They followed me into the kitchen of the house. All three of them
started to sit down, then stopped, and walked over to the table in
perfect step. They looked at the cold remains of my breakfast eggs. The
WFI inspector shoved his hat up and said, "Eggs." The others nodded,
wordless with wonder. Then the inspector said, "Chickens?"
"Where," I said, "do you think I got the eggs?"
The little man alongside the inspector came to life. In three dextrous
movements he had glasses on, a notebook in his hand, and stylus poised.
"What do you feed them?" he inquired eagerly.
"Seeds," I said, "insects, chopped up garter snakes, mussels, ground up
oyster shells. You boys have all the grain."
There was an excited light in the little man's eyes. He hurried out to
a broken down shed to examine the chickens.
That left two of them. The inspector continued to gaze at the remains
on the plate in a dreamy way. The other man straightened his big
shoulders, looked at me, and said, jerking his thumb toward the shed,
"Mr. Carter's an ecologist. He just came along for the trip. He's on
his way to the Government Experimental Farm over at Murdock. I'm a
government sociologist. I was sent here to have a talk with you. My
name is Ranson."
"Sure. Sit down. I guess I'm licked, but there's no use making a rumpus
about it."
I turned to the inspector whose eyes were still caught in the egg
plate. I said, "Ever taste them?"
"Once," he said, in a far away voice. I went to the cupboard and came
back with a paper bag full of eggs and put it in his hands. He held
them as if someone had just given him the wheat sheaf badge of merit.
"I won't be needing these after our little talk, I expect. Take them
home to the kiddies."
He smiled, looked at the sociologists, who grinned back and nodded. The
inspector walked very carefully out of the back door and down to the
wharf to stow his eggs in the helicopter.
Ranson shifted in his chair. He said, "That was very nice of you, Mr.
Henry."
"George," I said.
"Against the law, of course." There was a smile around his eyes. "Are
you against the law, George?"
"Yes. No use bluffing. You know the story. All the waters and
everything in them are WFI. All the land and everything on it. I don't
like packaged food. I like real food. I don't like my oysters, crabs,
clams, fish minced up and blended with chick weed, cereals, yeast,
algae, plankton, and flavored to taste a little like steak. And plenty
of others feel the same. I have a market."
"An illegal market."
"Yes," I said. "By God, if you had told my father, before I was born,
that the oysters he tonged could not be eaten as oysters, he'd have
laughed in your face. And if you had told him he wouldn't even be
allowed to tong them, he'd have cussed you good and proper!"
"People have to be fed. The only way we can do it is to combine the
total food resources of the world, process and package them, and do it
as efficiently as possible. That means absolute control of _all_ food
sources and their harvesting. You could work for WFI, George. It would
be important work."
"I know. It's so important nothing else gets done. Have you seen the
roads around here? Half the bridges are down across Charles Neck and
Walter Hook. You can't get gas. You can't get telephones, and if you
happen to have one, it doesn't work half the time. And the busses don't
run any more. And--"
Ranson held up his hand. "It's an emergency, George. You have to
realize that. It's been building up for a long time, long before your
father worked the oyster beds in Murdock Sound."
"There's another thing," I said. "Before you fellows closed the Sound,
I was independent. I had my own boat and I made my own way. Now you
put your WFI scoops in the Sound and the whole job is done in a month
or two. And who are the watermen? A couple of clerks to every scoop
who turn a valve every once in a while and draw their packaged food,
clothing, and entertainment once a week. Do you call that a job? Why,
those food clerks couldn't even lift a pair of thirty foot rakes, let
alone tong with them."
"We get more oysters, George, and in less time, and we do it
scientifically."
Ranson tapped his notebook with the stylus and he looked out of the
kitchen window. He was giving me time to cool off. He'd been kind and
patient when he didn't have to be either. With his job he had no time
to sit and reason with a one man resistance movement. He had no time
for anything but food, and organizing society to keep it grubbing
incessantly for food, and, at the same time, to keep society as orderly
and contented as possible. I was not orderly and I was not contented.
But I was just one man, not society. I cooled off.
I said, "Look, Ranson. It's like this. I know you're right. I've had a
look around, and I've thought about it some. The figures are with you:
too many men and not enough food. Only thing is, even from your point
of view, I'm not fit for WFI. I have to be on my own. There ought to be
somewhere, someplace for a man, instead of a food clerk--" I trailed
off unhappily.
* * * * *
"I'm afraid you have no alternative, George. You are a criminal in the
eyes of the WFI. Either you will work for WFI or you will be punished."
He paused.
"I won't work for them."
Carter, the ecologist, burst in at the door, slammed his gloves down
in the middle of the kitchen table. "Ranson, you never saw anything
like it. Fifty in the flock, two roosters, all in fine shape. Lice of
course, some bone malformation in the legs. But healthy."
He began to ask me dozens of questions, but Ranson interrupted.
"I need your help, Carter, and time's wasting. Among other
depredations, George Henry, here, has been robbing government oyster
beds, trapping government crabs, netting government fish, presumably
at night. I needn't add that he has a ready and lucrative market. In
effect, he refuses to cease his depredations, he refuses to join the
WFI, and he is generally uncooperative."
Carter said, "uncooperative," in an absent way. He dragged his mind
away from a flock of fifty fowl living in a most unusual ecology,
narrowed his eyes, and asked a shrewd question.
"How did he get there?"
"What?"
"To the beds."