had never before occurred to them to think of it as “salt-water soap.” The assignment boss came up to me and duly said: “Groby! You know any nutrient chemistry?” “Funny you should ask,” I told him. ‘Tve studied it quite a bit. I know the sulfur-phosphorus-carbon-oxygen-hydrogen-nitrogen ratios for chlorella, I know the optimum temperatures and stuff like that.” Obviously this little was much more than he knew. He grunted, “Yeah?” and went away, impressed. A week later everybody was telling a dirty joke about the Starrze-lius Verily trust and I was transferred to an eight-hour job inside the pylon, reading gauges and twisting valves that controlled the nutrient flow to the tanks of chlorella. It was lighter and easier work. I spent my time under Chicken Little-I could pass through her with a Gallon whistle almost without cringing-rewriting the Consies’ fantastically inept Contact Sheet One: CAN YOU QUALIFY FOR TOP-LEVEL PROMOTION? You and only you can answer these important questions: Are you an intelligent, forward-looking man or woman between the ages of 14 and 50-Do you have the drive and ambition needed to handle the really BIG JOBS tomorrow will bring-Can you be trusted-absolutely trusted-with the biggest, hopefulest news of our time? If you can’t stand up and shout YES! to every one of these questions, please read no further! But if you can, then you and your friends or family can get in on the ground floor of. … And so on. Bowen was staggered. “You don’t think that appeal to upper-level IQs limits it too much, do you?” he asked anxiously. I didn’t tell him that the only difference between that and the standard come-on for Class 12 laborers was that the Class 12s got it aurally-they couldn’t read. I said I didn’t think so. He nodded. “You’re a natural-born copysmith, Groby,” he told me solemnly. “In a Conservationist America, you’d be star class.” I was properly modest. He went on, “I can’t hog you; I’ve got to pass you on to a higher echelon. It isn’t right to waste your talents in a cell. I’ve forwarded a report on you-” he gestured at the communicator,
“and I expect you’ll be requisitioned. It’s only right. But I hate to see you go. However, I’m pulling the strings already. Here’s the Chlorella Purchasers’ Handbook . . .” My heart bounded. I knew that Chlorella contracted for raw materials with a number of outlets in New York City. “Thanks,” I mumbled. “I want to serve wherever I best can.” “I know you do, Groby,” he soothed. “Uh-say, one thing before you go. This isn’t official, George, but-well, I do a little writing too. I’ve got some of my things here-sketches, I guess you’d call them-and I’d appreciate it a lot if you’d take them along and . . .” I finally got out with the handbook, and only fourteen of Bowen’s “sketches.” They were churlish little scraps of writing, with no sell in them at all that I could see. Bowen assured me he had lots more that he and I could work on. I hit that handbook hard. Twisting valves left me feeling more alive at the end of a day than scum-skimming, and Bowen made sure my Consie labors were as light as possible-to free me for work on his “sketches.” The result was that, for the first time, I had leisure to explore my milieu. Herrera took me into town with him once, and I discovered what he did with those unmentioned weekends. The knowledge shocked, but did not disgust me. If anything, it reminded me that the gap between executive and consumer could not be bridged by anything as abstract and unreal as “friendship.” Stepping out of the old-fashioned pneumatic tube into a misty Costa Rican drizzle, we stopped first at a third-rate restaurant for a meal. Herrera insisted on getting us each a potato, and insisted on being allowed to pay for it-“No, Jorge, you call it a celebration. You let me go on living after I gave you the contact sheet, no? So we celebrate.” Herrera was brilliant through the meal, a fountain of conversation and bilingual badinage with me and the waiters. The sparkle in his eye, the rapid, compulsive flow of speech, the easy, unnecessary laughter were like nothing so much as the gaiety of a young man on a date. A young man on a date. I remembered my first meeting with Kathy, that long afternoon at Central Park, strolling hand in hand down the dim-lit corridors, the dance hall, the eternal hour we stood outside her door. . . . Herrera reached over and pounded me on the shoulder, and I