The Marching Morons
attacking the Bureau of Fisheries. The North California Syndicalist
says he got affidavits that John Kingsley-Schultz is a bluenose from
way back. He didn't publistat the affydavits, but he says they say that
Kingsley-Schultz was saw at bluenose meetings in Oregon State College
and later at Florida University. Kingsley-Schultz says he gotta confess
he did major in fly-casting at Oregon and got his Ph.D. in game-fish at
Florida.
"And here is a quote from Kingsley-Schultz: 'Hull-Mendoza don't know
what he's talking about. He should drop dead.' Unquote. Hull-Mendoza
says he won't publistat the affydavits to pertect his sources. He says
they was sworn by three former employes of the Bureau which was fired
for in-com-petence and in-com-pat-ibility by Kingsley-Schultz.
"Elsewhere they was the usual run of traffic accidents. A three-way
pileup of cars on Route 66 going outta Chicago took twelve lives.
The Chicago-Los Angeles morning rocket crashed and exploded in the
Mo-have--Mo-javvy--what-ever-you-call-it Desert. All the 94 people
aboard got killed. A Civil Aeronautics Authority investigator on the
scene says that the pilot was buzzing herds of sheep and didn't pull
out in time.
"Hey! Here's a hot one from New York! A Diesel tug run wild in the
harbor while the crew was below and shoved in the port bow of the
luck-shury liner _S. S. Placentia_. It says the ship filled and sank
taking the lives of an es-ti-mated 180 passengers and 50 crew members.
Six divers was sent down to study the wreckage, but they died, too,
when their suits turned out to be fulla little holes.
"And here is a bulletin I just got from Denver. It seems--"
* * * * *
Barlow took off the headset uncomprehendingly. "He seemed so callous,"
he yelled at the driver. "I was listening to a newscast--"
Tinny-Peete shook his head and pointed at his ears. The roar of air was
deafening. Barlow frowned baffledly and stared out of the window.
A glowing sign said:
MOOGS!
WOULD YOU BUY IT
FOR A QUARTER?
He didn't know what Moogs was or were; the illustration showed
an incredibly proportioned girl, 99.9 per cent naked, writhing
passionately in animated full color.
The roadside jingle was still with him, but with a new feature. Radar
or something spotted the car and alerted the lines of the jingle. Each
in turn sped along a roadside track, even with the car, so it could be
read before the next line was alerted.
IF THERE'S A GIRL
YOU WANT TO GET
DEFLOCCULIZE
UNROMANTIC SWEAT.
"A*R*M*P*I*T*T*O"
Another animated job, in two panels, the familiar "Before and After."
The first said, "Just Any Cigar?" and was illustrated with a two-person
domestic tragedy of a wife holding her nose while her coarse and
red-faced husband puffed a slimy-looking rope. The second panel glowed,
"Or a VUELTA ABAJO?" and was illustrated with--
Barlow blushed and looked at his feet until they had passed the sign.
"Coming into Chicago!" bawled Tinny-Peete.
Other cars were showing up, all of them dreamboats.
Watching them, Barlow began to wonder if he knew what a kilometer
was, exactly. They seemed to be traveling so slowly, if you ignored
the roaring air past your ears and didn't let the speedy lines of the
dreamboats fool you. He would have sworn they were really crawling
along at twenty-five, with occasional spurts up to thirty. How much
was a kilometer, anyway?
The city loomed ahead, and it was just what it ought to be: towering
skyscrapers, overhead ramps, landing platforms for helicopters--
He clutched at the cushions. Those two 'copters. They were going
to--they were going to--they--
He didn't see what happened because their apparent collision courses
took them behind a giant building.
* * * * *
Screamingly sweet blasts of sound surrounded them as they stopped for a
red light. "What the hell is going on here?" said Barlow in a shrill,
frightened voice, because the braking time was just about zero, he
wasn't hurled against the dashboard. "Who's kidding who?"
"Why, what's the matter?" demanded the driver.
The light changed to green and he started the pickup. Barlow stiffened
as he realized that the rush of air past his ears began just a brief,
unreal split-second before the car was actually moving. He grabbed for
the door handle on his side.
The city grew on them slowly: scattered buildings, denser buildings,
taller buildings, and a red light ahead. The car rolled to a stop in
zero braking time, the rush of air cut off an instant after it stopped,
and Barlow was out of the car and running frenziedly down a sidewalk
one instant after that.
_They'll track me down_, he thought, panting. _It's a secret police
thing. They'll get you--mind-reading machines, television eyes
everywhere, afraid you'll tell their slaves about freedom and stuff.
They don't let anybody cross them, like that story I once read._
Winded, he slowed to a walk and congratulated himself that he had guts
enough not to turn around. That was what they always watched for.
Walking, he was just another business-suited back among hundreds. He
would be safe, he would be safe--
A hand tumbled from a large, coarse, handsome face thrust close to his:
"Wassamatta bumpinninna people likeya owna sidewalk gotta miner slamya
inna mushya bassar!" It was neither the mad potter nor the mad driver.
"Excuse me," said Barlow. "What did you say?"
"Oh, yeah?" yelled the stranger dangerously, and waited for an answer.
Barlow, with the feeling that he had somehow been suckered into
the short end of an intricate land-title deal, heard himself reply
belligerently, "Yeah!"
The stranger let go of his shoulder and snarled, "Oh, yeah?"
"Yeah!" said Barlow, yanking his jacket back into shape.
"Aaah!" snarled the stranger, with more contempt and disgust than
ferocity. He added an obscenity current in Barlow's time, a standard
but physiologically impossible directive, and strutted off hulking his
shoulders and balling his fists.
* * * * *
Barlow walked on, trembling. Evidently he had handled it well enough.
He stopped at a red light while the long, low dreamboats roared before
him and pedestrians in the sidewalk flow with him threaded their ways
through the stream of cars. Brakes screamed, fenders clanged and
dented, hoarse cries flew back and forth between drivers and walkers.
He leaped backward frantically as one car swerved over an arc of
sidewalk to miss another.
The signal changed to green, the cars kept on coming for about thirty
seconds and then dwindled to an occasional light-runner. Barlow crossed
warily and leaned against a vending machine, blowing big breaths.
_Look natural_, he told himself. _Do something normal. Buy something
from the machine._
He fumbled out some change, got a newspaper for a dime, a handkerchief
for a quarter and a candy bar for another quarter.
The faint chocolate smell made him ravenous suddenly. He clawed at the
glassy wrapper printed "CRIGGLIES" quite futilely for a few seconds,
and then it divided neatly by itself. The bar made three good bites,
and he bought two more and gobbled them down.
Thirsty, he drew a carbonated orange drink in another one of the glassy
wrappers from the machine for another dime. When he fumbled with it, it
divided neatly and spilled all over his knees. Barlow decided he had
been there long enough and walked on.
The shop windows were--shop windows. People still wore and bought
clothes, still smoked and bought tobacco, still ate and bought food.
And they still went to the movies, he saw with pleased surprise as he
passed and then returned to a glittering place whose sign said it was
THE BIJOU.
The place seemed to be showing a quintuple feature, _Babies Are
Terrible_, _Don't Have Children_, and _The Canali Kid_.
It was irresistible; he paid a dollar and went in.
He caught the tail-end of _The Canali Kid_ in three-dimensional,
full-color, full-scent production. It appeared to be an interplanetary
saga winding up with a chase scene and a reconciliation between
estranged hero and heroine. _Babies Are Terrible_ and _Don't Have
Children_ were fantastic arguments against parenthood--the grotesquely
exaggerated dangers of painfully graphic childbirth, vicious children,
old parents beaten and starved by their sadistic offspring. The
audience, Barlow astoundedly noted, was placidly champing sweets and
showing no particular signs of revulsion.
The _Coming Attractions_ drove him into the lobby. The fanfares
were shattering, the blazing colors blinding, and the added scents
stomach-heaving.
* * * * *
When his eyes again became accustomed to the moderate lighting of the
lobby, he groped his way to a bench and opened the newspaper he had
bought. It turned out to be _The Racing Sheet_, which afflicted him
with a crushing sense of loss. The familiar boxed index in the lower
left hand corner of the front page showed almost unbearably that
Churchill Downs and Empire City were still in business--
Blinking back tears, he turned to the Past Performances at Churchill.
They weren't using abbreviations any more, and the pages because of
that were single-column instead of double. But it was all the same--or
was it?
He squinted at the first race, a three-quarter-mile maiden claimer for
thirteen hundred dollars. Incredibly, the track record was two minutes,
ten and three-fifths seconds. Any beetle in his time could have knocked
off the three-quarter in one-fifteen. It was the same for the other
distances, much worse for route events.
_What the hell had happened to everything?_
He studied the form of a five-year-old brown mare in the second and
couldn't make head or tail of it. She'd won and lost and placed and
showed and lost and placed without rhyme or reason. She looked like a
front-runner for a couple of races and then she looked like a no-good
pig and then she looked like a mudder but the next time it rained she
wasn't and then she was a stayer and then she was a pig again. In a
good five-thousand-dollar allowances event, too!
Barlow looked at the other entries and it slowly dawned on him that
they were all like the five-year-old brown mare. Not a single damned
horse running had the slightest trace of class.
Somebody sat down beside him and said, "That's the story."
* * * * *
Barlow whirled to his feet and saw it was Tinny-Peete, his driver.
"I was in doubts about telling you," said the psychist, "but I see you
have some growing suspicions of the truth. Please don't get excited.
It's all right, I tell you."
"So you've got me," said Barlow.
"_Got_ you?"
"Don't pretend. I can put two and two together. You're the secret
police. You and the rest of the aristocrats live in luxury on the sweat
of these oppressed slaves. You're afraid of me because you have to keep
them ignorant."
There was a bellow of bright laughter from the psychist that got them
blank looks from other patrons of the lobby. The laughter didn't sound
at all sinister.
"Let's get out of here," said Tinny-Peete, still chuckling. "You
couldn't possibly have it more wrong." He engaged Barlow's arm and led
him to the street. "The actual truth is that the millions of workers
live in luxury on the sweat of the handful of aristocrats. I shall
probably die before my time of overwork unless--" He gave Barlow a
speculative look. "You may be able to help us."
"I know that gag," sneered Barlow. "I made money in my time and to make
money you have to get people on your side. Go ahead and shoot me if you
want, but you're not going to make a fool out of me."
"You nasty little ingrate!" snapped the psychist, with a kaleidoscopic