They filed in, men, women and children; at the door Vince Strikerock, businesslike and cool, a good, solid bureaucratic official, operated their new identification reader, checking each of them in turn to be sure that no one from outside, from another communal apartment building, got in. The residents submitted good-naturedly and it all went very fast.
‘Hey Vince, how much’d it set us back?’ asked old Joe Purd, oldest resident in the building; he had moved in with his wife the day the building, in May of 1992, had been built.
His wife was dead now and the children had grown up, married and moved on, but Joe remained.
‘Plenty,’ Vince said quietly, ‘But it’s error-proof. It isn’t merely subjective.’ Up to now, in his permanent job as sergeant of arms, he had admitted people merely by his ability to recognize them. But that way, he had let in a pair of goons from Robin Hill Manor and they had disrupted the entire meeting with their questions and comments. It would not happen again: Vince Strikerock had vowed that, to himself and to his fellow apartment dwellers. And he meant it. Passing out copies of the agenda, Mrs Wells smiled fixedly and chanted, ‘Item 3 A, Appropriation for Roof Repairs, has been moved to 4 A. Please make a note of that.’
The residents accepted their agendas and then divided into two streams flowing to opposite sides of the hall; the liberal faction of the building seated themselves on the right and the conservatives on the left, each conspicuously ignoring the existence of the other. A few uncommitted persons — new residents or oddballs — took seats in the rear, self-conscious and silent as the room buzzed with many small conferences.
The tone, the mood of the room, was tolerant, but the residents knew that tonight there was going to be a clash. Presumably, both sides were prepared. Here and there documents, petitions, newspaper clippings rustled as they were read and exchanged, handed back and forth.
On the platform, seated at the table with the four building trustees, chairman Donald Tishman felt sick at his stomach.
A peaceful man, he shrank from these violent squabbles.
Even seated in the audience he found it too much for him, and here tonight he would have to take active part; time and tide had rotated the chair around to him, as it did to each resident in turn, and of course it would be the night the school issue reached its climax.
The room had almost filled and now Patrick Doyle, the current building skypilot, looking none too happy in his long white robe, raised his hands for silence. ‘The opening prayer,’ he called huskily, cleared his throat and brought forth a small card. ‘Everyone please shut your eyes and bow your head.’ He glanced at Tishman and the trustees, and Tishman nodded for him to continue. ‘Heavenly father,’ Doyle read, ‘we the residents of the communal apartment building Abraham Lincoln beseech you to bless our assembly tonight. Um, we ask that in your mercy you enable us to raise the funds for the roof repairs which seem imperative. We ask that our sick be healed and that in processing applicants wishing to live amongst us we show wisdom in whom we admit and who we turn away. We further ask that no outsiders get in and disrupt our law-abiding, orderly lives and we ask in particular that lastly, if it be thy will, that Nicole Thibodeaux be free of her sinus headaches which have caused her not to appear before us on TV lately, and that those headaches not have anything to do with that time two years ago, which we recall, when that stagehand allowed that weight to fall and strike her on the head, sending her to the hospital for several days. Anyhow, amen.’
The audience agreed, ‘Amen.’
Rising from his chair, Tishman said, ‘Now, before the business of the meeting, we’ll have a few rewarding minutes of our own talent display for our enjoyment. First, the three Fetersmoeller girls from apartment number 205. They will do a soft-shoe dance to the tune of “I’ll Build a Stairway to the Stars.” ‘ He reseated himself, and on to the stage came the three little blonde-haired children, familiar to the audience from talent shows in the past.
As the Fetersmoeller girls, in their striped pants and glittery silver jackets, shuffled smilingly through the dance, the door to the outside corridor opened and a latecomer, Edgar Stone, appeared.
He was late, this evening, because he had been grading test papers of his next-door neighbour, Mr Ian Duncan, and as he stood in the doorway his mind was still on the test and the poor showing which Duncan — whom he barely knew had made. It seemed to him that without even having finished the grading of the test he could see that Duncan had failed.
On the stage the Fetersmoeller girls sang in their scratchy voices, and Stone wondered why he had come. Perhaps for no more reason than to avert a fine, it being mandatory for the residents to be here tonight. These amateur talent shows, put on so frequently, meant nothing to him; he recalled the old days when the TV set had carried entertainment, good shows put on by professionals. Now of course all the professionals who were any good were under contract to the White House, and the TV had become educational, not entertaining. Mr Stone thought of the glorious old golden age, long since gone, of great old movie comics such as Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, and then he looked once more at the Fettersmoeller sisters and groaned.
Vince Strikerock, ever on duty, hearing him, glanced at him severely.
At least he had missed the prayer. He presented his identification to Vince’s expensive new machine and it allowed him to pass — lucky break! — down the aisle towards a vacant seat. Was Nicole watching this, tonight? Was a talent scout present somewhere in the audience? He saw no unfamiliar faces. The Fetersmoeller girls were wasting their time. Seating himself, he closed his eyes and listened, unable to endure watching. They’ll never make it, he thought.
They’ll have to face it, and so will their ambitious parents, they’re untalented, like the rest of us … The Abraham Lincoln has added little to the cultural store of the USEA, despite its sweaty, strenuous determination, and you are not going to be able to alter that.
The hopelessness of the Fetersmoeller girls’ position made him remember once more the test papers which Ian Duncan, trembling and waxen-faced, had pressed into his hands early that morning. If Duncan failed he would be even worse off than the Fetersmoeller girls because he would not even be living at The Abraham Lincoln; he would drop out of sight — their sight, anyhow — and would revert to a despised and ancient status: he would, in all probability, unless gifted with some special skills, find himself once more in a dorm, working on a manual gang as they all had done back in their teens.
Of course he would also be refunded the money which he had paid for his apartment, a large sum which represented the man’s sole major investment in life. From one standpoint, Stone envied him. What would I do, he asked himself as he sat, eyes closed, if I had my equity back right now, in a lump sum? Perhaps, he thought, I’d emigrate. Buy one of those cheap, illegal jalopies they peddle at those lots which — Clapping hands roused him. The girls had finished, and he, too, joined in the applause. On the platform, Tishman waved for silence. ‘Okay, folks, I know you enjoyed that, but there’s lots more in store, tonight. And then there’s the business part of the meeting; we mustn’t forget that.’ He grinned at them.
Yes, Stone thought. The ‘beezness’. And he felt tense, because he was one of the radicals at The Abraham Lincoln who wanted to abolish the building’s grammar school and send their children to a public grammar school where they would be exposed to children from other buildings entirely.
It was the kind of idea which met much opposition. And yet, in the last weeks, it had gained support. Perhaps they were entering an odd and unusual time. In any case, what a broadening experience it would be; their children would discover that people in other apartment buildings were no different from themselves. Barriers between people of all apartments would be torn down and a new understanding would come about.
At least, that was how it struck Stone, but the conservatives did not see it that way. Too soon, they said, for such mixing. There would be outbreaks of fights as the children clashed over which building was supreme. In time it would happen … but not now, not so soon.
Risking the severe fine, small, grey, nervous Mr Ian Duncan missed the assembly and remained in his apartment that evening, studying official Government texts on the political history of the United States of Europe and America. He was weak in that, he knew; he could barely comprehend the economic factors, let alone all the relpol ideologies that had come and gone during the twentieth century, directly contributing to the present situation. For instance, the rise of the Democratic-Republican Party. Once it had been two parties (or was it three?) which had engaged in wasteful quarrels, in struggles for power, just the way buildings fought now. The two — or three — parties had merged, about 1985, just before Germany entered the USEA. Now there was just the one party, which had ruled a stable and peaceful society, and everyone, by law, belonged to it. Everyone paid dues and attended meetings and voted, each four years, for a new der Alte — for the man they thought Nicole would like best.