"Yes. Was that wrong?"
"It's what I did when I was your age," the older man said. "It's the
only sensible thing to do. Yes, you have three days to make up your
mind. You can go on taking the unworry capsules for the rest of your
life--or you can begin withdrawing. You'll have to decide that for
yourself."
Something fluttery throbbed in the pit of Larry's stomach. It was the
first sign of worry, the first agony of decision-making. He remained
calm; despite his lifelong use of Koletsky's drug, its peculiar
properties were such that he felt no need of it now.
Yet--how did he choose? In three days, how? Uneasily, he wiggled his
feet against the cool, yielding surface of the floor for a moment,
left the bed, crossed the room, threw open the door. Across the hall,
the robonurse was ministering to his younger brother. The sleepy-eyed
eight-year-old was sitting up in bed while the pseudomother washed and
dressed him.
Larry smiled. His brother's face was calm, relaxed, confident-looking.
"The lucky devil," he said out loud. "He's got nine years of happiness
left."
"You can have the rest of your lifetime, son."
Larry turned. His father's voice was flat, without any hint of emotion
or any trace of value-judgment.
"I know," Larry said. "One way--or the other."
* * * * *
Later that first day, he dressed and left the house. He crossed the
pedestrian-walk that led from his block to the next, feeling curiously
impermanent in his between-status status.
The pedestrian-walk was empty except for a wandering vendor struggling
along under a load of bubble-toys. Larry doubled his pace and caught
up with the man, a short, long-nosed individual with worry-creases
furrowing his thin face.
"Hello, son. Got your bubble-ship yet?" He held forth the inflatable
vehicle and smiled--a forced, slick smile that faded when the vendor
noticed the luminescent armband that told of Larry's status. "Oh--a
Changer," the vendor said. "I guess you wouldn't be interested in a
bubble-ship, then."
"I guess not." Larry took the toy from the vendor's hand anyway, and
examined it. "You make these yourself?"
"Oh, no, not at all. I get them from the Distributory." The vendor
scowled and shook his head. "They keep cutting down my allotment all
the time. I don't know how I'll stay in business."
"Why? Won't there always be a market?"
"There must be something new out," the vendor said gloomily. "The young
ones just aren't interested in bubble-toys these days. Things were good
last year, but--" he frowned dismally--"they're getting worse all the
time."
"Sorry to hear that," Larry sympathized. He felt vaguely disturbed--the
bubble-toys were vastly popular among his friends, and it was upsetting
to learn that the vendor was doing so badly. "I wish I could do
something for you."
"Don't worry about me, son. You've got your own problems now." The
vendor smiled bleakly at him and turned off the pedestrian-walk into
the side-road that led to the Playground, leaving Larry alone.
_Those were strange words_, he thought. He revolved them in his mind,
getting used to their feel. _You've got your own problems._ He looked
around, at the neat, clean suburb with its attractive little ten-story
units and carefully-spaced splotches of green garden, and shook his
head. _Problems. To be or not to be._ It was a line from an old play he
had found taped in his father's library.
The play had made no sense to him at the time, but now it troubled him.
He made a mental note to ask his father about it, some time in the next
two days, and walked on. He wanted to see as much as he could of the
adult world, before it was time to decide which he preferred.
* * * * *
The City was a maze of connected buildings, redoubled avenues, tangled
byways and confusing signs. Larry stood in the heart of the business
district, watching the grownups zoom past him, each walking alone, face
set determinedly as he pursued some private mission.
"Move along, boy," someone said roughly. Larry glanced around, saw a
man in uniform scowling at him. The scowl softened into something like
pity as the man noticed the badge of Larry's status. Hastily, Larry
walked on, moving deeper into the web of the City.
He had never been here before. The City was someplace where fathers
went during the day, during the pleasant hours of school and
Playground, and from which fathers came, grimy and irritable, in the
evening. Larry had never considered going to the City before. Now it
was necessary.
He had no particular destination in mind. But after seventeen years in
the unworrying world, he would simply have to investigate the world of
anxiety before making up his mind.
A car buzzed by suddenly, and he leaped to one side. Out here in the
City, cars ran right next to the pedestrian-walks, not on flying
skyways above them. Larry hugged the side of a building for a moment,
recovering his calm.
Calm. Stay calm. Make a cool, objective appraisal.
But how?
Nine out of ten people picked this world. Larry ran his fingers over
the rough brick of the building, and felt the tension beginning to
curdle his stomach. Nine out of ten. _Am I the tenth? Am I going to
decide to go back to a lifetime of unworry?_
It seemed so. This dirty, hypertense, overcrowded place seemed
boundlessly undesirable. The choice was obvious.
But still....
He shook his head. After a moment of complete unthought, he let go of
the side of the building and took a few hesitant steps forward. He was
really frightened now. Suddenly, he wanted to be home, wanted to know
again the smooth placidity of an unworried day.
He started to walk faster, then to run. After half a block, he stopped,
suddenly.
_Where am I running?_
He didn't know. He felt trapped, hemmed in, overwhelmed by despair.
_So this is the City? Sorry, I don't care for it._
"You're all alone, aren't you?" said a sudden voice from behind him.
"It's not wise, on your first day off the drug."
Larry turned. The man behind him was tall and narrow-shouldered, with
the pinched, baggy face of a grownup and a wide, sly smile. "Yes, I'm
all alone," he said.
"I thought so. I can tell a Changer when I see one, even without the
armband."
Larry glanced down at his arm quickly and saw that the identifying
armband was gone. Somehow, somewhere, he must have ripped it off. He
looked at the stranger, and in a hoarse voice asked, "What do you want?"
"A companion for a drink," the stranger said affably. "Care to join me?"
"No--I--all right," Larry said with a firmness that surprised himself.
"Let's go have a drink."
* * * * *
The alcohol stung his mouth, and the flavoring in the drink tasted
rancid, but he put the whole thing down and looked across the table at
the stranger.
"I don't much like that drink," he said.
"Not surprising." The other grinned. "It's one of our favorites."
"_Our?_"
"City people, I mean. Ulcer people. We gobble the stuff up. Not
surprising you don't like it."
Larry touched his forefingers lightly together. "I don't think I'd ever
like it, no matter how long I tried to get used to it."
"Oh?" The stranger's left eyebrow rose slightly. "_Never?_"
Larry shook his head. "Or the rest of the City, for that matter." He
sighed. "I don't think I'm the City type. I think I'm going to give the
whole thing up and go back home. The City isn't for me."
"Have another drink," the stranger said. "Go on--I'll pay. It'll take
your mind off your problems."
"There's a capsule that'll do it a lot more efficiently," Larry said.
"I don't need bad-tasting drinks to ease my mind."
"You're definitely cashing in your chips, then?"
"What?"
"I mean, you're definitely choosing Koletsky for life, eh?"
Larry paused a while, letting the images of the City filter through his
mind again. Finally he nodded. "I think so. I really do."
"Two full days more--and you've made up your mind?" The stranger shook
his head. "That'll never do, son. You'll have to think more deeply."
"How deep do I have to think?"
"Tell me what anxiety is," the stranger countered.
Taken aback by the sudden and seemingly irrelevant question, Larry
blinked. "Anxiety? Why--worry, isn't it? Fear? Ulcers and headaches?"
The stranger shook his head slowly and dialed another drink. "Anxiety
is the feeling that things are too good, that you're riding for a
fall," he said carefully. "It's a sense of things about to get worse."
Larry remembered the bubble-vendor and nodded. "But they have to be
pretty good to start with, don't they?"
"Right. You've got to have something pretty good--and be worried
that you're going to lose it. Then you fight to keep it.
Challenge--response. That's anxiety. Fear's something different. Then
you creep into the corner and shake. Or you hang onto the side of a
wall."
"I think I'll take another drink," Larry said thoughtfully.
"You get what I mean? Anxiety pushes and prods you, but it doesn't make
you shrivel. You've got to be strong to stand up under it. That's how
our world works."
"So?"
"You haven't experienced any real anxiety yet, boy. Just fear--and
you're reacting out of fear. You can't judge your response to something
if you're really responding to something else."
Larry frowned and gulped his drink. It tasted a little better, this
time, though only imperceptibly so. "You mean I'm deciding too quickly,
then? That I ought to look around the City a little longer?"
"Yes and no," the stranger said. "You're deciding much too
quickly--yes. But looking around the City won't do. No; go back home."
"Home?"
"Home. Go back to your Playground. Look there. Then decide."
Larry nodded slowly. "Sure," he said. "Sure--that's it." He felt the
tension drain out of him. "I think I'll have one more drink before I
go."
* * * * *
The Playground was crowded on the second day of Larry's three-day
period. Small children played happily near the shimmering wading pond,
older ones gathered for games in the playing-field farther on, and, far
in the distance, a group of permanent unworriers sat complacently in
the sun, neither thinking nor moving. Humming robonurses threaded here
and there through the Playground, seeing to it that no one got into any
trouble. They were necessary, of course--because the unworried children
would have no fear of leaping from a tree head-first or walking into
the path of a speeding baseball.
Larry stood at the edge of the Playground, leaning against the
confining fence, watching. His friends were there--the boys he had
played with only two days before, still happily occupied with their
games and their bubble-toys. Walking carefully, in order not to be
seen, he skirted the side of the playing area and headed for the green
fields where the Permanents were.
There were about a hundred of them, of all ages. Larry recognized a
former playmate of his--a boy of about nineteen, now--and there were
older men, too, some well along in middle age. They sat quietly,
unmoving, most of them, smiling pleasantly.
Larry entered the field and walked to the nearest bench.
"Mind if I join you?"