THE WRONG END OF TIME BY JOHN BRUNNER

Still, he had to put some questions about Danty because of what had already happened. He said, “Ah . . . 1 Well, if it’s Danty they’re after, I can’t see why. I talked to him a bit at the party last night. and he seemed to be veryuh-serious. Sort of thoughtful. And well-read, too,” he added as an afterthought.

“Yell” Lora chimed in. “That’s why Don wanted to see him again. Wasn’t it, Don?”

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

There was a dead silence, during which Magda looked -not discourteously, just searchingly-at both of them in turn for long seconds. She said at last, “And, of course, the pigs don’t like foster-rebs, either.”

Meaning herself, Sheklov deduced. The term had been included in his briefings. It applied to an older person who actively encouraged the young to drop out of society in search of some allegedly superior truth. A few states had incorporated it into their criminal codes, making such encouragement an offence for which the parents of minors

could sue by analogy with “alienation of affection” in the old British common law.

Shades of Socrates and the hemlockl “Corrupting our youthl”

“I get the impression,” Sheklov said slowly, not looking directly at Magda, “that over the border we-you know I’m Canadian?”

“Danty did mention it.”

Was there mockery in those dark eyes? Had she seen through his pretence?-He couldn’t tell. He ploughed doggedly on.

“Well, we seem to understand something different by the word reb. I mean, it’s not something the police would -uh . . .” A wave of his hand.

“Down here the police pounce on anyone who’s in the slightest degree different,” Magda said. “Anyone who tries to think for himself, to begin with-they’re the most dangerous of all. Every loyal citizen is convinced that the government is right, even if today it says the exact opposite of what it said yesterday. Not that that happens so much any more. We’ve decayed into what they call a consensus.” She made the word sound fairly obscene.

“You mean-” Lora began. Magda cut her short.

“What I mean is that the government of this country is killing us. Stone-dead. By slow strangulation.”

She jolted forward on her couch, her face suddenly animated, and Sheklov realized with a start that she was beautiful-not in the conventional American, or even the conventional Russian, sense, which had more to do with mere glamour, but in the ancient sense of the Gioconda or the Venus di Milo. It was as though a light had been switched on inside her head that illuminated her true personality. Also, in contrast with the shrill whine of almost every other woman he had met since his arival-most notably, Sophie Turpin and her mother-her voice was a resonant contralto, cello-forceful.

“And it’s a tough job for them,” she said. “Because in every generation you get a handful of people who won’t just be crushed into the regulation mould. Don’t you? The ones who want to be–oh-inventors rather than engineers, or poets rather than copywriters, or architects rather than building-contractors. Peg it?”

“I guess so,” Sheklov said, and added wryly, “likewise, ecologists rather than timber-salesmen.”

“You peg,” she said. and this time smiled at him-just with her eyes. wrinkling the lids humorously. “So what happens when you block off all their opportunities to explore and experiment as they want to? You get rebs. Hell, you’re bound to.”

“Well-sure you are!” Sheklov said, blinking. “So . . .?”

“So they get stamped on,” Magda said. “Like I said.”

“But–21

“But why? Oh, I know it’s crazy. I know we’re so rich we ooze monev like-like fat dripping off roast pork. I know we ought to be able to tolerate a fraction of 1 per cent of young people who’d rather sit and think than fit into the machine. But people seem to resent their need to do that, don’t they?”

Sheklov swallowed hard, wondering what Holtzer ought to say, and was saved the trouble. Lora spoke up.

“I know just what you mean!” she exclaimed. “Lots of times I think inside my head there’s something going on that isn’t in the books they make you read in school. It makes me want to do crazy things now and then, really crazy, just to shake everybody up. And they don’t even notice!” The last word was almost a cry.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *