“Well—”
“You might find it interesting. If you feel like it, drop over. Any time after eight. We meet at Professor Gotkin’s house.”
He left, then, and the rest of the afternoon passed quietly. But there was a buzzing in my stomach, and when suppertime came I didn’t want to eat. I waited until it got dark and then I slipped out and headed for Professor Gotkin’s house.
I walked through alleys, wondering if this was the way they always walked: the Commies, the pinkos, the eggheads. It gave me a funny feeling, a feeling of being alone. The game was over now, and the cars were packing the streets; I could hear the horns blaring and the radios going and the guys singing. And I was alone, stumbling through the alley. A dark alley. A blind alley. Alone.
Then I came to the big old house where Professor Gotkin lived, and I wasn’t alone any more. Mark Sawyer met me at the door and put out his hand, and he pulled me in, down the hall and through the double doors of the old-fashioned study. I blinked in the sudden glare.
The brightness came from one of those old-fashioned overhead lighting fixtures; come to think of it, I didn’t see a single TV lamp in the place, and no TV set, either. Instead, the room was filled with the kind of furniture you wouldn’t expect to find anywhere but in a museum. Overstuffed chairs, big sofas, real pre-atomic pieces.
Old Gotkin came up and held out his hand, and he was a museum piece himself. He had long hair, positively bushy, and the oddest glasses I ever saw. They were rimless, so help me.
But what surprised me the most was the guys he introduced me to. There must have been almost a dozen other students in the room, and he took me around and introduced me to them. I don’t know what I’d expected, really; I suppose I thought all of them would look something like Mark Sawyer. But he was the only oddball in the whole crowd. All of the other fellows looked perfectly normal and Ivy League, with crewcuts and hornrims. A couple of them even wore army gab pants and Service emblems. There were three girls, too, and I was a little shocked to realize I’d met them all before; two of them were friends of Sherry’s, and the third was last year’s Junior Prom Queen. Everybody seemed to be acting perfectly natural, and they all smiled at me, but I guess they could tell I was upset.
Professor Gotkin showed me to a big chair—it was a funny-looking thing, no functional lines at all, but it felt kind of comfortable—and then brought me a glass of something that turned out to be beer.
Only it was dark, and tasted strange.
“Glad to have you with us,” he said. “According to what Mark tells me, you are with us, aren’t you?”
Mark Sawyer leaned over my shoulder. “I hope you don’t mind, Dick. I took the liberty of explaining to the gang just what you had to say to me this afternoon.”
I nodded. “Then I guess there’s nothing more to explain.”
“There’s one thing you can tell us,” Professor Gotkin murmured. “What are your plans for the future?”
“Well, I suppose I’d better quit school before they call a hearing and throw me out. After that, I guess I’ll have to find a job on my own. My father’ll be pretty sore.”
“What sort of a job?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Factory or manual labor. If I try for anything better, they’ll check up on my record here. But maybe that won’t be too bad. I mean, it’s just five or six hours a day, and I’ll have security.”
“Security.” Surprisingly enough, it was the Junior Prom Queen who spoke. “I thought you were the one who made that remark about not liking French fries with your hamburgers.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Everything. Do you know how the average worker lives?”
“Well—”
“Take an ordinary job and you’ll be a prisoner for life, in a world of French fries, surrounded by the faceless mob that eats, drinks, dresses, talks and acts on the basis of conditioned reflexes. You’ll live in a prefabricated house with a prefabricated wife and a bunch of prefabricated kids. You were taking a Junior Exec course, weren’t you? Then you must have studied Depth Motivation Technique. What did you think you were learning that stuff for? In order to use in on consumers against consumers; and who are they? Manual workers, factory workers, the army of conformists and conformity-worshippers you’re rebelling against. And now you think you’ll find a solution by joining their ranks? Don’t be ridiculous!”
“Then what should I do?” I asked.
Professor Gotkin stepped in front of me. “We’ve been discussing that, before your arrival,” he said. “We advise you to stay right here in school.”
“But I can’t. I mean, they won’t let me change my courses, they told me so.”
He shook his head. “That’s the whole point. You don’t change any courses. You make your apologies, take a week off to rest your nerves, and go right back into your studies in Junior Exec.”
For a minute I couldn’t believe my ears. “You mean, keep on doing what I’ve been doing? And graduate next year, and go into the Corporation, and buy a ranch house, and marry the kind of a girl the Corporation wants me to marry—a girl who’ll nag at me until we can buy a bigger ranch house? Be an exurbanite, and drive a new car back and forth to work until I keel over with a heart attack and they drive me to the cemetery in a new hearse? Is this your idea of a solution?”
“A necessary step towards a solution,” Mark Sawyer said.
“I don’t get it.”
“Listen, what you’ve just said isn’t new. Everybody in this room has sounded off about the same thing, in practically the same words. But all of us are still here, going to school. And all of us will be graduating, taking regular jobs, doing our best to work our way up into key positions. Don’t you see that this is the whole secret?”
“Secret of what?”
“The secret of rebellion. The only way a minority can ever hope to win. By infiltration. It’s Professor Gotkin’s idea.”
He smiled. “Not original, I assure you. I borrowed it from the Communists.”
“But—you are a Communist, aren’t you?” I asked.
He frowned. “Not at all. A Communist, actually, is the follower of a political doctrine, a believer in community property, who seeks to overthrow other governmental systems by force, if necessary.”
“That isn’t the way I heard it.”
His frown deepened. “That’s right, I’d forgotten. They don’t teach that definition any more, do they? To you, a Communist is anyone whose ideas differ from those of the majority—or, rather, from the ideas superimposed upon the majority, who accept them without thinking. A Communist is an egghead is an individualist is a psychotic; isn’t that how it goes?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“And you think that any expression of nonconformity, and difference of taste from that of the mathematical majority, is an automatic indication of a maladjusted personality?”
“I suppose so.”
“Still, you are aware of such a difference in yourself?” His frown smoothed into a smile. “Don’t bother to answer that, Dick. Because we all feel the same way. Only we’ve learned not to be ashamed of it. We know that the history of this nation is a history of constant rebellion. It was political rebellion which won our freedom, social rebellion which expanded our frontiers, intellectual rebellion which resulted in invention and progress. Only in recent years have we fallen into the error of orientating our philosophy around an expanding economy, dependent upon a constant and complacent consumerdom. Only in recent years has it come to be a shameful thing to be ‘different’—and individuality is equated with antisocial attitudes.
“I know, because I’ve lived through the change. The get-in-line-and-stay-in-line doctrine was imposed as a necessity during the War, and somehow we never managed to abandon it after the shooting was over. Mass media dedicated itself to the noble purpose of selling masses of goods to the mass audience. From that, it was only a step to the mass merchandising of ideas. Then came the real Comm
unist scare; we began to be afraid of eggheads—and everybody who criticized was given that label. It’s still a label, today, but soon it may be down on the books as a legal synonym for traitor. Unless we take decisive steps to prevent it.”
“But what good will my returning to school do? How will it be helping to rebel by staying in line?”
“Through infiltration,” the Professor said. “Don’t you see? We’re all doing it. Granted, the process is a slow one, but it will bear fruit. If, within ten years or even twenty years, every student in this room will have attained a position of importance in the outside world, there will be a chance to reverse the trend. A legislator here, a banker there, a business executive, an advertising magnate, a newspaper man, a TV producer—people like that are in a position to influence key decisions from the top level.”
I glanced around. “There’s only eleven of us,” I said. “A drop in the bucket.”
Mark Sawyer cleared his throat. “You’d be surprised if you knew how many there really were,” he told me. “Not everybody’s here tonight. I’ll bet we have almost fifty on the campus.”
“Fifty out of twenty-three thousand students?”
“Fifty of the best. The individualists, the clear-headed ones. And this isn’t the only campus in the country, remember.” Professor Gotkin drew himself up. “Since I left—since I was fired, rather—I haven’t been idle. My connections with colleagues all over the nation have served me well. There are groups like these scattered throughout the schools, and in other places where you’d least suspect it. Army camps, labor unions, fraternal organizations; yes, and the very strongholds of the status quo. Most of our followers are young men and women like yourself, yes, and it is from their ranks that we’ll draw our real strength in the future. But even now we’ve got a slight toe-hold in high places. Would it surprise you if I revealed that we’ve already enlisted several important educators in our ranks? And no less than six Congressmen? And two practicing ‘industrial psychologists’ who specialize in Depth Motivation techniques?” He chuckled. “We’re not entirely impractical, you see. Nor entirely helpless. But there’s much to be done, and we can use able assistance. We need men like you, Dick. What do you say?”
I hesitated. “How can I be sure that you’re telling me the truth?”
“A sensible reaction. And one I’ll be glad to honor. It so happens that there are lists available to me. You are welcome to inspect the names of your—shall we call them fellow-eggheads?—right here in school. As the situation warrants, I’ll acquaint you with other members of the movement in the outside world; we hope to be eventually forming little key groups in selected industries and professions in time to come.”
“You aren’t going to start a revolution? You’re sure of it?”
“Of course we are! But not an armed revolution; we don’t intend to overthrow the government by violence. Ours will be a much more far-reaching and long-lasting rebellion. A revolution of ideas. We’re going to take the world away from the pitchmen and their puppets and give it back to the individual, the free citizen. Are you with us?”
I nodded.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked. “Where do I begin?”
“You begin by going back to your Psych Advisor. Apologize to him. Tell him you had a fight with your girl, tell him you’ve been under a strain. If he suggests rest or treatment, take it. But no narco-hypnosis, of course. You understand why.”
I nodded.
“Then, return to your classes. I’m sure. there’ll be no real difficulty. You have a brilliant record. Your father and your girl will come around. Just carry on as you did before this happened.”
I stood up. “But don’t I do anything? I mean, aren’t you carrying out any kind of program at all here on the campus?”
“You mean some sort of underground protest movement or sabotage?” Professor Gotkin shook his head. “We aren’t ready for that yet. In a few years, perhaps, when our group is stronger. Meanwhile, about all we do is proselyte. And that’s where someone like yourself will come in handy. Maybe we can work out a system, a way of bringing in more potential recruits. It’s worth thinking about, and planning for.”
“Will there be meetings like this regularly?”
“Yes, but not according to any schedule. We can’t afford to attract too much attention at this stage of the game. And another thing; we don’t believe it wise to congregate in social groups or be seen together anywhere outside this house. The notice of the next meeting will come to you from one of your fellow members. I suggest, therefore, that you take steps to memorize their names.”
“An excellent idea.” I made a circuit of the room slowly, shaking hands with each of my fellow conspirators. As I did so, I asked each one to repeat his or her name to me.
“Don’t forget, now,” Professor Gotkin cautioned.
“I won’t.”
“You’ll be notified when to come again.”
“I’ll be here.”
And, about a week later, I was. A lot happened in the meantime. I’d seen old Hastings and the Dean. I saw my father, too, and then there was a special two-day trip which nobody knew about. That is, not until I walked into the next meeting at Professor Gotkin’s house, with the Security officers right behind me.
We caught fifteen of the lousy eggheads right then and there, and of course we got hold of the old buzzard’s secret lists. Every last one of the subversive rats on the campus was rounded up, and I was surprised at some of the big wheels who were in on the plot.
But it was like that all over the country, they tell me. And it made a real stink—I guess you must have read about it in the papers, though.
Of course, I don’t claim credit for the whole thing. It was Dad’s idea in the first place, when he got wind of some kind of Commie activity down here at the school. He even supplied me with the little portable wire-recorder I’d hidden in my coat when I went to Gotkin’s house the first time; and that clinched it. No matter what he and the others said, they couldn’t deny the evidence—it was all down on tape, the whole subversive pitch, even their names in their own voices.
Right now I guess they’re being held on open charges, but that’s just a formality. Dad is in pretty thick with all the right people, and they say that in just a couple of weeks Congress is going to pass a Treason Law to take care of the whole gang. It’ll be retroactive, of course. They’re even talking about something called the Egghead Amendment to the Constitution.
Naturally, I’m pretty happy about the way things worked out. It wasn’t much fun having to pretend to be psycho, even for a little while—it must be awful to actually be that way, all queer and alone.
But it’s all over now, and I’m back at school, and Sherry’s with me, and Dad bought me a new convertible, and I guess right now you might say I’m kind of a hero.
It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if I was elected president of the Class of 1978.
DEAD-END DOCTOR
THE last psychiatrist on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” he said.
A tall robot entered, the electronic beam of its single eye piercing the gloom and focusing on the psychiatrist’s face.
“Dr. Anson,” the robot said, “the rent is due today. Pay me.”
Dr. Howard Anson blinked. He did not like the harsh light, nor the harsh voice, nor the harsh meaning of the message. As he rose, he attempted to conceal his inner reactions with a bland smile, then remembered that his facial expression meant nothing to the robot.
That was precisely the trouble with the damned things, he told himself; you couldn’t use psychology on them.
“Sixty tokens,” the robot chanted, and rolled across the room toward him.
“But—” Dr. Hanson hesitated, then took the plunge. “But I haven’t got sixty tokens at the moment. I told the manager yesterday. If you’ll only give me a little time, a slight extension of credit—”
“Sixty tokens,” the robot repeated, as i
f totally unmindful of the interruption, which, Dr. Anson assured himself, was exactly the case. The robot was unmindful. It did not react to unpredictable factors; that was not its function. The robot didn’t see the rental figures in this office building and had no power to make decisions regarding credit. It was built to collect the rent, nothing more.
But that was enough. More than enough.
The robot rolled closer. Its arms rose and the hooklike terminals slid back the panels in its chest to reveal a row of push buttons and a thin, narrow slot.
“The rent is due,” repeated the robot. “Please deposit the tokens in the slot.”
Anson sighed. “Very well,” he said. He walked over to his desk, opened a drawer and scooped out half a dozen shiny disks.
He slipped the disks into the slot. They landed inside the robot’s cylindrical belly with a series of dull plops. Evidently the robot had been making the rounds of the building all day; it sounded more than half full.
For a wild moment, Dr. Anson wondered what would happen if he kidnaped the robot and emptied its cashbox. His own medical specialty was psychiatry and neurosurgery, and he was none too certain of a robot’s anatomical structure, but he felt sure he could fool around until he located the jackpot. He visualized himself standing before the operating table, under the bright lights. “Scalpel—forceps—blow-torch—”
But that was unthinkable. Nobody had ever dared to rob a robot. Nobody ever robbed anything or anyone today, which was part of the reason Dr. Anson couldn’t pay his rent on time.
Still, he had paid it. The robot’s terminals were punching push buttons in its chest and now its mouth opened. “Here is your receipt,” it said and a pink slip slid out from its mouth like a paper tongue.
Anson accepted the slip and the mouth said, “Thank you.”
The terminals closed the chest-panels, the electronic beam swept the corners as the wheels turned, and the robot rolled out of the room and down the corridor.