The Marching Morons
He flung his pick out of the trench, climbed out and set off at a
dog-trot for his shop. A little rummaging turned up a hypo and there
was a plasticontainer of salt in the kitchen.
Back at his dig, he chipped for another half hour to expose the
juncture of lid and body. The hinges were hopeless; he smashed them off.
Hawkins extended the telescopic handle of the pick for the best
leverage, fitted its point into a deep pit, set its built-in fulcrum,
and heaved. Five more heaves and he could see, inside the vault, what
looked like a dusty marble statue. Ten more and he could see that it
was the naked body of Honest John Barlow, Evanston real estate dealer,
uncorrupted by time.
The potter found the apex of the trigeminal nerve with his needle's
point and gave him 60 cc.
In an hour Barlow's chest began to pump.
In another hour, he rasped, "Did it work?"
"_Did_ it!" muttered Hawkins.
Barlow opened his eyes and stirred, looked down, turned his hands
before his eyes--
"I'll sue!" he screamed. "My clothes! My fingernails!" A horrid
suspicion came over his face and he clapped his hands to his hairless
scalp. "My hair!" he wailed. "I'll sue you for every penny you've got!
That release won't mean a damned thing in court--I didn't sign away my
hair and clothes and fingernails!"
"They'll grow back," said Hawkins casually. "Also your epidermis. Those
parts of you weren't alive, you know, so they weren't preserved like
the rest of you. I'm afraid the clothes are gone, though."
"What is this--the University hospital?" demanded Barlow. "I want
a phone. No, you phone. Tell my wife I'm all right and tell Sam
Immerman--he's my lawyer--to get over here right away. Greenleaf
7-4022. Ow!" He had tried to sit up, and a portion of his pink skin
rubbed against the inner surface of the casket, which was powdered by
the ancient crystalized glass. "What the hell did you guys do, boil me
alive? Oh, you're going to pay for this!"
"You're all right," said Hawkins, wishing now he had a reference book
to clear up several obscure terms. "Your epidermis will start growing
immediately. You're not in the hospital. Look here."
* * * * *
He handed Barlow the stainless steel plate that had labeled the casket.
After a suspicious glance, the man started to read. Finishing, he laid
the plate carefully on the edge of the vault and was silent for a
spell.
"Poor Verna," he said at last. "It doesn't say whether she was stuck
with the court costs. Do you happen to know--"
"No," said the potter. "All I know is what was on the plate, and how to
revive you. The dentist accidentally gave you a dose of what we call
Levantman shock anesthesia. We haven't used it for centuries; it was
powerful, but too dangerous."
"Centuries ..." brooded the man. "Centuries ... I'll bet Sam swindled
her out of her eyeteeth. Poor Verna. How long ago was it? What year is
this?"
Hawkins shrugged. "We call it 7-B-936. That's no help to you. It takes
a long time for these metals to oxidize."
"Like that movie," Barlow muttered. "Who would have thought it? Poor
Verna!" He blubbered and sniffled, reminding Hawkins powerfully of the
fact that he had been found under a flat rock.
Almost angrily, the potter demanded, "How many children did you have?"
"None yet," sniffed Barlow. "My first wife didn't want them. But Verna
wants one--wanted one--but we're going to wait until--we _were_ going
to wait until--"
"Of course," said the potter, feeling a savage desire to tell him off,
blast him to hell and gone for his work. But he choked it down. There
was The Problem to think of; there was always The Problem to think of,
and this poor blubberer might unexpectedly supply a clue. Hawkins would
have to pass him on.
* * * * *
"Come along," Hawkins said. "My time is short."
Barlow looked up, outraged. "How can you be so unfeeling? I'm a human
being like--"
The Los Angeles-Chicago "rocket" thundered overhead and Barlow broke
off in mid-complaint. "Beautiful!" he breathed, following it with his
eyes. "Beautiful!"
He climbed out of the vault, too interested to be pained by its
roughness against his infantile skin. "After all," he said briskly,
"this should have its sunny side. I never was much for reading, but
this is just like one of those stories. And I ought to make some money
out of it, shouldn't I?" He gave Hawkins a shrewd glance.
"You want money?" asked the potter. "Here." He handed over a fistful
of change and bills. "You'd better put my shoes on. It'll be about a
quarter-mile. Oh, and you're--uh, modest?--yes, that was the word.
Here." Hawkins gave him his pants, but Barlow was excitedly counting
the money.
"Eighty-five, eighty-six--and it's dollars, too! I thought it'd
be credits or whatever they call them. 'E Pluribus Unum' and
'Liberty'--just different faces. Say, is there a catch to this? Are
these real, genuine, honest twenty-two-cent dollars like we had or
just wallpaper?"
"They're quite all right, I assure you," said the potter. "I wish you'd
come along. I'm in a hurry."
* * * * *
The man babbled as they stumped toward the shop. "Where are we
going--The Council of Scientists, the World Coordinator or something
like that?"
"Who? Oh, no. We call them 'President' and 'Congress.' No, that
wouldn't do any good at all. I'm just taking you to see some people."
"I ought to make plenty out of this. _Plenty!_ I could write books.
Get some smart young fellow to put it into words for me and I'll bet I
could turn out a best-seller. What's the setup on things like that?"
"It's about like that. Smart young fellows. But there aren't any
best-sellers any more. People don't read much nowadays. We'll find
something equally profitable for you to do."
Back in the shop, Hawkins gave Barlow a suit of clothes, deposited him
in the waiting room and called Central in Chicago. "Take him away," he
pleaded. "I have time for one more firing and he blathers and blathers.
I haven't told him anything. Perhaps we should just turn him loose and
let him find his own level, but there's a chance--"
"The Problem," agreed Central. "Yes, there's a chance."
The potter delighted Barlow by making him a cup of coffee with a cube
that not only dissolved in cold water but heated the water to boiling
point. Killing time, Hawkins chatted about the "rocket" Barlow had
admired, and had to haul himself up short; he had almost told the real
estate man what its top speed really was--almost, indeed, revealed that
it was not a rocket.
He regretted, too, that he had so casually handed Barlow a couple of
hundred dollars. The man seemed obsessed with fear that they were
worthless since Hawkins refused to take a note or I.O.U. or even a
definite promise of repayment. But Hawkins couldn't go into details,
and was very glad when a stranger arrived from Central.
"Tinny-Peete, from Algeciras," the stranger told him swiftly as the
two of them met at the door. "Psychist for Poprob. Polasigned special
overtake Barlow."
"Thank Heaven," said Hawkins. "Barlow," he told the man from the past,
"this is Tinny-Peete. He's going to take care of you and help you make
lots of money."
The psychist stayed for a cup of the coffee whose preparation had
delighted Barlow, and then conducted the real estate man down the
corduroy road to his car, leaving the potter to speculate on whether he
could at last crack his kilns.
Hawkins, abruptly dismissing Barlow and the Problem, happily picked
the chinking from around the door of the number two kiln, prying it
open a trifle. A blast of heat and the heady, smoky scent of the
reduction fire delighted him. He peered and saw a corner of a shelf
glowing cherry-red, becoming obscured by wavering black areas as it
lost heat through the opened door. He slipped a charred wood paddle
under a mug on the shelf and pulled it out as a sample, the hairs on
the back of his hand curling and scorching. The mug crackled and pinged
and Hawkins sighed happily.
The bismuth resinate luster had fired to perfection, a haunting film
of silvery-black metal with strange bluish lights in it as it turned
before the eyes, and the Problem of Population seemed very far away to
Hawkins then.
* * * * *
Barlow and Tinny-Peete arrived at the concrete highway where the
psychist's car was parked in a safety bay.
"What--a--_boat_!" gasped the man from the past.
"Boat? No, that's my car."
Barlow surveyed it with awe. Swept-back lines, deep-drawn compound
curves, kilograms of chrome. He ran his hands futilely over the
door--or was it the door?--in a futile search for a handle, and asked
respectfully, "How fast does it go?"
The psychist gave him a keen look and said slowly, "Two hundred and
fifty. You can tell by the speedometer."
"Wow! My old Chevvy could hit a hundred on a straightaway, but you're
out of my class, mister!"
Tinny-Peete somehow got a huge, low door open and Barlow descended
three steps into immense cushions, floundering over to the right. He
was too fascinated to pay serious attention to his flayed dermis. The
dashboard was a lovely wilderness of dials, plugs, indicators, lights,
scales and switches.
The psychist climbed down into the driver's seat and did something with
his feet. The motor started like lighting a blowtorch as big as a silo.
Wallowing around in the cushions, Barlow saw through a rear-view mirror
a tremendous exhaust filled with brilliant white sparkles.
"Do you like it?" yelled the psychist.
"It's terrific!" Barlow yelled back. "It's--"
He was shut up as the car pulled out from the bay into the road with
a great _voo-ooo-ooom_! A gale roared past Barlow's head, though the
windows seemed to be closed; the impression of speed was terrific. He
located the speedometer on the dashboard and saw it climb past 90, 100,
150, 200.
"Fast enough for me," yelled the psychist, noting that Barlow's face
fell in response. "Radio?"
He passed over a surprisingly light object like a football helmet,
with no trailing wires, and pointed to a row of buttons. Barlow put
on the helmet, glad to have the roar of air stilled, and pushed a
pushbutton. It lit up satisfyingly and Barlow settled back even farther
for a sample of the brave new world's super-modern taste in ingenious
entertainment.
"TAKE IT AND STICK IT!" a voice roared in his ears.
* * * * *
He snatched off the helmet and gave the psychist an injured look.
Tinny-Peete grinned and turned a dial associated with the pushbutton
layout. The man from the past donned the helmet again and found the
voice had lowered to normal.
"The show of shows! The super-show! The super-duper show! The quiz of
quizzes! _Take it and stick it!_"
There were shrieks of laughter in the background.
"Here we got the contes-tants all ready to go. You know how we work it.
I hand a contes-tant a triangle-shaped cut-out and like that down the
line. Now we got these here boards, they got cut-out places the same
shape as the triangles and things, only they're all different shapes,
and the first contes-tant that sticks the cutouts into the board, he
wins.
"Now I'm gonna innaview the first contes-tant. Right here, honey.
What's your name?"
"Name? Uh--"
"Hoddaya like that, folks? She don't remember her name! Hah? _Would
you buy that for a quarter?_" The question was spoken with arch
significance, and the audience shrieked, howled and whistled its
appreciation.
It was dull listening when you didn't know the punch lines and catch
lines. Barlow pushed another button, with his free hand ready at the
volume control.
"--latest from Washington. It's about Senator Hull-Mendoza. He is still