute literature through the crowd.
In an emotion-laden voice, with his Adam’s apple bobbing, the tall man implored, “FLEE WHILE YOU CAN! A TERRIBLE BLOOD-COLORED FIREBALL WILL DESCEND UPON US! AS THE GREAT COMET NEARS, THERE WILL BE PANIC, LOOTING AND MURDER! THE SEAS WILL RUSH ACROSS THE LAND! SEEK HIGH GROUND! FLEE WHILE YOU CAN!”
Although the man was fervent, Sidney detected an inner serenity about him . . . a deep strength that showed when he stopped speaking, lowered his bullhorn and looked from face to face across the crowd. Sidney felt a sudden urging to catch the man’s gaze, to be recognized as someone different in a sea of sameness.
But as the speaker’s gaze moved toward Sidney, a woman with dark, ringletted hair interrupted his concentration to call out, “HOW ABOUT A BOAT, NOAH? SHALL WE BUILD A BIG BOAT?”
The crowd roared with laughter.
“I KNOW WHAT!” the woman exclaimed, moto-shoeing forward and turning to face the crowd. She removed a vial from her purse, held her hands high and poured white pills into one hand. “COMET PILLS!” she screeched. “THE VERY LATEST ITEM, LADIES AND GENTS, GUARANTEED TO WARD OFF ANY EVIL INFLUENCES THE DREADED STAR MAY IMPORT! ONLY THREE FOR A DOLLAR! STEP RIGHT UP!”
Catcalls and the staccato thunder of auto-clappers drowned out the man with the bullhorn.
Sidney looked past him and up to the giant mechanical likeness of Uncle Rosy. A rotund, friendly-looking fellow, Uncle Rosy sat in a great armchair with his hands outstretched, palms turned to the heavens. In his left hand he held a cross, and in the right a machine gear, symbolizing the unity between religion and technology. Sidney looked beyond this to the new Bu-Industry Tower under construction on the southwest side of the square, and then over the building tops to scan a cerulean blue, nearly cloudless sky. Could it be? he thought.
“Do you notice anything strange about his appearance?” Carla asked.
“Eh?” Sidney dropped his gaze, met the eyes of his questioner. “Sorry, Carla. What did you say?”
Carla glared disapprovingly, as if to say that only non-patriots dared look for fireballs in the sky. “I SAID,” she repeated angrily, “do you notice anything strange about his appearance?” And she cast her gaze toward the man with the bullhorn.
Sidney studied the demonstration leader again, noted wrinkled, worn clothing, milky white skin and a mane of disheveled black hair. “Yes.” Sidney spoke carefully: “His skin is unusually pale. He doesn’t glow like the test of us.”
“Right! Obviously, he’s had his mento thought transmitter disconnected. Some of those other freaks are the same way. It’s positively un-AmFed and unconsumptive!”
“Yes,” Sidney said. Then he intoned: ‘Truly we are blessed.”
The police reached their prey now, pouncing upon the man with the bullhorn in a great phalanx of blue uniforms, gold buttons and flashing electro-sticks. The bullhorn was ripped away, and Sidney grimaced as he saw a club smash against the man’s face. With the blow, Sidney felt a surge of intense pain on his own cheek and nose.
The reality of this sensation was more shocking to Sidney than the pain. How can I feel what is happening to him? he wondered, lifting a hand to his face.
“Oh my . . . oh!” Sidney exclaimed.
“What’s the matter with you?” Carla asked.
“I’m okay,” Sidney lied, closing his eyes while trying to overcome the pain. He dropped his hand, opened his eyes and saw Carla staring at him with a perplexed expression. “I shouldn’t feel this way,” he said, “but the violence is so sickening—” Sidney watched in horror as the demonstration leader clutched at his face. Blood oozed through the man’s fingers, trickling down his arm.
“That doomie deserves it,” Carla said.
Now the murmuring, angry voices returned to Sidney’s awareness, and they grew louder quickly until he was able to make out complete sentences:
“You suffer, eh, fleshcarrier?” a tenor voice said. ‘Think of our plight then, mired in the decaying rot of Earth garbage!”
“What a stinking, terrible thing to do!” shouted another, deeper voice.
The voices faded as quickly as they had come, leaving Sidney stunned. He glanced around nervously, caught Carla’s inquisitive gaze.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yes, yes,” Sidney snapped.
“You’re behaving so strangely. . . . ”
“Don’t worry. I’m fine.” Sidney cleared his throat, looked away.
They watched three policemen kick the demonstration leader along the ground with steel-toed boots. The man curled into a ball in a pitiful attempt to protect himself. Strangely, Sidney felt sharp pains on his head, arms and torso, as if he too were being kicked and beaten, and he heard cruel, cackling laughter in a distant cavern of his brain. Sidney chewed at his lower lip, struggling not to show discomfort. The crowd clapped and called out derisively as the man’s unconscious and bleeding form was dragged to a waiting van.
When the van doors slammed shut and it began to roll away, Sidney’s pain subsided. That was the damnedest thing, he thought, turning to leave. “See you at coffee,” he said, feeling his moto-shoes click into gear.
Carla nodded, but she continued to stare at him curiously.
Now the comet pill woman called out again: “THESE DOOMIES ARE DOING US A GREAT SERVICE! MORE NUTS FOR OUR THERAPY ORBITERS MEANS MORE EMPLOYMENT IN BU-MED!”
Saddened at the spectacle, Sidney moto-shoed across smooth concrete toward a massive white-glass office tower which bordered the square. Pausing at an electronic security monitor just outside the main entrance, he pressed his palm against an identity plate and mentoed: G.W. seven-five-oh, Malloy, Sidney . . . Central Forms.
A vacuum surge pulled against his hand, then released him as a red light on the monitor turned to green. Glass doors slid open, and he rolled into the lobby.
Sidney paused at the elevator bank marked “SUB 501—SUB 700,” gazing above the hypnotic dance of blue floor indicator lights to one of many pictures of Uncle Rosy that ringed the lobby. The soft background notes of Harmak played a “Melody For Progress,” causing visions of home furnishings, autocars and bright clothing to float across his brain. Uncle Rosy seemed to look directly at him with concerned, benign eyes, and Sidney felt a force compelling him to reach for his back pocket. Dutifully, he brought forth a tiny red, yellow and blue volume. Gold leaf lettering on the cover announced its title: Quotations From Uncle Rosy.
Touching a button on the book cover, Sidney auto-leafed through the pages, only half-conscious of people around him doing the same thing.
“I can’t believe our Uncle Rosy wrote this more than three centuries ago,” a woman said. Then, in the precise and emotionless tone of a Freeness Studies Instructor, she commanded, “Turn to page one-three-four.”
She paused momentarily as pages auto-flipped.
“There will always be non-believers,” the woman read reverently, “dangerously insane people who will stop at nothing in their attempts to disrupt our holy order. They will predict all manner of plague and catastrophe, insisting that God disapproves of the manner in which we live.” She closed the volume, and Sidney looked up to see her smile softly. She had flaxen hair, and with a glance toward the square she said, “They are wrong, citizens. This is God’s land.”
The group closed their volumes, murmured, “Truly we are blessed.”
Sidney waited as people destined for lower floors took places in the back of a large elevator, then he roiled on and stood at the front. Mentoing sub-five-oh-three, Sidney felt a click in the back of his brain as the car’s computer accepted his command. The doors closed.
* * *
Sayer Superior Lin-Ti looked up, and his words slowed as he stopped reading from the text. “Those voices,” he said, “you understand who they were?”
A short youngsayerman rose and responded: “Yes, Sayer Superior. They were the beings whose realm was invaded by Earth’s garbage. The ones who turned the garbage into a fiery boomerang comet.”
“And why did they speak to Malloy?”
“We have heard stories, Sayer Superior. I believe Malloy was a . . . well . . . a dolt of some sort. And they wanted him to botch up Earth’s plan to stop the comet.”
“That is correct. To put it bluntly, Sidney Malloy was a no-talent jerk . . . working in the lowest level of the most useless department in the government. . . . ”
* * *
It was shortly after noonhour, the beginning of Carla’s daily shift. Her rotatyper platform stood to one side of the sprawling Presidential Secretaries Pool, and beyond the tap-tap-whir of memo-activated machinery she heard the faint, gelatinous purr of Harmak.
She thought of Sidney as she adjusted her earphones, of the strange way he had behaved at the demonstration and of his attempts to be more than a datemate with her. Lately, Sidney had been most persistent.
Carla watched the letter “e” appear on her rotatyper screen, then called out, “Lower case V period, return, tab, upper case.”
She paused to make an entry on a Time and Motion form, then watched the typists encircling her platform as they mento-activated the keyboards in front of their chairs. One did upper case, another lower case, yet another was responsible for numbers, and so on. Six typists sat around each rotatyper caller, although Carla had heard of a new machine developed by the Sharing For Prosperity people that would accommodate ninety-five typists, each having only one key to operate.
All across the floor Carla could see great mounds of paper. There were stacks of paper on desks, on sidechairs, on windowsills, on the floor, spewing out of computers and in autocarts which rolled back and forth down each aisle delivering and removing. Brown and gold pamphlet meckies rolled along the aisles as well, full to bursting on all four sides with red, green, yellow and blue government pamphlets. A round, four-faced head on a stick neck rose from the center of each meckie’s rack, above which was a square top hat that proclaimed “TAKE SEVERAL” in flashing purple lights on all sides. Department of Quality Control personnel wearing black uniforms and shiny yellow half-lemon helmets rolled from machine to machine, checking to be certain that all equipment malfunctioned according to standard.
Carla focused upon a sign on the back of one Quality Control Technician which read, “EACH BREAK IS A NEW TASK.” Then she noticed a typist glaring at her and removed her earphones to ask, “What is it now, Margaret? Don’t you like the way I’m calling out punctuation again?”
Margaret shook her puff-curled silver hair before replying haughtily, “I don’t like the way you call out anything. You think you’re better than we are.” She glared at Carla, then added in a sing-song tone: “We’ve all seen you making goo-goo eyes at Chief of Staff Birthright!”
“I don’t think I’m better than any of you,” Carla huffed, looking back with hostility in her lavender eyes.
“You don’t even go to coffee with us now that you’re a G.W. two-five-four. Well lah-dee-dah!” Margaret rolled her eyes upward. “That’s still only one two-hundred-fifty-fourth of a job! My brother is a G.W. fifteen!”
“You’re just bitter because you didn’t receive a higher calling, Margaret. I got the assignment you wanted.”
Margaret whirled around angrily on her swivel chair, rose and then sat back down abruptly. A hush fell across the floor as ten white-robed men carrying grey urns emblazoned with the Presidential Seal rolled single file into the department. Margaret recognized General Munoz at the head of the procession.
“The Council of Ten!” Carla whispered excitedly. “But they were just here yesterday for their regular—”
“Shuttup!” Margaret commanded, her voice a hostile whisper. “We can see who it is!”
Everyone rose silently, bowing their heads.
“Bless this mess,” the council ministers called out, reaching into their urns and scattering confetti as they rolled through the department. “Bless this mess. . . . ”
From his oval office on the two hundred eighty-fifth floor of the White House Office Tower, President Euripides Ogg heard the distant whine of police sirens. The President was a massive black man in a satin gold leisure suit—in his early fifties but with a lineless face. The eyebrows were dark and bushy, contrasting with a wave of golden hair that was combed straight back from a widow’s peak.
Ogg stared intently at a desk-mounted video screen as the Technology Square demonstration broke up, squinting his blue-green eyes as sunlight from a solar relay panel outside the window glinted off the screen. He took a deep puff on a tintette, and exhaled blue smoke thoughtfully. Ogg snapped a glance at a sign above the doorway, mouthed the familiar words: “Faith, Consumption, Freeness.” A half-read Sharing For Prosperity report lay on the desk in front of him, and he tried to get back into it. Forty-two additional tasks that could be shared—Uncle Rosy’s Thousand Year Plan. . . .
He sighed.
The President looked up, and through drifting blue smoke saw Chief of Staff Bulie Birdbright standing in the doorway. A handsome, tanned man of middle years with bright yellow hair and a small dimple in the center of his chin, Birdbright was in constant demand as a bedmate with the ladies of the office.
“The Council is here, sir,” Birdbright said. “Shall I send them in?”
Ogg nodded.
As the council ministers moto-filed in, Ogg tapped impatiently on his desk with one finger. General Munoz led, followed by Dr. Hudson, who moved along behind the tiny Mexican-American general like an oversized shadow.
Can’t trust those two, Ogg thought Something disturbing about their alliance . . . and Hudson made moves on my sister . . . until I appointed her mayor of that therapy orbiter.
Munoz and Hudson were followed by all the ministers of the various governmental super-bureaus. Each wore a hoodless white ministerial robe with a gold braid sash and a gold cross and chain which dangled from the neck. Munoz carried his military cap in one hand.
Cassius Murphy, the Jovial Minister of Bu-Bu, followed, then Bu-Free’s tall and angular Jack Ramsey. Both are neutral, Ogg thought. He glanced at Bu-Health’s Salim Bumbry and at the reddish-skinned American Indian Jim McConnel of Bu-Med, who entered eighth and tenth. So are they.
As the ministers took seats silently in comfortable red nauga suspensor chairs which formed a half circle in front of Ogg’s desk, Ogg singled out Kevin Osaka, the small oriental minister of Bu-Construct. Still not sure of him, Ogg thought Osaka noticed the President staring at him and looked away nervously.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” President Ogg said, scanning the faces in what he hoped was a somber manner. He nodded to Ezrah Sims of Bu-Cops and to Bu-Industry’s Marc Trudeau, men he considered loyal, then looked at his lifelong friend, Pete Dimmitt of Bu-Labor and said, “Nice to see you, Pete. Feeling better?”
“Yes, Mr. President The leg’s doing fine.” Dimmitt touched a star-shaped Purple Badge on his left lapel proudly. This was the nation’s highest mark of valor, evidence for all to see of Dimmitt’s “conspicuous bravery” in the face of a disintegrating product: his moto-shoes.
General Munoz placed his cap on the lap of his robe as he sat down crisply. Why in the hell has he called us in? Munoz wondered. Probably another foolish Job-Support idea to waste my time. . . .
Munoz studied President Ogg closely, noted anger as the big black man crushed out his tintette in an ashtray. Ogg’s penetrating, blue-green eyes flashed at Munoz for a second. Then Ogg looked away and mentoed a “coffee” button on his desk panel. “Gentlemen,” he said, “in a few minutes you will see something extremely important.”
That procession of coffee secretaries again, Munoz thought, reading the President’s thoughts with the brain-implanted transceiver given him secretly by Dr. Hudson. Munoz flicked a piece of confetti off his robe angrily. How many times is he going to show that to us?
As Ogg watched, Dr. Hudson cleared his throat and squirmed into a chair next to the thin and mysterious General Munoz. The pupils of Munoz’s eyes were almost pure black, and he stared back at the President in cool disdain.
Something about his eyes, Ogg thought. He almost seems to be laughing at me.
I am laughing at you, Munoz thought, reading the President’s mind again.
Ogg saw Munoz sneak a glance and a smile in Hudson’s direction.
Only Munoz, Hudson and ten trusted conspirators had received the mind-reading units. Munoz recalled his doubts when Hudson installed the transceiver. . . .
“ . . . Will I really be able to read minds with this?”
“You’ll see for yourself in a few minutes,” Hudson had said.
Munoz remembered his response: “Now I will see who is loyal to me and who is not!”
“This transceiver will operate electronic gadgets like any consumer-issued unit,” Hudson had explained as he worked, “but it has a nice additional feature—”
Munoz returned to the present, watched President Ogg clasp his hands on the cluttered desktop and glare around the room. Unaware of Munoz’s prying, Ogg said, “I have called this emergency session because the Alafin of Afrikari is due to arrive in my office at seven-thirty tomorrow morning.”
Munoz read the President’s thoughts and cursed under his breath.
Ogg rubbed a finger on the edge of his desk as the ministers whispered in surprise. “I should say a projecto-image of him will be here,” Ogg explained. ‘The old fool is still afraid to fly.”
“He has demanded an audience?” Bu-Cops’ craggy-faced Minister Sims asked.
“Yes. By telephone just an hour ago.” Ogg chewed his lower lip. “The Alafin says his astronomers have seen a comet which appears to be on a collision course with Earth.”
“I thought that was just a rumor,” Sims said.
The council ministers whispered to one another again.
President Ogg fixed an icy gaze on Hudson. “What I want to know is this, Dr. Hudson. You have told me everything about this alleged comet? It is a bunch of garbage, isn’t it?”
Hudson wiped his brow with a white kerchief, glanced at Munoz.
Tell him, Munoz mentoed. Better to hear it from us.
“Uh, no sir,” Hudson replied nervously. “I mean, yes sir. It is garbage.”
“Dammit to Hooverville, Hudson!” President Ogg thundered. “IS IT GARBAGE OR ISN’T IT?” A bulky mechanical arm popped out of the desktop, smashed a clenched fist down with tremendous force on the desk. WHAM! Papers scattered in all directions. CRASH! A brass lamp rocked and fell to the floor. The arm flexed back into its compartment.
Hudson shivered with fear, smoothed the fine muslaba robe he wore across his lap with one hand. He glanced at Munoz for support, then stammered, “S-sir, it’s d-difficult to ex—”
“It’s a garbage comet, Mr. President,” Munoz said. “Our own damned trash is coming back!”
President Ogg sat back in stunned disbelief, slack-jawed and mute.
“The th-thing is huge, sir,” Hudson said, “and Earth is directly in its path!”
Hardly able to speak, Ogg said, “I can’t believe. . . . ” His
voice trailed off, and a pained silence fell over the room.
Bu-Bu’s Cassius Murphy broke the silence. Looking at Hudson, he said, “You mean it stinks?”
“Why yes,” Hudson replied. “I suppose it does.”
“That’s interesting,” Murphy said with a wry smile. “If it kills every last one of us, will it still stink?”
Hudson shook his head, rolled his eyes upward.
“Those deep space shots we’ve been making for the past nine years,” Munoz explained, looking at Ogg. “A Bu-Tech computer miscalculated their trajectory.”
“Now w-wait just a minute,” Dr. Hudson protested, staring through sweat-fogged glasses at the battle ribbons on General Munoz’s chest. “The electro-magnetic catapults are operated by Bu-Mil people. Your staff should have checked the figures before making the shots!” Hudson took a deep breath, realizing he was treading on dangerous ground in speaking to the General this way.
“I don’t know about that, Dick,” Munoz said calmly. “There’s nothing in the procedures manual to that effect.”
“It was only a tiny miscalculation,” Hudson said plaintively, looking at President Ogg. “Just one-nineteenth of a percentile!”
“A tiny miscalculation!” Ogg half rose out of his chair. “It doesn’t seem so tiny to me!” He sat back, lit a tintette and blew an angry cloud of yellow smoke in Hudson’s direction.
“Tiny in galactic terms,” Hudson insisted. He removed his horn-rimmed glasses with shaking hands, wiped the glasses on his robe and put them back. “And besides, my bureau didn’t manufacture the Comp six-oh-one computer. Bu-Industry did that, and they didn’t follow Bu-Tech’s specifications. The circuit board that failed and caused a one-nineteenth of one percent trajectory error was constructed to consumer quality instead of industrial quality.”
“Hold it right there!” All eyes turned to Marc Trudeau, the Minister of Bu-Industry. Seated at the end of the semi-circle on the President’s right, Trudeau’s heavy brown face sported a bright pink mustache that had been dyed to match a new line of kitchen appliances. With his features contorted in indignation, he gripped the chair arms and said, “All circuit boards are manufactured in space . . . on therapy orbiters. How can we be expected to monitor quality with crips and retardos doing all the work?”
The President’s gaze was bone-chilling as he asked: “Why did you entrust such a critical part to the therapy orbiters?”
“It wasn’t our fault,” Trudeau said. “Some therapists from Bu-Med came into my office one day and asked to be given tours of our manufacturing and assembly lines. I didn’t see anything wrong with that, and a couple of days later they came back with a list of tasks they felt could be better performed by handicapped personnel. One of those tasks was the assembly of circuit boards.”
Jim McConnel, the portly Indian minister of Bu-Med, rose angrily and snapped: I’m not going to let this mess land in my lap! No one told us we were manufacturing critical components! And don’t forget that Bu-Construct pressured us to build more orbiters!”
Immediately, all the other ministers leaped to their feet, clamoring for attention. They argued heatedly for several minutes, with the ones who had not yet been blamed choosing sides. Ogg let the melee continue awhile to see if he could make sense out of the alignments among those ministers of doubtful loyalty. But no clear patterns emerged, and as the alliances shifted back and forth, Ogg finally demanded: “STOP THIS FOOLISHNESS! TAKE YOUR SEATS IMMEDIATELY!”
The ministers fell silent and resumed their seats.
“Now I will show you what the President’s office can do,” Ogg said.
Munoz knew what was coming.
The office door swung open, admitting a procession of coffee secretaries. They rolled in single file, dressed in dark brown mini-dresses bearing the gold encircled lapel crest of a steaming cup of coffee. The first in line was a consumptively rotund redhead carrying a trivet. With a curt smile, she placed the trivet on the President’s desk, did a one hundred eighty degree spin on her moto-shoes and rolled out the door. The second girl carried a large coffee pot, which she placed on the trivet with equal fanfare. Next came eleven pudgy saucer bearers, and a saucer was placed in front of the President and on the little tables next to the ministers’ chairs. They were followed by eleven cup bearers and then by a pneumatic brunette who poured the coffee and returned the pot to the trivet.
“Very impressive, Mr. President,” several ministers said as they watched buxom blond twins remove the coffee pot and trivet. “Very impressive, indeed.”
I call that showing off, Munoz thought as he watched the women leave. Twenty-seven girls to serve coffee to eleven of us!
“Thank you,” the President said as he mentoed the door closure. “Now let’s get back to the matter at hand.” Addressing Dr. Hudson, he said, “Just forty-eight hours ago you assured me that no comet was heading toward Earth.”
“That’s true, sir. I replied so at the time because I did not believe it to be a comet.”
“Why not?”
“Many bodies of matter move through the heavens, sir, not all of which are comets. This particular object is of unique origin . . . and unlike any comet I have observed, it has an extremely dense mass. Most comets are a ‘bag of nothing,’ in that they consist of gas particles surrounding an ice nucleus. While their tails may stretch for millions of kilometers across space, they typically don’t have much mass.”
“Tell him about the spectral analysis, Dick,” Munoz said.
“It’s burning common garbage, meteorite chunks, nuclear matter and the like,” Hudson said. “I suppose it’s a comet, Mr. President. It’s closer to that than to any other phenomenon. But this baby’s unlike any other comet in the universe!” It’s also burning human bodies from our burial shots, Hudson thought. Such a nasty detail.
Ogg took a sip of coffee, asked angrily, “Why didn’t you level with me in the first place? You knew something was heading toward us.”
“You don’t like to be bothered with technical details, Mr. President. Besides, until now, we didn’t have enough photographs to plot the course.”
“It’ll hit us? For sure?”
“It is on a definite collision course with Earth. We were trying to save you a lot of trouble. . . . ” Hudson’s voice trailed off.
President Ogg spun his chair around to stare out the window. He focused on an imposing grey General Oxygen factory in the distance, with seven tall stacks rising out of a domed base. Maybe we should turn this over to a committee, he thought. A lot of people could be kept busy. . . .
After several minutes of pained silence, Salim Bumbry, Minister of Bu-Health, said, “Shouldn’t we make an evacuation plan, sir . . . to help people reach higher ground?”
President Ogg did not turn around. He could imagine Bumbry sitting there—the youngest minister, precisely-trimmed brown hair, a neat beard and pale green eyes. Definite presidential stock. “No, Bumbry .We can’t do that now, don’t you see? I’ve told the world it isn’t coming.”
“Announce new evidence.”
“No. Too embarrassing . . . and I’m up for re-election Tuesday.”
Munoz, monitoring the thoughts of the speakers, noted that the President was Worried about losing votes. Bumbry was genuinely concerned about human life. Always knew Bumbry was poor political stock, Munoz thought.
“How much damage will it do?” Ogg asked, turning around to face Hudson. “And where will it hit?”
“It isn’t a question of damage, sir. Nor does it particularly matter where on Earth it hits.” Hudson squirmed in his chair. His eyes flitted around nervously behind the glasses. “This comet is very large, and grows as it accumulates space debris. If that baby hits us, the entire planet is going to be garbage!”
Ogg felt numb. He could not think of anything to say.
Hudson tried to take a sip of coffee, but his hands shook so badly that he sloshed liquid on his white robe. He placed the cup on the sidetable, coughed. “Laser penetration readings and gamma ray cameras show this to be the heaviest mass ever to approach our system. We think our garbage shots ended up in the Fourth Columbarian Quadrant . . . near a black hole.”
Hudson paused as he noticed President Ogg shaking his head from side to side in disbelief. Angry words seemed on the tip of Ogg’s tongue, but were not uttered.
“Our garbage shots probably reactivated a dead sun,” Hudson said. His gaze darted away under the President’s intense scrutiny.
“My Rosenbloom!” one of the ministers exclaimed.
We can’t admit the truth, Hudson thought, feeling uncomfortable. No one has any idea why that stuff is coming back! “If put on the periodic scale,” Hudson said, “where the highest present density is one hundred eighty-six, this fused mass would have a reading of five thousand, three hundred eighteen. It would crack our planet like a wrecking ball hitting glass.”
“We plugged the problem into Comp six-oh-two,” Munoz said. “That’s the computer which replaced the six-oh-one.”
I’d like to get rid of all computers, Ogg thought. The tasks they steal from people—
Munoz read this thought, then said, “We can deflect the damned comet, Mr. President.”
Ogg brightened. “Ah!” He turned to Hudson. “For sure?”
Hudson nodded. “The best plan has us changing the comet’s course by using an E-Cell powered mass driver. We’d push the comet as it passes the Leviathan planet of Kinshoto in the Bardo-Heather Group. Lots of nitrogen in that planet’s atmosphere.”
“We’re reviewing military dossier files now,” Munoz said, “searching for the best man to head up the mission.” Munoz felt a numbness in his brain, heard echoing, far-off voices. “Forget the dossier files” a voice said. “Choose Sidney Malloy. He’s the only one. . . . ” Munoz shook his head, tapped at the rear of his skull above his implanted mento transceiver. Dammit, he thought. It’s acting up again.
When Munoz’s head cleared, he heard Hudson speaking: “Kinshoto’s atmosphere is nearly seventy thousand kilometer’s deep and supports no known life forms. If we can lock onto the comet with fire probes and guide it through that nitrogenous region, it may burn up.”
“That planet is BI-I-IG!” Munoz said.
“What’s the likelihood of this comet hitting Earth?” Bu-Med’s Minister McConnel asked.
General Munoz reviewed the speaker’s thoughts, noted something new. An escape plan . . . bribe money paid to a shuttle commander . . . intended refuge on one of the orbiting solar power stations. How did he find out? Munoz wondered.
Hudson, responding to McConnel, said: “Ninety-eight point nine-one percentile. We’ve been monitoring it from deep space tracking stations. It’s coming back along the identical course of our garbage . . . and burial . . . shots. We’ve since corrected the error, of course.”
“Wonderful,” President Ogg said, his voice dripping sarcasm. Mumbling something about bodies coming back, he spun his chair again and watched a distant transport shuttle land at Robespierre Magne-Launch Base. “How much time do we have?” he asked.
“Fourteen days,” Hudson said, trying not to betray uncertainty in his tone.
As the ministers left the oval office single file, President Ogg singled out Hudson: “Dr. Hudson, I would have a word with you in private.”
Surprised, Hudson turned back and resumed his seat. “What is it, Mr. President?” he asked, timidly.
Ogg scanned the papers which had fallen to the floor, leaned down and retrieved a long, narrow piece of electronic billing paper. Looking at Hudson, he said stiffly, “This is the monthly microwave radio call log for the therapy orbiter of Saint Elba.”
Hudson gulped.
“It states that you called my sister six times this month, all on scramble code.” Ogg glared ferociously. “What did you discuss with her?”
“N-nothing important, Mr. President.”
“Then why was it necessary to use a scramble code?”
“P-personal matters, sir.”
“Personal matters?” Ogg sat back, a sneer on his face. “How can you have personal matters with someone tens of thousands of kilometers away?”
“L-look, Mr. President. I know you don’t like me. That’s why you made Nancy mayor of Saint Elba three months ago . . . to get her away from me.” Hudson read Ogg’s thoughts to confirm this statement.
A faint smile touched the edges of Ogg’s mouth.
“I love her, Mr. President. And . . . she loves me!” Hudson took a deep breath. He stared at the broken lamp on the floor.
“Love? You’re right about one thing, Hudson. I don’t like you. You’re a weak, sniveling—”
“I’m not good enough for your sister, right, Mr. President?” Hudson said, feeling his face flush hot with anger. He adjusted his glasses, focused upon the massive black man seated on the other side of the desk.
“That’s exactly right, Hudson. If not for Munoz’s influence, you’d still be a lab technician.” Hudson had read this thought previously and was not surprised to hear it spoken.
I’ll ruin you, Hudson thought. I’m going to show General Munoz an invention this afternoon that will knock you out of the oval office! “I do have certain . . . talents, shall we say?” Hudson said, beginning to taste the pleasure of prospective revenge.
Noticing a twinkle in Hudson’s eyes, Ogg was thrown off balance momentarily. Ogg fumbled with the call log sheet, glanced down at it and said, “I notice you called her almost daily in the early part of the month . . . but in the past week and a half there have been no calls. Why is that?”
“A minor disagreement, Mr. President.”
“Over what?”
Hudson felt the advantage swinging to Ogg again. “She wants me to s-stand up to you, sir.”
Ogg laughed cruelty. “And tell me what you think of me, eh, Hudson? You don’t have the guts!”
“M-maybe I do, sir.”
“Eh? What’s that?”
“May I speak candidly, sir?”
“Yes.” Ogg set the call sheet down, clasped his hands on the desktop and glared ferociously at Hudson.
“YOU’RE A BIGOT, MR. PRESIDENT!” Hudson said, blurting it out. Hudson’s eyeglasses slipped to the end of his nose. He pushed them back.
“A bigot!” Ogg rose out of his chair, hulked forward over the desk. “A bigot, you say?”
“That’s the real reason you don’t want me to be permies with Nancy, isn’t it? I’M WHITE AND SHE’S BLACK!” Hudson felt relief at getting the long-suppressed statement out, but was fearful of the consequences.
“Look at my council of ministers, Hudson! An American Indian, an oriental, six whites, a Mexican, a black. Does that sound like the council of a bigot?”
“You didn’t select them, sir. They were chosen by council votes when vacancies arose.”
“I could have vetoed any one of them, including you.” Ogg sat back down, glared at a wall.
“True enough, Mr. President. But even so, this represents your public self. I’m speaking of your real self.”
A shocked President Ogg felt Hudson’s words slash into an area of consciousness he had not considered. Can this be so? Ogg thought. His gaze snapped toward Hudson as he asked, “Who put those words into your mouth?”
“They are my own, sir. I have discussed the matter with Nancy, but the words are my own.”
“She agrees?”
“I believe she does.”
“You surprise me, Hudson.” Ogg lit a tintette nervously, blew a wisp of lavender smoke across the desktop.
Hudson saw near admiration in the President’s dark brown eyes, that and confusion. Deciding not to press his advantage, Hudson said, “I have to call Nancy right away, sir. An official call.”
“Concerning what?”
“Saint Elba is on the route of the comet intercept crew. It is the first recharging station . . . and the place where the two mass drivers will be constructed.”
“Mass drivers?” Ogg tapped his tintette on an ashtray.
“Remember we discussed that during the meeting, sir? They will connect fire probes to the comet’s nucleus, and guide it. . . . ”
“Yes, of course. Do what you must, Hudson. Do what you must.”
Hudson rose. “Unless you have something further, sir, I should leave now.”
Ogg nodded, stared at his tintette despondently. I should control everything, he thought. I AM PRESIDENT! But even the tiniest matters elude me. . . . My own sister opposes me?
As Hudson left the oval office, he realized he had seen a heretofore unexposed side of the President . . . unrevealed even to one able to read the thoughts of others. Maybe Ogg was not so bad after all. Still, forces had already been set in motion, and within days Hudson was confident that a new government would take power.
Mayor Nancy Ogg held a red towel in one hand as she turned sideways to admire herself in a poolside mirror. Her skin was sleek, wet and light brown, the swimsuited figure trim arid regal. Three red clasps secured the wet, black hair in a Mohanna Dancer’s tail. A triangular Bu-Med crest graced the waist of her suit, and superimposed over that was the tiny silver cross denoting her mayoral rank.
In an adjoining area of her suite on the L1 therapy orbiter of Saint Elba, the pool constituted a private place for her, and was, as she often liked to mention sarcastically, “one of the perks of power.” Overhead, a reflected midday sun flooded the room with light, and as she looked up she saw one edge of the orbiter’s night shield.
Five more hours, she thought dejectedly, and that shield will block the sun again, My Rosenbloom, but I hate this place!
She dropped the towel and stepped quickly onto the diving board. Springing twice at the tip of the board, she leaped into the air, bent gracefully and touched her toes before cutting neatly through the water. The pool was pleasantly warm.
When Mayor Nancy Ogg came to the surface, Security Sergeant Rountree stood at the pool edge, looking down at her. Trim, tall and muscular, he cut a dashing figure in his gleaming black and gold Security Brigade uniform. She was attracted to him, but had done nothing to fulfill her desires. A person of her status could not mingle with inferiors. A telephone cord at Rountree’s side had a cordless tele-cube which danced in the air above the phone cradle.
“Telephone call, Honorable Mayor,” the sergeant said, delivering the crisp rotating wrist salute of the Brigade.
“I am not to be disturbed in here!” Mayor Nancy Ogg snapped, treading water at the center of the pool. Her eyes stung, and she blinked, thinking, Too much chlorine in the pool again—Doesn’t anyone ever listen to me?
“But it’s a radio call . . . by microwave from Earth.”
The Mayor scowled, then muttered something and swam smoothly to where the sergeant stood. As she grasped the plasticized pool edge, the tele-cube dropped to meet her, hovering in midair before her mouth.
“This is Mayor Nancy Ogg.”
“Nancy?” Hudson’s voice crackled over the distance and immediately there came a scramble-code beep.
She motioned the sergeant away. Her eyes followed Rountree’s buttocks, then moved up his muscular back to the broad shoulders and wide neck.
Rountree flicked a glance at her as he pushed through a double exit door. She saw him smile.
“Yes, darling,” Mayor Nancy Ogg said to Hudson.
“I’ve just come from a meeting with the President,” Hudson said, breathlessly. He sat on the edge of his desk, spoke into an intercom.
“And how is my dear brother?”
“He is well.”
“Do you love me, Richard sweets?”
“You know I do.”
Mayor Nancy Ogg detected irritation in the tone, then asked: “And that is why you called? To tell me you love me?”
Hudson scowled. “No, There are problems here on Earth.”
“You haven’t called me for almost two weeks. Why not?”
“I’ve been busy, Nancy. You know of the comet?”
“Rumors,” she said, kicking the water playfully. “Tell me you love me.”
“Nancy, I don’t have—”
“Say it.”
The line beeped.
“All right. I love you. Now will you listen to me?” In his New City office, he could hear water splashing at Nancy’s end and realized she was in her pool. Hudson shook his head slowly in exasperation while staring out the window at an autocopter as it landed in a cloud of dust on a nearby rooftop. Sunlight flashed off the windows of the autocopter.
Mayor Nancy Ogg swam on her back to the center of the pool. The tele-cube followed her, remaining in midair several centimeters above her mouth. “I’m listening,” she said.
“The comet is not a rumor, Nancy.”
“Oh come now, Dick. Our therapy cells are overflowing with doomies. But you’re not going to tell me that—”
“I don’t have time to explain, but the danger is very real.”
Mayor Nancy Ogg swam to the opposite side of the pool. The tele-cube followed her, and she spoke as she climbed out of the water. “Can it be stopped?’
“Saint Elba is the closest orbiter to the flightpath of a ship we’re sending . . . and you have the manufacturing facility we need . . .”
“I get the feeling I’m not going to like what you have to say next,” she said, throwing a towel over her shoulders.
“Pay close attention to this. You must construct two E-Cell powered mass drivers, type J-sixteen with twin R-eleven fire probes on each. Scale everything up twenty-eight times.”
“Twenty-eight times? Are you kidding?”
“Our calculations show it will scale up with no problem.”
“No problem? We’ll have to hand-make a lot of this, with no molds, no standard parts that big. That will take time!”
“Put everyone to work on it. This is a Priority One.”
“We don’t have an assembly area that large.”
Hudson hesitated as he heard a scramble code beep, said, “Knock out the partition walls in Hub Sections A and B.”
“But we have work in progress in those areas, government contracts to fill . . . deadlines to meet.”
“Stop everything else, and I do mean EVERYTHING. Move it all out. Catapult it. Whatever, but get it to hell out of there.”
Mayor Nancy Ogg dried her legs angrily with the towel, said, “And even if we get the damned things built, how are we going to get them out? The space doors are too small! I know, I know . . . put a crew to work on that too—”
“Finish the mass-drivers by Friday of next week. At noon.”
“A week from tomorrow? All I can say is we’ll try—”
“Not good enough. No excuses on this one, Nancy.”
“I’m an administrator, not a technician!”
“Delegate it!”
“Will that be all, Dr. Hudson?” she asked, coolly.
“Nancy, please believe me when I say that I WILL get you off that orbiter.” I can’t tell her how we’re going to beat her brother in Tuesday’s election, he thought. The ties of blood. . . .
“Why did my brother have to send me here?” she wailed. “I’ve been on this Godforsaken orbiter for three months!”
“Be patient. We can’t let personal problems interfere with a world crisis.”
“Such a convenient excuse. If not for that one, you’d have another.”
“One more thing, Nancy.”
“Personal or official? I’m ready to hang up on you!”
“Official. Have a charging bay available for the ship when it gets there. Use Number One Argonium Gas. Check the charger now for malfunctions. There won’t be time for that later. . . . ”
Hudson heard a click.
“Nancy?” he said. “Are you there?”
The line beeped, went dead.
* * *
At a study carrel in the Pleasant Reef Library, a youngsayerman read the first question of his homework assignment:
1. State two reasons why Uncle Rosy led the AmFed people to believe he had died and then went secretly to the Black Box of Democracy.
In ornate script, the youngsayerman penned the answer on a separate sheet of ruled paper, “a.) Our Master felt strongly that the AmFed system eventually had to survive on its own. He chose to monitor electronically all aspects of AmFed life in secrecy, adopting a policy whereby his control would be withdrawn gradually. In essence, it was a weening, b.) . . .”
The youngsayerman scratched his shaven head, trying to come up with the second part of his answer. Glancing at the adjacent carrel, he read another student’s answer and then copied it onto his own paper: “b.) Uncle Rosy discovered the secret of long life, which he dispensed only to himself and to his sayermen. He did not feel an economic system could survive if such knowledge was released to the entire populace. . . . ”