"That's right. Borned blind as a bat."
"What happened to her?"
"Runned away with some river rat."
"You've hidden her somewhere, Dirkson. Where?"
"I ain't hid her nowhere."
Mesner turned a dial. The hillbilly screamed. His body bent upward.
Blood ran out of his mouth. He was chewing his tongue. Mesner stood up
and frowned. "Guess he didn't know. If he knew he'd have told us. He's
no disguised Egghead. Just a damn collaborating, bottle-headed jerk."
I went over behind some brush and was sick. The hillbilly would never
answer any more questions, I knew that much. Now he was laughing and
babbling and crawling around on his hands and knees.
"It's rough at first, Fred. No matter how patriotic you are, and how
much you hate Eggheads, it's always rough at first. But you should get
used to it."
"What--I mean why--?"
"The Dirksons didn't show for their quarterly brain-check. You assume
they're hiding something. It turns out they're not, then you haven't
lost anything. Of course you have to burn them out a little to
question them. But better to burn one innocent bottlehead than let one
double-dome slip away." Mesner turned and looked at me. "Isn't that
right, Fred?"
"Of course it's right," I said quickly. Mesner smiled at me.
* * * * *
On the way back to Washington, Mesner piloted the heliocar casually. He
leaned back, smoking cigarettes, the ashes streaming down the front of
his soiled lapels.
"I think you'll work out fine in SPA, Fred."
I was still sick. I had a throbbing ache in my head and sweat kept
stinging in my eyes. I nodded numbed agreement with Mesner.
"I appreciate your trying to make an SPA man out of me," I finally
managed to say. "But could you have made some mistake? Gotten the wrong
file or something?"
"No. Your IQ is a nice low eighty, Fred. But you're just not aware that
you have what is technically known as a quiescent IQ."
"What's that?"
"You're a true patriot, Fred. We both know that. So don't be scared.
You know the sick and evil danger of a high IQ and so you've put an
unconscious damper on your own intelligence. You're not really so dumb,
Fred."
"But I am," I said quickly.
"No, Fred. You think you are, and you look and act normally stupid
and believe me, Fred, I admire your patriotic suppression of your
intelligence, even from yourself. But a fact is a fact, and you're not
so dumb."
"I'm not pretending. I'm not a a subversive--"
"Easy now," Mesner said. "You're not a subversive, that's right. A
real subversive knows he's smart, is proud of it and consciously
tries to hide it from others. But you loathe your own inherent mental
ability, and you've been able to freeze its operation, conceal it even
from yourself. Now realize this, Fred. The only place we can allow
intelligence to operate is inside the Government. The Government must
have a slightly superior thinking capacity in order to run things--for
the present anyway."
"But any IQ above eighty is subversive. It says in the--"
"That's an ideal, a goal for the future, Fred. When the transition's
been made, when the last Egghead is captured and put away, then all of
us will be normal. We'll get ourselves bipped, and burn our excessive
intelligence down to the eighty mark. But until that time, Fred,
some of us--especially the SPA--have to keep our wits about us. An
unfortunate necessity that we pray will soon be ended."
I gazed numbly out through the plastic canopy at the white clouds
streaming past. He was trying to get some admission out of me, I
thought. That was the only explanation. Working some subtle game with
me. But that was absurd on its face, because I was way below normal.
"My IQ's no good for you then," I said. "I just don't see--"
Mesner interrupted with an impatient laugh. "You're a hell of a lot
brighter than you let yourself admit that you are, Fred. That's all
I'm saying. You know it's a terrible thing to be smart, so you keep it
under wraps. But now you know there's nothing to be afraid of. You know
it's legal for a while longer to be smart as long as you're in SPA. Now
you can start opening up, releasing your mental capacity. Believe me,
Fred, it's for the good of the state. I know it sounds like a paradox,
but that's how it is."
"How can it be good when it's such an evil thing?"
"Because right now it's a necessary evil. SPA has problems, Fred. There
are still a lot of Eggheads running loose, causing trouble. And the
doubledomes still loose are the toughest ones to catch, and that's
our job. We've got to track down the old maniac physicists, chemists,
engineers, professors, psyche-boys and the like who are still working
underground. Until they're all caught Fred, we've got to live with our
own filthy brains. Because you see it takes brains to catch brains."
"But I have hardly any brains at all," I insisted.
"You'll see, Fred. You'll see."
* * * * *
Before I left his office that evening he gave me an SPA identity card.
My name and face were on it. Suddenly it seemed impossibly official.
All at once, I was one of the most feared and powerful men in the
State. Only I knew that the only one I really feared was me.
That card supposedly gave me a free hand. It could take me anywhere,
even into top-secret departments in Security. With it, I was immune
to curfew laws, to all social restrictions and regulations. But when
I went for a walk that evening, I knew I was being followed. Wherever
I went, eyes watched me constantly. Shadows moved in and out of gray
doorways and dissolved around corners.
After nine, after the curfew sirens howled down the emptied streets, I
walked fast toward the ancient rooming house in which I thought I had
always lived. Hundreds of silent gray women and children came out onto
the streets and began cleaning them with brooms. One by one, the gas
lights along the rubbled streets went out. I started to run through
shadows, and footsteps moved behind me.
A drunken man came out of an alley and staggered down the broken
pavement where weeds grew. A black car whisked him away. But no black
car stopped for me. I saw no one with a black briefcase either. I saw
only shadows, and felt unseen eyes watching me.
The old woman who had been run down by a black car still lay there
on the sidewalk. No one dared approach that corpse to get it off the
streets. No one knew who it was, or why it was dead. No one would take
any chances. One was just as suspect from associating with a guilty
corpse as a living neighbor named Donnicker.
Upstairs, I saw a splotch of blood on the hall floor. This time I knew
it was Donnicker's. It reminded me of the Dirksons now. And of who
could say how many others?
I lay down and took all three of tomorrow's tranquitabs. We were
allotted a month's supply of tranquitabs at a time, and we were all
compelled by law to take three a day. They knocked out worry and
anxiety usually. But now they didn't seem to do me much good. I
couldn't seem to go to sleep. This had never happened to me before.
Maybe Mesner was right. Maybe I did have a high IQ but wasn't
consciously aware of it. This being true, then I _had_ to be in SPA.
SPA was the only place a high IQ could be tolerated.
What really bothered me the most, of course, was why I should be
worried about anything. If my IQ was useful, I ought to be glad of
it. A true patriot should be glad also to have unconscious subversive
elements detected. A true patriot would be grateful for whatever
treatment could cleanse him. What was the matter with me? Didn't I want
to be purified, cleansed? Didn't I want to be bipped a little?
I didn't trust Mesner. I didn't believe he really wanted me to help
him track down Eggheads. But so what? If he was trying to find out
something about me, I ought to be glad to cooperate.
Only I wasn't.
I had bad dreams. I dreamed of Dirkson babbling and crawling and
smiling at me with his bloody mouth. He kept smiling and whispering to
me: "I never did know nothing, and now I'm just all burned out."