“Perhaps those demands are a bit too aggressive,” said Weintraub thoughtfully. “We cannot afford to compromise, and Ebert will surely not concede. If we back down now, we’ll lose everything.”
“We’ll have to wait and see,” said Staefler.
“That’s the hard part,” said Weintraub. “We have to sit here in our secret den in Frachtdorf, while hundreds of miles away our destinies are being decided.” At that moment in Berlin, the Communist forces, flushed with their initial success, sought to consolidate their gains. The bands of militant Communists seized buildings and blockaded streets. The army fought back, and demanded that Ebert make a strong denunciation of the Party, as he had promised. Ebert vacillated. In the meantime, the Communists gained support. Strikes closed Jermany’s industries once more. Demonstrators numbering in the hundreds of thousands took control of transportation facilities and newspapers. The army, at last grown impatient with Ebert, took the matter into its own hands. Machine guns, grenades, and armored vehicles were used against the Communist bands. It was a case of an organized military force against a disordered mob of unemployed men, widows of soldiers killed in the war, and fanatical students. In three days the Communists were crushed.
The bad news reached Frachtdorf slowly. With it came the announcement of an election for the National Assembly, which would draw up a new constitution and elect a President. The official Party directive stated that all Communists should boycott the elections, and strive to reform their shattered organization. At the polls, the Jerman people vindicated Ebert’s policies. He was chosen the first president of the Jerman Republic by the Constituent Assembly in Weimar. His first act as president was to decline the offer of grain from the Soviet Union, in favor of what he termed “reparations” from the United States. There was shocked silence from the east, angry replies from Jerman Ostamerika.
“We’re dead,” said Kleib.
“No, not yet. But we’ve been forced underground again,” said Weintraub. “We can’t give up. We can’t get discouraged. The Party will not die. It just means more work for us, more dedication, a greater willingness to sacrifice ourselves to convince the Jerman people of the swindle they’ve accepted.”
“Oh, hell,” said Kleib. Weintraub’s cell was falling apart. Even Staefler had grown weary of the Communist game. The boys found other entertainments; in a few days, Weintraub was all alone in the Party’s Frachtdorf headquarters. His superior, Herr Schneck, in the nearby city of Gelnhausen, learned of the situation and ordered Weintraub to report in person.
The following afternoon, Weintraub was escorted into a darkened room where the old man lay, tucked up to his chin with an old army blanket. He was dying, Weintraub knew, but he worked steadily during his intermittent periods of consciousness. Schneck gestured, and Weintraub moved quietly to the bedside. The old man spoke, his voice dry and soft in the darkness.
“Wilhelm, my grandson,” he said, mistaking Weintraub in his delirium, “stay in touch with the Russians. It will serve no purpose to cause conflict. But now you must go. Go to America. Good luck, and may God bless.”
Weintraub bowed to the old man. Schneck smiled, and made a gurgling sound deep in his throat. He let his head fall one last time to the pillow. As Weintraub backed away, an aide handed him a thick folder.
CHAPTER 2
The trains were already crowded. Apparently everyone in the city had been given the same message, and they all rode home together with the same worried expression. Ernest wondered if he were the only one without that paralyzing feeling of apprehension. No matter what had happened, its effects would probably never trickle far enough down the ladder of fortune to alter his life. Or, he thought, the lives of any of these people. But here they all were.
Their lives continued without thought, without concern. There was a peculiar insectlike quality to them, Ernest reflected. It wasn’t a complimentary comparison. A few days before, he had talked to Sokol the foreman about that sad fact. “Jennings must get pretty burned,” Ernest had said. “I mean, I do my work all right. Not as good as I would if I gave a damn about these idiot machines. But, after all, the old man can’t expect me to jump for joy the way he does.”
“Nah,” said Sokol, “he won’t expect that. He’s running the red queen’s race himself, trying to hold his employees back so they won’t advance themselves right into unemployment.”
“We’re like a bunch of bees,” said Ernest. “You and me and everybody’s working like crazy at jobs we don’t care anything about, and only Old Man Jennings gets to suck the royal jelly.”
“He’s just a drone himself,” said Sokol with a cynical expression. “You ever see him? He’s seventy years old, running around the secretary pool pinching bottoms. He don’t fool me, though. What’s even sadder, he don’t fool the secretaries. And anyway, he’s not the big boss. He can’t understand what we’re doing, either. Only the Representatives can.”
“I hope they do.”
Sokol sighed. “Yeah, me too.” The two men lapsed into silence; the discussion was edging nearer a “meaning of existence” argument, and that was a pointless business before lunch.
The Representatives had learned to move softly while pursuing their enigmatic ends. Each of the Representatives had at least a billion constituents; in such concentrations, even such simple matters as minor urban renewals or revised agricultural quotas could bring about a general depression in the population. The citizenry reacted with symptoms of extreme distress and, sometimes, fury. Starving for symbols of stability in their lives, people began to resent the tearing down of familiar buildings and landmarks, the encroachment of highways on what small open areas remained. The Representatives exercised their wills to the fullest degree, but with a shrewd eye on the temper of the witless mob.
On the short ride from the factory to the subway, Eileen, the girl from the front office, speculated about the announcement that had sent them all home. “I really hope it isn’t too bad,” she said, shaking her head. Ernest looked at her closely, and saw that her eyes were bright with tears.
“It isn’t worth it, baby,” he said. “It really isn’t.”
“I don’t know what I’d do,” she said. “I remember once, when the son of the Representative of Africa was shot. I couldn’t go to work or anything. For a long time I didn’t think we could keep going.”
“Well, we did. And no matter what happened today, we will. The Representatives are only people, you know. Like us.”
Eileen glanced away from the street. “They’re Representatives,” she said, in the tone of voice she would reserve for angels or devils.
“Yeah,” said Ernest, sighing. He slouched in his seat. Eileen might make a lunch-hour mistress, but she’d never fit into his life any other way. He nodded to her without a word when she left him at the subway station. Before he had gone down the stairs to the turnstiles, he had forgotten everything she had said.
The crush in the subway car was terrible, for the time spoiling Ernest’s holiday. In a perverse way he wished that the emergency was, in fact, as serious as the commuters feared, to reward all their sullen, graceless behavior. It was so damned easy for people to lose perspective. When they got home, their televisions would tell them nothing more than that the Asian Representative’s daughter-in-law had had another miscarriage. The world would be due for a planet-wide Day of Prayer. Or something equally as unshattering; hardly worth all the anxiety.
In any event, he would have to find ways of killing the additional time at home. The prospect of spending the extra hours with his wife was not at all attractive. Whatever the seriousness of the situation demanded, Gretchen would react with panic and hysteria. He hoped the announcement would be made early; the sooner it came, the quicker he could dope her up and put her away.
Ernest recalled the night before. He had come home and found his wife watching television. He sat on the couch next to her. Neither of them said a word. Finally, during a commercial break, Ernest spoke. “You know,” he said, “Old M
an Jennings made a speech today. He said that with all the spare time we have now, we all ought to try to improve our education.”
“That’s right,” said Gretchen, her eyes fastened on the animated ad.
“Maybe we could do that. I might get a better job. Lots of guys do it. By going to the library, I mean. It’s free, you know. Or go back to school.”
“Sssh,” said Gretchen. The program was resuming.
Ernest said nothing more until the next commercial.
“Stuff like this turns my stomach,” he said.
“Don’t watch it,” said Gretchen.
“What am I supposed to do? There’s only one room in this lousy module.”
“So go to the library.”
“Yeah, right. Does somebody think that show’s supposed to be entertaining? That guy singing? Who is it?”
“Phil Gatelin. He’s great,” said Gretchen. “Now, shut up.”
Ernest went over and stretched out on the bed. The noise of the television wouldn’t let him nap. Finally he got up, put on his coat, and went out to a bar for a few hours. He would never mention the idea of further education to her again.
The memory irritated Ernest. He cut it off with a quick shake of his head.
The press on the subway had been so unpleasant that he decided to walk the mile and a half to his apartment rather than take a bus. The pedestrians had the same concerned look as the passengers on the train. Ernest shouldered his way through the people, forcing his own path among the currents of traffic.
The buildings that he passed were all condominium dormitories, every one of them filled to capacity with various-colored modular apartments. The government claimed that housing was being built at an even faster rate than necessary, but Ernest didn’t believe it. Everyone knew someone who was having a difficult time finding a place for his modapt.
Sokol had been trying to find a new slot for his apartment, closer to the Jennings plant. He hadn’t had any luck in the three weeks he’d been looking. “Do you know anyone ready to move out of your neighborhood?” he’d asked Ernest.
“No, not offhand,” said Ernest. “If I hear anything…”
“Yeah, thanks. You live right on the edge of the walking-distance limit. You don’t walk, though, do you?”
Ernest shook his head. “It’s a rotten part of town these days. I want to get out, myself. If I could find a place, I’d sublet my old one to you.” Sokol just nodded his head sadly.
“It used to be that people from the same backgrounds settled together,” said the foremen. “My wife, now. She’s Italian. I met her in Gallisi five years ago, and brought her back with me. You’d think she’d want to live near the rest of the Italians. No, in five years, she can’t understand them any more. They’ve changed so fast. And the ones who came here before then, well, they won’t understand her. She feels better away from them. I kind of miss the old neighborhoods. Now everything’s the same.”
“That’s the Representatives,” said Ernest. “That’s equality.”
“That’s rigor mortis,” said Sokol.
Ernest hated his own module. It was a Kurasu; it had been given to him new by his parents as a wedding gift. It was as small and as inexpensive as possible—Gretchen thought it was “snug.” Ernest rented a place for it in a privately owned building, a third-floor slot. They didn’t have the money yet to rent a higher slot, up away from the noise and filth of the city. But at least they were well in the interior of the building, with only a single window to the outside. Although Ernest complained that it was like living in a shoe box, still they were never troubled by the racket from the street. The economy modapt came equipped with only the merest essentials; it was old now, without the standard equipment of the Fords, the Chevrolets, the Peugeots Ernest dreamed of. It could not take advantage of even those piped-in luxuries which the skeleton frame of the building offered. Rather than moving, as Gretchen hoped to do, Ernest planned eventually to trade in the modapt and buy another and better fitted model.
Gretchen was always eager to move. She hadn’t learned yet that, as Sokol had pointed out, every neighborhood in the city was taking on a dismally similar appearance. There weren’t any more enclaves of Spanish-or Czech-or Chinese-speaking immigrants, slowly being assimilated into the American culture. There were only individuals, already alienated from the countrymen they had left behind, unable to identify with their predecessors in North America, trying to make out as best they could on their own. Customs, language, points of view altered so frequently that a person had much less in common with his ethnic fellows than with a stranger living across the hall, who at least shared the same spatial, temporal, and social locus.
“Why don’t we try to find a nice little neighborhood?” Gretchen had often asked. “You know, with shops and strange holidays. Don’t you remember how there used to be strings of light across the streets sometimes? They were always celebrating some holy day or somebody’s birthday. When I was a little girl, those were the best times. It was like a big party right on the street, with hot dogs and soda and everything. This part of town is too modern.”
“They don’t do that any more,” said Ernest patiently. “The Representatives decided that, don’t you remember? We’re all citizens of North America, and we can’t go around excluding people by having private minority holidays.”
Gretchen looked disgusted. “Well, they still have little shops, don’t they?”
“I don’t know,” said Ernest. “I’m not sure.” He had ended that fruitless discussion in the usual manner, by shaking his head and walking away.
All these thoughts surged through Ernest’s mind, triggered perhaps by the unusual circumstance, the mysterious “emergency.” He walked past the modapt buildings on his block, thinking about the thousands of individuals locked in each, all staring anxiously at their television sets. Gretchen would be staring anxionsly at hers. In a few minutes, against his will, so would Ernest.
As he unlocked the door to his apartment, Gretchen called to him. “Is that you?” she asked. When he didn’t reply, she came out of the partitioned nursery. “I was expecting you to come home,” she said. “Mom called to tell me about the announcement.”
“That’s good,” said Ernest. “I’m glad she called. That was a very wise thing for her to do. Now you’ve had all morning to worry about it.” He shut the door with his foot and hung his jacket on a hook on the wall.
“Don’t be sarcastic,” said Gretchen. “I noticed that you didn’t think to call me.”
“I wanted to trap you,” said Ernest. “I wanted to come home early and surprise you in the arms of a neighbor.”
Gretchen stared at him. “Are you serious? What a lousy thing to say! Is that what you think I do all day?”
Ernest sat on the couch, rubbing his aching temples. “It’s hot in here, you know that? You like it like this, or what? Why don’t you get me a can of beer?” While she crossed the room to the kitchen area he said, “How come you didn’t know about it yourself? All you do is watch television anyway.”
She gave him the cold beer, and he held it against the side of his head for a few seconds. “Our set’s broken again,” she said. “I don’t know, it just faded flat, and then it went out all the way. I haven’t seen a thing all day. Maybe we’ll have to get a new one. Ours is so old, anyway.”
“Never mind. I’ll run it down to the building superintendent. That’s what he’s for, you know. Sometimes I wonder if you know where money comes from.” “But what are we going to watch the bulletin on? That Hispanic guy they have here to fix things takes weeks to get a job done. I don’t trust him, anyhow.” “There’s the flat set in the kid’s room. Did you forget about that?”
“I can’t stand watching shows on that old set. It seems so dumb, looking at everything flat like a postcard. It makes my head hurt, now that I’m used to the stereo,” said Gretchen.
“It’s good enough for the announcement. I’ll get it out.”
Meanwhile 1
; In Europe, there were only memories of the great cultures. Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, England, Carbba, and Germany had all seized control of the world’s course and the imagination of the human race at one time or another. But now these great powers of the past were drifting into a cynical old age, where decadence and momentary pleasures replaced the drive for dominance and national pride. The Russians struggled pettily among themselves, expending the last energies of a once-glorious nation in puerile bickerings. China showed signs of total degeneration, having lost its immensely rich heritage of art and philosophy, while clinging to a ruthless creed which crushed its hopeless people beneath a burden of mock patriotism. Breulandy was the only vibrant force east of the Caucasus Mountains; still, no observer could tell what that guarded land might do. Perhaps a Breulen storm would spill out across the continent, at least instilling a new life force in the decaying states. But from Breulandy itself came no word, no hint, as though the country had bypassed its time of ascendancy to settle for a weary and bitter mediocrity.
Of the rest of the world there was nothing to be said. The Americas still rested as they had in the few centuries since their discovery: huge, parklike land masses, populated by savages, too distant, too worthless, too impractical to bother about. None of the crumbling European governments could summon either the leadership or the financial support to exploit the New World. The Scandinavian lands were inhabited by skin-clad brutes scarcely more civilized than the American cannibals. Further east, beyond the teeming Chinese shores, between Asia and the unexplored western reaches of the Americas, no one was quite certain just what existed and what was only myth. Perhaps the island continent of Lemarry waited with its untold riches and beautiful copper spires.
Relatives Page 3
