Fine, thought Ross wearily. Once a year—or did Holiday come once a year?—the kids were allowed to play “Spin The Bottle.” No doubt their elders thought it was too cute for words: mere tots of thirty and thirty-five childishly and innocently experimenting with sex. Of course it would be discreetly supervised so that nobody would Get In Trouble.
He was quite sure Helena’s last two faints had been unconvincing phonies.
The wake-up whistle blew at last. The chattering members of Junior Unit Twenty-Three dawdled while they dressed, and the new foreman indulgently passed out shabby, smutted ribbons which the girls tied in their hair. They had sugar on their mush for breakfast, and Ross’s stomach came near turning as he heard burbles of gratitude at the
feast.
With pushing and a certain amount of inexpert horseplay they formed a column of fours and hiked from the
hall—from the whole factory complex, indeed, along a rubberized highway.
Once you got out of the factory area things became pleasanter by the mile. Hortatory roadside signs thinned out and vanished. Stinking middens of industrial waste were left behind. And then the landscape was rolling, sodded acres with the road pleasantly springy underfoot, the ah- clean and crisp.
They oohed and aahed at houses glimpsed occasionally in the distance—always rambling, one-story affairs that looked spanking-new.
Once a car overhauled them on the highway and slowed to a crawl. It was a huge thing, richly upholstered within. A pair of grimlooking youths were respectively chauffeur and footman; the passenger waved at the troop from Junior Twenty-Three and grinned out of a fantastic landscape of wrinkles. Ross gaped. Had he thought the visiting minister was old? This creature, male or female, was old.
After the car sped on, to the cheers of the marchers, there was happy twittering speculation. Junior Twenty-Three didn’t recognize the Citizen who had graciously waved to them, but they thought he—or she?—was wonderful. So dignified, so distinguished, so learned, so gracious, so democratic!
“Wasn’t it sweet of him?” Helena burbled. “And I’m sure he must be somebody important connected with the voting, otherwise he’d just vote from home.”
Ross’s feet were beginning to hurt when they reached the suburban center. To the best of his recollection, they were no more than eight or ten kilos from the field and his star-ship. Backtrack on the road to the suburban center about three kilos, take the fork to the right, and that would be that.
Junior Twenty-Three reached a pitch of near-ecstasy marveling at the low, spacious buildings of the center. Through sweeping, transparent windows they saw acres of food and clothing in the shopping center; the Drive-in Theater was an architectural miracle. The Civic Center almost finished them off, with its statue of Equal Justice Under the Law (a dignified beldame whose chin and nose
almost met, leaning on a gem-crusted crutch) and Civic Virtue (in a motorized wheelchair equipped with an emergency oxygen tent, Lindbergh-Carrel auxiliary blood pump and an artificial kidney).
Merry oldsters were everywhere in their cars and wheel-chairs, gaily waving at the kids. Only one untoward incident marred their prevoting tour of inspection. A thickheaded young man mistakenly called out a cheerful: “Life and wisdom, ma’am!” to a beaming oldster.
“Ma’am, is it?” the oldster roared through his throat mike and amplifier in an unmistakable baritone. “I’ll ma’am you, you wise punk!” He spun his wheelchair on a decishield, threw it into high and roared down on the offender, running him over. The boy covered himself as well as he could while the raging old man backed over him again and ran over him again. His ordeal ended when the oldster collapsed forward in the chair, hanging from his safety belt.
The boy got up with tire marks on him and groaned: “Oh, lord! I’ve hurt him.” He appealed hysterically: “What’ll I do? Is he dead?”
Another Senior Citizen buzzed up and snapped: “Cut in his L-C heart, you booby!”
The boy turned on the Lindbergh-Carrel pump, trembling. The white-faced juniors of Twenty-Three watched as the tubes to the oldster’s left arm throbbed and pulsed. A massive sigh went up when the old man’s eyes opened and he sat up groggily. “What happened?”