FIVE: LAST CHANCE

I BEGAN the historic day of July 1st in the best spirits. No man could have been happier or prouder when, at eleven o’clock sharp, Bangani (Barnum F.) and I stood in the great hall where, only yesterday, Her Excellency the Minister of Police Affairs had given me a new sense of dedication.

It was the same cathedral-like hall, but in an instant, it was very different. Before us a curtain of light arose from the black and white chessboard floor, a curtain that reached to the ceiling two hundred feet above our heads, a dazzling curtain that changed constantly from red to white to green to orange. It reminded me of the mushroom cloud at Paris-in-Miami, but here the wild distorted colors had the strangest effect on both Bangani (Barnum F.) and myself. We stood there in a silence punctuated only by the beating of the magicientist’s R-Treatment, aluminum heart. He glanced at me and I nodded as if to say: It’s Them. His lips shaped the word: Vindicated, and his burning eyes, those youthful and original eyes of his, shone in the wrinkled face of Dr. Bangani. Then, the great hall filled with music:

It was startling to hear that snatch of music at that moment, and then I was grateful as no man has ever been grateful to a woman. That bit of music was my music, Our music, a reminder from Her Excellency not to be fearful. Almost immediately, two couches lifted up out of the chessboard floor and I really began to feel at home. With a sigh I stretched out on one of the couches. “Relax,” I said to Bangani (Barnum F.).

“Silence!’ A Voice thundered from behind that flickering wild curtain of light, and I realized as I should have done before, that the light was pouring out of Their Eyes! The Eyes of the Court. “We have come to a decision!” the Voice continued. “You, Barnum Fly, another human being driven by the classic formula¹ P=S have been convinced by Crockett Smith to appeal to this Court for a pardon for your criminal acts. We have considered the precedents in your case, and above all the precedents of power. It has always been the opinion of the Court of Problems that human affairs are too risky to be conducted by human beings. You, Barnum Fly, using the formula² A-A=AP have managed with the aid of the illegal St. Ewagiow conspiracy to obtain the A-I-D. Then, after eliminating your allies ?-A, you have achieved a position of absolute power or AP, where the very existence of society was endangered. This Court rules that in exchange for the A-I-D you cannot be refused your requests. Barnum Fly, you are hereby approved by this lower Court after due consultation with the Supreme Court of Supreme Thought as Assistant Secretary of Pleasure, Fun and Miscellaneous Hobbies. Assistant Secretary you are hereby ordered arrested!”

Stunned, I watched the Assistant Secretary jump to his feet from the couch, his black and purple cape fluttering behind him. “Arrest me, my Masters!” he shouted. “Arrest me! I’ll be vindicated! The A-I-D will be my vindication! Long live the St. Ewagiow! Long live Merlin and Einstein! For King and Sussex!”

He had gone crazy, veering from split to split — the splits of the deceased magicientist M. E. Bangani. He stood there, shaking his fist at that giant curtain of light, the Eyes of that treacherous Machine known as the Court of Problems.

“Your threats against society are futile,” the Voice of what was probably the Chief Justice thundered again. “We know where your fellow conspirator is hiding³ and before he can detonate the A-I-D we will seize — ”

I no longer was listening. If Bangani (Barnum F.) had gone noisily crazy, it could be said that at that moment, I’d gone silently crazy. For it was plain as plain could be that, to use a Reservation expression, I’d been sold down the river by Her Excellency. All That Thing had wanted was the safe delivery of Bangani (Barnum F.). What hurt the most was that I, a police officer myself, had let myself be tricked by the cheap promise of another Police Officer.

They didn’t hold me. I was free. It was a beaten man who returned to L. and O. Headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue. But when I reported to Commissioner Sonata, his reaction — he had always belonged to the Anti-Think Machine faction — had its effect on me. “We’ll appeal to the President. This plan of the Court makes sense but it’s risky.”

The plan, as we discovered, was to liquidate the Professor’s hiding place before he could detonate the A-I-D. But as the Commissioner argued, nobody really knew whether such liquidification — a tidal wave was to be the instrument of justice — would accomplish its purpose.

All that day of July 1st a debate raged in the highest Government circles, human and Non-Human, while the populace innocently went about its business, or more accurately its pleasure. Over in New City, the biggest brains (all Non-Human) had analyzed every bit of data on the subject of atomic and hydrogen explosions, beginning with the first two primitive ?-Bombs of 1945 used in the war with Japan, through the subsequent testings in the Pacific and Siberia. Their conclusion was that the Court of Problems plan was absolutely safe. This was disputed by the President and several of his Cabinet members. The next day, on July 2nd, the deadlock was referred to the Supreme Court of Supreme Thought in session on the moon. A final decision was received at 10:14 P.M. The Rulers had handed down a judgment, the formula¹ P=P which meant that It favored both contending parties.

Commissioner Sonata and the L. and O. organization were empowered to arrest the professor Fleischkopf and to seize the A-I-D. But within a fixed time limit, by 11 P.M. of July 3rd, 2039. If unsuccessful, promptly at one minute before midnight of July 3rd, 2039, the liquidification of the professor’s hiding place would be ordered.

“We’ll do the best we can, Crockett,” the Commissioner said to me in his office. “And please stop looking at your damned watch.”

“I can’t help it,” I groaned. “Why did They have to arrest him? Why didn’t They wait?

“You were too successful,” he sighed, and with a sad smile said; “You know the saying we have, ‘Nothing succeeds like success in arousing the hate of the failures.’ Crockett, we still can succeed, but only if we use our heads, our human heads. The instructions to arrest the professor are ridiculous! We must negotiate. Negotiate! I want you to negotiate with him. If he surrenders the A-I-D, we’ll appeal to the President. We’ll give Barnum Fly everything we promised. The Rulers are too rigid, Crockett. Thank God, we’re men!”

Again, slowly, oh so slowly, I began to feel a little hopeful. I felt a new respect for the Commissioner. And when I thought of how I had been duped by Her Excellency, I was ashamed. For who was the man prepared to step into the Commissioner’s shoes? Tempted by the R-Treatment? By power?

“Now to work, Crockett. We know that the professor has gone to Russoplayo¹. Russoplayo for your information is a completely decontrolled playland, unlike Atomic Park for example. Only one other playland equals it for violence, and that’s Racketland in Chicago. At Russoplayo, players play at revolution at their own risk. Lethal weapons are forbidden but everything else goes. Political assassination, by hand or foot, is permitted. It’s a dangerous place. Every second Sunday, L. and O. officers enter to remove and bury the corpses …”

I was listening intently as if my life depended on it. And it did, my life, his life, everybody’s life.

Finally the Commissioner got up from his desk and wished me good luck. There were tears in his eyes. Neither of us could speak as we shook hands.

The time was exactly 11.19 P.M. of July 2nd, 2039. Less than twenty-four hours remained to negotiate with the Professor.

I wasn’t surprised to see Gladys when I entered my private cabin on a Russoplayo Double-Jette.² She was apparently one of the Commissioner’s most trusted operatives, but when she introduced herself as Comrade Ekaterina Ustipopoff, I could only stare at her solemn face.

“Don’t play games with me, Gladys,” I said moodily. “I’m glad to see you. I was a fool the other day, but no games, darling.” I tapped my pocket where I had put my wrist watch. “There’s my watch. I don’t dare look at the time any more.”

“You are mistaken, Comrade. I am Comrade Ekaterina Ustipopoff,” she answered.

She was certainly dressed for the part, in a flaming red skirt and a white blouse embroidered in gold with the face of Karl Marx¹ over her heart. On her head she wore what seemed to be the cap of a locomotive engineer.

“Play away,” I said wearily. “Author, police agent and now an Ekaterina. I thought you were getting a little tired of all these games? Never mind what I thought. I want to apologize, Gladys — ”

“I am Comrade Ekaterina!” she said, glaring at me with those blue eyes that were so much like my dear wife’s. I wondered if she really knew who she was, or if any of them in the Funhouse knew. They were all bundles of sensations, not identities. Then I thought, who was I to be critical?

“Comrade,” I said, taking out my wrist watch. “We came aboard at midnight which I believe is the conspiratorial hour. It is now eight minutes past midnight of July 3rd. Comrade, time is running out on both of us.”

She ignored these remarks. Opening a red leather case, she removed a brand-new Talko-Typo. It reminded me of the one she had destroyed and suddenly I felt a deep emotion for this woman. “Gladys when I think of what we’ve been through together — ”

She had seated herself in front of the Talko-Typo, and when she didn’t answer me, I said. “Still on my autobiography, darling?”

“No,” she corrected me. “Your political credo.”

What was there to say? I searched the walls for the taps that I knew from past experience should be there. They were. But in keeping with the atmosphere, the drinks were all of Russian origin. Vodka, B-and-B or brandied borscht, etc. I tried a vodka while she began to work. After a few minutes she read my political credo to me. It explained why the great investigator Crockett Smith had finally subscribed to the philosophy of Marx and Engel.

I lit a U-Latu cigar, drank a second vodka, and as she read on, my confessions began to seem more plausible. I recalled a parting gift of the Commissioner’s, a copy of the National Dictionary of Pocket Humor. I fetched it and read off one of recommended quips called for by the circumstances, “Marx and Engel, the one true guide to the perplexed, the vexed and undersexed.”

“Humor, the opiate of the people!” she retorted.

I lifted my glass of vodka. “To you Comrade Ekaterina.”

“You stupid agent of the bourgeoisie. Capitalist seducer!”

“Me, a seducer?” I asked with a smile.

“Love under capitalism!” she declaimed. “You pretended to love the woman Gladys Ellsberg, but have you inquired about her fate?”

“It’s certainly been tied up with my own. It only seems like yesterday when I went into my cabin on that Tourist-Liner, and there you were in that roenfoam bra. Gladys, maybe I sound sentimental, but I believe I love you — ”

“Love!” she shouted. “The exploitation of the weaker sex by the stronger.”

“My God, Gladys, don’t tell me you take this game seriously?”

“Look at you!” she sneered. “Bourgeois fop in that hideous suit of megaton blue!”

I glanced at my suit and then at Gladys E. — Ekaterina Ustipopoff’s flaming red skirt and cap of a locomotive engineer.

“You heartless fop. Not one question about the woman Gladys Ellsberg.”

“What happened to Gladys Ellsberg?” I humored her.

“P.A. Permanent amnesia. Your bourgeois police brought her to Chicago and turned her loose on State Street in the busiest hour.”

This sounded so much like a sly reminder of Barnum’s P.A. whom he had imported to Washington from Bangani Castle that I was positive the Comrade was playing games. “Maybe the woman Gladys Ellsberg is in a bourgeois institution writing books?” I said with a smile.

“Shut up, you heartless lackey!”

I gave up trying to understand Gladys-Ekaterina although lately I had had plenty of experience with split personalities. I stared into my glass of vodka and then took a long drink.

“Drunken lackey.”

What with the vodka and the U-Latu I was smoking, I laughed and suggested that we play a little game of our own while there was time. ((Forgive me, dear wife. I plead guilty. But remember Gladys E. looked like you, and the thought that maybe this was my last day on earth was demoralizing. Yes, I know that if I had been on the Reservation I would have waited for doom, steadfast and with head unbowed — ”Like a Texan” as we say. But I was in the Funhouse, bound for Russoplayo, a split man like everybody else.)

“Filthy seducer!” she raged. “Immoral jackal.”

“ ‘A jackal of all trades,’ ” I said after consulting my pocket dictionary, “and a whoremaster of none!” I burst into laughter.

She sneered and returned to her Talko-Typo. After a few minutes she read: “In this hour of world crisis, I, Crockett Smith, have made my decision. To die if necessary on the soil of the proletariat.”

I tossed her a kiss. She glanced about her quickly, and then put her finger on her lips. I stared at this sudden switch from comrade into police agent. She pointed at the door, motioning me to follow her. I did so. Out in the passageway, from the cabin next door they were singing revolutionary songs. Gladys-Ekaterina led me to a narrow door smaller than the other. She opened it, and I staggered inside after her — the vodka had finally caught up with me. She shut the door and whispered. “Now we can talk freely, darling.”

I blinked at laundry stacked on the shelves. “Where are we?”

“In the linen room. Don’t you understand? Everything in our cabin is recorded. The Voice-Seismo¹, darling.” She flung her arms around my neck and kissed me so passionately her locomotive cap fell from her head. “You’re such a fool! You and Your Excellency, the Minister of Tapes.”

“Don’t remind me,” I said, holding her tight.

“You in love with a Think Machine! Madness — but it made sense the more I thought about it.”

“Let’s not think so much, darling,” I said, kissing her.

“I didn’t bring you here to make love to you but to talk. In love with a Think Machine! That’s what’s wrong with us. We’re in love with our own machines. You were right. We’ve surrendered our brains to the Rulers.”

She was so serious I couldn’t believe this woman was Gladys E. “I’ve been thinking and thinking, Crockett, ever since you threw me out! We’ve stopped being a democracy. We’ve become an ant-heap directed from above, filled with millions and millions of people no better than automatons, wound up for pleasure, our brains unwound.”

“You’re talking like a Reservationist!” I exclaimed.

She laughed sadly. “It’s that Bee-Ambo, darling, but don’t call me a Reservationist. Automatons wound up for work — that’s what you are. But at least you’re still human. We’re becoming antihuman.”

She was so serious I had to tease her. “Paris in June, have you forgotten?”

“We’ve made a little progress since then,” she smiled sadly.

“So very little.”

“Russoplayo and the professor with his little plaything. The nice professor of the cauterized conscience!” I shuddered and dug into my pocket for my pills. “Have a U-Latu, Gladys?”

“I’ve sworn off,” she said.

“My God, the revolution has come!”

“I’ve sworn off all false hopes, darling.”

Her eyes were shining and her plump pretty face with its full lips that once I had thought abandoned, was — to use a phrase of Her Excellency, the Minister of Police Affairs — almost spiritual. “I see it all so clearly,” she said. “This chase after the A-I-D has opened my eyes. Have you thought that, despite all our differences, we’ve always wanted the same thing? You on the Reservation. We, here. Happiness! There are no real differences between poeple — ”

I held up my box of U-Latus. “No real differences?”

“Only in their institutions, their habits, their politics, and with the A-I-D, these differences mean less than over. Today, the way I see it, there are only two parties in the world. A Death Party and a Life Party.”

I didn’t say a word. I felt she had said them all.

“And now to work, darling. Did the Commissioner explain that we belong to the R.T.R.?”

“He never explains,” I said, but this time I wasn’t bitter.

“Everybody at Russoplayo belongs to some faction or other. The R.T.R. are the Revolutionary True Revolutionaries …”

I listened for five or ten minutes. I took her hands in mine. “Gladys,” I said.

“Yes?”

“I’m an old-time member of that Life Party of yours, and one of the big planks on the program is you know what.”

“What?” she smiled, and patted my cheek.

“Love, the game of love.”

“The blame of love,” She laughed. “Do you love me more than I love you? I suggest we go back to our cabin. It’s rather cramped here in the linen room, my little sparrow, or perhaps since we’re bound for Russoplayo I ought to call you my little red cardinal.”

I laughed, too. It was good to know that the new Gladys still included the old one.

When we landed, L. and O. guards searched every passenger for weapons as had been done before leaving Washington. This time they confiscated all possessions considered bourgeois. My U-Latu cigars and U-Latu pills, my pocket dictionary of humor etc. Then we were marched from Customs Inspection to a fleet of Russoplayo cars.

There were hundreds of players. With our approved passports, we piled into the cars and were driven to Union Square in New York City where we descended to the playland which was a quarter of a mile below the surface of the city. Quite literally, we had gone underground. We were now conducted to a gloomy reception chamber where under a huge portrait of Ivan Radizl¹ there sat Ivan Radizl in person. He was a man of medium height, wearing an astrakhan hat, a white blouse, high Cossack boots. “Comrades,” he said. “Welcome to Russia, and a word of comradely warning. We will accept no deviation whatsoever on our Space Ship Programs. As you know, the first space ship was perfected in 1992 by the American, Maxwell Roy Rodger, and destroyed on its first flight at an altitude of 43,281 miles. This was considered an accident until the next space ship met disaster at exactly the same altitude. During the next two years, no space ship of any country succeeded in escaping the 43,281 D.P. or Disaster Point. It was evident Comrades, that Superior Beings² of some planet or stellar system unknown had decided on a fixed off-limits for men of the Earth. Simultaneously, comrades, flying saucers were no longer to be seen, proving that the period of surveillance was at an end. Every country abandoned space ship construction with the exception of our country. Comrades, this Socialist program of ours has its enemies who exist not only outside but inside our borders — ”

One of the newcomers shouted. “Down with the imperialists!”

Another released a balloon, which as it floated up towards the ceiling, expanded. It was painted with an atomic mushroom and carried the slogan:

WE WILL PLANT FORESTS OF MUSHROOMS ON THE SOIL OF OUR ENEMIES.

When order was restored, Ivan Radizl continued. “Our Space Ship Program is the only correct program, comrades. I warn you not to associate with the counter-revolutionary elements who argue that our Space Ship Program is worthless because it has been rejected by the Superior Beings. It is true, comrades, that they have consistently destroyed all space ships of all national origins. But nevertheless we will succeed for we have a new five-year plan. This plan advocates not only a communication of transportation but a communication of minds. We will perfect our sound-wave and light-wave telegraphs and with true Socialist zeal, we will create a monolithic improved radar that will reach to the furthest ends of the universe and thus achieve peaceful communication with the Superior Beings of outer space. Are there any questions, Comrades?”

Gladys-Ekaterina arose from her seat and said. “Long live the Space Ship Program! Long live the Five-Year Plan! Comrade Ivan Radizl, the bourgeois scientists as well as our own scientists are in agreement that all life will ultimately vanish from the Earth because the Earth itself is not eternal. The stockpiles of A and H bombs, the invention of the terrible A-I-D — all demonstrate the complete correctness of the Space Ship Program. Mankind’s only hope is the solution of the problem of how to leave the Earth when the Earth, either through natural causes or man-made causes becomes uninhabitable. Comrade Ivan Radizl, I would like to propose a slogan. Workers of the world you have nothing to lose but your lives if you remain on Earth.’ ”

She was greeted with cheers. Comrade Radizl himself congratulated her and then the meeting ended. As I escorted the comrade from the meeting, I said. “Ekaterina, you constantly amaze me.”

We newcomers were brought to the Hotel Five-Year-Plan. We had dinner served by automatons dressed simply in red blouses. After dinner Gladys-Ekaterina and I left the hotel. We walked down the street — more accurately a tunnel chipped out of stone. It was some eight feet high and four feet wide. Its walls covered with murals of outdoor scenes. There were yellow wheat fields with sunburned happy toilers waving at the famous sputnik¹ that had carried the historic dog Laika. There were murals of advanced sputniks successfully flying past the Disaster Point. I began to feel depressed and unhappy. These murals of earth and sky in this man-made hole made me feel as if Gladys-Ekaterina and I were the last two survivors of some terrible catastrophe.

“I’d rather die than live like this,” I muttered. “Never knowing if there’ll be a tomorrow. God, we’ve simply got to get hold of that damned A-I-D.”

Suddenly from an alcove, stepped a comrade carrying a black brief case. “You would rather die than live like this?” he asked in an accusing voice.

“The American comrade is joking,” Gladys-Ekaterina said hurriedly. “Americans have been weakened by the Capitalist virus which among them is known as humor. Believe me, comrade, the American comrade regrets his foolish remark criticizing the glorious achievement, this supreme example of revolutionary architecture, the Underground of the Comrades.” She raised a clenched fist over her head and shouted. “Long live Comrade Ivan Radizl!”

“Long live Comrade Ivan Radizl!” I echoed her as the man with the brief case studied my face for a long minute. Then he opened his brief case and gave me a pamphlet.

“You will find this instructive, comrade,” he said. “It is an account of humor as a leftist deviation of the rights of the people.”

Was he joking? His play on the words leftist and right seemed as if he might be. But his manner was serious, and I remembered that I had no rights in Russoplayo. He could kill me or I could kill him. These stupid games, I thought bitterly. Games, when the professor and that infernal A-I-D was menacing all of us.

I accepted the pamphlet, and without a word he walked with us down the tunnel.

“The comic strip was not his sole reading, comrade,” Gladys-Ekaterina said to the man with the brief case. “With the pennies saved from his bitter and debased existence as a shoeshine boy, for he steadfastly refused to toil as a newsboy, the other calling open to the declassed sons of the American Proletariat — ’No!’ he said to his degraded father who wished him to sell the yellow journals of the capitalistic press. ‘No, father!’ he said, ‘I will not further the enslavement of the American mind by selling even one copy of ‘The Racing Form’¹ or “The New Yorker’¹. And thus with the pennies saved from shining the shoes of the capitalists he contributed to the one American paper dedicated to a proletarian America.”

She broke off her eloquent description of my formative years because the comrade had stopped and was opening his brief case again. He took out a Searchorod² and we watched the yellow bubble inside the spectrometric dial fluctuate before steadying. The comrade then examined the stone wall before him and touched what seemed to be a rough edge. A section of the wall opened, showing a secret elevator. We stepped into it and the wall closed behind us. In the bright reddish light of the elevator, Gladys-Ekaterina looked at me as if to say: Whatever you do, keep your mouth shut.

As the elevator began to move, I realized it wasn’t an elevator so much as a subway³ for it was moving horizontally. And inside our little compartment, a deep voice began to speak in Russian. “The Secretary of the Party, Comrade,” Gladys-Ekaterina explained to me. “He doesn’t understand Russian,” she said to the comrade with the brief case.

Again, the comrade opened his brief case and took out what seemed to be an ear plug⁴. “Insert this in your ear, comrade.”

I did so and the Russian of the unseen orator immediately changed into English. “… the dialectical necessity of the superstructure involved with the Space Ship Program is historically based on the Socialist principle of the class struggle as it has undeviatingly struggled with the backward forces led by jackals and hooligans masked as leaders …”

I still didn’t understand, but I left the gadget in my ear anyway. The three of us traveled in silence. The subway became an elevator, ascending up, up, up, and suddenly we were in the open air. High above was the night sky, the stars and moon with its domed gleaming cities. There in lunar America, the Rulers were sitting, the Great Inflexibles. I thought of the old pure untouched virgin moon of the past when the solid earth had seemed so everlasting, when all wars were of no more consequence than the sorties of armies of ants. I thought of how easily we could now be turned into radioactive dust under the iron heel of science, and wished that iron heel had still been made of old-fashioned, honest iron and not of atoms.

We had come to that part of Russoplayo that was above ground. Roving shafts of red light played over the empty streets and spotlighted the Kremlin.¹ I thought that I had to succeed. For my own people, for these people, for all people, no matter what games they played.

“Where is everybody?” I asked the comrade with the brief case.

“At home studying for the examinations.”

“What examinations, comrade?”

“You know so little of our way of life, comrade from America. You must read, you must study, comrade. I must leave now. The Committee has given you two hours at which time I will meet you here.”

When he left I whispered to Gladys. “Is he one of us?”

“Sh! You’ll be overheard².”

I stared at the empty streets, a city without moving shadows. Only the fixed shadows of the buildings. It was like a vision of the St. Ewagiow, a city of the dead where only we two were alive.

It was a relief when we entered a workers’ apartment house. Even in the lobby we could hear the sound of voices, the voices of Moscow’s busy students. I glanced at the statue in the middle of the lobby, a marble fisherman hauling in a book made of red stone with the author’s name in gilt letters: KARL MARX. We climbed a flight of stairs and with the Universal Translator in my ear, I had no trouble understanding the students behind the closed doors.

“The bourgeois conception of the underprivileged beast of burden known as the camel leaping through the eye of a needle manufactured under non-union conditions …”

It was so good to hear voices, any voices, to know that the A-I-D had not yet destroyed the world. On the second flight, Gladys-Ekaterina led me to a door at the very end of the corridor. She kicked the door four times. Two hard ones and two taps. “It is the kick that is important,” she said excitedly. “Don’t worry, we can talk here.”

“The kick?” I said, puzzled.

“When sound waves travel from a position close to the ground they are so registered on the electric griddle inside,” she explained. “Usually secret knocks are delivered with the knuckles. The kick is pure genius. Only Comrade Atanos could have thought of it.”

“Atanos?”

“The greatest man in the R.T.R. Darling, don’t look so worried. Nobody can hear us. They have neutralized every listening device in this Building. Comrade Atanos — Commissioner Sonata to you — is a genius.”

I began to see daylight as we say on the Reservation. The R.T.R., as I had suspected, was an L. and O. front.

The door remained shut. Gladys-Ekaterina smiled and kicked it four times again. We heard footsteps. The door opened and we went into a living room, or so I guessed, for never had I seen so much tobacco smoke¹. I blinked at what was probably people, grayish blurs without faces. Several of the blurs approached us and before I knew what was happening, they seized us. “Spies!” one of them shouted.

I was so stunned I didn’t resist, and then it was too late — they had tied me up with what must have been All-Emergency Thread.

“We’re not spies!” Gladys-Ekaterina cried.

“Only spies would know the secret knock of the R.T.R.!” one of the gray blurs answered her. “Unsmoke the room!” he ordered.

In a few minutes they were all completely visible. I stared hopelessly at a dozen teen-agers² who were armed to the teeth. Literally so, for several of them carried the outlawed daggers³ of the St. Ewagiow between their molars. The St. Ewagiow, I thought with numb horror.

“Death to the spies!” they shouted and now the St. Ewagiow daggers were in their hands as they rushed us. I stood stiffly, trying to face the onslaught as a brave man should. “Death the Victorious!” they chanted. “Death — ”

“Stop!” their leader ordered, a pale boy of nineteen or twenty with a waxy white face. “We will give these spies a trial before execution.” He turned sternly to Gladys-Ekaterina. “How did you know the secret kick of the R.T.R.?”

“We overheard an R.T.R. agent at the hotel,” she lied with the professional coolness of an experienced police agent.

The pale boy grunted. “Guilty. You are both guilty.”

“Hallelujah!” they approved the verdict.

“Man is born of dust and to dust he shall return,” shrieked a red haired girl in a St. Ewagiow black dress.

“Hallelujah Dust!” the fanatics echoed her.

“Dust the Glorious! Dust the Victorious!” they chanted.

The pale boy said, “Brother Fecalle, recite the prayer for the dead.”

It was all over, I thought numbly. Death had won.

A boy of seventeen in a torn black coat who looked like some kind of preacher stepped into the middle of the room. I choked with fear, for this was indeed the end of the rope, a rope made of neutrons, not only around my own neck but that of all mankind. For who now would have the patience to negotiate with the professor? There was so little time left to find the A-I-D! Then suddenly, inspired, I shouted. “Execute me? Execute a member of the St. Ewagiow?”

They surrounded me, cursing me for a liar, but steadily I said in the deepest and most death-like voice I could manage. “I swear on my honor as a man who holds the skeleton within him in sacred trust that I will do all to hasten its revelation.”

This password that I had learned at Bangani Castle caused them to stare at me and to whisper among themselves.

“Let us end the world!” I shouted like a true fanatic. “Let us end the world and the universe! Smash, burn up the planets! Down with Mars, Venus! Down with the moon! Down with the Milky Way! Death, Universal death for every form of life! Our life and life wherever it is among the stars! Death, universal death for the universe.”

My inspired speech impressed them. And when they put me to the test, I demonstrated all the secrets I had learned at Bangani Castle from the St. Ewagiow who had been Barnum Fly’s double.

I showed them the St. Ewagiow kiss, kissing each of their leader’s closed eyelids. The mystical kiss of death, for under his eyelids were the sockets of his skull. “Long live the sacred skull!” I shouted. “The final custodian of mortal flesh!”

It was a narrow escape. We couldn’t believe it when they freed us. Outside in the corridor, Gladys-Ekaterina wiped her tears of joy and whispered. “It was the wrong apartment. This is the door I wanted.” I waited fearfully as she kicked it four times, but when we entered there was no cloud of smoke and the five men present looked what they were, L. and O. operatives. Gladys-Ekaterina introduced me to their leader, a sharpfaced policeman who you could see with one eye had come up from the ranks by fair means or foul. In short, a man I could trust. “Meet Captain Weir,” she said. “Or Comrade Nyet as he is known here.”

“I’m glad to meet you, Crockett,” he said. “Everything I’ve heard from the Commissioner has been good.”

“You’ve got some interesting neighbors,” I said. “St. Ewagiows down the hall.”

He shrugged. “What can you do, Crockett? They’re everywhere. And I’ll tell you something. They know the A-I-D is here in Russoplayo.”

“How do you know that, Captain?”

“We’ve got our men in their outfit just as they have their men in ours,” Comrade Nyet said cynically. “But we’re still ahead, thank Univac!”

He looked like a rough-and tumble type, but I had a hunch that his first loyalty was not to the Commissioner but the L. and O. Board and Her Excellency, the Minister of Police Affairs. “How are we ahead?” I asked.

“We know where the professor is, Crockett. It isn’t much because we don’t know where he’s hidden the A-I-D. That’s the big question. That damned A-I-D!” He stared at his five men and said gloomily. “We could arrest the professor. In fact, that’s our orders, and we’ll arrest him when the time comes.”

“We have until eleven tonight,” I said. “We have until eleven for me to negotiate with him. What time is it now?”

He shuddered. “Please, let’s not talk of the time.” His face had become an awful white. He pulled out a box of U-Latus. Only Gladys refused. When I thought of the watch in my pocket ticking away, I couldn’t resist a pick-me-up.

There was a moment of silence as we chewed on the happiness pills. Captain Weir-Comrade Nyet wiped his sweating face and grinned wanly. “To get back to the professor. He’s a good player, or perhaps they value intellectuals in this place. Anyway, he has a big job with Ivan Radizl. He’s one of the Judges in the Peace Prize Contest. That’s a game tied up with their Space Ship Program. This is what we’ve worked out, Crockett. You and Gladys are inventors, follow me? Tomorrow at three o’clock — or should I say today — the Peace Prize Judges, the professor among them, will be receiving inventors. You and Gladys will present your invention and that’s how you’ll contact Professor Fleischkopf or Comrade Fpok-Hcsielf, to give him his party name. He knows you, Crockett, and the rest is up to you.”

And quickly, he outlined the invention which in the dialectic of Russoplayo, might be — at least so he hoped — a means to the end. The end being the recovery of the A-I-D.

Gladys and I didn’t leave right away. “I want to talk to you where we won’t be overheard,” she said, and we went into another room. Portraits of Ivan Radizl hung on the walls but otherwise it was furnished simply. “I’m exhausted,” she sighed, dropping into a chair.

“Have you any of that Bee-Ambo on you?”

“No, it was confiscated before we passed through customs. Darling, I want to ask you a question. If all goes well today, what will you do?”

“Go home I suppose.”

“Take me with you!” she said impulsively.

I was silent, and she smiled. “Where are the roses of yesterday? The roses and the poses, the poses of love?”

“Gladys, I don’t know what to say — ”

“Don’t say it, my little sparrow.” Her face was bright and flippant like the face of the old Gladys.

“Gladys, this talk is silly. We might all be dead by tomorrow.”

She shook her head. “No, I have a feeling there’ll be a tomorrow. Death won’t give up his bad habits, but at least he’ll go back to his old job as a retailer. The wholesale merchant’ll be through! The wholesale merchant he became when we stupid blind fools took away his scythe and gave him the A-I-D.”

I stared at her — this was the new Gladys. “I can’t get over the change in you!”

She smiled at me. “Would you like to do the autobiog of my life? I’m tired of writing autobiogs. I’m tired of heroes. If we get the A-I-D, I’ll have to do one on Commissioner Sonata, not to mention one on you. The new heroes. I’m so tired of heroes. Did you know I wrote an autobiog on Barnum Fly, and another on old Doctor Bangani? Well, I did. And after the big trials, every book on a magicientist was burned. I’m tired of heroes, darling, tired of this Pleasure Republic if you must know, where science serves magicience and magicience serves the Rulers.”

“You’d go back with me to the Reservation?”

“Yes.”

“Gladys, I think it’s impossible. I wish you could, but how?”

She was silent for a second and then her hands moved before her as if at her Talko-Typo. She lifted an imaginary page and read: “Impossible is a word I’ve forgotten!” Crockett Smith retorted as he climbed on board his space ship, where the crew, Gladys Ellsberg, saluted smartly. In a split second, they were travelling towards the planet Utopia. Crockett Smith trembled when they approached the Disaster Point of 43,281 miles from Earth. ‘Is it possible,’ he said to his fellow-traveller Comrade Ekaterina. ‘No space ship has ever flown past this point.’ Interstellar silence. Interstellar mystery. 43,280 miles. 43,281 miles. 53,281 miles. 63,281 miles. ‘It is possible,’ the crew said laconically. On the planet Utopia, the two intrepid travellers found a race of Superior Beings who lived in small cities limited to 43,281 population. The Superior Beings had atomic power for all their needs. Each man and woman worked and read and thought on what was closest to his or her heart. ‘Your multi-million cityurbs are too large,’ the Superior Beings advised the two intrepid explorers. ‘We pity you. Your civilization is a circus and your culture is a clown with a painted face. You have surrendered your skills and your brains to the Circus Masters. We of Utopia pity you, for among us all men have skills, and all skills are for men and are never used against men. Return to earth, Crockett Smith and Comrade Ekaterina, and dream of Utopia and maybe even work for the day when men will recreate themselves in the image of Man.’ ”

She stood up and stroked her hair with a nervous hand. “I’ve been dreaming too much this last day and not the Sweet Dreams we manufacture. Maybe we need a 29th Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing life, liberty and the pursuit of a human happiness. Human happiness, the sweetest of all Sweet Dreams.”

I stared at her wet eyes, a common enough sight on the Reservation, but practically subversive among the denizens of the Fun house.

“Why so solemn, comrade inventor?” she said and laughed like the old Gladys. “We better go back and get some rest.”

We returned to the Hotel Five Year Plan. It was exactly 3.07 a.m. Seven hours and fifty-three minutes remained before what might be called D-Day — Death-Day.

The sun arose on the historic day of July 3rd, 2039, blinding me as I lay in my room. Sleepily I thought I’d get up and pull the shade. I was halfway to the window when I remembered we were a quarter of a mile below the surface of the earth. Yet the windows were a dazzling golden red¹. I touched the glass. It was warm to the touch, but when I tried to haul the window up, it wouldn’t budge.

“Comrade,” I heard Gladys-Ekaterina saying behind me. “The windows won’t open!”

She was sitting up in bed, her yellow hair tousled, her blue eyes rested; the left one, the squinty one, still drooping slightly. Across the front of her red pajamas was a Russian slogan in gold letters.

“These windows,” I complained.

“A supreme scientific achievement, comrade from America!”

I took the hint. This room too was a miracle of science, with every word monitored, every move photographed. “Well,” I said grimly. “This is the day of days — ”

“To present our invention,” she said quickly. “Think, comrade, we may win the Peace Prize! Oh, what a thought, comrade. Let us have a comradely drink!”

“Not now,” I said.

“Our appointment is at three o’clock.” She hopped out of bed and went to the wall taps where she filled two glasses, drinking her glass in one quick gulp. The transformation was astonishing. She was all smiles, leers in fact. She fetched me my glass but I had been forewarned. I glanced at the smoky red liquid² in my glass and perhaps it was an opgin-type illusion but I could have sworn that I saw miniature little things swimming about that reminded me of mermaids. Leering mermaids, if that’s possible …

Smiling, she began unbuttoning her pajama top. She had reverted to the old Gladys, lock, stock and barrel.

“No, comrade,” I said. “We’ve got work to do. Long live Comrade Ivan Radizl!”

She only laughed, holding out her arms and offering me the Garden of Eden body so like my own wife’s. “What better work is there, comrade?”

“This isn’t the time, Gladys,” I said nervously.

“Time!” she laughed. “You’re back in your element now, you bureaucrat, the alimentary like every capitalistic bureaucrat infested with Red Tapewormitis.”

I was revolted at her humor and also worried, for under the effect of the drink she seemed to have forgotten that every word, every move was being recorded.

“Comrade, at three o’clock we are seeing the Peace Prize Judges — ” I reminded her.

“Three o’clock, darling? We’ve a lifetime ahead of us, darling. It’s Paris in June, my little bulfinch. I mean Moscow in June!” she laughed and, naked as she was, danced across the room.

I stared at that abandoned woman who might have been my own wife, that is in flesh, not the spirit. Who was she, I wondered or perhaps the question was, who wasn’t she? A writer of autobiogs, an L. and O. operative, an R.T.R., my wife and yet not my wife….

(Fellow Americans of the Reservation, I won’t sugarcoat any of my actions. Let it be a lesson to our young people. Life on the Outside would corrupt a saint.)

I thought of the Peace Prize contest and of Professor Fleischkopf alias Comrade Fpok-Hcsielf who alone knew where the A-I-D was. I thought of how time was racing away, perhaps for the last time on this doomed earth, and then weak, tempted and all too human, I swallowed the smoky red drink she had poured for me …

At two-thirty we left the hotel, walking down the tunnel again. The subway elevator took us to the surface where a real sun was shining in the sky. The streets were crowded with people on their way to the daily examinations, a feature of the game as they played it. Here and there were corpses, unsuccessful players strangled in the night.

“We can talk freely, darling,” Gladys smiled. “The Urban Recorder is not sufficiently perfected to sift out a conspiratorial voice in a crowd.” The sun was in her face and her blue eyes were very blue.

“You think the professor’ll listen to us?”

“Yes darling, and remember to call him comrade, not professor, Comrade Fpok-Hcsielf.”

“The professor used to talk of the mystery of human nature,” I said, shaking my head. “You look so innocent now, but a short time ago you were a mermaid. Where was the woman who spoke of a Life Party and a Death Party?”

“A woman has a right to her moods, comrade inventor.”

Beyond Red Square, we could see the immense golden dome of the Palace of Peace with its circle of round closed windows painted red, each with a white dove in the center. Behind those windows, in readiness, were the atomic cannon¹. A skywriter flew above the walls of the Kremlin, writing:

HEAVEN ON EARTH IS A CLASSROOM WITH THE PARTY AS A TEACHER²

And now as if synchronized to the slogan, we heard a voice like a distant plucked wire³:

“People of Moscow, as you walk to the Palace of Examination, be guided by the great principle of Socialist Pedagogy. Think, reflect, relax, but do not relax too much.”

“The Secretary of the Party,” Gladys-Ekaterina said. “The Voice⁴.”

And as she spoke, the Voice began to report the morning news; which was mainly about the Space Ship Program and its progress.

We came to the Palace of Peace, its doors guarded by soldiers wearing berets’ made of white dove feathers. We entered a huge waiting room so crowded there wasn’t a seat left. Everywhere the players sat, clutching blueprints or miniature models of inventions. Some were silent, others argumentative, and even on the crackpot side. A man with thick glasses grabbed my arm and shouted. “Comrade, why are our space ships shot down?”

“Counter-revolutionaries,” I said. “Long live Comrade Ivan Radizl!”

“They are shot down,” he bellowed as if he hadn’t heard me, “because in the final analysis our space ships are molecular structures. Comrade, I have perfected the modified unified gravitational theory involving the phenomena of amorphous Stardust and space platforms. The mathematics is simple, comrade. Let us reduce molecules into electrons, neutrons, and mesons. Once beyond the Disaster Point, these elements will reassemble themselves molecularly into space ships!”

I eased away from the madman. Gladys-Ekaterina and I pushed through the crowd of inventors towards a desk where an official sat in a white suit with buttons of gold shaped like doves. All about him the mob called and asked questions while he concentrated on his work panel, pushing in its buttons with thin claw-like fingers. There was something odd about his face, but only when we were close did I see what it was. His eyes were perfectly round, iridescent and inhuman — the eyes of a dove.

“I am the assistant to the American comrade inventor,” Gladys-Ekaterina said to the official. “I am Comrade Ustipopoff and he is Comrade Ttekcroc¹.”

The dove-eyed official consulted a tiny screen. “The Comrade Judges will see you,” he said. “Proceed Comrades Ustipopoff and Ttekcroc.”

As we hurried to the flight of marble stairs behind his desk, Gladys-Ekaterina looked meaningfully at me. I understood. Dove Eyes was one of ours, another secret member of the R.T.R.

It was an impressive place, the Palace of Peace. The entire wall up to the second floor was one ascending mural, showing proletarian inventors since the dawn of time, beginning with the nameless Caveman and his invention, the first crude stone hammer. The next mural showed a collective group of neo-glacial Apemen whose invention was fire. The next skipped tens of thousands of years to feature the first birchbark canoe being made by a group of earnest proletarians, all Red Indians. As we stepped out on the second floor, thirty or forty doves appeared from nowhere and flew down the marble corridor to an immense door of gun-metal blue steel on which they arranged themselves in two words: PEACE, ENTER. Only then did I realize that the doves weren’t real but magnetized artificials.

To the left of the door there was one last exhibit, a great bowl of small reddish fish and the legend:

I was staring like a boy at a circus. The immense steel door opened and Gladys-Ekaterina nudged me with her elbow. “Comrade inventor,” she said, and we walked into a white chamber, the judges seated on a red-draped dais. There were five of them, all wearing very full-fashioned gowns of white feathers that fluffed out at their shoulders. They could have been angels except for the masks on their faces. An even more enigmatic note was struck by the huge mural behind the dais. It showed a titanic masked figure, that of Jesus Christ, proclaiming the slogan: PEACE ON EARTH AND GOOD WILL TO MEN.

The masked judge in the center spoke to me. “Comrades Ttekcroc and Ustipopoff, approach.”

We obeyed. I guessed that the tallest of the judges could only be Comrade Fpok-Hcsielf whom I had known as Professor Fleischkopf. “Comrades,” the chief judge said, picking up a document from which he read, “Comrade Judges, we have here an invention in the field of psychodynamics. Comrade Ttekcroc, will you outline your invention.”

I was so excited I couldn’t speak, my eyes on the huge masked figure of the professor, this conscienceless hybrid who was both bloodthirsty and learned. A hunter who lived to kill, and a philosopher who loved to discourse in a gentle voice — and this split man held the fate of the world in his hands. I couldn’t speak, I could only hope, pray.

“The comrade from America is modest,” Gladys-Ekaterina explained to the judges. “A true son of the proletariat. Modest, humble and dedicated.”

I gulped and then in a shaky voice began. “Judges, my invention is in the field of psychodynamics. It is a simple invention. Like the common clock it uses the principle of time. And time is the precious material we need in our society. Time against the A-I-D! Why is the A-I-D dangerous? Precisely because it can without a second of warning destroy all human society, including our own great society, the foremost in the world. As long as there is an A-I-D, death is the secret ruler of all mankind, including socialist mankind. That is why there is no time to adopt five-year plans or even five-day plans. Time is of the essence. Comrade Judges, I have invented what I call a Five Minute Plan. Let every citizen of the world sit down and concentrate for five minutes on the problem of the A-I-D and what should be done to neutralize it. Since the population of the Earth and Moon combined is five billion human beings, we arrive at a figure of twenty-five billion minutes which gives us enough time to perfect all human dreams, including our Space Ship Program!”

I paused. I was trembling, wondering whether the professor would accept my appeal or not. All the five masked judges could have been dead men, they were so still. Not a single feather of their robes fluttered. I waited and my eyes lifted to the masked Christ on the wall, and numbly I read his message: PEACE ON EARTH AND GOOD WILL TO MEN.

“Thank you,” the chief judge said.

We were dismissed. We left the chamber, the gun-metal blue door closed behind us.

Oh, who can describe the suspense as we sat downstairs with the crowd of inventors. The hours weren’t hours, the minutes weren’t minutes, but at last when all the inventors had been received, the five masked judges walked down the marble stairs.

I can’t continue calmly. Comrade Fpok-Hcsielf spoke to us in that gentle academic voice of his I remembered so well from Bangani Castle. “Your Five Minute Plan is interesting, comrades, I would like to question you further …”

Within a half hour we had left Russoplayo and were flying back to Washington — but without the A-I-D. The professor had listened to what we had to say and then smiling he had replied. “The A-I-D isn’t in Russoplayo. Only I know where it is.” He had tapped his temple. “It is safe inside the aqueous membranes of my brain, and I laugh at your Brain-Confessors because I have taken the precaution of having my brain falmemorized.¹”

I forced myself to ask The Question. “Is it set to go off?”

I can still hear my trembling voice. I can still see the professor and Gladys in the private compartment of the Double-Jette flying us back to Washington, D.C. He was wearing the khaki clothes of a hunter, on his head the hydrogen hat I remembered — the black skull cap representing the hydrogen nucleus, the white revolving ring the orbit of its single electron. His face was attentive and intelligent — that is, the part above the nose.

“Is it set to go off?” he repeated. “And is it so important?”

“Even you don’t want to die, professor!” Gladys said.

“The statement Life or Death is a misleading one, my dear young woman. The true statement is Life or Death but always Power.”

“Power to destroy the world!” she cried passionately. “The world is holy.”

The professor smiled. “You remind me of my youth, or rather of a book I read when I was young. It was an old book published more than a hundred years ago in 1910 or 1911. The cover and title page were missing, and with it the writer’s name. He was a scientist, and he too preached of a holy world. Let us search for order and beauty in the universe, he wrote. That was his definition of science, by the way. A search for order and beauty. He wrote that our minds are a part of our bodies, a part of the living breathing world, and the world was holy.” Mockingly, the professor folded his huge hands together. “Let us revere all that is alive and serve no masters who would destroy the goodness and beauty and mercy that exists in man except when he is occupied with war and death! In 1914, holy man fought his first unholy world war, and in 1939 his second. And the searchers for order and beauty searched for death! The chemists searched for chemical death, the bacteriologists for plague, the physicists for their poisoned mushrooms, the thinkers and philosophers for the cold death of words. And holy man marched in blood behind the waving triumphant banner of Science.”

I stared at him, at the white spinning of his hydrogen hat. “Have you set it?” I gasped.

“Only power is holy,” he answered. “I follow the instructions of my master!” His eyes had become fanatic. Those intelligent eyes of his were like a mad dog’s.

“For God’s sake!” I cried. “You’ve set it!”

“What is set, what is unset? Settled, unsettled, life, death?” the professor philosophized. “At the stroke of midnight it will be the 4th of July.”

“Will it be Zero Hour?”

‘What is Zero Hour but the beginning of infinity in one view, and in another, the beginning of a finite circle?”

It was twilight when we landed. The Commissioner was waiting for us at the airport and instantly we went to L. and O. Headquarters. There, the professor repeated his story, and the Commissioner said. “I don’t blame you for not trusting us, professor. We are grateful that you saw fit to accompany Crockett.”

“We are old hunting friends and a friendship sealed in the woods is lasting.”

From his face it was impossible to guess whether he was joking or serious. “We will go see the President right now, professor. Will you accept his assurances?”

The professor nodded. “I voted for him,” he said simply.

“Crockett,” the Commissioner said to me. “There isn’t time to explain why you can’t come along. Briefly, the Minister of Police X-Y has circulated all sorts of slanders about you and your abilities.” He glanced at his watch. “My God, time’s going! Crockett, you’ve done a great job. You deserve the Medal of Honor — ” He broke off and said to Gladys E. “Come along. I may need you.”

Before we parted he arranged for me to meet him at nine o’clock at the downstairs library of the New Senate Office Building. When I entered it was almost empty. Three or four men were reading newspapers or talking quietly with their One-Shot Animateds. On the walls there were murals showing the great inventions of the past — the electric bulb, the automobile, the cyclotron, the rocket. Other murals showed the great inventions of more recent times — the Space Bubble, the U-Latu pill etc.

Because the closets of an older America had a certain historical and symobolical significance, they had been preserved. The downstairs Library, as I should have mentioned, had once been the Men’s Room. (At the far end of the library was the simple biochemical product that had superceded the older habits — a glass container holding several hundred of what seemed to be candy balls, the manufacturer’s name No-Canno¹ printed above the well-known cherub trademark.)

I sat down and waited. I tried to read but it was nine o’clock, nine o’clock of July 3rd. I thought of how wonderful it would be to go home to my wife and family. These eleven days on the Outside were like eleven years, but I couldn’t relax. It was past nine o’clock and getting later with each breath I took. Later and later and later. God alone knew whether the Commissioner would succeed. The A-I-D was still missing and for all we knew set to detonate every A and H-Bomb in the world on the stroke of midnight.

I had to rush to the glass container. I pulled the lever. One of the No-Cannos rolled down the little chute, and I popped it into my mouth.

At that instant, I felt somebody’s hand on my shoulder. It was, a young man with a dapper little mustache. “Let’s sit down, Crockett,” he whispered in a deep gruff voice.

I’d never seen this particular L. and O., but without a word I followed him to a leather couch against the white wall (also preserved) opposite the antique closets.

“It looks good,” he whispered. “Badge didn’t have to convince Number One how serious the situation is.” He was, of course, speaking in code. Badge stood for the Commissioner. Number One was the President.

“Number One’s in favor of giving Broken Glass what he wants,” the operative continued, and taking a pad from his pocket he scribbled a few lines. I almost shouted with joy when I read them.

“Barnum’ll get all he was promised. Opposition from Court of Problems weakening. President firm. S.C.O.S.T. in emergency session.

“Nothing is definite yet,” the L. and O. warned me. “Badge is meeting now with a committee of Sub-Ones.” This, I guessed meant either Cabinet members or Senators or a mixture of both. “Badge couldn’t meet you, Crockett. You’re to come with me.”

“Where?”

“Badge wants you to relax. We’ll go to the Cineramour¹ on Pennsylvania Avenue.”

We walked uptown on the broad avenue with its alternately light and dark blocks.² Everywhere carefree people, tourists visiting the Capital, Government employees, young couples and entire families were strolling, whistling and singing and laughing. Many of them were also bound for the Cineramour where they would spend an hour or a couple days or even a week, if they were on vacation.³

Up ahead we could see the Cineramour, a great, square, windowless white building some hundred stories high. It shone like a huge lump of sugar, striped with fluctuating bands of rainbow color like a peppermint stick. Across Pennsylvania Avenue was the White House and the towering Little White House.¹

I walked in a daze, not daring to glance at my watch. As we entered another dark stretch I felt my hand seized by warm soft fingers. “Darling, don’t you know me?” The voice I heard was no longer gruff and masculine but light and soft. I pulled my hand free, and when we stepped into a street bright as daylight, I saw that she had managed to get rid of her mustache and suit. It was Gladys in a black evening gown. She held up a little curved metal plate, the Voicechanger that had been in her mouth. It had fitted over her upper teeth and was capable of being adjusted to control both volume and tone.

“Everything will be all right,” she said, throwing the gadget away.

“Are you sure?”

“As sure as I am of life.”

“I don’t trust the professor,” I muttered. “I don’t trust all these bureaucrats, these machine heads. Gladys, are you sure?”

“Yes, darling. I’m sure because there are more people who want to live than those who want to die, because life is stronger than death.”

I looked at her. It was the new Gladys who had first revealed herself in the linen room of the Double-Jette to Russoplayo. It was the explorer of the planet Utopia … Still, her shining eyes heartened me. I also began to feel that life would go on, life must go on. On the Outside, back home on the Reservation everywhere in the world, up to and including the moon.

In front of the Cineramour’s three entrances,² a dozen or so men and women paraded up and down carrying enlarged photos of dogs and cats. There was a photo of a Newfoundland guarding a small child, a kitten playing with a string. “We want dogs and cats in Washington D.C!” they shouted.

“Bring back our pets.³”

“Look at them,” I said. “If they only knew — ”

“Darling, you worry too much! Even the Rulers on the moon won’t be safe without the earth as an anchor.” She smiled. “Let’s declare a holiday, darling.”

She led me over towards the entrance to the Present Show. We passed a display, a late-model Space-Bubble that could be driven on land, through the air and under water. Behind its transparent walls, seated at the controls were two beautiful automatons — perfect imitations of the flesh and blood stars Theda Bara Rumppe and ?anymore¹ Jeffers. They were naked. The stars themselves couldn’t be according to law — only nudity in art was permissible on the Outside. No sound came through the transparent walls, but it was obvious that the two smiling and ogling automatons or sexomatums (as they were called in the entertainment industry) were having a romantic conversation. Curious people were listening in, holding audiophones attached to the Space Bubble, to their ears.

Gladys put one of the audiophones against her ear. Then she held out her hand to me. As soon as I took it I could also hear² what the sexomatums were saying:

“Theda, darling, I know a perfectly lovely place where we can be alone.”

“But we’ve been there Barry. I won’t go to that Sargasso Sea again.”

“Theda, you forget it’s July, and you can’t see lamprey eels every day of the week, only once in seven years when they migrate to the Sargasso, and besides the lampreys there are the octopus, darling, dripping simply dripping in their own ink. Theda, I haven’t ever used the Nature Control on this panel, and I think it would be so much fun to vibrate their rather meaningless scrawlings to read ‘Barry loves Theda.’”

I should have been used to life in the Funhouse but I’d heard enough. I pulled Gladys away and the connecting wire of her audiophone broke.

“Darling,” she said reproachfully, “suppose it is silly, but can’t we be silly now and then?”

No one paid any attention to us.³ Those with audiophones kept right on eavesdropping. But from the entrance to the Present Show, a Cineramour automaton dressed in a white suit spiraled with red and blue, a repair kit hanging from its shoulder, slithered up. It took the audiophone from Gladys, dropped it into its repair kit. “Thank you,” the thing said in a metallic voice. “These accidents do happen but your Management has provided for every contingency and every comfort. Your entertainment is our sole obligation.”

Opening the repair kit, it took out a little spray gun and squirted it on the end of the broken wire. “Ladies and gentlemen,” it spieled. “By utilizing a process of growth similar to that of the chrysalis and pupa — ”

I was listening with a growing fear to that spieling automaton. It reminded me of the Voice at Atomic Amusement Park. That Inhuman Voice … I was thinking htat the Time Stream of Dr. Bangani had led to the invention of these Cineramours. I was afraid of all these magicientists and their corrupted professors, of death and the A-I-D …

“By utilizing a process of growth observed in the world of insects, modern miracles can be performed for your entertainment!” the voice of the automaton was spieling.

The broken wire-end had begun to enlarge. It grew and grew, a smudgy foggy-white in color like an insect cocoon. Suddenly it hardened and condensed to become an audiophone. There were only a few scattered laughs. Nearly everybody had seen this fix-it operation before. Only a little boy asked loudly. “Mama, mama, where did the big doll hide it?”

From somewhere another metallic voice boomed; “Present, Past, Future! It is all yours, folks. Take your pick, folks. Do you want to go from the Present into the Future? Tonight, the Future offers love in a century still unborn where man the conqueror of the universe gaily explores the galaxies of space with his loved one. Starring the ever-popular Theda Rumppe as Phosphere Geiger and Barrymore Jeffers as Professor Halio-Minus. A shocking, outspoken story of two intrepid settlers from earth among the starry clusters of the Milky Way. With Barry Jeffers, you will meet with unearthly temptation — the strange sexy ovoid sixth-dimensional being who is however passionately feminine as no woman on earth dares to be. Be tempted with Barry Jeffers by the French actress Denise Havre-Brest as Logarithm M — E.”

Half of that fickle crowd were already hurrying over to the entrance to the Future. Again, I glanced at my watch. It was almost ten o’clock. “The time!” I muttered heartbrokenly. “Time, time. What have we done with our time?” I stared across Pennsylvania Avenue at the White House and Little White House. They were meeting there right now and I had made it possible for them (and Them) to meet. I had saved the country, saved humanity, but for what, I asked myself. Maybe I was just worn out from that final dash to Russoplayo, but I felt empty and bitter and mean enough to be a St. Ewagiow myself. I wondered if the human race was worth saving. That second I knew how the prophets had felt down the ages, writing their warnings on the walls; Mene Mene Tekel¹ while the people laughed and knocked each other down as they rushed to the circus or bullfight or ball game or crucifixion.²

“Don’t you want to see the Future?” Gladys asked me.

I shook my head. “I haven’t got the nerve.”

“Let’s take in the Past then, darling. And stop looking so gloomy.” She sighed. “You make me feel like taking a U-Latu, and I’ve sworn off.”

The display before the entrance to the Past was a horse, or rather, a horse automaton twenty feet high. I looked at this animal, familiar to me as a Reservation man if not to them. It was completely black except for a white blaze like the letter L in the middle of its forehead. With its muzzle, the horse nudged at the shoulder of Barrymore Jeffers, pushing him towards Theda Rumppe. That night, it seemed they were the main attraction in Past, Present, and Future.

Gladys pointed at the L on the horse’s forehead. “Love,” she smiled.

“The world can go smash!” I grumbled in a fury. “But who cares when we’re all having a good time?”

Again a Cineramour automaton slithered out to us. “Sir,” it said to me, “Would you prefer some other initial? The initial of your lady companion perhaps?” Without waiting for an answer, it slithered over to the horse and touched what must have been a control on its right front leg.

The L in the middle of the horse’s forehead vanished and an M appeared. “Have we a Mary in the house?” the automaton asked and M appeared. “Have we a Natchez Nelly?” It asked. “Initials of love constant through the ages.” An N had taken the place of the M on the horse’s forehead. “Tonight, the Past offers love in a bygone century, starring the ever-popular Barrymore Jeffers as Rob Vigilante, a cowboy on the vast western plain crisscrossed only by the double-crossing sheep herders. Have we an Osa in the house … A land lonely under the Big Dipper, torn by posses of sheriffs in pursuit of the ever-popular Theda Rumppe, starring in the role of Miss Evangeline Hereford, a prim schoolteacher from a little town in Massachusetts come to the virgin West, without a friend, and virginal herself until a humble black horse, a mere beast perhaps, but not a beast at heart, the horse with a heart, Digitalis, brings Evangeline to Rob. A truly great story, starring Digitalis in the role of Rin-Tin-Tin.¹”

“Let’s go in,” Gladys urged me with a smile. “You should like this, darling. Anyway, it might be amusing and I don’t want you to keep on looking like a storm.”

We entered a dim lobby and a nurse in a purowhite² uniform with the number 73 pinned on it, led us through the crowd of newcomers to the doctors’ offices. Under the vaulted ceiling, the offices looked like rows of tiny boxes. Nurse 73 opened a door numbered 73. The doctor inside raised his head from a picture book. Its title was ‘The Loves of Theda Rumppe,’ and from its pages a soft voice was murmuring; “Oh, doctor, only you can make me happy …”

He turned the book upside down and the voice stopped. He was also in purowhite, a 73 pinned to his jacket. “Please be seated, guests of Cineramour³.”

“No,” I muttered. “I don’t want any of it.”

“It only takes a few minutes,” Gladys whispered. “It’s a formality. Everybody should go to church once in awhile.”

“Church!”

The doctor had heard me. He smiled. “Your mental health is our pleasure,” he said and his voice was like the automoton’s outside. He gestured at two dark brown chairs that I noticed, now, were carved with all sorts of religious symbols, crosses and stars and crescent moons.

Gladys seated herself, and unwillingly I, too, sat down. The doctor returned to his picture book as if he were alone.

“Are you happy?” a Voice asked. At first I thought it was the doctor, then I realized it was coming out of the back of my chair. “Happiness is a state of mind.”

“Let me out of here!” I said. “I’ve had enough!”

But when I tried to rise, it was too late. Before I knew what had happened, I felt metal clamps gripping me at the temples, come up out of the back of that chair. A four-sided, framelike box, with no top or bottom, dropped down over my head, and on its miniature screen, conditioning shots out of the Past, Present and Future, unreeled before my captured eyes with a dizzying speed.

… Barry Jeffers as Rob Vigilante, seated on Digitalis and galloping across the plains … Theda Rumppe as Evangeline Hereford fighting off a dozen sex-maddened outlaws while a horde of Indians tried to stop Rob …

Faster and faster … Barry had Theda up on Digitalis and was keeping off the Indians as lamprey eels swam around their Space Bubble on the bottom of the Sargasso Sea … kissing and parting as Barry now become Dr. Halio-Minus, succumbed to the other-worldly charms of the galactic space siren Logarithm M-E …

Suddenly the conditioning shots ended. The miniature TV-movie house was lifted from my head, the metal clamps that had gripped me at the temples, numbing thought itself, sliding back into the carven chair. Dizzy, half-maddened, half-hypnotized, I blinked at the real faces of real people in an unreal world.

There before me was Doctor 73, Gladys, and Commissioner Sonata. “Men,” the Commissioner called and two L. and O. operatives entered. “Take him outside.”

They escorted the doctor out of the office. The Commissioner glanced at me, and shrugging hopelessly, he wandered over to the doctor’s desk. He stared down at the picture book and slowly began turning its pages. The soft voice of Theda Rumppe sounded. “Oh, Commissioner, only you can make me happy …”

Gently, Gladys took the book from him. “They’ve won,” he said. “They’ve put the professor in an H.R.L.H.¹”

Only now could I get the words off my tongue. “The A-I-D?”

“The A-I-D,” he echoed and laughed wildly. “The nuclear mass!” he shouted. “What’s your opinion of that, gentlemen? The isotope of any fractionating power, Mr. President, is related to the gravitational field by one thousand million megatons. This is the principle we have to contend with and without delay. Members of the Supreme Court of Supreme Thought! Without delay and without regard for the quantum theory! Energy cannot be created or destroyed but altered in form. Matter into energy into radioactivity into strontium. That is the fundamental decision for the Rulers. The thermal absorption modified by resonance capture can only lead to dire results for humanity and the generations unborn, the direct results, to an isotope with a half-life at the very best.”

Commissioner Elvis Sonata had cracked up. There was nothing to do but summon Doctor 73 and put the raving man into one of the dark brown chairs. With tears in my eyes I watched the metal clamps slide up, gripping him tight at the temples. The metal frame dropped down over his head, bringing him visions of the Past, Present and Future …

There isn’t much to add to this historic report. The A-I-D obviously did not go off on July 4th, 2039. And it is now September as I write this final page. Perhaps the Rulers were right in Their argument that even the maddest of power-mad professors wouldn’t want to destroy himself. Nevertheless THE QUESTION still hangs over mankind.

Did the professor set the A-I-D? And if he did, did he set it for some day in the near or distant future?

I only escaped imprisonment in an H.R.L.H. because I was a Reservation man. On July 5th, I returned home, and almost immediately I began to record my experiences for Posterity.

And before I conclude, let me express a word of thanks to the writer Gladys Ellsberg¹ who returned to the Reservation with me, and helped in the preparation of this eyewitness report. I cannot ever express my gratitude for her many professional skills. I should add that both of us have spoken throughout the Reservation against the St. Ewagiow and for the need to establish a Life Party to oppose that Death Party. The result has been the formation of the St. Samfu² which has swept the Reservation like a prairie fire, and leaping the atomic-powered fence that separates us from the Outside, achieved great popularity there. In fact, it has won members in every nation of the world, and is the first international organization in years capable of defeating the St. Ewagiow.

Posterity, one last word. The A-I-D must be found and returned to international custody! Report any odd or mysterious parcel of medium weight to the officials of your Government! This is mankind’s last chance! JOIN THE SAMFU!