[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science
Fiction May 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
_She was a young, enthusiastic worker for the Welfare Department.
She liked helping people ... only she really-but-good helped them!_
The office wasn't very bright or sunny, but that didn't matter. In the
first place, if Gloria really wanted sun, she could always get some by
tuning in on a mind outside, someone walking the streets of downtown New
York. And, in the second place, the weather wasn't important; what
mattered was how you felt inside. Gloria took off her beret and crammed
it into a drawer of her desk. She sat down, feeling perfectly ready for
work, her bright eyes sparkling and her whole twenty-one-year-old body
eager for the demands of the day.
It was ten minutes to nine in the morning.
On the desk was a mass of reports and folders. Gloria looked at them and
sighed; the cleaning woman, she thought, must have upset everything
again.
But neatness was the keystone of good, efficient work in any field.
Gloria set to work rearranging everything in a proper order. The job
took her nearly twenty minutes and, by the time she was finished, the
office was full.
Mr. Fredericksohn hadn't arrived yet, naturally. He always came in
around nine-thirty. But all of the case workers were ready for the day's
work. Gloria looked around the office at them, beaming. It was good to
be able to help people and to know that what you were doing was right.
She remembered wondering how you could be sure you were right about
somebody else, if you couldn't read minds. But, then, there were rules
to go by, and all of the fine classes and textbooks that a social case
worker had to have. If you paid attention, and if you really wanted to
help people, Gloria supposed, it was all right. Certainly everything in
her own office seemed to run smoothly.
Not that she would ever do anything about another worker, no matter
what. Gloria remembered what Mr. Greystone, a teacher of hers had said,
a year or so before: "Never interfere with the case load of another
worker. Your sole job is represented by your own case load."
That was good advice, Gloria thought. And, anyhow, her assistance didn't
seem to be too badly needed, among the others. She had quite enough to
do in taking care of her own clients.
And here she was, wasting time! She shook her head and breathed a little
sigh, and began on the first folder.
Name: GIRONDE, JOSE R.
* * * * *
_Name: Wladek, Mrs. Marie Posner._ She was no fool. She knew about the
reports they had to make, and the sheets covered with all the details of
your very own private life; she had seen them on a desk when she had
come to keep her appointment. Mrs. Wladek was her name, and that was how
the report would look, with her name all reversed in order right on the
top. And underneath that there would be her address and her story, all
that she had told the case workers, set right down in black and white
for anybody at all to read.
When you were poor, you had no privacy, and that was the truth. Mrs.
Wladek shook her head. A poor old woman, that was all that she was, and
privacy was a luxury not to be asked for. Who said the United States was
different from the old country?
_Cossacks_, she thought. In the old country, one still heard the old
stories, the streets paved with gold and the food waiting for such as
yourself; oh, the war had not changed that in the least. Now the Voice
of America was heard in the old country--she had a letter, smuggled out,
from her own second-cousin Marfa, telling her all about the Voice of
America--and that was only another trap. They wanted to make you leave
your own land and your own country, and come far away to America and to
the United States, so that you would have no friends and you would be
defenseless.
Then you could not help yourself. Then you had to do what they asked
you, because there was no other way to eat. There were no friends to
feed you dinners or to allow you room in a good house. No. There was
only the case worker with her reports that took the last bit of privacy
away from an old woman, and left her with barely enough money to remain
alive.
"Get a job," they said. "Tell your son to get a job. He is young and
strong and healthy."
Certainly! But the United States is not a place in which to work. The
United States will give you money. This fact she had from her uncle
Bedrich, who had come to the new country years before, and who had
written many letters back to his family before his death in an accident.
Should she, then, work? Should her own son, her own Rudi, be forced to
work out his time of youth? Surely a little privacy was a small enough
thing to surrender for freedom and ease?