Without a word Jake firmly took possession of her. (Oh, God, Eunice! Why didn’t you tell me?) (Tell you what?) (That for a woman it’s so much better!) (Is it?) (Ten limes, a hundred limes—I don’t know; I’m fainting.) (How could I guess that it’s better? Kiss him as you faint.)
21
The occupation of the Oklahama State House by the People’s Agrarian Emergency Government continued. The Martian Manned Field Laboratory reported finding artifacts (age 1.4 X 10^6 plus/minus 14% years) indicating extinct human-equivalent intelligence. A second report signed by the Chinese members of the expedition denied that the exhibits were artifacts but were simply automatic and instinctive by-products (analogous to coral rings, or to honeycombs) of sub-intelligent life closely related to the anaerobic life now present on Mars. The International Flat Earth Society in annual convention in Surrey, England, passed its usual sanctions on any national government wasting taxpayers’ money on alleged “space travel.”
The suicide rate was up for the nineteenth successive year, as were also rates for death by accident and by violence. World population appreciation passed 300,000 persons per day and continued up, with six babies born every second vs. 2.5 persons dying each second, for a net gain of seven people every two seconds.
A hen in Izard County, Arkansas, laid an egg with the Sign of the Cross on it. A spokesman for the Treasury Department, speaking off the record, announced that the Administration would not push the Administration bill for total abolition of paper currency in favor of universal credit cards and computer accounting. “We must face the fact,” he told the Washington Press Club, “that black market transactions, bribes, and other quasi-legal exchanges are as much part of our economy as is interest on the National Debt, and that to create conditions which would make these voluntary exchanges impractical would bring on a depression the country could not stand. To put it poetically, gentlemen, the small amount of physical currency still in circulation—only a few billions—is our lubricant for the gears of progress. You have my assurance that the President recognizes this truth.”
The First Satanist Church, Inc., (forty-four branches in California, five in other states) brought suit in Federal Court for relief from “discriminatory taxation.” The First Disciple stated: “If other churches aren’t badgered and taxed and investigated concerning their sacred objects, a Glory Hand should enjoy the same protection—that’s American as apple pie!” Reno again repealed its ordinance for licensed prostitution. The City Manager stated that the fees weren’t sufficient to pay the inspectors . . . and besides, there wasn’t all that much commercial prostitution anyhow since the closing of the Federal Youth Training Center.
The Rally for Human Beings gained speed in its drive to fold, spindle, and mutilate computer cards and drop them into the nearest mail box—despite arrests by Postal Inspectors there was almost no cooperation by local police and no jury had brought in a verdict of guilty no matter how compelling the evidence. The Post Office’s Chief Inspector stated that the mutilated cards were almost always bills and that, so far, no mutilated checks or money orders had been reported—and that the government bad no great interest in the matter but he was getting damn sick and tired of the country’s mailboxes being used as trash baskets.
The chairman of the Rally for Human Beings answered that the country’s mailboxes had been trash baskets for years and both the Postmaster General and Congress knew why. The traffic computer for downtown Houston went into spastic breakdown during the evening rush hour, leaving thousands of people stranded on the streets overnight; the estimated deaths exceeded seven thousand, including heart stoppage, smog poisoning, and mugging, but excluding suicide. The Southern States Automobile Assurance Companies Trade Association repudiated all claims based on the incident on the theory that deaths or injuries in stationary vehicles were not covered by the (fine print).
The Lunar Colonies dedicated two more superlarge “balanced-aquarium” Food Caves, the George Washington Carver and the Gregor Mendel, and the Commission again announced an increase in subsidized out-migration quota but again with no relaxation in standards (the injunction against the Commission issued by Mr. Justice Handy of the United States Supreme Court was quietly ignored on the grounds of no jurisdiction). The common stock of Las-Vegas-in-the-Sky continued to move up against the downward trend of the Market: most investment advice peddlers remained bullish basing their expectations on past correlations between weather, the Market, and women’s styles. The Interstellar Advisory Subcommittee to the Lunar Commission settled on Tau Ceti rather than Alpha Centauri for the first attempt. Jodrell Bank lost touch with the Manned Pluto Probe. The (official) casualties in Ukraina dropped below the (official) casualties in Matto Grosso—and in both places the dead did not argue