Respect to Tom Lehrer

 This week, Tom Lehrer passed away at the age of 97. Pretty good innings, Tom was a famous American satirist and musician. Not being American, I did not know much about Tom until I started surfing the net. In those days things were scattered and decentralised, being a nerd I trawled through geeky humour pages. It was here that I discovered some of Lehrer's work. Clicking on little speaker icons and listening to low kilobyte midi tunes, I remember the Von Braun song in particular. 

Fast-forward over some years and I encounter Tom Lehrer again, in 2020 the then relatively young Tom Lehrer announced that he was putting his entire musical body of work into the public domain. 

 I, Tom Lehrer, individually and as trustee of the Tom Lehrer Trust 2007, hereby grant the following permissions: All copyrights to lyrics or music written or composed by me have been permanently and irrevocably relinquished, and therefore such songs are now in the public domain. All of my songs that have never been copyrighted, having been available for free for so long, are now also in the public domain. In other words, I have abandoned, surrendered and disclaimed all right, title and interest in and to my work and have injected any and all copyrights into the public domain.

 I was surprised and spent an evening and then a weekend flicking through the catalogue. While doing that, I felt a growing sense of familiarity. Then it clicked, "I know some of these songs!" songs I hadn't heard in ages. It was a nostalgic trip, I never had the pleasure of meeting Tom Lehrer nor am I capable of writing a biography, but I appreciate his wit and his work and his commitment to an open culture.

If you've not had the pleasure than I recommend checking out his site, there's also a fan run channel on YouTube. Goodnight Mr Lehrer, goodnight.

 

A Turn of Phrase

Copyright is a very confusing field. In the United Kingdom, this confusion is exacerbated by a common phrase. In British English, Public Domain is commonly used to refer to things are known to the public and has no bearing to the protected status of a concept or piece of media.

 There are many examples I can choose from, so I've picked the most recent. On the BBC iPlayer there is a documentary series on the July 2005 bombings, commonly known in the UK as the 7/7 bombings, as thankfully the second round of bombings on the 21st of July all failed. During the documentary, a senior anti-terrorism officer for the Metropolitan police used the phrase public domain. He's not talking about fair use or copyright, he's referring to a press conference and the disclosures of his superior Ian Blair (no relation to Tony Blair). The reason he's using that term is to shield himself from potential criticism or prosecution under the UK's strict slander and libel laws. By referring to the contentious subject as being in the public domain he's stating that he's comments are based on what was widely available at the time, so if his comments cross the line and a legal challenge was initiated he can fall back on that. It's quite similar to the American way of adding `allegedley` to the end of a serious accusation or criticism. You're not saying it's a hundred percent accurate and true, you're commenting on an existing allegation. 

 I trust the grounds for confusion are obvious, but it's not completely wrong to use the term in this manner. Using public domain as synonym for publicly available is sort of true in regard to facts and popular opinions. You can cease and desist a video distributor and DMCA music remixers, but you can't make the public `unknow` or `unhear` a fact or opinion. That's the alleged harm that IP owners of academic journals and the image consultants of powerful people allege when unauthorised disclosures happen. By leaking or accidentally sharing the results of a study, you've de facto removed the control or `right` of the legal owners to use it as they wish. 

 My only issue is that since awareness of copyright and the Public Domain is increasing year-on-year, I'm worried that some people will be confused by the phrase and start using material that's still copyrighted and thus be vulnerable to action. I know that's not an unfounded fear because several years ago I was involved in just such a dispute. After leaving University I struggled to find work, I became a freelancer, mainly writing copy, the odd paid consumer review and photography. It's the latter that concerns us here. After a trip to London with some friends, I uploaded my photos to Facebook. Two days later in the local newspaper I found to my surprise some of those photographs, and even stranger, credited to someone else. I didn't recognise the name, but they were absolutely my photographs. 

I contacted the newspaper providing proof of ownership, and they replied with an apology, agreed to print a correction in a later issue and gave me the contact details of the person who submitted them. Turned out is one of my circle of friends, though friends was a bit of a stretch. Annoyed, I emailed them telling them I knew what they did and that I was not happy with them. They didn't take it very well. The one excuse they kept coming back to was that the photos were in the public domain, which they weren't remotely, at the time I was still taking client work so didn't release copyrights on any of my work as I was still building my portfolio. I did occasionally release some works under a creative commons' licence, which specified attribution, but that wasn't the case for those photos. Honestly, it happened so quickly I hadn't had time to decide what I was going to do with them, I just uploaded them to Facebook for my friends to see while I decided if they were worth using for something else. 

Still, the incident was quite revealingly, it became clear that the misunderstanding meant he was only concerned about legal consequences. Had I given my photos to the public domain, that wouldn't explain or excuse pretending he had taken them and submitting them for credit*. That's plagiarism and a rotten way to treat someone, especially a friend. My ex-friend's photography adventures ended at that point. 

 So, what's the solution? Well, I try to switch from public domain to public sphere or some other synonym when it comes up in my life. Currently, I don't know of anyone getting into trouble for the misunderstanding, and if someone is unlucky enough to get dragged through the courts then I think the issue will be resolved pretty quickly.

*I had got to know the photographers for the local paper and they confirmed no money changed hands. 

Kidnapped!

 While browsing my local comic shop I picked up a copy of a comic adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped (1886).

I'm afraid I'm in the process of being priced out of the average comic book so I've been looking for bargains and paperback collections or one and dones as I like to call them.

This comic ticked those boxes with the bonus of dovetailing with my renewed interest in tackling the 'classics' works from the early 20th century and earlier. As a student I used to dip in and out of gothic horror, translations of Roman and Greek myths and philosophy and regency era drama thanks to the cheap Wordsworth and Dover Thrift editions.

I'm pleased to learn that Marvel have a similar line in adapting classic works including Stevenson's other famous work Treasure Island. 

Kidnapped has some similarities to Treasure Island, a young protagonist, sinister sailors, sword fighting and plotting and murder over plunder.

But there are more influences that keep Kidnapped fresh and its own story. The narrative takes place exclusively within Scotland from the Highlands to the outskirts of Edinburgh.

The plot is also steeped in Scottish history and takes place in the aftermath of the failed Jacobite rebellions. I think if it had been published today it find its home on a Young Adult shelf in a bookshop or library. It doesn't bog the story down in detail but does make sure the important parts are covered by the events of the story.

As a comic version of a novel the events are necessarily abridged, but the art of Mario Gully makes up for the reduced page count. Whereas prose would convey that a character is hiding a sinister intent through descriptive paragraphs, a comic can convey that through its panels, e.g. the character is all smiles with the group, but is grim and sinister when alone.

Or in this case you can show how intense and stubborn Oig Roy is by posture and face

I quite enjoyed my evening with Kidnapped, I recomend it if you've been curious about it or Stevensons work but found the langauge off putting, its a fine introduction to his works and style.

Rudyard Kipling's Boots

 

 

Last weekend, I watched Danny Boyle's 28 Years Later. In addition to having a good time, it introduced me to a poem by Rudyard Kipling. The poem is Boots, and it appeared in a collection of poems in 1903. The poem features in the film, but was also a key part of their marketing in the United Kingdom, the trailers used a recording of the whole poem to great effect.

 If you live in an area that had a different marketing strategy like Japan which still used the recording but in a reduced form, here's the full recording.

Sing along!

We're foot—slog—slog—slog—sloggin' over Africa
Foot—foot—foot—foot—sloggin' over Africa --
(Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up and down again!)
There's no discharge in the war!
Seven—six—eleven—five—nine-an'-twenty mile to-day
Four—eleven—seventeen—thirty-two the day before --
(Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up and down again!)
There's no discharge in the war!
Don't—don't—don't—don't—look at what's in front of you.
(Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up an' down again);
Men—men—men—men—men go mad with watchin' em,
An' there's no discharge in the war!
Count—count—count—count—the bullets in the bandoliers.
If—your—eyes—drop—they will get atop o' you!
(Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up and down again) --
There's no discharge in the war!
We—can—stick—out—'unger, thirst, an' weariness,
But—not—not—not—not the chronic sight of 'em,
Boot—boots—boots—boots—movin' up an' down again,
An' there's no discharge in the war!
'Taint—so—bad—by—day because o' company,
But night—brings—long—strings—o' forty thousand million
Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up an' down again.
There's no discharge in the war!
I—'ave—marched—six—weeks in 'Ell an' certify
It—is—not—fire—devils, dark, or anything,
But boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up an' down again,
An' there's no discharge in the war!
Try—try—try—try—to think o' something different
Oh—my—God—keep—me from goin' lunatic!
(Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up an' down again!)
There's no discharge in the war!
 

It has a strong effect on me, and the reader does a phenomenal job. The recorder was American actor Taylor Holmes (1899-1959) and the recording was made in 1915, this means that both the poem and the recording are in the Public Domain in most territories.  The point of the poem is to make the general public aware of the dangers of monotony and ceaseless repetitive action and what that does to a person trapped in that cycle. Its a war poem in which no one dies, no one gets shot and no one stands gallantly. 

I'm lucky enough not to have been in a war so far, but I was in the Cadets and I have had a taste of this monotonous action for its own sake. I've also worked in a factory and experienced something very similar to the poor soldier in the poem, hours dedicated to repeating the same action over and over and over again, looking up the line and seeing the product keep coming and never ends, it absolutely does mess with your head and I have seen some people crash emotionally because of it.  

 So, there we are a horror story involving the public domain that's creative and good.

 

Godzilla is coming for us all!

 

Soon, soon.

Recently there's been an interesting development, a Japanese man from Osaka was arrested for selling bootleg DVDs. Okay, given how strict Japan's IP laws are, that isn't particularly interesting. Except, that one of the DVDs was a colourised version of the original Godzilla movie, released in 1954.

Again, since that movie is owned by Toho, Japan's Disney analogue an arrest isn't surprising either. But because it went to court and a sentence was given, it gave some much-needed clarity to a grey area in Japanese copyright law.  

 

Ippei Miyamoto, a part-time worker in the Osaka city of Toyonaka, has admitted to the allegation, according to investigative sources.

Miyamoto is suspected of selling a DVD copy of the 1954 film, copyrighted by Toho, for ¥2,980 in mid-November last year.

According to police sources, he allegedly used image conversion software to colorize old black-and-white films and created pirated DVDs, which he sold on flea market websites and his own website.

Japan Times 

If you remember when I wrote about Kurosawa, I mentioned that Japan currently has two overlapping copyright terms for its 20th century cinematic output. An older statute that set terms of protection for movies at 38 years after the passing of its director, and a newer one that lasts for 70 years after publication. But since both were upheld by Japan's court system, it was difficult to work out the terms of protection for many of Japan's older movies. 

Until today, while I am against the arrest and probable prosecution of Ippei Miyamoto, I am glad at least that in forming a case against him the police have answered that question. In order to mount a case for copyright infringement, they had to prove that the work in question was still under copyright. The case against Miyamoto states that since the Director of Godzilla Ishiro Honda died in 1993 the copyright on the film and all of Honda's other directed works expires in 2031. So, on the 1st of January 2031, Godzilla will enter the public domain in Japan, and all other territories that have the law of shorter term. Which includes the nation I live in, but does not include many nations, including the United States of America.

 I won't gloat, 6 years is a long time and there's still time for some copyright "reform" that will favour Toho keeping control for even longer. That's happened a lot in recent years. 

 

Common-Sense Country by L.S. Bevington

 

Credit to No Bonzo

A short story demonstrating a possible Anarchist future, written sometime in the 1890s.
 

Common-Sense Country

There was a country where Common-sense had somehow got the upper hand. In that country sense was as common as lunacy is in a madhouse. There was a place for everything, and everything was either in that place, or else was on the direct way there—the shortest way, the easiest way, the cheapest way. In that country everybody was brought up with the notion that the simplest plan in everything served everybody’s turn best, even the clever people’s; and it was taken as a matter of course that if things did not go wrong people wouldn’t. They read in their books of history and comparative sociology that in countries were things do go wrong, people go wrong too, in the blind, blundering attempt to straighten things back a bit. But in Common-sense Country it was always said when things went wrong that there had been some nonsense—that is, empty word-play—in the heads or habits of the people, which had diverted attention from realities, and caused the people to let things wander out of the way.

In Common-sense Country all the commodities and goods, all the instruments, utensils, and appliances—in short, all the “things”—had very simple and unadventurous biographies, and, if they could have spoken, they would not have had much harrowing information to impart about the ravages of their tissues and textures caused by moth and rust, nor yet of vicissitudes incurred at the hands of thieves breaking through to steal. “I was needed: I was made: I was conveyed: I was applied: I was consumed.” That would have summed up the history of a thing in the country where things went right: only five short chapters. In most countries, of course, all sorts of distressing and distracting other chapters intervene. Thus: “I was coveted: I was done without: I was lied for: I was hated for: I was speculated in: I was adulterated: I was advertised. I was legislated about: I was sold (and my buyer with me): I was squandered: I was hoarded: I was quarrelled over: I was fought for: I was burgled: I was bombed.”

* * *

In Common-sense Country there was a job for everyone, and everyone was merrily, ardently, or placidly doing that job. No one was doing mere “business” and calling it work. No one was doing real work and feeling it “toil”. Dull jobs were done in short spells by an immense number of people; delightful jobs were worked at for the pleasure of the thing, in longer spells, and by a fewer number of people. It fell out so, naturally, and because of common sense; nobody had to be at the trouble of enforcing the arrangement. The man with the dullest or most fatiguing job, as a matter of course, got the longest leisure for re-creation of his naturally flagging zest for the job. The man with the pleasurable and healthy job hardly knew leisure from job. The kindliest and most able-bodied and jolliest of the people had common-sense reasons for attending to the least appetizing tasks. Everybody knew they wanted doing; and these kindly, vigorous, and jolly folks were those who cared most about getting them done, and cared least about minor disagreeables. They also liked the peculiar way in which other people shook hands with them for it, and more than made it good to them in the way of respect and hospitality wherever they went.

You never saw any feet without shoes in cold weather in Common-sense Country. And you never saw any shoes heaped up thousands thick in warehouses with no feet to put into them. Common-sense citizens had grave objections, not only to cold, discomfort, and disease, but also grave objections to the enormous expense of thought, time, material, and goodwill, necessarily involved in any and every measure for keeping empty shoes warm indoors, and human feet cold outside in the street. You never came to a place in any Common-sense city where, by turning your head to the right, you could see one horn of a dilemma in the shape of a lot of grain or fish being destroyed on the lunatic excuse that it could not be sold for more than it cost, while by turning your head to the left the other horn of the dilemma became visible in the shape of men and women (with their children) hungry, worried, and constantly at their wits’ end, only because they could not buy back the comestibles they had ploughed, reaped, milled, fished, and otherwise laboured to bring within human reach.

* * *

In Common-sense Country there were no jerry built houses, because people could not see any reason for making insecure and unhealthy dwellings. There were no ground landlords to make it disadvantageous to any builder to build honestly; no builders so hard pressed, therefore, that they were obliged to cause the masons to scamp work, use limeless mortar, or unseasoned wood. No builder or mason, moreover, had (in the name of common-sense) any object whatever in view so immediately as the supplying of buildings wanted for use. He built houses for bakers, clothiers, artists, and all sorts of other useful persons; and these lived in the houses and produced food, clothing, works of art, and all sorts of other useful things for the builder in exchange.

There was no waste of any energy or of any talent in Common-sense Country. There were no churches and temples made with hands; because hands had better things to do than build prisons to shut up souls in. Also because in strict common sense the sky was holy enough to “sit under,” and even to sing spiritual songs under. Besides, Common-senseites had discovered that you could not get the sun and fixed stars and all their lesser lights into the biggest of temples ever made with hands. In Common-sense Country people liked daylight for their minds and morals as well as for their bodies; and found it cheapest in the long run.

* * *

There were next to no shipwrecks on the coasts of Common-sense Country; no one raced any ships to port in all weathers for the nonsensical reason of getting in before other ships. People on shore could always afford to wait a day or so for the weather, better than they could afford to kill men, sink ships, and spoil cargoes through running amuck at nature’s meteorological arrangements. It did not matter a jot to any one which ship got in first, since all ships were full of supplies, and sure to drop in, in natural order, as fast as needed. What sense of hurry there was, founded of course on experience of the inconvenience of waiting, led to all possible improvements in the art and science of ship-building and engine-building, so that wind-and-wave difficulties had been reduced to a minimum. So there was no colliding in fogs, no bursting of boilers, no over-lading, and no un-seaworthy craft; also no “Lloyd’s” agencies, to speculate on anyone’s want of common-sense, and to live as parasites on the low moral vitality of the public, making profit at its expense. When folk talked of “insuring” in that country, they always meant making as sure as possible against chances of mishap. To insure a ship was to build her well, fit her well, man her well, to steer clear of shoals, and keep her in sound repair. Likewise with the insurance of houses. And to insure your life, you had only to eat, drink, and clothe yourself on hygienic principles, to avoid the indolence or the over-taxing of any of your faculties, and to act fairly by every one of your fellow-creatures with whom you had to do. In common-sense language, insuring your life or property never meant to make it worth anyone’s while to destroy either one or the other.

* * *

No visible teacher taught common-sense in that country. Children were born with it ready-made. It lay in their human nature. It taught itself. It “growed” (like Topsy) because neither “business” nor “policy” existed to check or warp it—indeed neither the policy of business nor the business of policy were known at all, except as queer, sad, old superstitions, suffered through and done with ages ago, during the time when human generations were paying a big price in the purgatory of civilization, for the privilege of having beaten other creatures in the dangerous matter of language. Children in Common-sense Country were never taught to be “wise and prudent,” because that was the way to prevent anything of any interest or beauty or high import from being “revealed.” Their little, honest, ignorant, simple questions received honest, accurate, and simple answers, in language which they could understand, and which they never needed to unlearn afterwards. And this alike on all subjects. Every young man and young woman grew up with as much common-sense in his or her head or expectations as the elders could help them to. And each young man or young woman went on from a common-sense starting point to use his or her faculties as individual endowment suggested, so that each generation kept on fearlessly adding to real knowledge by experimenting in new directions as common-sense prompted; while the elders loved to have it so, and felt rewarded for their good faith to the children, and were sometimes in their own turn listeners, questioners, learners.

* * *

Common-sense citizens never said “Time is money.” They said that money-minting, money-managing, and money-protecting entail endless waste of time and trouble; that they are an abuse of human faculty, resulting in a great deal of death—bodily, intellectual, moral, and spiritual. Also it was said these and like employments were as nonsensical in their objects as they were vicious in their effects. Money in Common-sense Country had no meaning, any more than it has in a beehive. No one said “Money is power.” Sometimes it was said “Money is weakness.” That was when Common-senseites were speaking of the doings and miseries of the inhabitants of Lunatic Land. (By the way, the word used was not money but mammon.) One objection they had to money, beyond its nonsensicalness, was its tendency—in proportion to the degree of its accumulation in a man’s hand—to sap away his “soul,” his moral individuality, his character. They said, “What can it profit a man to lose his soul, and become a moral paralytic?” They observed also that wherever in Lunatic Land mammon had accumulated in a man’s hand, it had a tendency to put into his other hand a sceptre, a truncheon, a gatling gun, or some other preposterous implement, making of that moral paralytic a lord over two, or five, or ten cities, or markets, or communities—as the case might be.

* * *

As there was no mammon, there were none of those dismal things which are eternal essentials where mammon reigns. There were no arsenals, no armies, no police, no spies: no banks, no prisons, no poorhouses: no brothels, no divorce courts, no nunneries, no confessionals: no “rings,” no strikes, no infernal machines, no gallows. Common-sense found no sort of use in any of these queer things. Common-sense knew by hearsay that mammon could not reign without them; but then common sense found no reason whatever for putting up with mammon, or paying its expenses.

There were many stores and depots where anyone who wanted anything for wear, or consumption, or instruction, or pleasure, or any other use, could go, or send and get it, or get it made. He never had to ask “What’s the damage?” because in Common-sense Country damage was objected to. Everyone knew that no one had got what he did not want, because nobody was so insane as to cumber himself with the custody of anything that was of no use or pleasure to him; so that to ask him to give up what was of direct use or pleasure to him would damage him. No one was short of anything, because the world is very fruitful, and human beings are very numerous, very ingenious, and very industrious, and are able and eager to make it more and more fruitful. Wealth in Common-sense Country increased even faster than the population, so that there was more leisure for every new generation born. Whatever was not of direct use to the individuals who produced it, it was to the convenience of these individuals to place in care, and outside custody altogether, so that those to whom it was not superfluous might choose their own time and put it to their own uses. It is only in Lunatic Land that everybody (willingly or not) makes a practice of fining everybody else for the privilege of living alongside of him on the same planet. It takes a hereditary lunatic of many generations’ standing to go shamming about in the roundabout, nonsensically solemn effort to convert man’s natural home into a penal colony, by means of a cunningly devised system of fines all round for being alive and active and wanting to stop so.

* * *

In Common-sense Country there were horn ninety-five per cent. fewer idiots, cripples, and otherwise afflicted mortals than are born elsewhere. The few there were, were not felt as a burden; for those of tender hearts found a natural pleasure in doing what could be done to make life tolerable for these sad and ever diminishing exceptions; and of course they were no expense in a land of plenty, where access was free to whatever was wanted, without money and without price.

* * *

In Common-sense Country words were true, and purposes single; even newspapers expressed real opinions, and conveyed real information; fun abounded, and nobody preached. Every shade of individuality was respected and made welcome, variety being suggestive as well as interesting. No one wheedled, no one canted, no one flattered, or equivocated, or slandered; because none of these were necessary expedients. There was never anything to fear from either honesty or generosity in that land. People could have food, friends, fun, and freedom without little abject servilities. Every individual was, as a matter of course, left perfectly free on his capable side, while being courteously and gladly aided, by custom and common consent, on his weak side. So that there was nothing to prevent his voluntarily and naturally making common cause with others in the overcoming of common difficulties, and in the acquirement, production, and distribution of all good things.

* * *

There was no schism in that country, because there was no Church. There was a great deal of religion, because Common-senseites had time to try their best powers of life and mind on everything, and the more they knew, the deeper depths of sheer wonderfulness did they find beneath the new-won knowledge. They found that life, love, liberty, peace, progress, and everything worth having came as the reward of adherence to certain inexorable, universal laws, inherent in everything; laws in which there was no variableness, nor shadow of turning; and also no respect of persons. They had the intensest interest and zest in getting hold of these laws, and in falling in with them as fast as they became visible; and they never dreamt of making cheap and nasty substitutes for laws in places or cases where none appeared of their own accord. As neither the ignorance nor superstition of their fellows served anyone’s turn in a country where citizens were free and trusted one another, no people in black were kept to purvey either the one or the other, not even to women or to the little children. All black arts were forgotten, and not missed. On the other hand Common-sense Country was rich in prophets, or poets, of the variety known as “born not made.”

* * *

There was no sedition, because there was no State. Instead, there was every where a most beautiful order; for common-sense, left to itself, saw no use in a public muddle, or in a private scramble; such as exists everywhere and all the while in Lunatic Land. It was moreover found that there were a thousand simpler, cheaper, and surer (because more natural) ways of forestalling and discouraging any atavistic aggressiveness on the part of individuals, than bribing a number of strangers beforehand to be in readiness to retaliate by proxy.

* * *

There was no swindling because there was no competition. Instead, there was endless emulation. The results of doing anything well, usefully, or admirably were wholly pleasant. The social results of doing any thing that wanted doing better and more easily and swiftly than it had been done before, were so exceptionally pleasant that all the most energetic and able people aspired and endeavoured to experience those results at first hand. No man-imposed restriction thwarted or impeded any experiment, and in the end the community learnt something useful by every mistake made. General goodwill and prosperity were immense; because there were no reasons at all for tricking anybody—quite the reverse.

* * *

Human nature was never made a butt for satire, or a subject of regret, in Common-sense Country. No mud, no rotten eggs, no printers’ ink were thrown at it. No one made a “living” by undertaking to convince others of their unsuspected depravity, with promise of cure for it in exchange for cash down and vows of allegiance. No one made any name or fame for himself by undertaking to keep human nature in others in order, by means of penal and restrictive regulations invented and imposed by human nature in himself or his set. Common-senseites saw that human nature was a branch of nature at large, and that to divide it against itself was the surest way to get it out of gear. Whenever a proclivity was found to be universal amongst humans, common-sense put the natural interpretation on the fact, and respected the proclivity, however superficially inconvenient in minor respects or exceptional cases. They respected it as due to some instinct, implanted and developed by the law of Lifewardness, and which it was therefore dangerous and disastrous systematically to nullify and oppose. Their endeavour was, instead, to become better acquainted with it.

* * *

The great pleasure of trustful, unchecked sympathy, and of spontaneous glowing kindliness, was enjoyed nowhere to such a degree as in Common-sense Country. The old people, the little children, the animals and birds had a happy time of it; and there was free exchange of friendship and affection between the dumb and the human sharers of earthly life. And in the healthy, breathable, moral atmosphere of habitual good faith, fearless thinking, true speech, and sincere dealing which (by dint of simple good sense) people had gradually instituted, the necessary love of self, which takes such crude forms in Lunatic Land, had overflowed at every point, and become indistinguishable from the delicious, zest-giving, and inexhaustible pleasure of love for those around.

There was Peace in Common-sense Country, and Goodwill among men; and Happiness and Fullness of Life had become the Natural Order of the day.

Les Demolisseurs (The Wreckers)

 

The Wreckers, a sketch from 1896 by the Anarchist artist Paul Signac (1863-1935) famous for his work in Neo-Impressionism and a pioneer of the Pointillism style. I'm quite the novice when it comes to art, as in painting and sketches, but I've been endeavouring to improve my knowledge. I discovered Paul Signac while reading Ruth Kinna's introduction to Anarchism, The Government of No-one. And found this image depicting two workers to be striking. They're demolishing a house and the worker in the foreground is raising his pick at the audience. 

If you'll forgive the cliché, I don't know art, but I'm eager to learn. And to me this image plays with and depicts the intertwined relations between creation and destruction. The Anarchist Revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin famously stated, "the passion for destruction is itself a creative act".  The Reaction in Germany (1842). Here we have two workers or "Wreckers" dismantling a building and in the process creating something new, exactly what remains to be seen, it could be the foundations for a new building or just remain as an open space. 

Dialectics can be tricky to simplify and explain, personally I think that phrase and now this image is the best summary of it in its crude thesis+anti-thesis=synthesis. Or in this case, destruction includes creation and thus leads to a new phenomenon.  

Like with prose and poetry, many of the classics are in the public domain, which has made them much more accessible to me. 

 I can't afford to go to many galleries, so the freedom to distribute and share is much valued and appreciated. I hope to improve my knowledge and experience throughout the year. 

 

Portrait of Paul Signac, created in 1890 by his friend and collaborator Georges Seurat (1859-1891)

The Marching Morons By C. M. Kornbluth

 

The Marching Morons

                          By C. M. KORNBLUTH

                       Illustrated by DON SIBLEY

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                  Galaxy Science Fiction April 1951.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]




           In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man, of
          course, is king. But how about a live wire, a smart
          businessman, in a civilization of 100% pure chumps?


Some things had not changed. A potter's wheel was still a potter's
wheel and clay was still clay. Efim Hawkins had built his shop near
Goose Lake, which had a narrow band of good fat clay and a narrow beach
of white sand. He fired three bottle-nosed kilns with willow charcoal
from the wood lot. The wood lot was also useful for long walks while
the kilns were cooling; if he let himself stay within sight of them,
he would open them prematurely, impatient to see how some new shape or
glaze had come through the fire, and--_ping!_--the new shape or glaze
would be good for nothing but the shard pile back of his slip tanks.

A business conference was in full swing in his shop, a modest cube
of brick, tile-roofed, as the Chicago-Los Angeles "rocket" thundered
overhead--very noisy, very swept-back, very fiery jets, shaped as
sleekly swift-looking as an airborne barracuda.

The buyer from Marshall Fields was turning over a black-glazed one
liter carafe, nodding approval with his massive, handsome head. "This
is real pretty," he told Hawkins and his own secretary, Gomez-Laplace.
"This has got lots of what ya call real est'etic principles. Yeah, it
is real pretty."

"How much?" the secretary asked the potter.

"Seven-fifty each in dozen lots," said Hawkins. "I ran up fifteen dozen
last month."

"They are real est'etic," repeated the buyer from Fields. "I will take
them all."

"I don't think we can do that, doctor," said the secretary. "They'd
cost us $1,350. That would leave only $532 in our quarter's budget.
And we still have to run down to East Liverpool to pick up some cheap
dinner sets."

"Dinner sets?" asked the buyer, his big face full of wonder.

"Dinner sets. The department's been out of them for two months now. Mr.
Garvy-Seabright got pretty nasty about it yesterday. Remember?"

"Garvy-Seabright, that meat-headed bluenose," the buyer said
contemptuously. "He don't know nothin' about est'etics. Why for don't
he lemme run my own department?" His eye fell on a stray copy of
_Whambozambo Comix_ and he sat down with it. An occasional deep chuckle
or grunt of surprise escaped him as he turned the pages.

Uninterrupted, the potter and the buyer's secretary quickly closed a
deal for two dozen of the liter carafes. "I wish we could take more,"
said the secretary, "but you heard what I told him. We've had to
turn away customers for ordinary dinnerware because he shot the last
quarter's budget on some Mexican piggy banks some equally enthusiastic
importer stuck him with. The fifth floor is packed solid with them."

"I'll bet they look mighty est'etic."

"They're painted with purple cacti."

       *       *       *       *       *

The potter shuddered and caressed the glaze of the sample carafe.

The buyer looked up and rumbled, "Ain't you dummies through yakkin'
yet? What good's a seckertary for if'n he don't take the burden of
_de_-tail off'n my back, harh?"

"We're all through, doctor. Are you ready to go?"

The buyer grunted peevishly, dropped _Whambozambo Comix_ on the floor
and led the way out of the building and down the log corduroy road to
the highway. His car was waiting on the concrete. It was, like all
contemporary cars, too low-slung to get over the logs. He climbed down
into the car and started the motor with a tremendous sparkle and roar.

"Gomez-Laplace," called out the potter under cover of the noise, "did
anything come of the radiation program they were working on the last
time I was on duty at the Pole?"

"The same old fallacy," said the secretary gloomily. "It stopped us on
mutation, it stopped us on culling, it stopped us on segregation, and
now it's stopped us on hypnosis."

"Well, I'm scheduled back to the grind in nine days. Time for another
firing right now. I've got a new luster to try...."

"I'll miss you. I shall be 'vacationing'--running the drafting room of
the New Century Engineering Corporation in Denver. They're going to put
up a two hundred-story office building, and naturally somebody's got to
be on hand."

"Naturally," said Hawkins with a sour smile.

There was an ear-piercingly sweet blast as the buyer leaned on the horn
button. Also, a yard-tall jet of what looked like flame spurted up from
the car's radiator cap; the car's power plant was a gas turbine, and
had no radiator.

"I'm coming, doctor," said the secretary dispiritedly. He climbed down
into the car and it whooshed off with much flame and noise.

The potter, depressed, wandered back up the corduroy road and
contemplated his cooling kilns. The rustling wind in the boughs was
obscuring the creak and mutter of the shrinking refractory brick.
Hawkins wondered about the number two kiln--a reduction fire on a load
of lusterware mugs. Had the clay chinking excluded the air? Had it
been a properly smoky blaze? Would it do any harm if he just took one
close--?

       *       *       *       *       *

Common sense took Hawkins by the scruff of the neck and yanked him
over to the tool shed. He got out his pick and resolutely set off on a
prospecting jaunt to a hummocky field that might yield some oxides. He
was especially low on coppers.

The long walk left him sweating hard, with his lust for a peek into the
kiln quiet in his breast. He swung his pick almost at random into one
of the hummocks; it clanged on a stone which he excavated. A largely
obliterated inscription said:

     ERSITY OF CHIC
      OGICAL LABO
    ELOVED MEMORY OF
     KILLED IN ACT

The potter swore mildly. He had hoped the field would turn out to be a
cemetery, preferably a once-fashionable cemetery full of once-massive
bronze caskets moldered into oxides of tin and copper.

       *       *       *       *       *

Well, hell, maybe there was some around anyway.

He headed lackadaisically for the second largest hillock and sliced
into it with his pick. There was a stone to undercut and topple into
a trench, and then the potter was very glad he'd stuck at it. His
nostrils were filled with the bitter smell and the dirt was tinged with
the exciting blue of copper salts. The pick went _clang_!

Hawkins, puffing, pried up a stainless steel plate that was quite badly
stained and was also marked with incised letters. It seemed to have
pulled loose from rotting bronze; there were rivets on the back that
brought up flakes of green patina. The potter wiped off the surface
dirt with his sleeve, turned it to catch the sunlight obliquely and
read:

                          "HONEST JOHN BARLOW

    "Honest John," famed in university annals, represents a challenge
    which medical science has not yet answered: revival of a human being
    accidentally thrown into a state of suspended animation.

    In 1988 Mr. Barlow, a leading Evanston real estate dealer, visited
    his dentist for treatment of an impacted wisdom tooth. His dentist
    requested and received permission to use the experimental anesthetic
    Cycloparadimethanol-B-7, developed at the University.

    After administration of the anesthetic, the dentist resorted to his
    drill. By freakish mischance, a short circuit in his machine
    delivered 220 volts of 60-cycle current into the patient. (In a
    damage suit instituted by Mrs. Barlow against the dentist, the
    University and the makers of the drill, a jury found for the
    defendants.) Mr. Barlow never got up from the dentist's chair and
    was assumed to have died of poisoning, electrocution or both.

    Morticians preparing him for embalming discovered, however, that
    their subject was--though certainly not living--just as certainly
    not dead. The University was notified and a series of exhaustive
    tests was begun, including attempts to duplicate the trance state
    on volunteers. After a bad run of seven cases which ended fatally,
    the attempts were abandoned.

    Honest John was long an exhibit at the University museum, and
    livened many a football game as mascot of the University's Blue
    Crushers. The bounds of taste were overstepped, however, when a
    pledge to Sigma Delta Chi was ordered in '03 to "kidnap" Honest
    John from his loosely guarded glass museum case and introduce him
    into the Rachel Swanson Memorial Girls' Gymnasium shower room.

    On May 22nd, 2003, the University Board of Regents issued the
    following order: "By unanimous vote, it is directed that the remains
    of Honest John Barlow be removed from the University museum and
    conveyed to the University's Lieutenant James Scott III Memorial
    Biological Laboratories and there be securely locked in a specially
    prepared vault. It is further directed that all possible measures
    for the preservation of these remains be taken by the Laboratory
    administration and that access to these remains be denied to all
    persons except qualified scholars authorized in writing by the
    Board. The Board reluctantly takes this action in view of recent
    notices and photographs in the nation's press which, to say the
    least, reflect but small credit upon the University."

       *       *       *       *       *

It was far from his field, but Hawkins understood what had happened--an
early and accidental blundering onto the bare bones of the Levantman
shock anesthesia, which had since been replaced by other methods. To
bring subjects out of Levantman shock, you let them have a squirt of
simple saline in the trigeminal nerve. Interesting. And now about that
bronze--

He heaved the pick into the rotting green salts, expecting no
resistence and almost fractured his wrist. _Something_ down there was
_solid_. He began to flake off the oxides.

A half hour of work brought him down to phosphor bronze, a huge casting
of the almost incorruptible metal. It had weakened structurally over
the centuries; he could fit the point of his pick under a corroded boss
and pry off great creaking and grumbling striae of the stuff.

Hawkins wished he had an archeologist with him, but didn't dream of
returning to his shop and calling one to take over the find. He was an
all-around man: by choice and in his free time, an artist in clay and
glaze; by necessity, an automotive, electronics and atomic engineer
who could also swing a project in traffic control, individual and
group psychology, architecture or tool design. He didn't yell for a
specialist every time something out of his line came up; there were so
few with so much to do....

He trenched around his find, discovering that it was a great
brick-shaped bronze mass with an excitingly hollow sound. A long strip
of moldering metal from one of the long vertical faces pulled away,
exposing red rust that went _whoosh_ and was sucked into the interior
of the mass.

It had been de-aired, thought Hawkins, and there must have been an
inner jacket of glass which had crystalized through the centuries and
quietly crumbled at the first clang of his pick. He didn't know what a
vacuum would do to a subject of Levantman shock, but he had hopes, nor
did he quite understand what a real estate dealer was, but it might
have something to do with pottery. And _anything_ might have a bearing
on Topic Number One.

       *       *       *       *       *

He flung his pick out of the trench, climbed out and set off at a
dog-trot for his shop. A little rummaging turned up a hypo and there
was a plasticontainer of salt in the kitchen.

Back at his dig, he chipped for another half hour to expose the
juncture of lid and body. The hinges were hopeless; he smashed them off.

Hawkins extended the telescopic handle of the pick for the best
leverage, fitted its point into a deep pit, set its built-in fulcrum,
and heaved. Five more heaves and he could see, inside the vault, what
looked like a dusty marble statue. Ten more and he could see that it
was the naked body of Honest John Barlow, Evanston real estate dealer,
uncorrupted by time.

The potter found the apex of the trigeminal nerve with his needle's
point and gave him 60 cc.

In an hour Barlow's chest began to pump.

In another hour, he rasped, "Did it work?"

"_Did_ it!" muttered Hawkins.

Barlow opened his eyes and stirred, looked down, turned his hands
before his eyes--

"I'll sue!" he screamed. "My clothes! My fingernails!" A horrid
suspicion came over his face and he clapped his hands to his hairless
scalp. "My hair!" he wailed. "I'll sue you for every penny you've got!
That release won't mean a damned thing in court--I didn't sign away my
hair and clothes and fingernails!"

"They'll grow back," said Hawkins casually. "Also your epidermis. Those
parts of you weren't alive, you know, so they weren't preserved like
the rest of you. I'm afraid the clothes are gone, though."

"What is this--the University hospital?" demanded Barlow. "I want
a phone. No, you phone. Tell my wife I'm all right and tell Sam
Immerman--he's my lawyer--to get over here right away. Greenleaf
7-4022. Ow!" He had tried to sit up, and a portion of his pink skin
rubbed against the inner surface of the casket, which was powdered by
the ancient crystalized glass. "What the hell did you guys do, boil me
alive? Oh, you're going to pay for this!"

"You're all right," said Hawkins, wishing now he had a reference book
to clear up several obscure terms. "Your epidermis will start growing
immediately. You're not in the hospital. Look here."

       *       *       *       *       *

He handed Barlow the stainless steel plate that had labeled the casket.
After a suspicious glance, the man started to read. Finishing, he laid
the plate carefully on the edge of the vault and was silent for a
spell.

"Poor Verna," he said at last. "It doesn't say whether she was stuck
with the court costs. Do you happen to know--"

"No," said the potter. "All I know is what was on the plate, and how to
revive you. The dentist accidentally gave you a dose of what we call
Levantman shock anesthesia. We haven't used it for centuries; it was
powerful, but too dangerous."

"Centuries ..." brooded the man. "Centuries ... I'll bet Sam swindled
her out of her eyeteeth. Poor Verna. How long ago was it? What year is
this?"

Hawkins shrugged. "We call it 7-B-936. That's no help to you. It takes
a long time for these metals to oxidize."

"Like that movie," Barlow muttered. "Who would have thought it? Poor
Verna!" He blubbered and sniffled, reminding Hawkins powerfully of the
fact that he had been found under a flat rock.

Almost angrily, the potter demanded, "How many children did you have?"

"None yet," sniffed Barlow. "My first wife didn't want them. But Verna
wants one--wanted one--but we're going to wait until--we _were_ going
to wait until--"

"Of course," said the potter, feeling a savage desire to tell him off,
blast him to hell and gone for his work. But he choked it down. There
was The Problem to think of; there was always The Problem to think of,
and this poor blubberer might unexpectedly supply a clue. Hawkins would
have to pass him on.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Come along," Hawkins said. "My time is short."

Barlow looked up, outraged. "How can you be so unfeeling? I'm a human
being like--"

The Los Angeles-Chicago "rocket" thundered overhead and Barlow broke
off in mid-complaint. "Beautiful!" he breathed, following it with his
eyes. "Beautiful!"

He climbed out of the vault, too interested to be pained by its
roughness against his infantile skin. "After all," he said briskly,
"this should have its sunny side. I never was much for reading, but
this is just like one of those stories. And I ought to make some money
out of it, shouldn't I?" He gave Hawkins a shrewd glance.

"You want money?" asked the potter. "Here." He handed over a fistful
of change and bills. "You'd better put my shoes on. It'll be about a
quarter-mile. Oh, and you're--uh, modest?--yes, that was the word.
Here." Hawkins gave him his pants, but Barlow was excitedly counting
the money.

"Eighty-five, eighty-six--and it's dollars, too! I thought it'd
be credits or whatever they call them. 'E Pluribus Unum' and
'Liberty'--just different faces. Say, is there a catch to this? Are
these real, genuine, honest twenty-two-cent dollars like we had or
just wallpaper?"

"They're quite all right, I assure you," said the potter. "I wish you'd
come along. I'm in a hurry."

       *       *       *       *       *

The man babbled as they stumped toward the shop. "Where are we
going--The Council of Scientists, the World Coordinator or something
like that?"

"Who? Oh, no. We call them 'President' and 'Congress.' No, that
wouldn't do any good at all. I'm just taking you to see some people."

"I ought to make plenty out of this. _Plenty!_ I could write books.
Get some smart young fellow to put it into words for me and I'll bet I
could turn out a best-seller. What's the setup on things like that?"

"It's about like that. Smart young fellows. But there aren't any
best-sellers any more. People don't read much nowadays. We'll find
something equally profitable for you to do."

Back in the shop, Hawkins gave Barlow a suit of clothes, deposited him
in the waiting room and called Central in Chicago. "Take him away," he
pleaded. "I have time for one more firing and he blathers and blathers.
I haven't told him anything. Perhaps we should just turn him loose and
let him find his own level, but there's a chance--"

"The Problem," agreed Central. "Yes, there's a chance."

The potter delighted Barlow by making him a cup of coffee with a cube
that not only dissolved in cold water but heated the water to boiling
point. Killing time, Hawkins chatted about the "rocket" Barlow had
admired, and had to haul himself up short; he had almost told the real
estate man what its top speed really was--almost, indeed, revealed that
it was not a rocket.

He regretted, too, that he had so casually handed Barlow a couple of
hundred dollars. The man seemed obsessed with fear that they were
worthless since Hawkins refused to take a note or I.O.U. or even a
definite promise of repayment. But Hawkins couldn't go into details,
and was very glad when a stranger arrived from Central.

"Tinny-Peete, from Algeciras," the stranger told him swiftly as the
two of them met at the door. "Psychist for Poprob. Polasigned special
overtake Barlow."

"Thank Heaven," said Hawkins. "Barlow," he told the man from the past,
"this is Tinny-Peete. He's going to take care of you and help you make
lots of money."

The psychist stayed for a cup of the coffee whose preparation had
delighted Barlow, and then conducted the real estate man down the
corduroy road to his car, leaving the potter to speculate on whether he
could at last crack his kilns.

Hawkins, abruptly dismissing Barlow and the Problem, happily picked
the chinking from around the door of the number two kiln, prying it
open a trifle. A blast of heat and the heady, smoky scent of the
reduction fire delighted him. He peered and saw a corner of a shelf
glowing cherry-red, becoming obscured by wavering black areas as it
lost heat through the opened door. He slipped a charred wood paddle
under a mug on the shelf and pulled it out as a sample, the hairs on
the back of his hand curling and scorching. The mug crackled and pinged
and Hawkins sighed happily.

The bismuth resinate luster had fired to perfection, a haunting film
of silvery-black metal with strange bluish lights in it as it turned
before the eyes, and the Problem of Population seemed very far away to
Hawkins then.

       *       *       *       *       *

Barlow and Tinny-Peete arrived at the concrete highway where the
psychist's car was parked in a safety bay.

"What--a--_boat_!" gasped the man from the past.

"Boat? No, that's my car."

Barlow surveyed it with awe. Swept-back lines, deep-drawn compound
curves, kilograms of chrome. He ran his hands futilely over the
door--or was it the door?--in a futile search for a handle, and asked
respectfully, "How fast does it go?"

The psychist gave him a keen look and said slowly, "Two hundred and
fifty. You can tell by the speedometer."

"Wow! My old Chevvy could hit a hundred on a straightaway, but you're
out of my class, mister!"

Tinny-Peete somehow got a huge, low door open and Barlow descended
three steps into immense cushions, floundering over to the right. He
was too fascinated to pay serious attention to his flayed dermis. The
dashboard was a lovely wilderness of dials, plugs, indicators, lights,
scales and switches.

The psychist climbed down into the driver's seat and did something with
his feet. The motor started like lighting a blowtorch as big as a silo.
Wallowing around in the cushions, Barlow saw through a rear-view mirror
a tremendous exhaust filled with brilliant white sparkles.

"Do you like it?" yelled the psychist.

"It's terrific!" Barlow yelled back. "It's--"

He was shut up as the car pulled out from the bay into the road with
a great _voo-ooo-ooom_! A gale roared past Barlow's head, though the
windows seemed to be closed; the impression of speed was terrific. He
located the speedometer on the dashboard and saw it climb past 90, 100,
150, 200.

"Fast enough for me," yelled the psychist, noting that Barlow's face
fell in response. "Radio?"

He passed over a surprisingly light object like a football helmet,
with no trailing wires, and pointed to a row of buttons. Barlow put
on the helmet, glad to have the roar of air stilled, and pushed a
pushbutton. It lit up satisfyingly and Barlow settled back even farther
for a sample of the brave new world's super-modern taste in ingenious
entertainment.

"TAKE IT AND STICK IT!" a voice roared in his ears.

       *       *       *       *       *

He snatched off the helmet and gave the psychist an injured look.
Tinny-Peete grinned and turned a dial associated with the pushbutton
layout. The man from the past donned the helmet again and found the
voice had lowered to normal.

"The show of shows! The super-show! The super-duper show! The quiz of
quizzes! _Take it and stick it!_"

There were shrieks of laughter in the background.

"Here we got the contes-tants all ready to go. You know how we work it.
I hand a contes-tant a triangle-shaped cut-out and like that down the
line. Now we got these here boards, they got cut-out places the same
shape as the triangles and things, only they're all different shapes,
and the first contes-tant that sticks the cutouts into the board, he
wins.

"Now I'm gonna innaview the first contes-tant. Right here, honey.
What's your name?"

"Name? Uh--"

"Hoddaya like that, folks? She don't remember her name! Hah? _Would
you buy that for a quarter?_" The question was spoken with arch
significance, and the audience shrieked, howled and whistled its
appreciation.

It was dull listening when you didn't know the punch lines and catch
lines. Barlow pushed another button, with his free hand ready at the
volume control.

"--latest from Washington. It's about Senator Hull-Mendoza. He is still
attacking the Bureau of Fisheries. The North California Syndicalist
says he got affidavits that John Kingsley-Schultz is a bluenose from
way back. He didn't publistat the affydavits, but he says they say that
Kingsley-Schultz was saw at bluenose meetings in Oregon State College
and later at Florida University. Kingsley-Schultz says he gotta confess
he did major in fly-casting at Oregon and got his Ph.D. in game-fish at
Florida.

"And here is a quote from Kingsley-Schultz: 'Hull-Mendoza don't know
what he's talking about. He should drop dead.' Unquote. Hull-Mendoza
says he won't publistat the affydavits to pertect his sources. He says
they was sworn by three former employes of the Bureau which was fired
for in-com-petence and in-com-pat-ibility by Kingsley-Schultz.

"Elsewhere they was the usual run of traffic accidents. A three-way
pileup of cars on Route 66 going outta Chicago took twelve lives.
The Chicago-Los Angeles morning rocket crashed and exploded in the
Mo-have--Mo-javvy--what-ever-you-call-it Desert. All the 94 people
aboard got killed. A Civil Aeronautics Authority investigator on the
scene says that the pilot was buzzing herds of sheep and didn't pull
out in time.

"Hey! Here's a hot one from New York! A Diesel tug run wild in the
harbor while the crew was below and shoved in the port bow of the
luck-shury liner _S. S. Placentia_. It says the ship filled and sank
taking the lives of an es-ti-mated 180 passengers and 50 crew members.
Six divers was sent down to study the wreckage, but they died, too,
when their suits turned out to be fulla little holes.

"And here is a bulletin I just got from Denver. It seems--"

       *       *       *       *       *

Barlow took off the headset uncomprehendingly. "He seemed so callous,"
he yelled at the driver. "I was listening to a newscast--"

Tinny-Peete shook his head and pointed at his ears. The roar of air was
deafening. Barlow frowned baffledly and stared out of the window.

A glowing sign said:

         MOOGS!
    WOULD YOU BUY IT
     FOR A QUARTER?

He didn't know what Moogs was or were; the illustration showed
an incredibly proportioned girl, 99.9 per cent naked, writhing
passionately in animated full color.

The roadside jingle was still with him, but with a new feature. Radar
or something spotted the car and alerted the lines of the jingle. Each
in turn sped along a roadside track, even with the car, so it could be
read before the next line was alerted.

    IF THERE'S A GIRL
     YOU WANT TO GET
      DEFLOCCULIZE
    UNROMANTIC SWEAT.
    "A*R*M*P*I*T*T*O"

Another animated job, in two panels, the familiar "Before and After."
The first said, "Just Any Cigar?" and was illustrated with a two-person
domestic tragedy of a wife holding her nose while her coarse and
red-faced husband puffed a slimy-looking rope. The second panel glowed,
"Or a VUELTA ABAJO?" and was illustrated with--

Barlow blushed and looked at his feet until they had passed the sign.

"Coming into Chicago!" bawled Tinny-Peete.

Other cars were showing up, all of them dreamboats.

Watching them, Barlow began to wonder if he knew what a kilometer
was, exactly. They seemed to be traveling so slowly, if you ignored
the roaring air past your ears and didn't let the speedy lines of the
dreamboats fool you. He would have sworn they were really crawling
along at twenty-five, with occasional spurts up to thirty. How much
was a kilometer, anyway?

The city loomed ahead, and it was just what it ought to be: towering
skyscrapers, overhead ramps, landing platforms for helicopters--

He clutched at the cushions. Those two 'copters. They were going
to--they were going to--they--

He didn't see what happened because their apparent collision courses
took them behind a giant building.

       *       *       *       *       *

Screamingly sweet blasts of sound surrounded them as they stopped for a
red light. "What the hell is going on here?" said Barlow in a shrill,
frightened voice, because the braking time was just about zero, he
wasn't hurled against the dashboard. "Who's kidding who?"

"Why, what's the matter?" demanded the driver.

The light changed to green and he started the pickup. Barlow stiffened
as he realized that the rush of air past his ears began just a brief,
unreal split-second before the car was actually moving. He grabbed for
the door handle on his side.

The city grew on them slowly: scattered buildings, denser buildings,
taller buildings, and a red light ahead. The car rolled to a stop in
zero braking time, the rush of air cut off an instant after it stopped,
and Barlow was out of the car and running frenziedly down a sidewalk
one instant after that.

_They'll track me down_, he thought, panting. _It's a secret police
thing. They'll get you--mind-reading machines, television eyes
everywhere, afraid you'll tell their slaves about freedom and stuff.
They don't let anybody cross them, like that story I once read._

Winded, he slowed to a walk and congratulated himself that he had guts
enough not to turn around. That was what they always watched for.
Walking, he was just another business-suited back among hundreds. He
would be safe, he would be safe--

A hand tumbled from a large, coarse, handsome face thrust close to his:
"Wassamatta bumpinninna people likeya owna sidewalk gotta miner slamya
inna mushya bassar!" It was neither the mad potter nor the mad driver.

"Excuse me," said Barlow. "What did you say?"

"Oh, yeah?" yelled the stranger dangerously, and waited for an answer.

Barlow, with the feeling that he had somehow been suckered into
the short end of an intricate land-title deal, heard himself reply
belligerently, "Yeah!"

The stranger let go of his shoulder and snarled, "Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah!" said Barlow, yanking his jacket back into shape.

"Aaah!" snarled the stranger, with more contempt and disgust than
ferocity. He added an obscenity current in Barlow's time, a standard
but physiologically impossible directive, and strutted off hulking his
shoulders and balling his fists.

       *       *       *       *       *

Barlow walked on, trembling. Evidently he had handled it well enough.
He stopped at a red light while the long, low dreamboats roared before
him and pedestrians in the sidewalk flow with him threaded their ways
through the stream of cars. Brakes screamed, fenders clanged and
dented, hoarse cries flew back and forth between drivers and walkers.
He leaped backward frantically as one car swerved over an arc of
sidewalk to miss another.

The signal changed to green, the cars kept on coming for about thirty
seconds and then dwindled to an occasional light-runner. Barlow crossed
warily and leaned against a vending machine, blowing big breaths.

_Look natural_, he told himself. _Do something normal. Buy something
from the machine._

He fumbled out some change, got a newspaper for a dime, a handkerchief
for a quarter and a candy bar for another quarter.

The faint chocolate smell made him ravenous suddenly. He clawed at the
glassy wrapper printed "CRIGGLIES" quite futilely for a few seconds,
and then it divided neatly by itself. The bar made three good bites,
and he bought two more and gobbled them down.

Thirsty, he drew a carbonated orange drink in another one of the glassy
wrappers from the machine for another dime. When he fumbled with it, it
divided neatly and spilled all over his knees. Barlow decided he had
been there long enough and walked on.

The shop windows were--shop windows. People still wore and bought
clothes, still smoked and bought tobacco, still ate and bought food.
And they still went to the movies, he saw with pleased surprise as he
passed and then returned to a glittering place whose sign said it was
THE BIJOU.

The place seemed to be showing a quintuple feature, _Babies Are
Terrible_, _Don't Have Children_, and _The Canali Kid_.

It was irresistible; he paid a dollar and went in.

He caught the tail-end of _The Canali Kid_ in three-dimensional,
full-color, full-scent production. It appeared to be an interplanetary
saga winding up with a chase scene and a reconciliation between
estranged hero and heroine. _Babies Are Terrible_ and _Don't Have
Children_ were fantastic arguments against parenthood--the grotesquely
exaggerated dangers of painfully graphic childbirth, vicious children,
old parents beaten and starved by their sadistic offspring. The
audience, Barlow astoundedly noted, was placidly champing sweets and
showing no particular signs of revulsion.

The _Coming Attractions_ drove him into the lobby. The fanfares
were shattering, the blazing colors blinding, and the added scents
stomach-heaving.

       *       *       *       *       *

When his eyes again became accustomed to the moderate lighting of the
lobby, he groped his way to a bench and opened the newspaper he had
bought. It turned out to be _The Racing Sheet_, which afflicted him
with a crushing sense of loss. The familiar boxed index in the lower
left hand corner of the front page showed almost unbearably that
Churchill Downs and Empire City were still in business--

Blinking back tears, he turned to the Past Performances at Churchill.
They weren't using abbreviations any more, and the pages because of
that were single-column instead of double. But it was all the same--or
was it?

He squinted at the first race, a three-quarter-mile maiden claimer for
thirteen hundred dollars. Incredibly, the track record was two minutes,
ten and three-fifths seconds. Any beetle in his time could have knocked
off the three-quarter in one-fifteen. It was the same for the other
distances, much worse for route events.

_What the hell had happened to everything?_

He studied the form of a five-year-old brown mare in the second and
couldn't make head or tail of it. She'd won and lost and placed and
showed and lost and placed without rhyme or reason. She looked like a
front-runner for a couple of races and then she looked like a no-good
pig and then she looked like a mudder but the next time it rained she
wasn't and then she was a stayer and then she was a pig again. In a
good five-thousand-dollar allowances event, too!

Barlow looked at the other entries and it slowly dawned on him that
they were all like the five-year-old brown mare. Not a single damned
horse running had the slightest trace of class.

Somebody sat down beside him and said, "That's the story."

       *       *       *       *       *

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."

Barlow had another idea. "Why don't you sterilize them?"

"Two and one-half billion operations is a lot of operations. Because
they breed continuously, the job would never be done."

"I see. Like the marching Chinese!"

"Who the devil are they?"

"It was a--uh--paradox of my time. Somebody figured out that if all
the Chinese in the world were to line up four abreast, I think it was,
and start marching past a given point, they'd never stop because of the
babies that would be born and grow up before they passed the point."

"That's right. Only instead of 'a given point,' make it 'the largest
conceivable number of operating rooms that we could build and staff.'
There could never be enough."

"Say!" said Barlow. "Those movies about babies--was that your
propaganda?"

"It was. It doesn't seem to mean a thing to them. We have abandoned the
idea of attempting propaganda contrary to a biological drive."

"So if you work _with_ a biological drive--?"

"I know of none which is consistent with inhibition of fertility."

       *       *       *       *       *

Barlow's face went poker-blank, the result of years of careful
discipline. "You don't, huh? You're the great brains and you can't
think of any?"

"Why, no," said the psychist innocently. "Can you?"

"That depends. I sold ten thousand acres of Siberian tundra--through
a dummy firm, of course--after the partition of Russia. The buyers
thought they were getting improved building lots on the outskirts of
Kiev. I'd say that was a lot tougher than this job."

"How so?" asked the hawk-faced man.

"Those were normal, suspicious customers and these are morons, born
suckers. You just figure out a con they'll fall for; they won't know
enough to do any smart checking."

The psychist and the hawk-faced man had also had training; they kept
themselves from looking with sudden hope at each other.

"You seem to have something in mind," said the psychist.

Barlow's poker face went blanker still. "Maybe I have. I haven't heard
any offer yet."

"There's the satisfaction of knowing that you've prevented Earth's
resources from being so plundered," the hawk-faced man pointed out,
"that the race will soon become extinct."

"I don't know that," Barlow said bluntly. "All I have is your word."

"If you really have a method, I don't think any price would be too
great," the psychist offered.

"Money," said Barlow.

"All you want."

"More than you want," the hawk-faced man corrected.

"Prestige," added Barlow. "Plenty of publicity. My picture and my name
in the papers and over TV every day, statues to me, parks and cities
and streets and other things named after me. A whole chapter in the
history books."

The psychist made a facial sign to the hawk-faced man that meant, "Oh,
brother!"

The hawk-faced man signaled back, "Steady, boy!"

"It's not too much to ask," the psychist agreed.

Barlow, sensing a seller's market, said, "Power!"

"Power?" the hawk-faced man repeated puzzledly. "Your own hydro station
or nuclear pile?"

"I mean a world dictatorship with me as dictator!"

"Well, now--" said the psychist, but the hawk-faced man interrupted,
"It would take a special emergency act of Congress but the situation
warrants it. I think that can be guaranteed."

"Could you give us some indication of your plan?" the psychist asked.

"Ever hear of lemmings?"

"No."

"They are--were, I guess, since you haven't heard of them--little
animals in Norway, and every few years they'd swarm to the coast and
swim out to sea until they drowned. I figure on putting some lemming
urge into the population."

"How?"

"I'll save that till I get the right signatures on the deal."

       *       *       *       *       *

The hawk-faced man said, "I'd like to work with you on it, Barlow. My
name's Ryan-Ngana." He put out his hand.

Barlow looked closely at the hand, then at the man's face. "Ryan what?"

"Ngana."

"That sounds like an African name."

"It is. My mother's father was a Watusi."

Barlow didn't take the hand. "I thought you looked pretty dark. I don't
want to hurt your feelings, but I don't think I'd be at my best working
with you. There must be somebody else just as well qualified, I'm sure."

The psychist made a facial sign to Ryan-Ngana that meant, "Steady
_yourself_, boy!"

"Very well," Ryan-Ngana told Barlow. "We'll see what arrangement can be
made."

"It's not that I'm prejudiced, you understand. Some of my best
friends--"

"Mr. Barlow, don't give it another thought. Anybody who could pick on
the lemming analogy is going to be useful to us."

And so he would, thought Ryan-Ngana, alone in the office after
Tinny-Peete had taken Barlow up to the helicopter stage. So he
would. Poprob had exhausted every rational attempt and the new
Poprobattacklines would have to be irrational or sub-rational. This
creature from the past with his lemming legends and his improved
building lots would be a fountain of precious vicious self-interest.

Ryan-Ngana sighed and stretched. He had to go and run the San
Francisco subway. Summoned early from the Pole to study Barlow, he'd
left unfinished a nice little theorem. Between interruptions, he was
slowly constructing an n-dimensional geometry whose foundations and
superstructure owed no debt whatsoever to intuition.

       *       *       *       *       *

Upstairs, waiting for a helicopter, Barlow was explaining to
Tinny-Peete that he had nothing against Negroes, and Tinny-Peete wished
he had some of Ryan-Ngana's imperturbability and humor for the ordeal.

The helicopter took them to International Airport where, Tinny-Peete
explained, Barlow would leave for the Pole.

The man from the past wasn't sure he'd like a dreary waste of ice and
cold.

"It's all right," said the psychist. "A civilized layout. Warm,
pleasant. You'll be able to work more efficiently there. All the facts
at your fingertips, a good secretary--"

"I'll need a pretty big staff," said Barlow, who had learned from
thousands of deals never to take the first offer.

"I meant a private, confidential one," said Tinny-Peete readily, "but
you can have as many as you want. You'll naturally have top-primary-top
priority if you really have a workable plan."

"Let's not forget this dictatorship angle," said Barlow.

He didn't know that the psychist would just as readily have promised
him deification to get him happily on the "rocket" for the Pole.
Tinny-Peete had no wish to be torn limb from limb; he knew very
well that it would end that way if the population learned from this
anachronism that there was a small elite which considered itself
head, shoulders, trunk and groin above the rest. The fact that this
assumption was perfectly true and the fact that the elite was condemned
by its superiority to a life of the most grinding toil would not be
considered; the difference would.

The psychist finally put Barlow aboard the "rocket" with some thirty
people--real people--headed for the Pole.

       *       *       *       *       *

Barlow was airsick all the way because of a post-hypnotic suggestion
Tinny-Peete had planted in him. One idea was to make him as averse as
possible to a return trip, and another idea was to spare the other
passengers from his aggressive, talkative company.

Barlow during the first day at the pole was reminded
of his first day in the Army. It was the same
now-where-the-hell-are-we-going-to-put-_you_? business until he took a
firm line with them. Then instead of acting like supply sergeants they
acted like hotel clerks.

It was a wonderful, wonderfully calculated buildup, and one that he
failed to suspect. After all, in his time a visitor from the past would
have been lionized.

At day's end he reclined in a snug underground billet with the 60-mile
gales roaring yards overhead, and tried to put two and two together.

It was like old times, he thought--like a coup in real estate where
you had the competition by the throat, like a 50-per cent rent boost
when you knew damned well there was no place for the tenants to move,
like smiling when you read over the breakfast orange juice that the
city council had decided to build a school on the ground you had
acquired by a deal with the city council. And it was simple. He would
just sell tundra building lots to eagerly suicidal lemmings, and that
was absolutely all there was to solving the Problem that had these
double-domes spinning.

They'd have to work out most of the details, naturally, but what the
hell, that was what subordinates were for. He'd need specialists in
advertising, engineering, communications--did they know anything about
hypnotism? That might be helpful. If not, there'd have to be a lot of
bribery done, but he'd make sure--damned sure--there were unlimited
funds.

Just selling building lots to lemmings....

He wished, as he fell asleep, that poor Verna could have been in on
this. It was his biggest, most stupendous deal. Verna--that sharp
shyster Sam Immerman must have swindled her....

       *       *       *       *       *

It began the next day with people coming to visit him. He knew the
approach. They merely wanted to be helpful to their illustrious visitor
from the past and would he help fill them in about his era, which
unfortunately was somewhat obscure historically, and what did he think
could be done about the Problem? He told them he was too old to be
roped any more, and they wouldn't get any information out of him until
he got a letter of intent from at least the Polar President, and a
session of the Polar Congress empowered to make him dictator.

He got the letter and the session. He presented his program, was asked
whether his conscience didn't revolt at its callousness, explained
succinctly that a deal was a deal and anybody who wasn't smart enough
to protect himself didn't deserve protection--"Caveat emptor," he threw
in for scholarship, and had to translate it to "Let the buyer beware."
He didn't, he stated, give a damn about either the morons or their
intelligent slaves; he'd told them his price and that was all he was
interested in.

Would they meet it or wouldn't they?

The Polar President offered to resign in his favor, with certain
temporary emergency powers that the Polar Congress would vote him if
he thought them necessary. Barlow demanded the title of World Dictator,
complete control of world finances, salary to be decided by himself,
and the publicity campaign and historical writeup to begin at once.

"As for the emergency powers," he added, "they are neither to be
temporary nor limited."

Somebody wanted the floor to discuss the matter, with the declared hope
that perhaps Barlow would modify his demands.

"You've got the proposition," Barlow said. "I'm not knocking off even
ten per cent."

"But what if the Congress refuses, sir?" the President asked.

"Then you can stay up here at the Pole and try to work it out
yourselves. I'll get what I want from the morons. A shrewd operator
like me doesn't have to compromise; I haven't got a single competitor
in this whole cockeyed moronic era."

Congress waived debate and voted by show of hands. Barlow won
unanimously.

"You don't know how close you came to losing me," he said in his first
official address to the joint Houses. "I'm not the boy to haggle;
either I get what I ask or I go elsewhere. The first thing I want is
to see designs for a new palace for me--nothing _un_ostentatious,
either--and your best painters and sculptors to start working on my
portraits and statues. Meanwhile, I'll get my staff together."

He dismissed the Polar President and the Polar Congress, telling them
that he'd let them know when the next meeting would be.

A week later, the program started with North America the first target.

Mrs. Garvy was resting after dinner before the ordeal of turning on
the dishwasher. The TV, of course, was on and it said: "Oooh!"--long,
shuddery and ecstatic, the cue for the _Parfum Assault Criminale_ spot
commercial. "Girls," said the announcer hoarsely, "do you want your
man? It's easy to get him--easy as a trip to Venus."

"Huh?" said Mrs. Garvy.

"Wassamatter?" snorted her husband, starting out of a doze.

"Ja hear that?"

"Wha'?"

"He said 'easy like a trip to Venus.'"

"So?"

"Well, I thought ya couldn't get to Venus. I thought they just had that
one rocket thing that crashed on the Moon."

"Aah, women don't keep up with the news," said Garvy righteously,
subsiding again.

"Oh," said his wife uncertainly.

And the next day, on _Henry's Other Mistress_, there was a new
character who had just breezed in: Buzz Rentshaw, Master Rocket Pilot
of the Venus run. On _Henry's Other Mistress_, "the broadcast drama
about you and your neighbors, _folksy_ people, _ordinary_ people,
_real_ people"! Mrs. Garvy listened with amazement over a cooling cup
of coffee as Buzz made hay of her hazy convictions.

MONA: Darling, it's so good to see you again!

BUZZ: You don't know how I've missed you on that dreary Venus run.

SOUND: _Venetian blind run down, key turned in door lock._

MONA: Was it _very_ dull, dearest?

BUZZ: Let's not talk about my humdrum job, darling. Let's talk about us.

SOUND: _Creaking bed._

Well, the program was back to normal at last. That evening Mrs. Garvy
tried to ask again whether her husband was sure about those rockets,
but he was dozing right through _Take It and Stick It_, so she watched
the screen and forgot the puzzle.

She was still rocking with laughter at the gag line, "Would you buy it
for a quarter?" when the commercial went on for the detergent powder
she always faithfully loaded her dishwasher with on the first of every
month.

       *       *       *       *       *

The announcer displayed mountains of suds from a tiny piece of the
stuff and coyly added: "Of course, Cleano don't lay around for you to
pick up like the soap root on Venus, but it's pretty cheap and it's
almost pretty near just as good. So for us plain folks who ain't lucky
enough to live up there on Venus, Cleano is the real cleaning stuff!"

Then the chorus went into their "Cleano-is-the-stuff" jingle, but Mrs.
Garvy didn't hear it. She was a stubborn woman, but it occurred to her
that she was very sick indeed. She didn't want to worry her husband.
The next day she quietly made an appointment with her family freud.

In the waiting room she picked up a fresh new copy of _Readers Pablum_
and put it down with a faint palpitation. The lead article, according
to the table of contents on the cover, was titled "The Most Memorable
Venusian I Ever Met."

"The freud will see you now," said the nurse, and Mrs. Garvy tottered
into his office.

His traditional glasses and whiskers were reassuring. She choked out
the ritual: "Freud, forgive me, for I have neuroses."

He chanted the antiphonal: "Tut, my dear girl, what seems to be the
trouble?"

"I got like a hole in the head," she quavered. "I seem to forget all
kinds of things. Things like everybody seems to know and I don't."

"Well, that happens to everybody occasionally, my dear. I suggest a
vacation on Venus."

The freud stared, open-mouthed, at the empty chair. His nurse came in
and demanded, "Hey, you see how she scrammed? What was the matter with
_her_?"

He took off his glasses and whiskers meditatively. "You can search
me. I told her she should maybe try a vacation on Venus." A momentary
bafflement came into his face and he dug through his desk drawers
until he found a copy of the four-color, profusely illustrated journal
of his profession. It had come that morning and he had lip-read it,
though looking mostly at the pictures. He leafed through to the article
_Advantages of the Planet Venus in Rest Cures_.

"It's right there," he said.

The nurse looked. "It sure is," she agreed. "Why shouldn't it be?"

"The trouble with these here neurotics," decided the freud, "is that
they all the time got to fight reality. Show in the next twitch."

He put on his glasses and whiskers again and forgot Mrs. Garvy and her
strange behavior.

"Freud, forgive me, for I have neuroses."

"Tut, my dear girl, what seems to be the trouble?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Like many cures of mental disorders, Mrs. Garvy's was achieved largely
by self-treatment. She disciplined herself sternly out of the crazy
notion that there had been only one rocket ship and that one a failure.
She could join without wincing, eventually, in any conversation on the
desirability of Venus as a place to retire, on its fabulous floral
profusion. Finally she went to Venus.

All her friends were trying to book passage with the Evening Star
Travel and Real Estate Corporation, but naturally the demand was
crushing. She considered herself lucky to get a seat at last for the
two-week summer cruise. The space ship took off from a place called
Los Alamos, New Mexico. It looked just like all the spaceships on
television and in the picture magazines, but was more comfortable than
you would expect.

Mrs. Garvy was delighted with the fifty or so fellow-passengers
assembled before takeoff. They were from all over the country and
she had a distinct impression that they were on the brainy side. The
captain, a tall, hawk-faced, impressive fellow named Ryan-Something
or other, welcomed them aboard and trusted that their trip would be a
memorable one. He regretted that there would be nothing to see because,
"due to the meteorite season," the ports would be dogged down. It was
disappointing, yet reassuring that the line was taking no chances.

There was the expected momentary discomfort at takeoff and then two
monotonous days of droning travel through space to be whiled away in
the lounge at cards or craps. The landing was a routine bump and the
voyagers were issued tablets to swallow to immunize them against any
minor ailments. When the tablets took effect, the lock was opened and
Venus was theirs.

It looked much like a tropical island on Earth, except for a blanket
of cloud overhead. But it had a heady, other-worldly quality that was
intoxicating and glamorous.

The ten days of the vacation were suffused with a hazy magic. The soap
root, as advertised, was free and sudsy. The fruits, mostly tropical
varieties transplanted from Earth, were delightful. The simple shelters
provided by the travel company were more than adequate for the balmy
days and nights.

It was with sincere regret that the voyagers filed again into the ship,
and swallowed more tablets doled out to counteract and sterilize any
Venus illnesses they might unwittingly communicate to Earth.

       *       *       *       *       *

Vacationing was one thing. Power politics was another.

At the Pole, a small man was in a soundproof room, his face deathly
pale and his body limp in a straight chair.

In the American Senate Chamber, Senator Hull-Mendoza (Synd., N. Cal.)
was saying: "Mr. President and gentlemen, I would be remiss in my duty
as a legislature if'n I didn't bring to the attention of the au-gust
body I see here a perilous situation which is fraught with peril.
As is well known to members of this au-gust body, the perfection of
space flight has brought with it a situation I can only describe
as fraught with peril. Mr. President and gentlemen, now that swift
American rockets now traverse the trackless void of space between this
planet and our nearest planetarial neighbor in space--and, gentlemen, I
refer to Venus, the star of dawn, the brightest jewel in fair Vulcan's
diadome--now, I say, I want to inquire what steps are being taken
to colonize Venus with a vanguard of patriotic citizens like those
minutemen of yore.

"Mr. President and gentlemen! There are in this world nations, envious
nations--I do not name Mexico--who by fair means or foul may seek to
wrest from Columbia's grasp the torch of freedom of space; nations
whose low living standards and innate depravity give them an unfair
advantage over the citizens of our fair republic.

"This is my program: I suggest that a city of more than 100,000
population be selected by lot. The citizens of the fortunate city
are to be awarded choice lands on Venus free and clear, to have and
to hold and convey to their descendants. And the national government
shall provide free transportation to Venus for these citizens. And this
program shall continue, city by city, until there has been deposited on
Venus a sufficient vanguard of citizens to protect our manifest rights
in that planet.

"Objections will be raised, for carping critics we have always with
us. They will say there isn't enough steel. They will call it a cheap
giveaway. I say there _is_ enough steel for _one_ city's population to
be transferred to Venus, and that is all that is needed. For when the
time comes for the second city to be transferred, the first, emptied
city can be wrecked for the needed steel! And is it a giveaway? Yes! It
is the most glorious giveaway in the history of mankind! Mr. President
and gentlemen, there is no time to waste--Venus must be American!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Black-Kupperman, at the Pole, opened his eyes and said feebly, "The
style was a little uneven. Do you think anybody'll notice?"

"You did fine, boy; just fine," Barlow reassured him.

Hull-Mendoza's bill became law.

Drafting machines at the South Pole were busy around the clock and the
Pittsburgh steel mills spewed millions of plates into the Los Alamos
spaceport of the Evening Star Travel and Real Estate Corporation. It
was going to be Los Angeles, for logistic reasons, and the three most
accomplished psycho-kineticists went to Washington and mingled in the
crowd at the drawing to make certain that the Los Angeles capsule
slithered into the fingers of the blind-folded Senator.

Los Angeles loved the idea and a forest of spaceships began to blossom
in the desert. They weren't very good space ships, but they didn't have
to be.

A team at the Pole worked at Barlow's direction on a mail setup. There
would have to be letters to and from Venus to keep the slightest
taint of suspicion from arising. Luckily Barlow remembered that the
problem had been solved once before--by Hitler. Relatives of persons
incinerated in the furnaces of Lublin or Majdanek continued to get
cheery postal cards.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Los Angeles flight went off on schedule, under tremendous press,
newsreel and television coverage. The world cheered the gallant
Angelenos who were setting off on their patriotic voyage to the land
of milk and honey. The forest of spaceships thundered up, and up, and
out of sight without untoward incident. Billions envied the Angelenos,
cramped and on short rations though they were.

Wreckers from San Francisco, whose capsule came up second, moved
immediately into the city of the angels for the scrap steel their own
flight would require. Senator Hull-Mendoza's constituents could do no
less.

The president of Mexico, hypnotically alarmed at this extension of
_yanqui imperialismo_ beyond the stratosphere, launched his own
Venus-colony program.

Across the water it was England versus Ireland, France versus Germany,
China versus Russia, India versus Indonesia. Ancient hatreds grew into
the flames that were rocket ships assailing the air by hundreds daily.

    Dear Ed, how are you? Sam and I are fine and hope you are fine. Is
    it nice up there like they say with food and close grone on trees?
    I drove by Springfield yesterday and it sure looked funny all the
    buildings down but of coarse it is worth it we have to keep the
    greasers in their place. Do you have any truble with them on Venus?
    Drop me a line some time. Your loving sister, Alma.

    Dear Alma, I am fine and hope you are fine. It is a fine place here
    fine climate and easy living. The doctor told me today that I seem
    to be ten years younger. He thinks there is something in the air
    here keeps people young. We do not have much trouble with the
    greasers here they keep to theirselves it is just a question of us
    outnumbering them and staking out the best places for the Americans.
    In South Bay I know a nice little island that I have been saving
    for you and Sam with lots of blanket trees and ham bushes. Hoping
    to see you and Sam soon, your loving brother, Ed.

Sam and Alma were on their way shortly.

Poprob got a dividend in every nation after the emigration had passed
the halfway mark. The lonesome stay-at-homes were unable to bear the
melancholy of a low population density; their conditioning had been to
swarms of their kin. After that point it was possible to foist off the
crudest stripped-down accommodations on would-be emigrants; they didn't
care.

Black-Kupperman did a final job on President Hull-Mendoza, the last
job that genius of hypnotics would ever do on any moron, important or
otherwise.

Hull-Mendoza, panic-stricken by his presidency over an emptying nation,
joined his constituents. The _Independence_, aboard which traveled
the national government of America, was the most elaborate of all the
spaceships--bigger, more comfortable, with a lounge that was handsome,
though cramped, and cloakrooms for Senators and Representatives. It
went, however, to the same place as the others and Black-Kupperman
killed himself, leaving a note that stated he "couldn't live with my
conscience."

       *       *       *       *       *

The day after the American President departed, Barlow flew into a rage.
Across his specially built desk were supposed to flow all Poprob
high-level documents and this thing--this outrageous thing--called
Poprob_term_ apparently had got into the executive stage before he had
even had a glimpse of it!

He buzzed for Rogge-Smith, his statistician. Rogge-Smith seemed to be
at the bottom of it. Poprobterm seemed to be about first and second and
third derivatives, whatever they were. Barlow had a deep distrust of
anything more complex than what he called an "average."

While Rogge-Smith was still at the door, Barlow snapped, "What's the
meaning of this? Why haven't I been consulted? How far have you people
got and why have you been working on something I haven't authorized?"

"Didn't want to bother you, Chief," said Rogge-Smith. "It was really
a technical matter, kind of a final cleanup. Want to come and see the
work?"

Mollified, Barlow followed his statistician down the corridor.

"You still shouldn't have gone ahead without my okay," he grumbled.
"Where the hell would you people have been without me?"

"That's right, Chief. We couldn't have swung it ourselves; our minds
just don't work that way. And all that stuff you knew from Hitler--it
wouldn't have occurred to us. Like poor Black-Kupperman."

They were in a fair-sized machine shop at the end of a slight upward
incline. It was cold. Rogge-Smith pushed a button that started a motor,
and a flood of arctic light poured in as the roof parted slowly. It
showed a small spaceship with the door open.

       *       *       *       *       *

Barlow gaped as Rogge-Smith took him by the elbow and his other boys
appeared: Swenson-Swenson, the engineer; Tsutsugimushi-Duncan, his
propellants man; Kalb-French, advertising.

"In you go, Chief," said Tsutsugimushi-Duncan. "This is Poprobterm."

"But I'm the world Dictator!"

"You bet, Chief. You'll be in history, all right--but this is
necessary, I'm afraid."

The door was closed. Acceleration slammed Barlow cruelly to the metal
floor. Something broke and warm, wet stuff, salty-tasting, ran from his
mouth to his chin. Arctic sunlight through a port suddenly became a
fierce lancet stabbing at his eyes; he was out of the atmosphere.

Lying twisted and broken under the acceleration, Barlow realized that
some things had not changed, that Jack Ketch was never asked to dinner
however many shillings you paid him to do your dirty work, that murder
will out, that crime pays only temporarily.

The last thing he learned was that death is the end of pain.