That seemed to have been the general idea--how much everyone liked the
music. And each one looked at his card, and they were all comparing
cards and exclaiming over them.
Phil was looking at Kane's card, comparing it with his own and with
some other cards.
"Well, not bad," Phil was saying, "Is it, gang?"
"Not bad at all!" they chorused.
"What isn't bad?" Kane asked.
"Our taste, man," Laura said. "You'll fit so good."
The odd one, Lucille, raised an eyebrow, with some mockery in it still,
at Kane.
"You'll sure belong, Professor. Don't worry," Lucille said. She held up
her card. "We liked it."
"Of course it'll take a little time," Phil said as he threw his arm
over Kane's shoulder. "A few sessions and you'll match up just right."
"I really don't believe I understand," Kane said vaguely.
"You will," Lucille said as she moved away from him. "You sure will,
Professor." She was tall, and with long lithe legs. She was a handsome
woman, Kane thought.
As Phil explained casually on the way toward the Midtown Hotel, they
had just had a music session. Everything was done in sessions, in
groups that is. Everyone had his group, and his group did everything
together.
Anyway, they had had a music session. The machine in the middle was
a Reacto. The cards were Reacto Cards. It was really a kind of taste
tester, and the point was that the Reacto tested everyone's reaction to
the music.
The cards enabled everyone to check their reactions, check them against
the reactions of all the others. It involved conformity ratings, and
tendencies to stray from the group norm.
The important thing about the taste rate cards was that they enabled
you to find out just how much group spirit you had. The closer your
card resembled that of all the others in your group, the more GS you
had.
"My GS rating's gone up," Laura kept burbling all the way to the
Midtown Hotel. "It's gone up!"
The same process applied to reading, movies, television, eating,
anything involving the elements of reacting. The important thing was
not how you yourself felt, but how you felt in relation to the feelings
of the group. The problem seemed to be that of reducing deviation
tendencies to a minimum.
On the way to the Midtown Hotel, Jenny asked Phil how he liked the
new best-seller, _Love Is Forever_, and Phil took a small card out of
his wallet and they all compared Reacto Cards in order to determine
relative reactions to _Love Is Forever_.
Good God! _You had to look at a card to find out how you liked
something!_ It was frightening as hell.
Kane wondered how wide-spread, how universal, it really was, this
incredible conformity, this collective thinking.
This appalling sacrifice of individuality.
Kane was too tired to give much thought to it right then. He was
anxious to get to the Hotel, and he was beginning to fantasize a bed,
cool sheets, his body stretching and sinking down into blissful slumber.
But as appalling as the situation seemed at the time, Kane soon found
that he had only circled on the fringes of it. This was only the
beginning.
* * * * *
"Here we are, here were are, gang!" someone shouted as they piled out
of the cabs and Kane was being hustled toward the suddenly formidable
glint of a revolving door.
So here we are, Kane thought. It was nice being here all right. He was
glad, very glad. But it sounded as though someone might swoon over the
fact.
There was some difficulty with the revolving door. No one seemed able
to move first, and there were spontaneous group lunges ending in
jamming chaos in which someone hurt their arm. Kane thought it was the
fat man, Ben.
"We're hurt!" Jenny screamed.
"Oh--it's not bad," Ben said, laughing all the time he was groaning.
"Just bruised a little, gang. We're just bruised a little."
Kane grabbed his advantage and ventured alone through the revolving
doors into the lobby. A pair of desk clerks nodded across the lobby.
A group was emerging from behind drapes and beyond them Kane saw an
ornate, subtly lighted, cocktail lounge.
Kane was heading for the elevator when the gang overtook him.
Laura had hold of one of his arms, and Phil the other.
"We're having cocktails," Laura said.
Phil repeated it, and Ben and Jenny joined in. The young man, Clarence,
was singing as he herded the others toward the drapes of the cocktail
lounge, and they were all whisking Kane away before he could voice any
protest.
"What'll the gang have?" the waiter asked, smiling. Only he wasn't
really smiling at any of them, Kane thought. He had picked out a center
point of focus and was smiling at that so as not to appear to be
smiling at any one, but at everyone.
"Martinis!" several voices said.
The waiter nodded, whirled away.
"Ah, waiter," Kane said. "I'll have a double shot of Scotch. No ice."
The waiter seemed shocked, unable to come to grips with Kane's
seemingly simple order. "But--but I thought you said Martini."
The gang was still smiling, but faintly. The waiter was backing away.
"No," Kane insisted. "He said Martinis, and she said Martinis, and so
did several others. But I didn't say Martinis. I said Scotch, no ice."
"But Martinis--"