_Sooner or later it would happen, and
after that he wouldn't ever have to
worry again. He'd be dead, or worse,
one of the silent living dead._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, October 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I was suddenly wide awake and listening. A gray light the color of
wet charcoal lay over the chilled room. There it was again. Plain and
sharp through the thin wall separating my room from that of old man
Donnicker, the shoe-maker.
Maybe he was sick. No, that wasn't it. Another muted cry of pain, then
a choking sound, and the unmistakable thud of a falling body. An odd
whirring sound clicked off. Then a voice said, "Grab the verminous legs
of this subversive, Marty. Let's get him in the wagon."
"You gave him too much bip. He looks deader than Einstein."
"I said grab his legs."
A door shut. I went to the window. I was shivering in the morning
chill. A black car moved away down the broken pavement. It swerved to
miss a large mudhole in the middle of the street and an old woman with
burlap wrapped around her feet didn't move fast enough. She flew across
the sidewalk like a ragged dummy and lay in a heap.
Goodbye, Donnicker. I had seen the black car before. Donnicker was
dead. But it didn't bother me. I never had anything to do with
neighbors, anybody I didn't know had a top clearance. I was clear and
intended to stay that way.
You just never knew. Donnicker had seemed like a true patriot. My
carefully distant and casual observations of him had led me to believe
he was as happily stupid as I was. But he had been hiding something.
I turned from the window and started the day's routine that had been
the same for as long as I could remember. I warmed up some mush on
the gas burner. At seven, as always, the Tevee warmed up, and Miss
Info with the lacquered lips smiled at me. "... and so don't worry,
citizens. The past is dead. The future is assured, and tomorrow will
only be another today. And today we are safe and care-free."
Amen. She said it every morning, but it was nice hearing it again.
Then the news came on. There was a pile of junked tractors, trucks
and harvesting machines, smashed and rusting. Then a line of farmers
working with hoes and hand-guided ploughs drawn by horses.
"Machines took away sacred routine work from citizens. Eggheads built
the machines to disrupt and spread the disease of reason. We are now
replacing machines at the rate of a million a week. Soon, all of us
will again be united in the happy harmonious brotherhood of labor. And
when you see a rusting machine, what you are seeing is another captured
Egghead, frothing and fuming in its cage...."
At a quarter to eight I walked ten blocks to work. There were the
usual hectic early morning traffic jams. Wagon-loads of produce and
half-starved horses blocking the streets. The same man was beating a
nag with a board. A wagon piled with fruit and vegetables was stuck in
a pot hole in the pavement. Two men were carrying a spinning wheel into
the front of an apartment building. A peddler was selling oil lanterns,
wicks and kerosene out of a barrel. The same women and boys in dirty
sheepskin jackets were hauling rickshaws.
I really didn't see anyone or speak to anyone. I didn't know anyone. I
knew I was safe and had nothing to worry about. Once a week I used up
my GI liquor chit at a bar with a Security seal on the window. Twice
a week, I slept over at a GI brothel, where every girl had a Security
clearance number tattoed on her thigh.