“Norris,” the professor said thoughtfully, “we’ve been associated for some tune. I think you might drop the ‘professor’ and call me ‘Leuten.’ In a way we’re friends—”
I jammed on the worn, mushy brakes. “Out!” I yelled, and we piled out. The silly glow was enveloping me fast. Again, thumb to nose and tongue out, I burned it away. When I looked at the professor and was quite sure he was a stubborn old fossil I knew I was all right again. When he glared at me and snapped: “Naturally I withdraw my last remark, Norris, and no chentleman would
hold me to it,” I knew he was normal. We got in and kept going north.
The devastation became noticeably worse after we passed a gutted, stinking shambles that had once been the town of Meshoppen, Pa. After Meshoppen there were more bodies on the road and the flies became a horror. No pyrethrum from Kenya. No DDT from Wilmington. We drove hi the afternoon heat with the windows cranked up and the hood ventilator closed. It was at about Me-shoppen’s radius from La Plume that things had stabilized for a while and the Army Engineers actually began to throw up barbed wire. Who knew what happened then? Perhaps Miss Phoebe recovered from a slight cold, or perhaps she told herself firmly that her faith -in Professor Leuten’s wonderful book was weakening; that she must take hold of herself and really work hard at being hi utter harmony with her environment. The next morning—no Army Engineers. Zombies in uniform were glimpsed wandering about and smiling. The next morning the radius of the Plague Aea was growing at the old mile a day.
I wanted distraction from the sweat that streamed down my face. “Professor,” I said, “do you remember the last word in Miss Phoebe’s letter? It was ‘forever.’ Do you suppose … ?”
“Immortality? Yes; I think that is well within the range of misapplied F.E. Of course complete mastery of F.E. ensures that no such selfish power would be invoked. The beauty of F.E. is its conservatism, hi the kinetic sense. It is self-regulating. A world in which universal mastery of F.E. has been achieved—and I now perceive that the publication of my views by the Hopedale Press was if anything a step away from that ideal—would be hi no outward wise different from the present world.”
“Built-in escape clause,” I snapped. “Like yoga. You ask ’em to prove they’ve achieved self-mastery, just a little demonstration like levitating or turning transparent but they’re all ready for you. They tell you they’ve achieved so much self-mastery they’ve mastered the de-
sire to levitate or turn transparent. I almost wish I’d read your book, professor, instead of just editing it. Maybe you’re smarter than I thought.”
He turned brick-red and gritted out: “Your insults merely bore me, Norris.”
The highway took a turn and we turned with it. I braked again and rubbed my eyes. “Do you see them?” I asked the professor.
“Yes,” he said matter-of-factly. “This must be the retinue of the Duchess of Carbondale.”
They were a dozen men shoulder to shoulder barricading the road. They were armed with miscellaneous sporting rifles and one bazooka. They wore kilt-like garments and what seemed to be bracelets from a five-and-ten. When we stopped they opened up the center of the line and the Duchess of Carbondale drove through in her chariot—only the chariot was a harness-racing sulky and she didn’t drive it; the horse was led by a skinny teen-age girl got up as Charmian for a high-school production of Antony and Cleopatra. The Duchess herself wore ample white robes, a tiara and junk jewelry. She looked like your unfavorite aunt, the fat one, or a grade-school teacher you remember with loathing when you’re forty, or one of those women who ring your doorbell and try to bully you into signing petitions against fluoridation or atheism in the public schools.
The bazooka man had his stovepipe trained on our hood. His finger was on the button and he was waiting for the Duchess to nod. “Get out,” I told the professor, grabbing my briefcase. He looked at the bazooka and we got out.