seguro. Then they get me, maybe they brainburn me. What the hell, I can laugh at them. I done my part. Here. I don’t have to tell you to be careful where you open this.” He shook my hand and I felt a wad of something adhere to my palm. Then he strolled across the dayroom to the hypnoteleset, punched his clock number for a half-hour of trance and slid under, with the rest of the viewers. I went to the washroom and punched my combination for a ten-minute occupancy of a booth-bang went another nickel off my pay -and went in. The adhesive wad on my palm opened up into a single sheet of tissue paper which said: A Life Is in Your Hands This is Contact Sheet One of the World Conservationist Association, popularly known as “The Consies.” It has been passed to you by a member of the W.C.A. who judged that you are (a) intelligent; (b) disturbed by the present state of the world; (c) a potentially valuable addition to our ranks. His life is now in your hands. We ask you to read on before you take any action. * Facts About the W.C.A. The Facts: The W.C.A. is a secret organization persecuted by all the governments of the world. It believes that reckless exploitation of natural resources has created needless poverty and needless human misery. It believes that continued exploitation will mean the end of human life on Earth. It believes that this trend may be reversed if the people of the Earth can be educated to the point where they will demand planning of population, reforestation, soil-building, deurbanization, and an end to the wasteful production of gadgets and proprietary foods for which there is no natural demand. This educational program is being carried on by propaganda-like this-demonstrations offeree, and sabotage of factories which produce trivia. Falsehoods About the W.C.A. You have probably heard dial “the Consies” are murderers, psychotics, and incompetent people who kill and destroy for irrational ends or out of envy. None of this is true. W.C.A. members are humane, balanced persons,
many of them successful in the eyes of the world. Stories to the contrary are zealously encouraged by people who profit from the exploitation which we hope to correct. There are irrational, unbalanced and criminal persons who do commit outrages in the name of conservation, either idealistically or as a shield for looting. The W.C.A. dissociates itself from such people and regards their activities with repugnance. What Will You Do Next? That is up to you. You can (a) denounce the person who passed you this contact sheet; (b) destroy this sheet and forget about it; (c) go to the person who passed you the sheet and seek further information. We ask you to think before you act. I thought-hard. I thought the broadside was (a) the dullest, lousiest piece of copysmithing I had ever seen in my life; (b) a wildly distorted version of reality; (c) a possible escape route for me out of Chlorella and back to Kathy. So these were the dreaded Consies! Of all the self-contradictory gibberish-but it had a certain appeal. The ad was crafted-unconsciously, I was sure-the way we’d do a pharmaceutical-house booklet for doctors only. Calm, learned, we’re all men of sound judgment and deep scholarship here; we can talk frankly about bedrock issues. Does your patient suffer from hyperspasm, Doctor? It was an appeal to reason, and they’re always dangerous. You can’t trust reason. We threw it out of the ad profession long ago and have never missed it. Well, there were obviously two ways to do it. I could go to the front office and put the finger on Herrera. I’d get a little publicity maybe; they’d listen to me, maybe; they might believe enough of what I told them to check. I seemed to recall that denouncers of Consies were sometimes brainburned on the sensible grounds that they had been exposed to the virus and that it might work out later, after the first healthy reaction. That wasn’t good. Riskier but more heroic: I could bore from within, playing along with the Consies. If they were the world-wide net they claimed to be, there was no reason why I shouldn’t wind up in New York, ready and able to blow the lid off them. Not for a moment did I have any doubts about being able to get