much happiness to be had in keeping a machine right at the peak of performance, turning
out, every shift, an over-quota of passes and an under-permittance of rejects-zero
rejects being always the target.
No Person in his right mind ever even thought of wondering what the Goods he produced
were for, or what became of them. That was Company business and thus
incomprehensible by definition.
On this Compday forenoon, then, in a vast machineshop in City One of the World, a
young man was hard at work-sitting at ease in a form-fitting chair facing an
instrument-board having a hundred-odd dials, meters, gauges, lights, bells, whistles,
buzzers, and what-have-you.
Occasionally a green light would begin to shade toward amber and a buzzer would begin
to talk to him in Morse code; whereupon he would get up, walk around back of the board
to his machine, and make almost imperceptible manual adjustments until the complaining
monolog stopped. If, instead of stopping, the signal had turned into a Klaxon blare, he
would have been manufacturing rejects, but he was far too good a machiner to make:
any such error as that. He hadn’t turned out a single reject in eighteen straight shifts. He
knew everything there was to be known about his machine-and the fact that he knew
practically nothing whatever else had never bothered him a bit. Why should it have? That
was precisely the way it should be in this, the perfect World: that was precisely what the
all-powerful Company had decreed.
He was of medium height and medium build; trimly, smoothly muscular; with large,
strong, and exquisitely sensitive hands. He had a shock of rather unkempt brown hair,
clear gray eyes, and a lightly-tanned, unblemished skin. lie wore the
green-and-white-striped coveralls of his caste-Machiner Second-and around his neck, on
a hard-alloy chain, there hung a large and fairly thick locket. This locket, which had been
put on him one minute after he was born and which his body would wear into the
crematorium, and which-he firmly believed-could not be opened or removed without
causing his death, had seven letters of the English alphabet cut deeply into its face. This
group of letters-V T J E S O Q -was his symbol. As far as he knew, the only purpose of
the locket was to make him permanently and unmistakably identifiable.
At twelve o’clock noon the machine stopped; for the first time in exactly one week. At the
same time he heard the sound of fast-stepping hard heels and turned to see a Company
Agent approaching him-the first Agent to come to him in all his twenty years of life. This
Agent was a young female, whose spectacular build was spectacularly displayed by a
sleeveless, very tight yellow sweater and even tighter black tights. Her boots, laced to
the knees, were of fire-engine-red leather. Her short-bobbed hair was deep russet brown
in color. Low on her forehead blazed the green jewel of her rank. This jewel, which
resembled more than anything else a flaring green spotlight about the size of a half dollar
piece and not much thicker, was mounted in platinum on the platinum drop-piece of a
plain platinum headband. Under her sweater she, too, wore a locket; upon which was
engraved the symbol A C B A A B A.
Be happy, Veety!” the Agent snapped.
“Be happy, Agent.” The machiner raised his arms and put both hands flat on the top of
his head.
“At ease, Veety! Follow me!”
Whirling on the ball of her left foot, she led the way down a narrow corridor; sharp right
into a wider one; sharp left into the main hall and straight into the crowd of operators
going off shift. She did not even slow down -the crowd dissolved away from her like
magic. They Jell all over themselves to get out of her way; for to touch a Company
Agent, however accidentally or however lightly, was to receive a blast of Company wrath
that, while not permanently harmful, was as intolerable as it was inexplicable.
Through the huge archway, along a wide walkway she led him, to the second archway on
the right. She stopped and whistled sharply through her teeth. The exiting operators
stopped in their tracks, put hands on heads, and stood motionless.
“V T J R S Y X-forward!” she snapped, and a green and-white-coveralled, well-built
girl-People had to be good physical specimens or they did not live to grow up-came up to
within a few feet of the Agent and stopped. She was neither apprehensive nor pleased;
merely acquiescent.
“Be happy, Veety!” “Be happy, Agent.”
“Job transfer. Come with me and this other veety to that aircar over there.”
The Agent slipped lithely into the single front seat of the vehicle, at the controls; the two
Machiners Second got into the back seat. The aircar bulleted upward, screamed across
City One to Suburb Ten, and dropped vertically downward to a high-G landing on the
beautifully-kept grounds of a small plastic house.
“Out,” the Agent said, and led the couple into a large, comfortably-furnished living room.
“Stand there . hold hands . . . V T J R S Y X-job transfer. You’re eighteen today, so you
stop machinering and start running a family. Permanent assignment. The Company
knows that you two know each other and like each other. That liking will now become
love. The Company knows all.”
“The Company knows all,” the two intoned in unison, solemnly.
“Press your right thumbs here . . . you are mated for life. This house is
yours-permanently. Four rooms and bath to start. It’s expandable; one additional room
per child. Here are your family coupon books; throw your single-person ones into the
disposer. This special mating coupon gives you free time from now until hour seventeen,
when you go to the band concert at Shell Nineteen. Amuse yourselves, you two.” The
Agent smiled suddenly, a smile that made her hard young face human and beautiful.
“Have fun-in the bedroom, perhaps? Be happy, both of you.” The Company Agent
executed a snappy about-face and strode toward the door.
“Be happy, Agent,” the newlyweds said; and, as the door closed, went into each others
arms.
They amused themselves and were very happy indeed. They were still very happy while,
as hour seventeen neared, they walked, arms around each other, toward Bandshell
Nineteen. A man of their own caste, an older man, fell into step beside them.
“I’m V T B L Q Q M,” he introduced himself. “I found out a thing after bed-hour last night
that everybody has got to know. . . .”
“Shut up!” the young man barked. “We don’t want to know one single damn thing that we
don’t know already.” “But listen!” the stranger whispered, intensely. “This is important!
The most important thing that ever happened in the World! There’s a meeting tonight-I’ll
pick you up-but I tell you this right now. There ain’t any such thing as the Company. It’s
just those damn snotty Agents and they’re just as human as we are; they’ve been
suckering us all our lives. If we had the gadgetry they’ve got we could knock them all off
and take . . .”
“Shut up!” the girl screamed, and sprang away from him in horror. “You’re a mal-you’re
unhappy-that means death!”
“Death, hell!” came the whispered snarl. “I got the straight dope-the real poop-last night
and I’m still alive, ain’t I? We’re going to get some special insulation tonight and I’m going
to grab one of those high nosed bitches of Agents and choke her plumb to death after I. .
.
The man stopped whispering and screamed in utterly unbearable agony. His every
muscle writhed and twisted, convulsively and impossibly. After a few seconds his body
slumped bonelessly to the pavement; limp, motionless, dead.
“How terrible,” the girl remarked, in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone of voice. Then, with
arms again around each other and as blissful as before, the two lovers stepped over the
body and went on their interrupted way. Mals had no right whatever to live. Therefore the
All-Wise, All-Powerful Company had put that mal to death. Everything was perfect, in this
their perfect World.
And in one minute flat a ground-car, a light-truck type, came up beside the corpse and
stopped. Two husky men, wearing the dark-gray-on-light-gray of Sanitationers Fourth,
got out of it, picked the body up, and tossed it nonchalantly into the back of their truck.
Perce and Cecily Train ‘ported the Explorer to a point in space well outside Pluto’s orbit;
well out of detector range of any of the strange warships englobing Earth. Aboardship
this time, in addition to the regular complement of spacemen and psiontists, were a
couple of dozen graduates of the University, who were making the trip for advanced
study.
“If any of us’d thought of it and if we’d stayed and if we’d had the techniques we’ve got
now, we could’ve ‘ported bombs aboard those jaspers and blown ’em clear out of the