Sneak Preview

by Robert Bloch

  Graham sat next to him in the cabin, just behind the pilots’ seats before the panel.

  “Strap,” Krug told him. He indicated a lever at Graham’s side. “Seat-chute. Just press in case of emergency. But you know that, of course. It’s only that sometimes they forget, on the first trip. Liable to be quite a shock.”

  Graham smiled. The back of his neck was wet. They’d be taking off in a moment. Taking off. Getting out of here. Heading South, to the Resorts. How far was Miami from Gulfport? Maybe he could shake Krug down there, get to his father. He’d have to plan carefully, but no sense thinking about that now. It all depended on the situation when he arrived. At the moment the important thing was to get away.

  And they were leaving.

  Leaving with a shudder and with shock, with pulsation and pressure and power—but leaving nonetheless, so that Graham’s heart soared with the ship. The launchers propelled them through the opening in the plexide Dome with split-second precision, and then they were clear, and jetting. Lights dimmed, brightened. The ship was on course, at a steady seven hundred.

  Krug fumbled at a compartment next to his seat. “Hungry?” he asked.

  Graham shook his head.

  Krug shrugged and unwrapped a hamsan. He munched thoughtfully. “Better check in,” he muttered, reaching for a comm-tube.

  Graham held his breath as Krug addressed Control, already six miles behind them. But apparently Control had nothing to report. Everything was clear. And if no one had found Sigmond and Mellot by now, chances were that the offices would remain undisturbed until morning. By that time he’d be in Miami, and out of Krug’s reach. Just how that would be arranged he didn’t know, but a chance would come. It had to.

  Graham shifted his strap, patting the pockets of the Brass uniform to see what he could discover. He’d had no time to take inventory. Here was his idento, here was a stunner, here a lumpy packet of what might be emergency rations or pacifiers—for all he knew, it could be Libidose. He had little idea of what constituted standard equipment for Brass assigned to flights like this. And he had little idea what he was supposed to know. The best thing to do would be to keep his mouth shut as much as possible and let Krug do the talking.

  Krug seemed amenable to that arrangement. He talked over and around his hamsan.

  “Desert country down there,” he said. “Too dark to see, of course.”

  “No Domes?”

  “We should be over Feenix, now. Always fly the same route. Then there’s nothing until Dallas. And after that, the Gulf.”

  “Gulf?”

  “Gulf of Mexico, of course. Which reminds me.” He leaned forward and tapped the co on the shoulder. “Don’t forget to give me the signal,” he said.

  The co nodded, then turned back to the panel. He and the pilot carried on a conversation of their own in low tones. Graham scarcely heard it. Another sound overrode; it came from the big passenger-area behind their cabin wall.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “Socially Secured. They’re singing.”

  And so they were. Graham strained, trying to distinguish the words of the ragged tune. All he could understand was something about high in the sky we fly and life in the sun has just begun.

  “Traditional,” Krug commented. “They always sing those things when they leave.”

  He fumbled for another hamsan. “Sure you don’t want one?”

  Graham nodded again. Krug gave him a worried glance. “What’s the matter, stomach upset?”

  “No. I’m just not hungry.”

  That didn’t seem to be the right answer, because Krug continued to stare. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Back there at Jetport, you were asking a lot of questions about the Socially Secured. You made some remark about why they weren’t sorry to leave. Did somebody feed you some classified info?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve got some idea about what’s going to happen?”

  “No. What is going to happen?”

  Krug’s eyes were intent upon his face. Apparently he was satisfied with what he saw, because he turned away. “You’ll see,” he said. Again he leaned forward and spoke to the co. The co nodded briefly.

  Krug leaned back in his seat. He reached over to the right wall of the cabin and pressed a button located unobtrusively below the lights. A faint hissing filled the air.

  “What’s that?” Graham inquired.

  “Don’t ask questions.” Krug reached for a third hamsan.

  All at once his voice seemed louder, and Graham realized why. The singing from the big cabin behind had died away. There was only the hissing.

  “They’ve stopped,” he murmured.

  Krug nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Anything the matter?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “Maybe we ought to step back and take a look.”

  “I wouldn’t advise it.”

  “But—”

  “Stay strapped. And don’t try to open the door. That’s an order! If any of the gas ever reached us in here we’d be finished.”

  “Gas?”

  “Don’t worry. I’m going to run the ejector now. I think they’ve had enough.” Krug pressed another button, still munching his hamsan. “Only takes a minute to work, only takes another couple of minutes to purify the air again.”

  Graham felt the urgency rising in him: he knew it was wrong to speak, and yet he had to. “Aren’t you going to tell me?” he asked. “Because if you can’t, I’ll have to guess. The gas—it does something to them, doesn’t it? I mean, you’re not just knocking them out. You’re giving them a laundry-job, isn’t that it? Affecting their memories?”

  “Right.” Krug finished his last bite and wiped his hands. “This stuff affects their memories, you might say. Permanently.”

  “Per—?”

  “Might as well face it. We all have to, our first trip out. Remember the conditioning you got at school? The first time they locked you in with the corpses? That was all done with a purpose, boy. It was necessary, if you’re going to be fit for this assignment. Because you’re going to see a lot of corpses. To be exact, nine hundred every trip.”

  “You—you killed them?”

  Krug nodded.

  Something snapped and Graham turned in his seat. He was reaching out when he saw Krug’s hand, saw the stunner trained on his throat.

  “Easy now,” Krug was whispering. “Easy. I know how you feel. I think the bombed system’s wrong, myself. I’m in favor of letting the trainees know before they go into flight. But the Psychos don’t agree. They want it to come this way; want you to find out only when it’s happened.”

  Graham didn’t hear him. He was listening to a voice inside, a voice that screamed I know now. I know about the vox-box. It’s a fake. Some impersonator. You killed my father. He died this way, they all die this way, there is no Resort for the Socially Secured anywhere, it’s all a lie, the whole system’s a lie.

  And the stunner was ready, waiting; waiting for him to open his mouth. Because he couldn’t open his mouth he opened his pores. For a moment he thought he was going to be sick.

  Then Krug gripped his arm. “That’s better,” he said. “Just relax. Use your common sense and you’ll understand that it has to be this way. We’re running to capacity right now; how could we possibly support another thirty or forty million of non-productives? Turn them loose for fifty years to live in luxury and idleness? And what would they do—spend half a lifetime playing shuffleboard? This is the best way. Live fully, and die quickly and painlessly in happy anticipation.”

  “But it’s—”

  “Cruel? Barbaric? Inhuman?” Krug smiled wryly. “Go ahead, use the words if you like. I won’t hold them against you. Felt the same way myself, at first. Guess we all do. It’s only when you stop to think things out objectively that you realize what we do is necessary. And for the best. He paused. “You know, they really tried to work out Resorts at first. They actually brought the Socially Secure
d down here. And the results were murder. Literally murder. Without Psychos to run things, they reverted, went right back to oldstyle civilization—complete with robbery, violence, even rape. Had to go in and exterminate whole colonies. Then they hit on this system, and there’s been no trouble since.”

  He pointed at the left wall. “See that button? Press it.”

  Graham hesitated. Krug leaned forward and tapped the co on the shoulder. “Over the Gulf?” he asked. The co nodded.

  Krug turned to Graham again. “All right. Press it,” he repeated.

  “What happens when I press it?”

  “Never mind. Do as you’re told.” His voice carried authority, and so did the pointing stunner.

  Graham pressed.

  There was a woosh and a thudding roar from behind. The Jet jerked violently.

  “What happened?” Graham asked.

  “We just dumped our passengers. Into the Gulf of Mexico.”

  As Graham started, the hand came down on his arm again. “You did it,” Krug reminded him. “You’re a part of the system. Might as well get used to it.”

  Graham turned his face away. He felt his fingers ball into fists. Then Krug was standing up, unstrapped. He put his audio-relay down on the seat.

  “Hold it a minute,” he said. “I’m going back to check the ship. Make sure everything’s closed up again. I won’t be gone long.”

  He edged into a passageway and shut the door.

  Graham sat there alone, sat there thinking about what he had done, thinking about those who had just died, and about how his father had died. A whiff of gas and a plunge down into the dark waters—that was the end result of fifty years of Planned Society. Lies, all lies, with this as the last lie of all. No, it didn’t even end here. For Talents, there would be still more lies; the impersonators on the vox-box every week. This task was grim enough, the task of the executioner. But the impersonator’s role was even worse. Studying old tapes and life-records, and then deceiving the survivors. Telling them to be happy, to adjust, to take it easy, relax, don’t worry—

  “Control to Krug.”

  The voice came from the empty seat beside him. Audio had been activated.

  “Control to Krug. Stand by. Acknowledge. Emergency message. Repeat. Acknowledge and stand by for emergency message.”

  The metallic voice crackled in Graham’s ears. Emergency message. That meant only one thing. They’d discovered Sigmond and Mellot. They knew. And they were warning Krug.

  Graham glanced behind him. Krug was still in the cabin, but he’d be back in a moment. Could the audio be turned off? No, because the pilots were listening too. It wouldn’t help. He’d have to unstrap himself and get out the stunner.

  But he couldn’t stun the pilots, and if he stunned Krug they’d turn on him. Bomb it, why hadn’t he planned things in advance? He ought to have anticipated that his luck wouldn’t hold forever. And now there was no answer available, no escape.

  Escape.

  He started to unstrap and then remembered what Krug had said about the seat. It was an escape-chute. “Just press in emergency.”

  Well, this was an emergency if he ever saw one. With the audio squawking now, “Acknowledge!” and the sound of the door behind him opening slowly. Krug was coming, Krug was here, he was holding his stunner in one hand.

  Graham took a deep breath. His thumb found the button on the side of his seat. It was now or never.

  “What are you doing?” Krug began.

  The rest of his sentence was drowned in the rush of air. The seat dropped from beneath Graham, and then he was dropping with it, turning over and over as he fell. The darkness was all around, coming up with a rush, and he could see the phosphorescence whirling below.

  Graham closed his eyes, then opened them. He’d have to dump the seat-chute before he landed. He was over water, and it would drag him down.

  His fingers tugged frantically at the strap, but he was falling too fast, turning too quickly. Over and over and over, and the water rushing up, and the night closing in—

  Then Graham screamed. He was still screaming as he followed the dumped dead down into the Gulf of Mexico.

  FLASHBACK: THAT OLDTIME RELIGION

  Miss Abby was born old.

  “Never trust anyone over thirty”—that’s what the kids said nowadays, didn’t they? Miss Abby had to smile to herself whenever she heard that, because if it was true she’d never had a chance. Both her parents had been past thirty at the time of her birth, and that meant her own mother and father had been enemies, right from the start.

  Oddly enough, she’d never felt that way about them. Mommy had always smelled so nice and perfumy, and Daddy smelled good too—all leather and tobacco. And they took her on picnics in the country in the big Hupmobile, all three of them sitting in the back seat together while Fred drove, wearing his chauffeur’s uniform.

  Reflecting on it now, she realized that Fred was probably underpaid, and perhaps it was a bit demeaning for him to wear the livery and the cap. But she couldn’t remember him being unhappy; he seemed to be almost proud of his job, and when he wasn’t polishing the car spic and span he found time to make kites for Miss Abby. She was “Miss Abby” even then to Fred, and he always touched his cap when he spoke to her.

  It was difficult for Miss Abby to realize Fred had died in World War I, when she was only six years old. But then it was difficult for her to think in terms of wars with numbers attached to them. World War I had always been the World War in her mind—that’s the way everybody referred to it. The war to end war, as President Wilson called it.

  Daddy knew Mr. Wilson of course. And during the war, after Fred had gone off to help make the world safe for democracy, Daddy had worked with Mr. Hoover on Belgian War Relief. Mommy did something or other for the Red Cross, but she found time to take Miss Abby to see Maude Adams in Peter Pan.

  “Do you believe in fairies?” She still remembered the line; nobody laughed at it in those days. Much later, in finishing school in the Twenties, Miss Abby found out what a “fairy” was, but she didn’t quite believe it. She didn’t quite believe a lot of the things the girls giggled and whispered about when they sneaked into each others’ rooms at night to make cocoa and smoke Egyptian Ovals.

  Mommy and Daddy never discussed sex with Miss Abby, and perhaps that made them her enemies by today’s standards—but at the time they seemed only to be genuinely concerned with her welfare. The good schools and the vacations (Daddy always liked to sail on the Mauretania) and then the big plans for the Coming Out Party—that’s what she remembered now.

  But Miss Abby never did Come Out. The winter season hadn’t even started when the Crash came. October, 1929. By Christmas, Daddy was dead. No, he didn’t jump out of a window—very few brokers did, in spite of all the legends. It was just a sudden coronary. And next Spring Mommy had her stroke, right there in the lawyer’s office where she was still trying to untangle the mess of what had been Daddy’s estate.

  Perhaps the Crash was a divine judgement on the whole rotten economic system, and perhaps Daddy had his punishment coming to him for being a part of it, and perhaps Mommy was one of those silly, giddy social parasites who deserved her fate. Miss Abby didn’t presume to know for sure; not even today, after all those years. But she could swear sincerely that her parents weren’t against her, they’d loved her and protected her according to their own mores.

  That’s why Miss Abby went to work, at nineteen, in a department store. There was nothing left in the estate and she didn’t earn much, but somehow she managed to keep up the flat and see to it that Mommy had a practical nurse. Of course the nurse didn’t sleep over; when Miss Abby came home she fixed dinner and then sat with Mommy while they listened to the radio. Mommy couldn’t speak, but she did enjoy her favorite programs—Rudy Vallee, Kate Smith, Amos ’n’ Andy, The Goldbergs. Nobody told Mommy that sentimental singers were corny, and somehow the derogatory connotations of the word ethnic hadn’t come into general consideration. She jus
t liked the shows.

  Abby liked the shows too, but it was a grim time, that Depression decade. And sitting in a three-room walkup with an inarticulate invalid wasn’t exactly a completely fulfilling existence for a healthy young woman in her early twenties. No dates, no parties, no real outside friends—the job was almost a relief, though they worked her hard and she was always afraid of being laid off and having to depend on welfare. People did haul little red wagons to get their food allotments, though it seems difficult to believe it nowadays.

  So Miss Abby sublimated herself in her work, as they used to say, and resigned herself to being an old maid, as they used to say, and accepted her lot in life. As they also used to say, particularly in church.

  Miss Abby turned her back on the church during the Thirties. She failed to see God’s wisdom manifested in the war, the depression, or such personal tragedies as had befallen her own mother.

  Perhaps it was the lack of religious conviction which helped create Miss Abby’s illusion that she had been born old. Or perhaps it was just the endless cycle of work—bookkeeping at the store, housekeeping at home, catering to the whims and placating the rages of the twitching, tormented, prematurely-senile creature who was her constant companion and ceaseless concern.

  But Miss Abby’s self-image was set by the time she reached her late twenties, and then came World War II to sustain it. For anyone who remembered 1917, this war had a certain déjà vu quality; even the slogans had a ring of familiarity. Germany was once again our enemy, Russia our sudden and unexpected ally, and women were knitting for the Red Cross.

  Miss Abby didn’t knit. She buried her mother exactly one year after Pearl Harbor, and took on the post of assistant to the Head of Accounting at the store. That’s how she first met Fred—not Fred the chauffeur, but another Fred, a junior executive in Purchasing. Fred was thirty-four, and what he saw in the shy, retiring spinster nobody ever knew, including Abby herself.

  But he did see something, and he enjoyed coming up for the home-cooked meals Miss Abby prepared in her new four-room apartment near Beekman Place which she’d managed to secure and hang on to thanks to the rent freeze. They pooled their meat stamps and were on the verge of further sharing when Fred—at thirty-four, right on the brink of exemption—was drafted. They sent him to a training camp down south, and Miss Abby didn’t even have the opportunity to sleep with him before he left. It was a matter she fully intended to rectify on his first leave; unfortunately he died the week prior to his scheduled return. Meningitis. Hardly a hero’s death, but they buried him just the same. Come to think of it, Fred the chauffeur had passed away as a result of the flu epidemic of ’18.