The older one scratched his chin. “That’s true,” he said to Mary. “I’d say you couldn’t stand to have that dressing off. We’ll just have to dig up a prowl car for you.”
Which they did—one was just landing and they hailed it. I had to pay the charges on the rented wreck, then I went along, as far as Mary’s entrance. It was in a hotel, through a private elevator; I got in with her to avoid explanations, then went back up after she had gotten out at a level lower than the obvious controls of the car provided for. I was tempted to go on in with her, but the Old Man had ordered me to come in by Kay Five, so Kay Five it was.
I was tempted, too, to put my shorts back on. In the prowl car and during a quick march through a side door of the hotel, with police around us to keep Mary from being shot, I had not minded so much—but it took nerve to step out of the elevator and face the world without pants.
I need not have worried. The short distance I had to go was enough to show me that a fundamental custom had gone with last year’s frost. Most men were wearing straps—codpieces, really—as the cops had been, but I was not the only man in New Brooklyn stark naked to his shoes. One in particular I remember; he was leaning against a street roof stanchion and searching with cold eyes every passer-by. He was wearing nothing but slippers and a brassard lettered with “VIG”—and he was carrying an Owens mob gun under his arm.
I saw three more like him before I reached Kay Five; I was glad that I was carrying my shorts.
Some women were naked, some were not—but those who were not might as well have been—string brassieres, translucent plastic trunks, nothing that could possibly hide a slug.
Most of the women, I decided, would have looked better in clothes, preferably togas. If this was what the preachers had been worrying about all these years, then they had been barking up the wrong tree; it was nothing to arouse the happy old beast in men. The total effect was depressing. That was my first impression—but before I got to my destination even that had worn off. Ugly bodies weren’t any more noticeable than ugly taxicabs; the eye discounted them automatically. And so it appeared to be with everybody else, too; those on the streets seemed to have acquired utter indifference. Maybe Schedule Bare Back got them ready for it.
One thing I did not notice consciously until much later: after the first block I was unaware of my own nakedness. I noticed other people long after I had forgotten my own bare skin. Somehow, some way, the American community had been all wrong about the modesty taboo and had been wrong for centuries.
When tackled firmly, it was as empty as the ghost that turns out to be a flapping window drape. It did not mean a thing, either pro or con, moral or immoral. Skin was skin and what of it?
I was let in to see the Old Man at once. He looked up and growled, “You’re late.”
I answered, “Where’s Mary?”
“In the infirmary, getting treated and dictating her report. Let’s see your hands.”
“I’ll show them to the doctor, thanks,” I replied, making no move to take off the gloves. “What’s up?”
“If you would ever bother to listen to a newscast,” he grumbled, “you would know what was up.”
XXIV
I’m glad I had not looked at a newscast; our honeymoon would never have gotten to first base. While Mary and I had each been telling the other how wonderful the other one was the war had almost been lost—and I was not sure about that “almost”. My suspicion that the slugs could, if necessary, hide themselves on any part of the body and still control hosts had proved to be right—but I had guessed that from my own experience on the streets. It had been proved by experiments at the National Zoo before Mary and I had holed up on the mountain, although I had not seen the report. I suppose the Old Man knew it; certainly the President knew it and the other top VIPs.