Attracted by the noise as he stowed his fighting gear in its rack, his wife Nora appeared on the internal com-web screen in the hallway. By the look of it she was lying out on the patio at the back of the house catching some sun, but after a first curt glance he turned his back to the camera.
“Did you have a good exercise, dear?” she asked in the formally polite tone he had grown used to over the past few years.
“A good exercise?” Prior repeated, his voice shrill. “No, it was a stinking awful exercise!”
Her manner changing on the instant, Nora said, “Well, you needn’t take out your bad temper on me!”
“Might as well give you a foretaste of what’s coming.”
Prior snapped back. “We’re due for the pariah treatfor the next few weeks, I can assure you of that Those nice neighbors of ours!”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“Let me get a drink.” He slung the last of his gear on its peg and headed for the living-zone; she switched cameras to follow him, looking alarmed.
“It went like this,” he resumed when he had swigged the first gulp of a strong vodka rickey. “And all beI treat my citidef responsibilities seriously comto some people I could name! You take the knee-blank part today, Phil Gasby says when I show up-you’re good, he says, you’ll sharpen our wits a bit. So I said all right. If he put it like that how could I refuse with them all staring at me? And then he pulled the drop on me. There’s a man from ISM waiting at the junction of Green and Willow, he says. Captain LoriHe’ll give you your attack program.”
Savagely he poured the rest of his drink down his throat.
“I don’t understand,” Nora said after a pause.
“Don’t you? Do you know where you are right now on the analog screen? Buried under a pile of smoking nibble, that’s where! Phil’s defense plan that he’s been boasting about so long collapsed like a pricked balloon! I had to take him out three minutes after the start. I mean had to. I stalled as long as I could but the idiot was right there in plain sight and nobody, blank or kneecould have failed to realize he was in charge the way he was shouting and waving. So then Tom Mesner took over and made a stand on the line of Willow Road, and Lorimer told me to go in by way of Orange and that was that. Sixty-eight percent casualties in under an hour and twenty-two houses afire including ours. So then he canceled the exercise and called everyone toand told us off like-like naughty children! Tom and Phil deserved what they got, of course, because lives are at stake in a thing like this and there’s no excuse for carelessness. But you know who’s going to be blamed for them being scolded in public? I am, that’s who!”
“But I thought we had a good ISM rating here,” Nora said. “That was one of the reasons we decided to move into this district!”
“I don’t know whether they had a good rating before that bastard Phil Gasby took charge,” Prior grunted. “But we certainly don’t have one now. Listen!” He tugged a folded paper from his pocket and spread it out “InSecurity Maintenance, exercise report number blah, district citizens’ defense group number blah-blah. Ah, here we are. Rating for Lionel Prior Class Four, rating for group as a whole Class Six, not adjudged competent to maintain order in assigned zone in event of civil disturbance. Remarks: the group-no, I won’t read that out. It’s downright libellous!”
“At least you got a better rating than the group averNora ventured.
“Class Four? It’s ridiculous! If I hadn’t tried to do Phil a favor I’d have got at least a Class Two, but Loribawled me out too for not shooting him as soon as I got the chance. Think I’m going to get any credit for that, though? Not in a million years!”
He threw himself into an inflatable chair and scowled at the big picture-window. Currently if was set for a broad arid stretch of veldt with a herd of antelope browsing in the distance.