Once the door was safely shut behind him, he took the two boxes out, opened them, and examined their contents. There was a little metallic globe in each, but one had a roughly soldered seam that made it look like a hand production job. He gave a little whistle of excitement and stowed it away carefully in his pocket. If he was going to make it through the game with North, he was going to need super power. After replacing the other grenade in his box and putting it back in his carrier, he squatted down on his haunches and listened at the keyhole. He wanted to find out something more about his new weapon.
“Fine young consumer, that,” he heard Mr. Flugnet say in the voice that producers use when they want to say something nice that they really don’t mean. Aunt Martha let out a long sniff.
“Too spindly! It’s a wonder to us that he’s made it this far. He just hasn’t got the stuff that my boys have. Made it through, both of them, with hardly a scratch.”
She nodded fondly over toward Reuban and Alf. Alf was sniggering through a comic book one of the new improved kind without any words to distract the reader. Reuban just sat a thin driblet of saliva drooling from one corner of his mouth, and plucked aimlessly at the buttons on his shirt. As they looked at him. he began to squirm back and forth and to make little whimpering sounds.
“Better take Reuban upstairs before he dirties himself again,” said Aunt Martha. Alf obediently took his younger brother by the arm and herded him out of the room. Alan ducked under the hall table until they had gone by.
“Which shock is he on? asked Mr. Flugnet politely.
“He got his third today. That’s always the worst.”
Mr. Flugnet nodded his agreement.
“Another couple of weeks, though, and he’ll be ready to start his reconditioning. And by spring he’ll be ready to settle down as a full-fledged producer and start raising little consumption units of his own.” he sighed. “I do wish they’d work out a faster method. For three weeks now I’ve had to take care of him just like I would a baby. It’s no easy job for a woman of my age.”
Alan’s uncle clucked impatiently. “We all had to go through it once—and somebody had to take care of us. It’s never pretty, but it’s just the way things are.”
ALAN was just about to give up and go back in the room when he heard his uncle say, “This new grenade you have in production, it’s something special?”
“It was supposed to be,” said the visitor unhappily. “We figured it would be the hottest consumers item to hit the market in years.”
“What do you mean, ‘supposed to be’ ? Did some bugs show up after you got it into production?”
Mr. Flugnet shook his head. “There’s nothing wrong with the grenade itself. It’ll knock out anything within a radius of ten feet and not even bother anybody standing just the other side of the blast area. We thought we had the perfect consumer item. No flying fragments to bother innocent producers, no danger of misfire. New Washington was so impressed that they gave us a heavy enough subsidy to make it possible for us to put three man hours in each one and still retail them for $4.27 a gross. And then . . .”
“Yes?” Alan’s uncle leaned forward eagerly in his chair.
For some reason or other Mr. Flugnet changed the subject hurriedly. “What line are you in?”
“Small arms. But getting to those experimental models you’re looking for . . .”
Mr. Flugnet wasn’t about to get back. “How’s production?” he asked.
Unwillingly, Alan’s uncle moved off in the new direction. “Not bad, considering. We’re always the last to feel the pinch. Things are still tighter than I like, though. Shirey down the street got laid off at the burp gun plant last week and he doesn’t know when he’ll be taken back. I don’t see why the government doesn’t shorten the truce periods so as to give the kids more consuming time.”
“It’s not that simple,” said Mr. Flugnet pontificailly. “If you increase consumption much over what it is now, you’ll decrease the number of consumers too fast. That causes overproduction, and pretty soon more factories start shutting down. Then bingo! we’ve got ourselves a fine recession.”
“I hadn’t thought about it that way,” said Alan’s uncle slowly. “And after all, things aren’t too bad. Even if some of the arms plants do have to shut down once in a while, most of the producers do have jobs most of the time. And we are able to keep the population down to the point where the land that escaped dusting during the big war can produce enough food for everybody.”
One of Alan’s feet was going to sleep and the conversation didn’t make much sense to him, so he decided that now was as good a time to make his entrance as any.
“I found it,” he said, holding out the second sample.
“Took you long enough,” grumbled his uncle. Mr. Flugnet didn’t say anything, he just came over and took the box from Alan. Dumping the sphere that was inside out into the palm of his hand, he examined it closely.
“No soap,” he said wearily and handed it back. “That’s one of the regulars. Here, you can keep it.”
“Thanks.” Alan placed the little grenade carefully in his carrier. “I’ll need this tonight. We’re playing North and every little bit will help. Coach Blauman says that even if we haven’t much in the way of equipment, it’s the spirit that counts. He says that if we really get in there and fight we’ll be able to stop North cold.”
“That’s nice,” murmured Mr. Flugnet vaguely as he reached for his hat. He obviously had his mind on other things.
“Sorry the boy didn’t have what you were looking for,” said Alan’s uncle. “But probably the other men have rounded up the rest of them by now.”
MR. Flugnet looked dubious.
“I doubt it. Kids are like packrats. When Security finally broke Harris down—he’s the guy that’s responsible for this whole mess—he admitted to having made at least three hundred and slipping them into sample cases. As of an hour ago we’d recovered exactly thirty-seven.”
He caught himself with a start. “Shouldn’t be talking about it. Though I can’t see where it makes any difference now.” He let out a long sigh. “Well, you’re the last house on my list and I’ve done all that I can. Guess I’d better be going.” He picked up his truce hat and planted it firmly on his head.
“Guess I’d better be going too,” said Alan. “I’ve got to be getting over to the stadium to get dressed for the game.”
“Don’t rush off,” said Alan’s uncle. He didn’t intend to let the visitor escape until he found out exactly what it was that was causing him so much concern. “No, not you, Alan. You run on. I’m talking to Mr. Flugnet. Why not wait until the cease-fire siren sounds? It’s getting dark outside and some of the kids might take a potshot at you before they see your truce hat.”
“Thanks just the same, but—”
“Aw, stay! I’ll fix you a good Stiff drink. You look as though you could use one.”
Mr. Flugnet hesitated and then sat down again. “I guess I could at that,” he said.
Alan’s uncle hurried over to the liquor cabinet and poured two long ones. After he’d handed a drink to Mr. Flugnet, he settled back in his own chair and said as casually as he could, “You were saying something about somebody named Harris who did something to some grenades and got hauled in by Security?”
Mr. Flugnet didn’t answer right away. Instead he took a long pull at his glass, coughed, and then took another. Alan looked at his watch and then started out of the room. He was almost to the door when his aunt said sharply, “Alan!”
He turned.
“If you get hit tonight, mind that you see that they do a proper job of patching you up at the aid station. I don’t want my sheets all messed up like last time.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Alan said obediently. As he went out nobody said goodbye. They were all waiting for Mr. Flugnet to say something.
Alan stopped automatically at the front door and made a quick check of the street through the periscope. Nothing seemed to be moving but he didn
’t take any chances. Sliding the door open just wide enough to get through, he made a running dive for the communication trench. The kid across the street had got a sniper-scope for Christmas and a guy wasn’t even safe after dark.
THE field lights were already on and the stadium a quarter full when Alan slipped into the locker room. He was ten minutes late and had to hurry with his dressing, but for once the coach didn’t bawl him out. Coach Blauman didn’t even notice him—Coach Blauman had troubles of his own. He was over in one corner telling them to Dan Ericson, the sports reporter for the Tribune who covered most of the high school events.
The coach was a fat, florid man, and there was a slight thickness to his speech that indicated that he had gotten to the bottle he kept in the back of his locker earlier than usual.
“You want a quote?” he snorted. “HI give you a quote. I’ll give you enough quotes to fill that whole damn fish-wrapper you call a magazine from front to back. You can put my picture on page one and put a great big Coach Blauman says right underneath it.”
Ericson gave a tired grin. “Go ahead, coach. What’s the beef for the evening?”
“That damn PTA, that’s what. I go to them and ask for four mortars, four stinking mortars, and all I get is the brush-off. Three thousand bucks they got salted away, and it’s all going for new body armor for the band. I say, ‘What’s the use of having a pretty band when the team’s so hard up for equipment that a bunch of sand lot grade school players could knock them over. So old Stevens gives me the fish eye and throws me a line about how it ain’t whether you win or lose but how you play the game.”
“Don’t let it get you down, Blauman,” said the reporter. “Think of all the character you’re building!”
ALAN was lugged off the field at the end of the second action with a gash in his head that took six stitches to close. During the rest of the quarter he sat woodenly on the bench in the players dugout. A telescreen at the far end was following the play but he didn’t lift his head to look at it. He looked like a clockwork manikin that had been temporarily turned off.
He was sent back in just before the end of the half. Illegally, it is true—the enemy had already received credit for one wounded, and according to NAA rules he was supposed to be ineligible to continue playing. Blauman didn’t have any choice, however. The last drive of North’s had torn up his whole center and he didn’t have much left in the way of reserves.
As Alan trotted out toward the foxholes that marked his side’s last stand, he passed stretcher bearers bringing back the dead and injured from the last play. Most of them were wearing the green helmets of Marshall. The PA system announced the substitution and there was a feeble cheer from the Marshall side of the stadium.
Alan went up to the referee’s tank and threw a quick salute at the vision slit.
“Wetzel substituting for Mitchell.”
“Check,” said the bored voice of the official inside. “Fight clean and fight hard and may the best team win.” The formula came mechanically. Neither the referee nor anybody else had any doubt that the best team had won.
Alan was half way to the hastily dug trenches that marked his team’s position when a mortar shell exploded forty feet away and knocked him off his feet. There was a sudden outraged blast from the referee’s siren, and then the enemy captain bobbed out of his foxhole.
“Sorry, sir,” he yelled. “One of my mortar crews was sighting in and accidentally let off a round.”
The referee wasn’t impressed.
“That’ll cost you exactly twenty yards,” he said.
A yell came from the Marshall bleachers as the penalty for back-field illegally in motion was announced. The Marshall team was too tired to do any cheering. They just drudged forward and planted themselves in the defensive line they had been thrown out of five minutes before.
The North team was more careful this time. There wasn’t a quiver of motion from their side until the referee’s siren signaled the beginning of play. Then they opened up with everything they had. It seemed to Alan that every mortar North owned was zeroed in on his position and that every one of their grenade men was out to get him personally. Blast followed blast in such steady succession that the night air seemed one solid mass of jagged shrapnel. He’d had it bad before, but nothing like this. He flattened against the moist earth of his fox hole and waited numbly for the knife edges to rip him open. Then suddenly it stopped and without thinking he found himself rising into a defensive position. There was a savage spatter of victory yells from the other line and then they came swarming out of their positions, their bayonets gleaming wickedly in the overhead lights.
They were repeating the play that they had been using all evening, a hard punching thrust through center. The guidon bearer came charging forward, his tommy gunners fanned out in front of him in a protecting screen, their guns hosing the Marshall positions with quick accurate bursts.
Alan forced himself to lift his head enough to sight accurately, and opened up on the flag bearer. He was a difficult target as he came dancing forward, bobbing and shifting at every step. Alan fired methodically, remembering not to jerk his trigger finger as he squeezed off his shots. And then his gun jammed. He got a moment’s breathing spell as Marshall’s two surviving mortars opened up to give him some covering fire, but the Northers didn’t stop altogether, they kept coming in short rushes.
Alan was singled out for their special attention. With him knocked out they could carry their flag right through the center of Marshall’s line. With a sudden yell, four of them threw themselves into a crouching run and came charging down on his position. Alan hammered at the clearing lever of his rifle but it was stuck fast. Throwing it angrily off to one side, he tore open the cover of his grenade case and fumbled inside until his fingers closed around the sphere with the roughly soldered edge. He waited until the Northers were almost on him and then threw it at the middle man as hard as he could.
There was a blast. A blast of harsh purple light that punched through the protecting ramparts of his foxhole as if they weren’t there. He felt a sudden wave of nausea, and then a stabbing tearing pain inside the back of his head as old neural channels were ripped out and new ones opened up. When he finally staggered to his feet he looked the same. Outside that is. Inside he wasn’t the same sort of a human any longer. Neither was any other consumer in the stadium.
WHEN Alan got back to the house, everybody was still in the living room. Mr. Flugnet was somewhat drunk and all the pressure that had been built up inside him was hissing out in speech. Alan stood silently in the doorway and listened.
“. . . and then it was too late,” said Mr. Flugnet. “Somebody must have slipped up in shock therapy or else something went haywire with the reconditioning machinery. Whatever it was, Harris came out with the job only half done. He waited ten years for a chance to strike back for what had been done to him while he was still a consumer. When he was put to work on the development of the new concussion grenade, he had his chance and he made the most of it.”
“How?”
“He worked out a deconditioner that was so tiny it would fit into a grenade case and so powerful that it could blanket an area half a mile across.”
“Deconditioner?” said Alan’s uncle in a puzzled voice.
“You went through one while you were being changed. The old patterns have to be taken out before new ones can be put in.”
“All that I remember is sitting in a long room with a silver helmet on my head that had a lot of wires attached to it. But I still don’t understand about that Harris fellow.”
“It’s simple enough. He came out remembering.”
“Remembering what?”
“Remembering what it was like to be a consumer,” said Mr. Flugnet grimly.
“But everybody remembers that.”
Mr. Flugnet shook his head. “You just think you do. Part of the reconditioning process is the introduction of a protective amnesia. Being a consumer isn’t nice, isn’t nice at all. The po
st natal blocks only operate on the conscious level. Underneath a tremendous pressure of anger and hatred and fear is built up over the years. The consumer pattern that has been conditioned in runs directly contrary to the instinct for self preservation, or whatever you want to call it. That’s why the change to producer status takes so long. The accumulated charge has to be drained off slowly before the reconditioning can take place. But if the blocks were to be removed at once, if the youngsters were to suddenly wake up and see their world as it actually is . . .” Mr. Flugnet’s voice shuddered to a stop. “Do you mind if I have another drink? Just a short one?” Without waiting for an answer he went and helped himself. “Maybe they’d understand,” he muttered.
“Understand what?” said Alan’s uncle blankly. “Who?”
“The consumers. Maybe they’d understand that there wasn’t any other way to do it. The factories produce so fast that when everybody has all they want, they have to shut down—except the war plants, that is. That gets used up as fast as it’s made. But when there was nobody left to fight, when everybody else was dead, we had to keep producing. And if you produce, somebody has to consume. And . . .” His voice trailed off.
“I still don’t see what you’re so upset about,” said Alan’s uncle.
Alan stepped into the room. “I do,” he said in a strange flat voice.
Mr. Flugnet took one good look at him, made a funny little squawking sound, and huddled back in his chair.
“I almost got killed tonight,” said Alan.
His uncle shot him a surprised look. “That’s a funny remark for a consumer to make.”
“Yeah,” said Alan. “I guess it—”
“Well, forget about it, If you’ve got what it takes, you’ll make it through like Alf and Reuban did. If you haven’t—well, that’s just the way things are.”
“And that’s the way things should be,” announced Alf. “Only the strong deserve the jobs. By the way, what happened to the celebration? We used to tear the town up after games.”
“We’re having it tomorrow.”
Collected Fiction Page 35
