I stopped the car abruptly. “I think I feel something,” I said. “Professor, I like you.”
“I like you too, Norris,” he told me. “Norris, my boy, what do you think of ladies?”
“Delicate creatures. Custodians of culture. Professor, what about meat-eating?”
“Shocking barbarous survival. This is it, Norris!”
We yanked open the doors and leaped out. We stood on one foot each, thumbed our noses and stuck out our tongues.
Allowing for the time on the tram, this was the l,962d time I had done it in the past two months. One thousand, nine hundred and sixty-one times the professor had arranged for spiders to pop out at me from books, from the television screen, from under steaks, from desk drawers, from my pockets, from his. Black widows, tarantulas, harmless (hah!) big house spiders, real and imitation. One thousand, nine hundred and sixty-one times I had felt the arachnophobe’s horrified revulsion; Each time I felt I had thrown major voluntary muscular systems into play by drawing up one leg violently, violently swinging my hand to my nose, violently grimacing to stick out my tongue.
My body had learned at last. There was no spider this time; there was only Miss Phoebe: a vague, pleasant feeling something like the first martini. But my posture of
defense this l,962d time was accompanied by the old rejection and horror. It had no spider, so it turned on Miss Phoebe. The vague first-martini feeling vanished like morning mist burned away by the sun.
I relaxed cautiously. On the other side of the car so did Professor Leuten. “Professor,” I said, “I don’t like you any more.”
“Thank you,” he said coldly. “Nor do I like’you.”
“I guess we’re back to normal,” I said. “Climb in.” He climbed in and we started off. I grudgingly said: “Congratulations.”
“Because it worked? Don’t be ridiculous. It was to be expected that a plan of campaign derived from the principles of Functional Epistemology would be successful. All that was required was that you be at least as smart as one of Professor Pavlov’s dogs, and I admit I considered that hypothesis the weak link in my chain of reasoning. . . .”
We stopped for a meal from the canned stuff in the back of the car about one o’clock and then chugged steadily north through the ruined countryside. The little towns were wrecked and abandoned. Presumably refugees from the expanding Plague Area did the first damage by looting; the subsequent destruction just—happened. It showed you what would just happen to any twentieth-century town or city in the course of a few weeks if the people who wage endless war against breakdown and dilapidation put aside their arms. It was anybody’s guess whether fire or water had done more damage.
Between the towns the animals were incredibly bold. There was a veritable army of rabbits eating their way across a field of clover. A farmer-zombie flapped a patchwork quilt at them, saying affectionately: “Shoo, little bunnies! Go away, now! I mean it!”
But they knew he didn’t, and continued to chew then-way across his field.
I stopped the car and called to the farmer. He came right away, smiling. “The little dickenses!” he said, wav-
ing at the rabbits. “But I haven’t the heart to really scare them.”
“Are you happy?” I asked him.
“Oh, yes!” His eyes were sunken and bright; his cheekbones showed on his starved face. “People should be considerate,” he said. “I always say that being considerate is what matters most.”
“Don’t you miss electricity and cars and tractors?”
“Goodness, no. I always say that things were better in the old days. Life was more gracious, I always say. Why, I don’t miss gasoline or electricity one little bit. Everybody’s so considerate and gracious that it makes up for everything.”
“I wonder if you’d be so considerate and gracious as to lie down hi the road so we can drive over you?”
He looked mildly surprised and started to get down, saying: “Well, if it would afford you gentlemen any pleasure—”
“No; don’t bother after all. You can get back to your rabbits.”
He touched his straw hat and went away, beaming. We drove on. I said to the professor: “Chapter Nine: ‘How to be in Utter Harmony With Your Environment.’ Only she didn’t change herself, Professor Leuten; she changed the environment. Every man and woman hi the Area is what Miss Phoebe thinks they ought to be: silly, sentimental, obliging and gracious to the point of idiocy. Nostalgic and all thumbs when it comes to this dreadful machinery.”