Short Fiction quotes

The idea was his own, really, and a good one.

In a luxury mad world the cry was for new titillations, new pleasures, new planets on which to play, new drugs to bring ever wilder dreams, new foods, new drinks, new loves; but, most of all, new thrills.

Yes, the idea of taking cruise ships of wealthy thrill seekers to the more backward planets and letting them join in primitive wars, had been his. It proved the thrill supreme.

Captain Foren looked at him and laughed. “You, also?

I’m afraid this must be a racial characteristic, this love of imposing death.

I must confess, on my first trips, I too liked to join in the sport.” He turned and glanced out an observation port. “What is that steel tower down there on the desert?”

I knew you had great things in you. Now they’ll be coming out. … Er. … That is, just think, one of the three gladiators representing Terra. What an honor!”

The Interplanetary Meet was just three days off and I had three days to live.

I wouldn’t have been on Mars in the first place if it hadn’t been for an argument I had with Suzi back on Terra just before she was scheduled to blast off for Mars to cover the Interplanetary Games. Suzi is a sports reporter, see.

The planets have long since abolished war, but they put great store by these Interplanetary Meets.

The theory is: Why fight a war and kill off billions of population when you can figure out before the fighting ever takes place who’d win? It’s the natural ultimate development of diplomacy.

Everything is settled by the diplomats without resorting to armed conflict.

“I’ve got it, Jake,” she said breathlessly.

Kitty was always breathless over any story carrying more pathos than a basketball score.

“My column tomorrow’ll have them melting. Actually, I mean.”

Kerry said, “

There isn’t any weather, fair or foul, in space.

”

“Hey, Ted. Get Bunny on the line up in Oneonta and tell her I said to look up some of these unscheduled spacelines guys and see if she can get a photograph of Phil Mooney from them. Maybe he’s got some buddies in Oneonta.”

There was one thing about being in free fall. You had lots of time to sit and think. Too much time, perhaps.

You had the time to think it all over. And over and over again.

“You give me kert for telling him to beat it, but you give Sam the high sign to let him have woji with which to rot out his brains. I’d think I was being the kinder of the two of us.”

“Each man’s salvation is within himself,” Joseph said softly. “You won’t redeem him by attempting to keep him from his weaknesses.”

“You talk like a saint but I notice you’re sitting here at a bar.”

He was silent for a long time. Finally he sighed and answered, “

Happiness is not to be found in wine, nor in food, nor in beautiful women, nor even in wealth and power. It is from within, what you have done, what you are in the eyes of your fellow man.

”

Wilde said indignantly, “It’s an entirely different matter.

Hell is now a scholarly word, and quite acceptable.

Of course, in ancient times it wasn’t and when a cultivated person wished to use a strong expletive he said Hades, which was still a more ancient word meaning the same thing. Using the scholarly expression made it all right.”

She had some nasty comebacks, because sentiment was running pretty high throughout the League planets, and anybody saying a word against the Champ was apt to find himself mobbed.

They were frightened, understand? The whole Solar System was frightened, and they couldn’t bear the thought that I was less than their saviour.

But Suzi kept it up. She was the only sports reporter in the system who dared point out what they were all probably feeling.

They realized, those citizens from all over the Solar System, what was happening. The stakes were too high.

The Solar System was trading honor for security.

Instead of being armed with the traditional sword or spear, battleaxe or boomerang, I was laden with the most deadly devices our scientists could develop.

I grated out one of Suzi’s slogans to give myself courage.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall. And then it came to me that the trouble was that if they’re big enough perhaps they don’t get around to falling at all.

It was about and after me again.

Jake snorted. “

Every nut’s story makes a certain amount of sense. The only trouble is that, when you check it, it doesn’t hold up.

”

Alexander had not been the first to be faced with this problem, nor was he the last. So it was later with Rome, and later with Napoleon, and later still with Adolf the Aryan, and still later—

It isn’t travel that is broadening, stimulating, or educational. Not the traveling itself.

Visiting new cities, new countries, new continents, or even new planets, yes. But the travel itself, no. Be it by the methods of the Twentieth Century—automobile, bus, train, or aircraft—or be it by spaceship, travel is nothing more than boring.

SupSpaceCom Michell indicated his disgust with an impatient flick of his hand. “

Any alien is a potential enemy, Post; that should be elementary. And a potential enemy is an enemy in fact.

Even though these aliens might seem amiable enough today, how do we know they will be in the future—possibly in the far future? There can be no friendship with aliens. We can’t afford to have neighbors; we can’t afford to be encircled by enemies.”

The next words were coldly contemptuous.

We are not wanton killers, like man. We have no desire to destroy.

Gray winced and changed the subject. “You have found your new planet?”

Dermott muttered, “

And with it he has to pick up the corniest brogue west of Dublin.

”

It was thought this other civilization had advanced greatly beyond Earth’s and that the problems besetting us—social, economic, scientific—had been solved by the super-civilization. Obviously, then, Dameri Tass had come, an advisor from a benevolent and friendly people, to guide the world aright.

And nine-tenths of the population of Earth stood ready and willing to be guided. The other tenth liked things as they were and were quite convinced that the space envoy would upset their applecarts.

Viljalmar Andersen, Secretary-General of the U.N., was to introduce the space emissary. “Can you give me an idea at all of what he is like?” he asked nervously.

“Do I look daft? Begorry, I should have been a-knowin’ something was queer. All your weapons and your strange ideas. Faith, I wouldn’t be surprised if ye hadn’t yet established a planet-wide government. Sure, an’ I’ll go still further.

Ye probably still have wars on this benighted world. No wonder it is ye haven’t been invited to join the Galactic League an’ take your place among the civilized planets.

”

I began to say, “Everybody calls me Nap,” but then I didn’t. There was something about this guy that didn’t click with me.

Say what you will against snap judgments, I still take my love at first sight and enmity often the same way.

For one thing, he gave me the impression of looking for trouble; he was about six foot two and he had what he obviously thought was an aristocratic face.

But the trouble is that a hundred people a lot quicker with a dicto-typer than I am have already done the job. I’ll just leave that part of it and take up with my first contact with my fellow Terrans on Mars.

One of the old gags is to the effect that when Greek meets Greek they start a restaurant. Okay, maybe, but I do know this, that when man in general starts up a new colony one of the first buildings he puts up is a bar.

At any rate, as soon as I was settled at the Biltless Hotel—the name, of course, is a gag, but the place lived up to it—I made my way to Sam’s.

“Each race, each nation, each religion, even each sex, thought they should have the greater representation. And each of these groups in turn were divided into subgroups by wealth, age, class, education and others.

Almost everyone on earth knew of some reason why he should be one of the colonists.

And most of us were willing to take any steps to make our desire come true.”

Not the bitterness of regret, but of defeat.

Defeat at the hands of the defeated.

The damned Martians who came back after he had driven them halfway across their damned arid planet. The Jupiter Satellite Confederation landing endlessly on the home planet, sending their vast armadas of spacecraft daily and nightly to turn his mighty cities into dust.

His people would rise again. But not, now after Armageddon, in his lifetime. Not under him, nor another like him. The last of the dictators.

Hated by a solar system, and hating it.

It would have been intolerable, save that he was alone. He had foreseen that—the need for solitude. Alone, he was still Number One. The presence of others would have forced recognition of his miserably changed status. Alone, his pride was undamaged. His ego was intact.

It would have been intolerable, save that he was alone. He had foreseen that—the need for solitude.

Alone, he was still Number One.

The presence of others would have forced recognition of his miserably changed status. Alone, his pride was undamaged. His ego was intact.

It screamed back at the baroons and they were silent. And at times he laughed, and the marigee laughed. Sometimes, the queerly shaped Venusian trees talked too, but their voices were quieter.

The trees were submissive, they were good subjects.

Sometimes, fantastic thoughts went through his head. The race of trees, the pure race of trees that never interbred, that stood firm always. Someday the trees—

In the intensity of his hatred there slowly filtered through a grudging admiration. The kifs were true totalitarians. They practiced what he had preached to a mightier race, practiced it with a thoroughness beyond the kind of man to comprehend.

Theirs the complete submergence of the individual to the state, theirs the complete ruthlessness of the true conqueror, the perfect selfless bravery of the true soldier.

But they got into his bed, into his clothes, into his food.

Of course if all men had been fertile in the old days.

But if you started with if, as a beginning point, you could go as far as you wished in any direction.

He called the meeting to order in the assembly hall which stood possibly a hundred feet below the citadel in one direction, another hundred from the stone corral which housed their prisoners, in the other.

“The Oktoberfest,” he repeated. “The greatest festival the world has ever seen, the carnival, feria, fiesta to beat them all. Every year it’s held in Munich.

Makes the New Orleans Mardi gras look like a quilting party.

” He began to swing into the spirit of his description. “It originally started in celebration of the wedding of some local prince a century and a half ago and the Bavarians had such a bang-up time they’ve been holding it every year since.

For one thing, a time traveler wouldn’t be conspicuous. At a festival like this somebody with a strange accent, or who didn’t know exactly how to wear his clothes correctly, or was off the ordinary in any of a dozen other ways, wouldn’t be noticed.

You could be a four-armed space traveler from Mars, and you still wouldn’t be conspicuous at the Oktoberfest. People would figure they had D.T.’s.

”

And the head was getting worse by the minute. I was bleeding to death through the eyes and instead of butterflies I had bats in my stomach.

Believe me, nobody should drink a gallon or more of Marzenbräu.

I decided the hell with it. I took a cab to the airport, presented my return ticket, told them I wanted to leave on the first obtainable plane to New York. I’d spent two days at the Oktoberfest, and I’d had it.

I said to him, “Glad you’re here, sir. I can report. Ah, what was it you came for? Impatient to hear if I’d had any results?”

My mind was spinning like a whirling dervish in a revolving door.

I’d spent a wad of his money and had nothing I could think of to show for it; nothing but the last stages of a granddaddy hangover.

“Everyone to his own opinion,” said Calvin. Almost he sneered a little. He turned his gaze once more about the island. “

In my book, them that won’t be beat can’t be beat.

That’s maybe where we’re different, plant.”

“I would go with the wind until I found shelter,” said the plant. “The wind and waves would not harm me then.

They hurt only whatever stands firm and opposes them.

”

“Then I understand at last,” said the plant. “

For of all things, the most terrible is to die unfruitful.

It is no good to say we will not be beaten, because there is always waiting, somewhere, that which can beat us. And then a life that is seedless goes down to defeat finally and forever.

But when one has seeded, there is no ending of the battle, and life mounts on life until the light is reached by those far generations in which we have had our own small but necessary part.

Then our personal defeat has been nothing, for though we died, we are still living, and though we fell, we conquered.

”

Vovo chuckled, “

Defense materials. I wonder if ever in the history of the human race anyone ever admitted to producing offense materials.

”

And when they end? Well, personally I can’t see my organization going out without a blood bath.” He grimaced sourly, “And since I’d probably be one of the first to be bathed, I’d like to postpone the time.

It’s like having a tiger by the tail, Jim. We can’t let go.

”

“Possibly your position isn’t exactly the same as ours but there’ll be some awfully great changes if that military based economy of yours suddenly had peace thrust upon it. You’d have a depression such as you’ve never dreamed of.

Let’s face reality, Jim, neither of us can afford peace.

”

“Then you make the mistake of believing our propaganda.

That’s always a mistake, believing your own propaganda. Worse than believing the other man’s.

”

“

Economic interests shape the political views of groups and classes. Neither reason nor moral considerations override these interests.

Individuals may be converted, they may surrender their special privileges, although this is rare enough, but classes and groups do not do so.

This was a delicate point, Paul sensed.

Revolutions are seldom put over in the name of reaction or even conservatism.

Whatever the final product, they are invariably presented as being motivated by liberal idealism and progress.

“

Individuals don’t put over revolutions. The times do, the conditions apply.

Did you know that six months before the Bolshevik revolution took place Lenin wrote that he never expected to live to see the Communist take over in Russia? The thing was that the conditions were there.

There is always betrayal and there are always counterrevolutionary agents within the ranks of an organization such as this. What was the old Russian proverb?

When four men sit down to discuss revolution, three are police spies and the third a fool.

Actually, this had been astonishingly well handled. He had operated for over a year with no signs that the K.G.B. was aware of his activities. Leonid and his fellows were efficient. They had to be.

Ana was Russian. As patriotic a Russian as it was possible to be. As much a dedicated member of the Russian team as it was possible to be. And as a team member, she, like Paul, knew the chances that were involved.

You didn’t get to be a star by sitting on the bench.

She hadn’t hesitated, in the clutch, to sacrifice her favorite brother.

His expression became more serious. “You are acquainted with the unique position you assume. These colonists are in your control to an extent no small group has ever dominated millions of others before.

No Caesar ever exerted the power that will be in your educated hands. For a half century you will be as gods.

Your science, your productive know-how, your medicine—if it comes to that, your weapons—are many centuries in advance of theirs. As I said before, your position should be humbling.”

Mayer wrapped it up. “

Honorables, modernize or go under. It’s each man for himself and the devil take the hindmost, if you’ll allow a saying from another era.

”

“Yeah,” Watson grinned. “

The thing about a benevolent tyranny, though, is that it’s up to the tyrants to decide what’s benevolent.

I’m not so sure there’s a great basic difference between your governing of Genoa and ours of Texcoco.”

We bear you no ill will, far to the contrary. However, it is necessary that you all return to Earth. You have impressed upon us the aforementioned truism that man adapts but in the Pedagogue’s library I have found another that also applies.

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

”

We hold various reservations about how you accomplished this. However, when you return to your Coordinator of Galactic Colonization, please inform him that we are anxious to receive his ambassadors. The term is ambassadors and we will expect to meet on a basis of equality.

Surely in all Earth’s millennia of social evolution man has worked out something better than either of your teams have built here. We should like to be instructed.

”

Twombly pushed his chair back and came to his feet. It occurred to Hank Kuran that his chief had aged considerably since the forming of this department nearly ten years ago. The thought went through his mind, a general in the cold war.

A general who’s been in action for a decade, has never won more than a skirmish and is currently in full retreat.

Morton Twombly said, “I’m not sure I know. Come along.”

“

Good, Mr. Kuran, how would you like to die for your country?

”

The sick man snorted. “

That’s exactly the right answer. I don’t trust heroes.

Now, how much have you heard about the extraterrestrials?”

And, as in the movies, everything the good guys do is fine and everything the bad guys do, is evil.

I sometimes think that if the Russians had developed a cure for cancer first you Americans would have refused to use it.

”

Or, perhaps, this was merely a showplace. But he drew himself up at that thought. That was one attitude the Western world couldn’t afford—deprecating Soviet progress. This was the very thing that had led to such shocks as the launching of the early Sputniks.

Underestimate your adversary and sooner or later you paid for it.

The Soviets had at long last built up a productive machine as great as any. Possibly greater. In sheer tonnage they were turning out more gross national product than the West. This was no time to be underestimating them.

He said in Russian, “

Always violence. The sadness of violence.

When faced with crisis, threaten violence if outpointed. Your race has much to learn.” He switched to English. “But this is probably your language, isn’t it?”

The alien turned his eyes from one to the other.

His face, Hank decided, had a Lincolnesque quality, so ugly as to be beautiful in its infinite sadness.

“You must think us incredibly naive,” he said.

By deciding to combat Russian progress you became a retarding force, a deliberate drag on the development of your species, seeking to cripple and restrain rather than to grow and develop.

The way to win a race is not to trip up your opponent, but to run faster and harder than he.

”

Loo sighed, returned the weapon which he had until now held in his hand to a shoulder holster. “Yes,” he said, meaninglessly. He turned and looked at Hank Kuran wryly. “

I have spent the better part of my life learning to be an ultra-efficient security operative. I suspect that my job has just become obsolete.

”

“

Sure. But wait’ll you see our country in ten years. You know, Char, this world of ours has just got started.

”

They were both in their middle years. The impossibly corpulent one, Don Mathers vaguely recognized. From a newscast? From a magazine article? The other could have passed for a video stereotype villain, complete to the built-in sneer.

Few men, in actuality, either look like or sound like the conventionalized villain.

This was an exception, Don decided.

Don placed Demming now. Lawrence Demming, billionaire. Robber baron, he might have been branded in an earlier age. Transportation baron of the solar system.

Had he been a pig he would have been butchered long ago; he was going unhealthily to grease.

Rostoff said, “You have identification?”

Rostoff said sourly, “Don’t be naive, Lieutenant. Whoever does it, is going to need little integrity.

You don’t win in a sharper’s card game by playing your cards honestly. The biggest sharper wins.

We’ve just found a joker somebody dropped on the floor; if we don’t use it, we’re suckers.”

Don Mathers laughed at him. “Trying to bribe me with money, Demming?

Why don’t you realize, that I’m the only man in existence who has no need for money, who can’t spend money?

That my fellow men—whom I’ve done such a good job of betraying—have honored me to a point where money is meaningless?”

The President smiled at him, albeit a bit sourly. “

It would hardly do for human morale to find out our supreme symbol of heroism was a phoney, Captain.

There will be no trial, and you will retain your decoration.”

In European dress you’ll see Japs and Chinese, Hindus and Turks, Levantines and Filipinos, North Americans and South Americans, and, of course, even Europeans—from both sides of the Curtain.

In Tangier you’ll find some of the world’s poorest and some of the richest.

The poorest will try to sell you anything from a shoeshine to their not very lily-white bodies, and the richest will avoid your eyes, afraid you might try to sell them something.

In Tangier you’ll find some of the world’s poorest and some of the richest.

The poorest will try to sell you anything from a shoeshine to their not very lily-white bodies, and the richest will avoid your eyes, afraid you might try to sell them something.

In spite of recent changes, the town still has its unique qualities.

Joe Prantera had been rocking with the mental blows he had been assimilating, but this was the final haymaker. He was stuck in this squaresville of a world.

Joe Prantera on a job was thorough.

He spent the first three days of his life in the year 2133 getting the feel of things. Brett-James and Reston-Farrell had been appointed to work with him.

“

Why would anybody wish to steal a car?

” Reston-Farrell said easily.

The other sported his contempt. “

Perhaps there’s too much discipline in Russia, Comrade policeman.

”

In fact, Ilya Simonov was not alone in Party circles in wondering whether or not discipline had been allowed to slip too far.

It is easier, the old Russian proverb goes, to hang onto the reins than to regain them once dropped.

But if Moscow had lost much of its pall of fear, Prague had certainly gone even further. In fact, in the U Pinkasu beer hall Simonov had idly picked up a magazine left by some earlier wassailer.

It came to him that this sort of thing could work like a geometric progression.

Give a man a bit of rope one day, and he expects, and takes, twice as much the next, and twice that the next. And as with individuals, so with whole populations.

This was going to have to be stopped soon, or Party control would disappear. Ilya Simonov felt an edge of uncertainty. Nikita Khrushchev should never have made those first motions of liberalization following Stalin’s death. Not if they eventually culminated in this sort of thing.

Ilya Simonov said flatly, “

They want freedom, Kliment.

”

“Yes, sir.” Ilya Simonov went on doggedly. “

Man never achieves complete freedom. It’s a goal never reached, but one continually striven for.

The moment as small a group as two or three gather together, all of them must give up some of the individual’s freedom. When man associates with millions of his fellow men, he gives up a good many freedoms for the sake of the community.

Ronny took the chair.

For a moment he tried to appear alert, earnest, ambitious but not too ambitious, fearless, devoted to the cause, and indispensable.

For a moment. Then he gave it up and looked like Ronny Bronston.

“Um-m-m. In Its own good time.

Sort of a don’t call Me, thing, I’ll call you.

”

“Lord only knows,” Metaxa said. “To get back to Section G.

We’re Interplanetary Security. In short, Department Cloak and Dagger.

Would you be willing to die for the United Planets, Bronston?”

“

What’s happiness? I suppose they were as happy as anybody ever averages.

Frankly, I didn’t mind the assignment. Lots of fishing, lots of hunting.”

The Section G agent laughed. “

Tommy Paine stayed just long enough to introduce gunpowder. That was the end of those impregnable castles up on the hills.

”

Ronny Bronston retraced the route of his first visit here. How long ago? It already seemed ages since his probationary appointment.

Your life changed fast when you were in Section G.

Ross Metaxa’s brown bottle, or its twin, was sitting on his desk and he was staring at it glumly. He looked up and scowled.

He glared at Ronny. “What do you think the purpose of this Section is, Bronston?

Our job is to keep our member planets from being afraid of each other.

If they found that Tommy Paine and his group, if he’s got a group, were buzzing through the system subverting everything they can foul up, they’d drop out of U.P. and set up quarantines that a space mite couldn’t get through.

She shook her head. “Evidently not.

It takes a brave man to revolt against both his king and his God at the same time.

”

And almost always, nepotism rears its head, favoritism of one sort or another. How long will it be before one of your moderate monks decides he’ll moderately tinker with the tests, or whatever, just to be sure his favorite nephew makes the grade?

A high I.Q. is no guarantee of integrity.

”

Ronny said, “It sounds good enough, although I’m leery of benevolent dictatorships.

The trouble with them is that it’s up to the dictators to decide what’s benevolent.

And almost always, nepotism rears its head, favoritism of one sort or another. How long will it be before one of your moderate monks decides he’ll moderately tinker with the tests, or whatever, just to be sure his favorite nephew makes the grade?

… the efficiency of such Section G officials as Metaxa and Jakes that they would assign an unknown quality such as himself to a task as important as running down Tommy Paine, and then as an assistant provide him with an experienced operative such as Tog.

The bureaucratic mind can be a dilly, he decided.

Was the fact that she was a rather delicately constructed girl a factor? He felt the weight of the Model-H gun nestled under his left armpit. Perhaps in the clutch Section G preferred men as agents.

The driver shot a contemptuous look over his shoulder. “

Better world? What do I want with a better world? I just don’t want to be bothered.

I’ve been getting my three squares a day, got a nice little flat for my family. How do I know it’s not going to be a worse world?”

“Well,” Ronny said, “at least you can figure just about anything in the way of a new government will be better than one based on superstition and inquisition. It couldn’t get worse.”

“Things can always get worse,” the other contradicted him sadly.

They left the cab before an impressively tall, many windowed building in city center. As they mounted the steps, Ronny frowned at her. “You seemed to be encouraging that man in his pessimism.

He was not on the planet, that was definite Ronny felt.

A stranger on New Delos was as conspicuous as a walrus in a goldfish bowl.

There simply were no such.

Bulchand was wagging his pipe stem in a negative gesture. “

Bronston, governments are never motivated by idealistic reasons. Individuals might be, and even small groups, but governments never.

Governments, including that of Avalon, exist for the benefit of the class or classes that control them. The only things that motivate them are the interests of that class.”

Tog suppressed her amusement. “Artificial insemination, at first, so I understand. They brought their, ah, supply with them. But then there were boys among the first generation on the new planet and even the Amazonians weren’t up to cold bloodedly butchering their children.

So they merely enslaved them. Nice girls.

”

If I say anarchism is ridiculous, you dredge up an opinion that it’s man’s highest ethic. You must laugh yourself to sleep at nights. You and Metaxa and Jakes and every other agent in Section G.

Everybody is in on the Tog gag but the sucker.

”

And now this.

All that had been gold, was suddenly gilted lead. The dream had become contemptuous nightmare.

Finally back in Greater Washington, he went immediately from the shuttleport to the Octagon. His Bureau of Investigation badge was enough to see him through the guide-guards and all the way through to the office of Irene Kasansky.

Metaxa came to his feet. He scowled at Ronny Bronston and growled, “

Unfortunately, the human race can’t take the time out for happiness.

Come along, I want to show you something.”

But often not and a nudge, a push, from Section G can start them up another rung or so of the ladder of social evolution. Most of them don’t want the push.

Few cultures, if any, realize they are mortal; like Hitler’s Reich, they expect to last at least a thousand years.

They resist any change—even change for the better.”

Metaxa was shaking his head again. He poured himself another drink, offered the bottle this time to the others. “We don’t know,” he said wearily, “perhaps there is none.

Perhaps there is always another rung on this evolutionary ladder.

” He punched at his order box and said, “Irene, have them do up a silver badge for Ronny.”

“

The goat did it. The goat, and the use of charcoal as fuel.

Along with ignorance of soil erosion and the destruction of the wonderful watershed based on the Cedars of Lebanon. Same thing applies to large areas of Libya and Tunisia, and to Morocco and Spain.

In his income bracket and in the suburb in which he lived, government employees in the twenty-five to thirty-five age group were currently wearing tweeds. Tweeds were in.

Not to wear tweeds was Non-U.

Lawrence Woolford wore tweeds. His suit, this morning, had first seen the light of day on a hand loom in Donegal. It had been cut by a Swede widely patronized by serious young career men in Lawrence Woolford’s status group;

Which was a shame in a way, he liked the car. However, he had no desire to get a reputation as a weird among colleagues and friends. What was it Senator Carey MacArthur had said the other day?

Show me a weird and I’ll show you a person who has taken the first step toward being a Commie.

Woolford slid under the wheel, dropped the lift lever, depressed gently the thrust pedal and took off for downtown Greater Washington. Theoretically, he had another four days of vacation coming to him. He wondered what the Boss wanted.

He grinned down at her. “That’s the idea.

Keeping up with the Jones clan in this man’s town costs roughly twice my income.

”

Fredrick said, “

The dress appears as though it is of Chez Marie, but she wears it as though it came from Klein’s.

Her perfume is Chanel, but she has used approximately three times the quantity one would expect.”

“One more label to hang on people,” she snarled after him. “

Everything’s labels. Be sure and never come to any judgments of your own!

”

Autobars were all the rage. The Boss had one that gave a selection of a hundred. But what difference did it make when nobody but eccentric old-timers or flighty blondes drank anything except vodka martinis? He didn’t like autobars anyway.

A well mixed drink is a personal thing, a work of competence, instinct and art, not something measured to the drop, iced to the degree, shaken or stirred to a mathematical formula.

Out of the tiny refrigerator he brought a four-ounce cube of frozen pineapple juice, touched the edge with his thumbnail and let the ultra thin plastic peel away.

He couldn’t get beyond the first page or two.

And when you can’t concentrate on a Western, you just can’t concentrate.

He finished his drink, went over to his phone and dialed Department of Records and then Information. When the bright young thing answered, he said, “I’d like the brief on an Ernest Self who lives on Elwood Avenue, Baltimore section of Greater Washington.

But it wasn’t the saccharine pleasant face of the Personal Service operator which confronted him when he grumpily answered the phone in the morning. In fact, the screen remained blank.

Larry decided that sweet long drinks were fine, but that anyone who took several of them in a row needed to be candied.

He grumbled into the phone, “All right, who is it?”

The Professor became more animated. “Ha!” he snorted. “One example among many. Self is not alone.

Our culture is such that the genius is smothered.

The great contributors to our society are ignored, or worse.”

The Professor said snappishly, “So any time you feel you need to have your brains unscrambled, you can go to his office and expend twenty-five dollars an hour or so. His reputation is of the highest.” The Professor grunted his contempt. “

He doesn’t know the difference between an aspirin tablet and a Rorschach test.

”

The Professor seemed angry. “I repeat, I’m afraid I get carried away on this subject. I’m in revolt against a culture based on the status label.

It eliminates the need to judge a man on his merits.

To judge a person by the clothes he wears, the amount of money he possesses, the car he drives, the neighborhood in which he lives, the society he keeps, or even his ancestry, is out of the question in a vital, growing society.

“Then you’re wrong,” the Professor said definitely, pouring himself another cup of coffee. “

History bears out that almost invariably revolutionists are men of idealism.

The fact that they might be either right or wrong in their revolutionary program is beside the point.”

“

Money is the greatest social-label of them all.

The Professor believes that through this step the Movement will have accomplished its purpose. That people will be forced to utilize their judgment, rather than depend upon social-labels.”

The Professor was indignant—and stalling for time. He said, “

Nonconformists is correct! He who conforms in an incompetent society is an incompetent himself.

”

In fact, it was so bad that even as Joe Mauser let his sports hover-car sink to a parking level and vaulted over its side he was still questioning his decision to sign up with the Vacuum Tube outfit rather than with their opponents.

Joe was an old pro and old pros do not get to be old pros in the Category Military without developing an instinct to stay away from losing sides.

Fine enough for Low-Lowers and Mid-Lowers to sign up with this outfit, as opposed to that, motivated by no other reasoning than the snappiness of the uniform and the stock shares offered, but an old pro considered carefully such matters as budget.

Not much more than a kid, really. Surprisingly aggressive for a Lower who must have been raised from childhood in a trank-bemused, Telly-entertained household. The fact that he’d broken away from that environment at all was to his credit, it was considerably easier to conform.

But then it is always easier to conform, to run with the herd, as Joe well knew.

His own break hadn’t been an easy one. “Relax,” he said now.

Joe was wearying of the conversation now. You seldom ran into anyone, even in Middle caste, the traditionally professional class, interested enough in such subjects to be worth arguing with. He said, “

The Constitution, Max, has got to the point of the Bible. Interpret it the way you wish, and you can find anything.

If not, you can always make a new amendment. So far as the two-party system is concerned, what effect does it have when there are no differences between the two parties?

“Sure, sure, sure,” Joe sighed. “The modern equivalent of the Roman Bacchanalia.

Election day in the West-world when no one, for just that one day, is freer than anyone else.

”

On the various occasions when matters had pickled and Joe had to fight his way out against difficult odds, using spectacular tactics in desperation, he was almost always off camera. Purely luck.

On top of skill, determination, experience and courage, you had to have luck in the Military Category to get anywhere.

This time Joe was going to manufacture his own.

Purely luck. On top of skill, determination, experience and courage, you had to have luck in the Military Category to get anywhere.

This time Joe was going to manufacture his own.

A voice said, “Ah, Captain Mauser.”

She must have caught in his tone that he wasn’t needling. She frowned at him. “I don’t know man’s goal, if there is one. I’m not even sure it’s important.

It’s the road that counts. The endeavor. The dream. The effort expended to make a world a better place than it was at the time of your birth.

”

Nadine Haer was deep into her theme, her eyes flashing her conviction. “A socioeconomic system reacts like a living organism.

It attempts to live on, indefinitely, agonizingly, no matter how antiquated it might have become.

The Roman politico-economic system continued for centuries after it should have been replaced.

But it was the coming of Telly which increasingly brought such conflicts literally before the public eye. Zealous reporters made ever greater effort to bring the actual mayhem before the eyes of their viewers, and never were their efforts more highly rewarded.

A society based upon private endeavor is as jealous of a vacuum as is Mother Nature.

Give a desire that can be filled profitably, and the means can somehow be found to realize it.

“

Because he doesn’t have luck, and in the dill you need luck.

” Warren grunted in sour memory. “Had the Telly cameras been focused on Joe Mauser, there at the Little Big Horn, he would have been a month long sensation to the Telly buffs, with all that means.” He grunted again.

Joe looked him full in the face. “

But you of the Sov-world do not admit that the Wrights were the first to fly, do you?

”

Joe grinned. He liked the buoyance of glider flying, the nearest approach of man to the bird, and thus far everything was going well. He told Max, “

An airplane plows through the air currents, a glider rides on top of them.

”

“Yes, sir,” Cogswell snapped. “

A soldier, not a butcher of the lads under me.

” He called to the Telly reporter who was getting as much of this as he could. “Mr. Soligen, isn’t it?”

“About goals,” she said. “

As long as they exist, whether for individuals, or nations, or a whole species, life is still worth the living.

Things are a bit bogged down right now, but at the risk of sounding very trite, there’s tomorrow.”

“You wretch,” Patricia laughed. “The wedding is off!”

But Crowley was no lout. He was full of the folk wisdom of his people.

God helps those who help themselves.

Had he been somewhat more of a student he might also have run into that nugget of the ancient Greek.

Morals are the invention of the weak to protect themselves from the strong.

Once convinced that the three eggheads were incapable of realizing the potentialities of their discovery, he had little difficulty in arguing himself into the stand that he should.

He was beginning already to get the feel of the underworld element with which he had decided he was going to have to work, at least in the early stages of his operations.

Any leader, be he military, political or financial, knows that true greatness lies in the ability to choose assistants.

Be you a Napoleon with his marshals, a Roosevelt with his brain trust, a J. P. Morgan with his partners, the truism applies. No great leader has ever stood alone.

Whitely’s got some big deal brewing and we got to work it out.” He grinned suddenly. “And Larry’s got a different kind of deal. One he’s been planning for years but hasn’t been able to swing one or two details.

It’s a caution how many details a little man who wasn’t there can handle in one of these king-size capers.

”

Crowley wasn’t provoked.

The strong can afford to laugh at the malcontented weak.

“That’s one of the things you never know,” he said easily. “You sure you want out? Something the Doc said the other day had a lotta fact in it.

“Even that doesn’t matter,” Patricia said testily. “I’ve about come to the conclusion that it wouldn’t have made any difference who we’d put in Don’s … I mean Daniel Crowley’s position.

Man is too near the animal, as yet at least, to be trusted with such power. Any man.

”

In other eras he might have been described as swacked, stewed, stoned, smashed, crocked, cockeyed, soused, shellacked, polluted, potted, tanked, lit, stinko, pie-eyed, three sheets in the wind, or simply drunk.

In his own time, Major Joseph Mauser, Category Military, Mid-Middle Caste, was drenched.

Or at least rapidly getting there.

I don’t know if it was talking movies, the radio, the coming of Telly, or what. Possibly all three. But we got away from real heroes, they’re not exciting enough. Telly actors can do it better.

Real heroes are apt to be on the dull side, they’re men who do things rather than being showmen.

Actually, most adventure can be on the monotonous side, nine-tenths of the time. When a Stanley goes to find a Livingston, he doesn’t spend twenty-four hours a day killing rogue elephants or fighting off tribesman;

Freddy Soligen laid it on the line. “When it’s all been accomplished, you’ll be an Upper. I’m ambitious, too, Joe. Just as ambitious as you are. I need an In. You’ll be it. I’ll make you. I have the know-how. I can do it.

When you’re made, you’ll make me.

”

Behind her, he rolled his eyes upward in mute protest. He said, “What was I supposed to do, hand him a rose from our table bouquet?”

“Violence is the resort of the incompetent.”

“You must tell that, some time, to a jungle animal being attacked by a lion.”

“Violence is the resort of the incompetent.”

“You must tell that, some time, to a jungle animal being attacked by a lion.”

When Freddy Soligen entered his living room, he automatically switched off the Telly screen which was the entire north wall. The room’s lights automatically went brighter.

they got all sorts of fancy names to call it. You’ve got cradle to the grave security. Instead of waiting for old age, or thirty years of service, or something, to get your pension, it starts at birth.

At long last, the jerks have inherited the earth.

”

“All right, all right. I just meant that she was willing to spend her life sucking on trank, watching Telly, and living on the pittance income from the unalienable stock shares issued her at birth. But let’s get to this religious curd.

Son, whatever con man first thought up the idea of gods put practically the whole human race on the sucker list.

You say they’re giving you comparative religion in your classes at the Temple now, eh? OK, have you ever heard of a major religion where the priests didn’t do just fine for themselves?”

“It sure isn’t. The story is that anybody can make Upper-Upper if he has the ability.

But the thing is, Sam, you can’t make a jerk realize he’s a jerk.

If he sees somebody else rise in caste, he can’t see why he shouldn’t. That’s why real rising has been restricted to Category Military and Category Religion. In the military, a man gives up his security, obviously, and if he’s a jerk he dies.

The arenas were finally closed in 404 AD but by that time the Roman Empire was a mockery.

In all they last more than half a millennium, but things move faster these days.

”

And as in the case of Rome, the games are bankrupting it.

Our present day patrician class, our Uppers, have a tiger by the tail, Joseph Mauser, and can’t let go.

We need those capable and intelligent people of whom you spoke earlier, to make some basic changes. Where are they? Nadine said that your great driving ambition is to be jumped to Upper in caste.

they clamored for permission to serve with him. You weren’t apt to find yourself in the dill, under Cogswell, and you practically never failed to collect your victory bonus.

Victory was a habit.

Marshal Cogswell looked up from the desk at which he sat scowling at a military chart stretched before him. The scowl disappeared and his strong face lit with pleasure.

Joe snorted. He seldom met someone not of Category Military who didn’t want a special detailed description of some gory action in which Joe had participated. And like all veterans of combat, there was nothing he liked less to do.

Combat was something which, when done, you wished to leave behind you.

Were brainwashing really practicable, it was this you would wish to wash away.

Again he didn’t tell her that his fortune was all but dissipated. Instead, he said bitterly, “

Those who have, get. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer.

Things are rigged, these days, so that it’s impossible to work your way to the top except in Military and Religion.

Freddy laughed, even as he looked apprehensively over the sailplane’s side. He said, “Yeah, or that other one.

The Hungarians are the only people who can enter a revolving door behind you and come out in front.

”

Nadine Haer was in the process of hitting the drop lever with her left hand as they slowed and headed for the entrance to a parking area. She said brittlely, “

The moral is that you can have slobs at any level in society. Being an Upper doesn’t guarantee anything.

”

Budapest, basically, had changed little over half a millennium.

The Danube, seldom blue except when seen through the eyes of a twosome between whom spark has recently been struck, still wandered its way dividing the old, old town of Pest from the still older town of Buda.

Where the stream widens there is room for the one hundred and twelve acres of Margitsziget, or Margaret Island to the West-world.

Nadine looked at him from the side of her eyes, even as they descended. “That’s what I keep telling you, Joe. We’ve become ossified.

When a society, afraid of change, adopts a policy of maintaining the status quo at any cost, progress is arrested. Progress means change.

”

Joe said absently, “

If international fracases would be won by newspapers and Telly reporters, the Sovs would have lost the Frigid Fracas as far back as when they still called it the Cold War.

”

Armstrong snorted. “You should study up on revolutionary routine, Joe. The smaller the unit of organization, the better.

The fewer members you know, the fewer you can betray.

Here in the Sov-world, back before the Sovs came to power, the size of their cells was five members, so the most any one person could betray was four.”