by Isaac Asimov
Men looked up as he passed, wherever he went; in the gymnasium, along the tennis courts; through the library (he had never in his life imagined books could exist in such numbers; they were stacked, actually stacked, along long shelves). They stared at him curiously and he returned the looks savagely. At least they were no better than he; no call for them to look at him as though he were some sort of curiosity.
Most of them were in their twenties. George said suddenly, “What happens to the older ones?”
Omani said, “This place specializes in the younger ones.” Then, as though he suddenly recognized an implication in George’s question that he had missed earlier, he shook his head gravely and said, “They’re not put out of the way, if that’s what you mean. There are other Houses for older ones.”
“Who cares?” mumbled George, who felt he was sounding too interested and in danger of slipping into surrender.
“You might. As you grow older, you will find yourself in a House with occupants of both sexes.”
That surprised George somehow. “Women, too?”
“Of course. Do you suppose women are immune to this sort of thing?”
George thought of that with more interest and excitement than he had felt for anything since before that day when—He forced his thought away from that.
Omani stopped at the doorway of a room that contained a small closed-circuit television set and a desk computer. Five or six men sat about the television. Omani said, “This is a classroom.”
George said, “What’s that?”
“The young men in there are being educated. Not,” he added, quickly, “in the usual way.”
“You mean they’re cramming it in bit by bit.”
“That’s right. This is the way everyone did it in ancient times.”
This was what they kept telling him since he had come to the House but what of it? Suppose there had been a day when mankind had not known the diatherm-oven. Did that mean he should be satisfied to eat meat raw in a world where others ate it cooked?
He said, “Why do they want to go through that bit-by-bit stuff?”
“To pass the time, George, and because they’re curious.”
“What good does it do them?”
“It makes them happier.”
George carried that thought to bed with him.
The next day he said to Omani ungraciously, “Can you get me into a classroom where I can find out something about programming?”
Omani replied heartily, “Sure.”
It was slow and he resented it. Why should someone have to explain something and explain it again? Why should he have to read and reread a passage, then stare at a mathematical relationship and not understand it at once? That wasn’t how other people had to be.
Over and over again, he gave up. Once he refused to attend classes for a week.
But always he returned. The official in charge, who assigned reading, conducted the television demonstrations, and even explained difficult passages and concepts, never commented on the matter.
George was finally given a regular task in the gardens and took his turn in the various kitchen and cleaning details. This was represented to him as being an advance, but he wasn’t fooled. The place might have been far more mechanized than it was, but they deliberately made work for the young men in order to give them the illusion of worth-while occupation, of usefulness. George wasn’t fooled.
They were even paid small sums of money out of which they could buy certain specified luxuries or which they could put aside for a problematical use in a problemical old age. George kept his money in an open jar, which he kept on a closet shelf. He had no idea how much he had accumulated. Nor did he care.
He made no real friends though he reached the stage where a civil good day was in order. He even stopped brooding (or almost stopped) on the miscarriage of justice that had placed him there. He would go weeks without dreaming of Antonelli, of his gross nose and wattled neck, of the leer with which he would push George into a boiling quicksand and hold him under, till he woke screaming with Omani bending over him in concern.
Omani said to him on a snowy day in February, “It’s amazing how you’re adjusting.”
But that was February, the thirteenth to be exact, his nineteenth birthday. March came, then April, and with the approach of May he realized he hadn’t adjusted at all.
The previous May had passed unregarded while George was still in his bed, drooping and ambitionless. This May was different.
All over Earth, George knew, Olympics would be taking place and young men would be competing, matching their skills against one another in the fight for a place on a new world. There would be the holiday atmosphere, the excitement, the news reports, the self-contained recruiting agents from the worlds beyond space, the glory of victory or the consolations of defeat.
How much of fiction dealt with these motifs; how much of his own boyhood excitement lay in following the events of Olympics from year to year; how many of his own plans—
George Platen could not conceal the longing in his voice. It was too much to suppress. He said, “Tomorrow’s the first of May. Olympics!”
And that led to his first quarrel with Omani and to Omani’s bitter enunciation of the exact name of the institution in which George found himself.
Omani gazed fixedly at George and said distinctly, “A House for the Feeble-minded.”
George Platen flushed. Feeble-minded!
He rejected it desperately. He said in a monotone, “I’m leaving.” He said it on impulse. His conscious mind learned it first from the statement as he uttered it.
Omani, who had returned to his book, looked up. “What?”
George knew what he was saying now. He said it fiercely, “I’m leaving.”
“That’s ridiculous. Sit down, George, calm yourself.”
“Oh, no. I’m here on a frame-up, I tell you. This doctor, Antonelli, took a dislike to me. It’s the sense of power these petty bureaucrats have. Cross them and they wipe out your life with a stylus mark on some card file.”
“Are you back to that?”
“And staying there till it’s all straightened out. I’m going to get to Antonelli somehow, break him, force the truth out of him.” George was breathing heavily and he felt feverish. Olympics month was here and he couldn’t let it pass. If he did, it would be the final surrender and he would be lost for all time.
Omani threw his legs over the side of his bed and stood up. He was nearly six feet tall and the expression on his face gave him the look of a concerned Saint Bernard. He put his arm about George’s shoulder, “If I hurt your feelings—”
George shrugged him off. “You just said what you thought was the truth, and I’m going to prove it isn’t the truth, that’s all. Why not? The door’s open. There aren’t any locks. No one ever said I couldn’t leave. I’ll just walk out.”
“All right, but where will you go?”
“To the nearest air terminal, then to the nearest Olympics center. I’ve got money.” He seized the open jar that held the wages he had put away. Some of the coins jangled to the floor.
“That will last you a week maybe. Then what?”
“By then I’ll have things settled.”
“By then you’ll come crawling back here,” said Omani earnestly, “with all the progress you’ve made to do over again. You’re mad, George.”
“Feeble-minded is the word you used before.”
“Well, I’m sorry I did. Stay here, will you?”
“Are you going to try to stop me?”
Omani compressed his full lips. “No, I guess I won’t. This is your business. If the only way you can learn is to buck the world and come back with blood on your face, go ahead. —Well, go ahead.”
George was in the doorway now, looking back over his shoulder. “I’m going”—he came back to pick up his pocket grooming set slowly—“I hope you don’t object to my taking a few personal belongings.”
Omani shrugged. He was in bed aga
in reading, indifferent.
George lingered at the door again, but Omani didn’t look up. George gritted his teeth, turned and walked rapidly down the empty corridor and out into the night-shrouded grounds.
He had expected to be stopped before leaving the grounds. He wasn’t. He had stopped at an all-night diner to ask directions to an air terminal and expected the proprietor to call the police. That didn’t happen. He summoned a skimmer to take him to the airport and the driver asked no questions.
Yet he felt no lift at that. He arrived at the airport sick at heart. He had not realized how the outer world would be. He was surrounded by professionals. The diner’s proprietor had had his name inscribed on the plastic shell over the cash register. So and so, Registered Cook. The man in the skimmer had his license up, Registered Chauffeur. George felt the bareness of his name and experienced a kind of nakedness because of it; worse, he felt skinned. But no one challenged him. No one studied him suspiciously and demanded proof of professional rating.
George thought bitterly: Who would imagine any human being without one?
He bought a ticket to San Francisco on the 3 A.M. plane. No other plane for a sizable Olympics center was leaving before morning and he wanted to wait as little as possible. As it was, he sat huddled in the waiting room, watching for the police. They did not come.
He was in San Francisco before noon and the noise of the city struck him like a blow. This was the largest city he had ever seen and he had been used to silence and calm for a year and a half now.
Worse, it was Olympics month. He almost forgot his own predicament in his sudden awareness that some of the noise, excitement, confusion was due to that.
The Olympics boards were up at the airport for the benefit of the incoming travelers, and crowds jostled around each one. Each major profession had its own board. Each listed directions to the Olympics Hall where the contest for that day for that profession would be given; the individuals competing and their city of birth; the Outworld (if any) sponsoring it.
It was a completely stylized thing. George had read descriptions often enough in the newsprints and films, watched matches on television, and even witnessed a small Olympics in the Registered Butcher classification at the county seat. Even that, which had no conceivable Galactic implication (there was no Outworlder in attendance, of course) aroused excitement enough.
Partly, the excitement was caused simply by the fact of competition, partly by the spur of local pride (oh, when there was a hometown boy to cheer for, though he might be a complete stranger), and, of course, partly by betting. There was no way of stopping the last.
George found it difficult to approach the board. He found himself looking at the scurrying, avid onlookers in a new way.
There must have been a time when they themselves were Olympic material. What had they done? Nothing!
If they had been winners, they would be far out in the Galaxy somewhere, not stuck here on Earth. Whatever they were, their professions must have made them Earth-bait from the beginning; or else they had made themselves Earth-bait by inefficiency at whatever high-specialized professions they had had.
Now these failures stood about and speculated on the chances of newer and younger men. Vultures!
How he wished they were speculating on him.
He moved down the line of boards blankly, clinging to the outskirts of the groups about them. He had eaten breakfast on the strato and he wasn’t hungry. He was afraid, though. He was in a big city during the confusion of the beginning of Olympics competition. That was protection, sure. The city was full of strangers. No one would question George. No one would care about George.
No one would care. Not even the House, thought George bitterly. They cared for him like a sick kitten, but if a sick kitten up and wanders off, well, too bad, what can you do?
And now that he was in San Francisco, what did he do? His thoughts struck blankly against a wall. See someone? Whom? How? Where would he even stay? The money he had left seemed pitiful.
The first shamefaced thought of going back came to him. He could go to the police— He shook his head violently as though arguing with a material adversary.
A word caught his eye on one of the boards, gleaming there: Metallurgist. In smaller letters, nonferrous. At the bottom of a long list of names, in flowing script, sponsored by Novia.
It induced painful memories: himself arguing with Trevelyan, so certain that he himself would be a Programmer, so certain that a Programmer was superior to a Metallurgist, so certain that he was following the right course, so certain that he was clever—
So clever that he had to boast to that small-minded, vindictive Antonelli. He had been so sure of himself that moment when he had been called and had left the nervous Trevelyan standing there, so cocksure.
George cried out in a short, incoherent high-pitched gasp. Someone turned to look at him, then hurried on. People brushed past impatiently pushing him this way and that. He remained staring at the board, openmouthed.
It was as though the board had answered his thought. He was thinking “Trevelyan” so hard that it had seemed for a moment that of course the board would say “Trevelyan” back at him.
But that was Trevelyan, up there. And Armand Trevelyan (Stubby’s hated first name; up in lights for everyone to see) and the right hometown. What’s more, Trev had wanted Novia, aimed for Novia, insisted on Novia; and this competition was sponsored by Novia.
This had to be Trev; good old Trev. Almost without thinking, he noted the directions for getting to the place of competition and took his place in line for a skimmer.
Then he thought somberly: Trev made it! He wanted to be a Metallurgist, and he made it!
George felt colder, more alone than ever.
There was a line waiting to enter the hall. Apparently, Metallurgy Olympics was to be an exciting and closely fought one. At least, the illuminated sky sign above the hall said so, and the jostling crowd seemed to think so.
It would have been a rainy day, George thought, from the color of the sky, but San Francisco had drawn the shield across its breadth from bay to ocean. It was an expense to do so, of course, but all expenses were warranted where the comfort of Outworlders was concerned. They would be in town for the Olympics. They were heavy spenders. And for each recruit taken, there would be a fee both to Earth, and to the local government from the planet sponsoring the Olympics. It paid to keep Outworlders in mind of a particular city as a pleasant place in which to spend Olympics time. San Francisco knew what it was doing.
George, lost in thought, was suddenly aware of a gentle pressure on his shoulder blade and a voice saying, “Are you in line here, young man?”
The line had moved up without George’s having noticed the widening gap. He stepped forward hastily and muttered, “Sorry, sir.”
There was the touch of two fingers on the elbow of his jacket and he looked about furtively.
The man behind him nodded cheerfully. He had iron-gray hair, and under his jacket he wore an old-fashioned sweater that buttoned down the front. He said, “I didn’t mean to sound sarcastic.”
“No offense.”
“All right, then.” He sounded cozily talkative. “I wasn’t sure you might not simply be standing there, entangled with the line, so to speak, only by accident. I thought you might be a—”
“A what?” said George sharply.
“Why, a contestant, of course. You look young.”
George turned away. He felt neither cozy nor talkative, and bitterly impatient with busybodies.
A thought struck him. Had an alarm been sent out for him? Was his description known, or his picture? Was Gray-hair behind him trying to get a good look at his face?
He hadn’t seen any news reports. He craned his neck to see the moving strip of news headlines parading across one section of the city shield, somewhat lackluster against the gray of the cloudy afternoon sky. It was no use. He gave up at once. The headlines would never concern themselves with him. This was Olympics
time and the only news worth headlining was the comparative scores of the winners and the trophies won by continents, nations, and cities.
It would go on like that for weeks, with scores calculated on a per capita basis and every city finding some way of calculating itself into a position of honor. His own town had once placed third in an Olympics covering Wiring Technician; third in the whole state. There was still a plaque saying so in Town Hall.
George hunched his head between his shoulders and shoved his hands in his pocket and decided that made him more noticeable. He relaxed and tried to look unconcerned, and felt no safer. He was in the lobby now, and no authoritative hand had yet been laid on his shoulder. He filed into the hall itself and moved as far forward as he could.
It was with an unpleasant shock that he noticed Gray-hair next to him. He looked away quickly and tried reasoning with himself. The man had been right behind him in line after all.
Gray-hair, beyond a brief and tentative smile, paid no attention to him and, besides, the Olympics was about to start. George rose in his seat to see if he could make out the position assigned to Trevelyan and at the moment that was all his concern.
The hall was moderate in size and shaped in the classical long oval, with the spectators in the two balconies running completely about the rim and the contestants in the linear trough down the center. The machines were set up, the progress boards above each bench were dark, except for the name and contest number of each man. The contestants themselves were on the scene, reading, talking together; one was checking his fingernails minutely. (It was, of course, considered bad form for any contestant to pay any attention to the problem before him until the instant of the starting signal.)
George studied the program sheet he found in the appropriate slot in the arm of his chair and found Trevelyan’s name. His number was twelve and, to George’s chagrin, that was at the wrong end of the hall. He could make out the figure of Contestant Twelve, standing with his hands in his pockets, back to his machine, and staring at the audience as though he were counting the house. George couldn’t make out the face.
