“Sort of a mirage, eh?” Ed Myers nodded. “You sure worked yourself up a theory, boy. But there’s kind of a hole in it, isn’t there?”
“Hole?”
“Well, just for the sake of argument, supposing something like that had happened. Let’s even use that rumor you and the troops heard over in Asia, about how the whole country was knocked out by chain-reaction. Then how could you come back here again to live? There’d be nothing left, isn’t that right? No people, no buildings, no radio, or TV, or books, or movies, or any of the stuff you’re so badly worried about.”
“But if we believed it was here—” Harry started, then stopped. “Come to think of it, I guess you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right.” Myers smiled again. “You just think about it a while, boy. Everything’ll straighten out. Take a rest for a few days, you’ll get over it.”
Marge smiled, too. “You gave us an awful scare, Harry.”
“Scare?” Harry Jessup blinked. “Scare? Could that be it?”
“Could what be what?”
“Scare. The flying saucers scare. Remember? We heard all about it. Sure—that could be the answer!”
“Oh, Harry, for heaven’s sake—”
“Same deal. Nobody knew whether they were real or fake either. But suppose they were real. And they dropped the bombs. A new kind. Wiped out the country and took over. Nobody’d ever know. They’d send out fake reports, create an illusion that nothing had changed. People coming in from abroad would find everything the same. So accustomed to fakery in normal life, they wouldn’t notice the difference. Just as I didn’t notice.”
Ed Myers groaned. Marge sighed.
“That’s the answer!” Harry cried. “It has to be the answer! Nobody left at all, and the whole thing is an illusion built up to protect whoever or whatever owns this country now—built up to fool the few real people left, the ones in Service who came back! They’ll just have to keep things going until we’re dead and buried and then the masquerade is over.
“No wonder they keep pouring out more and more synthetics all the time! Do it to deaden our faculties, get us so used to the artificial we’ll forget there ever was anything real. Who remembers when nobody had their teeth capped, when Wild Bill Hickok was an outlaw instead of a hero? Today kids think there really was a man named Sherlock Holmes—if there are any kids, that is.”
“Are any kids?” Marge shuddered. “Do you know what you’re saying now? Are you inferring that—?”
Harry paused. “Yeah,” he said, slowly. “Yeah. Come to think of it, I am.”
He walked over to Ed Myers, who was still picking his ear. Suddenly he reached out and grabbed at Myers, trying to reach the side of his head.
Myers ducked, moved back in alarm.
“That gray spot,” Harry whispered. “I think I know what it is, now.”
“Keep away from me!” Ed Myers yelled.
But Harry didn’t keep away. He lunged forward, grabbing up the paper-knife from the desk and bringing it down with a single, startling motion.
There was a ripping sound. Harry plunged the paper-knife into Myers’ head.
“Look!” he shouted. “I was right—nothing but sawdust! Sawdust and a bunch of cog-wheels.”
Myers fell to the floor and lay still.
Marge began to scream.
“Look!” Harry yelled. “Sawdust, all over the rug! Can’t you see—?”
He stopped. Marge kept staring at the floor, her scream subsiding to a whimper. “Harry, you’ve killed him.”
“How could I kill something that isn’t real? Something stuffed with sawdust?”
“Take another look,” Marge said. “That isn’t sawdust. It’s blood.”
Harry took another look. The knife clattered to the floor. He stared down at the slowly widening red pool....
He was still staring when Marge went to the phone. He was still staring when she came back. He was still staring when the squad-car arrived.
After that there were questions, many questions, and a lot of men crowded around, and somebody came in with a camera and flashbulbs and took pictures, and then they took Ed Myers’ body away, and finally they took Harry away too.
At the end, there was nobody left but Marge. She was all alone and there was nothing else to do, so she got out the dustpan and the broom and swept up the little pile of sawdust from the floor.
EGGHEAD
SHERRY was the first one to notice.
I picked her up in front of the sorority house about eight and I’ll never forget the way her eyes got wide as she stared at me.
“Why, Dick!” she gasped. “You are letting your hair grow!”
I couldn’t help it. I turned red as a beet. “Yeah,” I mumbled. “Kinda looks that way, doesn’t it?”
Her eyes got wider. “And what’s that you’re wearing? I mean, what on earth?”
“It’s a double-breasted suit,” I told her. “Picked it up last weekend, when I went home. I figured it was sort of different.”
“Different? It’s horrible! I’ll bet nobody’s worn one of those things in years.”
I shrugged. “Sorry. But I thought, since we were only going to have breakfast together, it would not make much difference.” I didn’t want to see her face, so I made a big production out of looking at my watch. “Come on, it’s after eight, and I’ve got a nine-o’clock this morning. We’d better hurry.”
She didn’t answer. I took her arm and steered her into the drugstore on the corner. It was crowded, as usual, and the juke was going. The big screen was behind the counter, but there were smaller ones in most of the booths. Only the two little booths at the rear didn’t have juke-screens, and of course they were vacant. Nobody wants to sit where you can’t see the screens. Right now Buzzy Blake was doing Number One—the Extra-Cola commercial.
Sherry made a face. “I suppose we’ll just have to wait for a place,” she said.
“Haven’t got time,” I told her. “Let’s grab a bite in one of the back booths.”
I sat her down before she could object, and pretty soon the waitress came up with two mugs of coffee.
“What’ll it be?” she asked.
“Cruller,” Sherry said.
The waitress looked at me and I shook my head. “No cruller. I want poached eggs. And you can take this coffee back, too. I didn’t order it.”
“You don’t want coffee?”
“I think I’d prefer cocoa instead.”
They were both staring at me. I wanted to sink right through the floor.
Sherry leaned over the table. “Dick, what’s wrong with you? Are you sick?”
“No, I’m fine. Just wanted to try something new for a change. Is there any law says you’ve got to have coffee and crullers for breakfast every morning of your life?”
“But everybody does.”
“I’m not everybody. I’m me.”
The waitress walked away, mumbling. Buzzy Blake finished the Extra-Cola song, and somebody dropped a dime for Number Two. Fuzzy Fluke, singing about King-Size Tissue. It had a real catchy beat, but Sherry wasn’t listening.
“Dick, what’s happened?”
I sighed. “I don’t want to talk about it now. It’s just that I’ve made up my mind. I’m sick and tired of being like everybody else on the campus. Wearing the same clothes, eating the same food, listening to the same things, thinking the same thoughts. At least I thought I might experiment a little.”
“Experiment? Look, you better go see your Psych Advisor, I mean it.”
“I’m all right. This is just sort of—well, you might call it a gesture of protest.”
“Protest?” She was really steamed. “I want you to march right over to the barber shop and get a decent crewcut and then put on some sensible clothes. If you think I’m going to the game with you looking like that this afternoon, you’re mistaken.”
“I thought we’d skip the game,” I told her. “I mean, who cares? Two gangs of apes fighting over a blown-up pig
bladder.” Then came the Thing that bombed her. “Besides, we’d have trouble getting there, anyway, I sold my car.”
“What?”
“Yesterday. I figured walking’s good exercise. As long as I’m right here on the campus all the time, what do I need a car for, anyway?”
“But everybody has a car, even the janitors! Suppose you did want to go to the game, the stadium’s half a mile away, how could you walk to—”
She was bombed, all right. Just then somebody put on Number Three, Muzzy Miles and his outfit, and I couldn’t hear the end of her sentence. But she was getting up, leaving the booth.
“Hey,” I said, “what about your breakfast?”
“Never mind, I’m not hungry. And don’t bother to get up. I don’t want to be seen with you. Now, or ever.”
“But Sherry—”
She was gone. And Muzzy Miles and a big symphonic chorus did a big production number on Ulcer-Seltzer, with trick camerawork that showed the whole gang singing and dancing inside a set that looked just like your small intestine.
It was just the sort of thing I should have been interested in, because I was sure the Prof would ask questions about it in the next Consumotivation class. But I didn’t care about it, or about my meal when it arrived. The poached eggs tasted awful.
So I skipped the cocoa and hurried down the street to the Administration building. I’d lied to Sherry, because I really did plan to see my Psych Advisor.
That was old Hastings, of course, and his office was over three blocks away. It felt kind of funny to walk that far, and I knew a lot of people were hanging out of their car windows and staring at me as I tramped along all alone on the sidewalk.
Halfway there I noticed another guy walking, across the street. It looked like Mark Sawyer, but I couldn’t be sure. Mark and I never had anything to say to each other—of course, very few people ever talked to him.
Anyway, that didn’t matter. My appointment with old Hastings did.
The girl told me to go right in. Hastings sat there puffing on his pipe and smiling at me. He had the closed-circuit screen on, and I guess he was monitoring some class or other, but when I sat down he turned it off.
“What’s the story, Dick?” he asked.
I shrugged. “No story. Like I said when I called you, I want to change my program to an all-elective course.”
He smiled and puffed. “You’re a senior, aren’t you, Dick?”
“You ought to know.” I pointed at the desk. “You’ve got my file right there in front of you.”
Old Hastings didn’t bat an eyelash. “Sharp orientation reflex,” he said. “Bet your father is the same way. He’s a pretty big operator up at Major Products, isn’t he?”
“President,” I said. “What’s that got to do with it?”
“I wish I knew.” Hastings stopped the nonsense with the pipe and pulled out a regular cigarette with a cancer-canceller filter. “Look at it my way for a minute. Here’s a bright student, doing excellent work for over three years. He tests out perfectly normal all along the line. Excellent adaptability, a conformity-rating of better than ninety-five per cent, routine channelization of all aggressions; a potential company man by any standards. I know, because I’ve just rechecked your personality profile, semester by semester. So here you are, taking a Junior Exec Course, and doing well. Next year, when you graduate, you’ll go right into the Home Office with your father’s company. But now you come to me and say you want to drop your studies and switch over to electives. What electives, might I ask?”
“Well, English Lit., for one.”
“You mean Advanced Copywriting?”
“No, English Lit. It’s down in my bulletin, under Liberal Arts.”
Hastings chuckled, “Really, Dick—you must have your old bulletin, from your freshman year. Right? We cut out the whole Liberal Arts Department last semester. Didn’t you read about it in the paper? I’m quite sure there was a squib on it somewhere. This is a state university, not a private college. Legislature decided not to appropriate any more funds for frills.”
“What about Philosophy?” I asked.
“Out,” he murmured, and he wasn’t smiling, now. Don’t try and tell me you didn’t hear about that. We fired Professor Gotkin the year you came here. A notorious egghead.”
“But I thought—I mean, I hear he’s still around. He has a house just off the campus, doesn’t he?”
“Unfortunately, there’s no way in which the university can compel a man to vacate his own property. But I assure you, Professor Gotkin has absolutely no connection with this institution.”
“Don’t some students go up to his place, for some kind of private seminars?”
Hastings ground out his cigarette. “Let’s stop sparring,” he said. “Have you been seeing Gotkin? Is that where you got these ideas about changing your courses? The truth, now.”
“I’m not on trial.”
“Not yet.”
I gulped. “Is it a crime to want to study Philosophy?”
“Don’t play stupid, Dick. Of course it’s no crime, any more than it’s a crime to study, say, the history of Russia. Not if the purpose of your study is to get documentation on the evils of Communism. But suppose you didn’t have such a sensible, clear-cut purpose and were just reading out of what you believed was idle curiosity? Consciously or unconsciously you’d be laying yourself open to dangerous ideas. Then your study would be a criminal matter. You see that, don’t you? Well, the same holds true for Philosophy, or any of those border-line subjects. They’re poison, Dick. Poison.”
He stepped over to the window. “Two hundred million people out there,” he murmured. “Two hundred million today, and in another generation there’ll be three hundred million. Each and every one of them equipped with drives, goals, needs. Each and every one of them vital to our economy as a consumer. All of them dependent upon the skills and techniques of a very few specialists, trained to direct those drives, set up those goals, stimulate and channelize those needs. That’s our job here, training the specialists. You’re studying to be one of them. Isn’t that enough of a positive challenge for you? Why bother with the doubts and illusions of Philosophy?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “And I can’t answer until I’ve investigated.”
Hastings scowled. “All right, you might as well have all of it. I took the liberty of getting in touch with your father this morning, after you called. He told me that under no circumstances should you be permitted to alter your program.”
“I can insist on a hearing. I can take it to the Dean.”
“Please.” He came around the desk and put his hand on my shoulder. “You know what that would lead to. Now I have another suggestion. It’s obvious you’ve been brooding about this whole business for quite some time. Perhaps you’ve been subject to pressure from outside influences which you don’t care to talk about. That’s your affair.
“On the other hand, I’m your Psych Advisor, and your mental health is my affair, too. I recommend an honorable solution. Put in for a two-week leave, for special therapy, and enter the hospital here. Let me handle the treatment. We’ll do it with narco-hypnosis. There won’t be any conflict involved; when you give us the names of these people—students or faculty members who have been feeding you all this nonsense about rebellion—there’ll be no guilt feelings. It’s all very open and aboveboard. And I’m sure it will clear up the whole problem.”
I jerked my hand away. I knew his receptionist was listening through the open door, but I didn’t care if I shouted.
“All right, to hell with it! You can tell my father whatever you like. Tell him his son is an antisocial egghead for all I care. And as for you, you can take your psychiatric couch and shove it!”
Then I got out.
I went back to my room and waited. Three times the phone rang, and as soon as I recognized my father’s voice I hung up.
The fellows came in from classes around noon, and I could hear them going through the hall. N
one of them stopped at my room. Word must have gone around fast.
Finally, at one o’clock, when most of them were going back to classes, my door opened.
A tall, skinny guy with glasses stood there blinking at me. At first I didn’t even recognize him.
“I’m Mark Sawyer,” he said.
“Oh. Come on in, have a chair.”
“I—I heard about this morning.”
“Who hasn’t?” I grinned at him. “Don’t tell me you came around to say you’re sorry.”
“No. I came around to say I’m glad.” He smiled up at me. “Surprised, too.”
“Why be surprised?” I shrugged. “Sooner or later, a guy just gets fed up. You know.”
“Yes, I know. But somehow I never thought you would. None of us did.”
“Us?”
He hesitated. “Well, you aren’t the only one, you know.”
I forced a grin. “I was beginning to feel that way. When you stop to think, there’re over twenty thousand students enrolled here; it gives you sort of a funny feeling when you figure that maybe you’re the only one in the whole bunch who doesn’t want French fries with his hamburgers.”
“I understand.” He hesitated a minute. “But are you sure you did not just lose your temper, on impulse?”
“Look, Sawyer. In the past six hours I’ve lost my girl, got my father sore at me, and told off Hastings. Chances are I’ll be expelled before the week is out. Does that sound as if I was acting on impulse?”
“I guess not.” He stood up. “How’d you like to be my guest this evening? Sort of a bull-session, to meet a couple of other fellows with the same ideas. We usually get together once or twice a week at a friend’s house.”