* * * * *
Barlow whirled to his feet and saw it was Tinny-Peete, his driver.
"I was in doubts about telling you," said the psychist, "but I see you
have some growing suspicions of the truth. Please don't get excited.
It's all right, I tell you."
"So you've got me," said Barlow.
"_Got_ you?"
"Don't pretend. I can put two and two together. You're the secret
police. You and the rest of the aristocrats live in luxury on the sweat
of these oppressed slaves. You're afraid of me because you have to keep
them ignorant."
There was a bellow of bright laughter from the psychist that got them
blank looks from other patrons of the lobby. The laughter didn't sound
at all sinister.
"Let's get out of here," said Tinny-Peete, still chuckling. "You
couldn't possibly have it more wrong." He engaged Barlow's arm and led
him to the street. "The actual truth is that the millions of workers
live in luxury on the sweat of the handful of aristocrats. I shall
probably die before my time of overwork unless--" He gave Barlow a
speculative look. "You may be able to help us."
"I know that gag," sneered Barlow. "I made money in my time and to make
money you have to get people on your side. Go ahead and shoot me if you
want, but you're not going to make a fool out of me."
"You nasty little ingrate!" snapped the psychist, with a kaleidoscopic
change of mood. "This damned mess is all your fault and the fault of
people like you! Now come along and no more of your nonsense."
He yanked Barlow into an office building lobby and an elevator that,
disconcertingly, went _whoosh_ loudly as it rose. The real estate man's
knees were wobbly as the psychist pushed him from the elevator, down a
corridor and into an office.
A hawk-faced man rose from a plain chair as the door closed behind
them. After an angry look at Barlow, he asked the psychist, "Was I
called from the Pole to inspect this--this--?"
"Unget updandered. I've dee-probed etfind quasichance exhim
Poprobattackline," said the psychist soothingly.
"Doubt," grunted the hawk-faced man.
"Try," suggested Tinny-Peete.
"Very well. Mr. Barlow, I understand you and your lamented had no
children."
"What of it?"
"This of it. You were a blind, selfish stupid ass to tolerate economic
and social conditions which penalized child-bearing by the prudent and
foresighted. You made us what we are today, and I want you to know that
we are far from satisfied. Damn-fool rockets! Damn-fool automobiles!
Damn-fool cities with overhead ramps!"
"As far as I can see," said Barlow, "you're running down the best
features of time. Are you crazy?"
"The rockets aren't rockets. They're turbo-jets--good turbo-jets, but
the fancy shell around them makes for a bad drag. The automobiles
have a top speed of one hundred kilometers per hour--a kilometer is,
if I recall my paleolinguistics, three-fifths of a mile--and the
speedometers are all rigged accordingly so the drivers will think
they're going two hundred and fifty. The cities are ridiculous,
expensive, unsanitary, wasteful conglomerations of people who'd
be better off and more productive if they were spread over the
countryside.
"We need the rockets and trick speedometers and cities because, while
you and your kind were being prudent and foresighted and not having
children, the migrant workers, slum dwellers and tenant farmers were
shiftlessly and short-sightedly having children--breeding, breeding. My
God, how they bred!"
* * * * *
"Wait a minute," objected Barlow. "There were lots of people in our
crowd who had two or three children."
"The attrition of accidents, illness, wars and such took care of that.
Your intelligence was bred out. It is gone. Children that should have
been born never were. The just-average, they'll-get-along majority took
over the population. The average IQ now is 45."
"But that's far in the future--"
"So are you," grunted the hawk-faced man sourly.
"But who are _you_ people?"
"Just people--real people. Some generations ago, the geneticists
realized at last that nobody was going to pay any attention to what
they said, so they abandoned words for deeds. Specifically, they formed
and recruited for a closed corporation intended to maintain and improve
the breed. We are their descendants, about three million of us. There
are five billion of the others, so we are their slaves.
"During the past couple of years I've designed a skyscraper, kept
Billings Memorial Hospital here in Chicago running, headed off war with
Mexico and directed traffic at LaGuardia Field in New York."
"I don't understand! Why don't you let them go to hell in their own
way?"
The man grimaced. "We tried it once for three months. We holed up at
the South Pole and waited. They didn't notice it. Some drafting-room
people were missing, some chief nurses didn't show up, minor government
people on the non-policy level couldn't be located. It didn't seem to
matter.
"In a week there was hunger. In two weeks there were famine and plague,
in three weeks war and anarchy. We called off the experiment; it took
us most of the next generation to get things squared away again."
"But why _didn't_ you let them kill each other off?"
"Five billion corpses mean about five hundred million tons of rotting
flesh."