"He said I was about to quit?"
"No. He said you were a quitter." She sighed heavily. "He knows you better than I do, apparently."
"God knows it'd be easy enough to stick with the system, and keep going right on up. It's getting out that takes nerve."
"But why quit, if it's so easy to stick with it?"
"Didn't you hear anything I said in Homestead? That's why I took you there, so you'd get the feel of things."
"That silly business about Katharine Finch and Shepherd?"
"No, no--God no. About how people like us have taken all the self-respect from all the others."
"You said you felt like a horse's ass. I remember that."
"Don't you, sometimes?"
"What an idea!"
"Your conscience, dammit--doesn't it ever bother you?"
"Why should it? I've never done anything dishonest."
"Let me put it another way: do you agree things are a mess?"
"Between us?"
"Everywhere! The world!" She could be appallingly nearsighted. Whenever possible, she liked to reduce any generalization to terms of herself and persons she knew intimately. "Homestead, for instance."
"What else could we possibly give the people that they haven't got?"
"There! You made my point for me. You said, what else could we give them, as though everything in the world were ours to give or withhold."
"Somebody's got to take responsibility, and that's just the way it is when somebody does."
"That's just it: things haven't always been that way. It's new, and it's people like us who've brought it about. Hell, everybody used to have some personal skill or willingness to work or something he could trade for what he wanted. Now that the machines have taken over, it's quite somebody who has anything to offer. All most people can do is hope to be given something."
"If someone has brains," said Anita firmly, "he can still get to the top. That's the American way, Paul, and it hasn't changed." She looked at him appraisingly. "Brains and nerve, Paul."
"And blinders." The punch was gone from his voice, and he felt drugged, a drowsiness from a little too much to drink, from scrambling over a series of emotional peaks and pits, from utter frustration.
Anita caught the strap of his overalls and pulled him down to kiss him. Paul yielded stiffly.
"Ohhhhhhh," she chided, "you're such a little boy sometimes." She pulled him down again, this time making sure he kissed her on the lips. "You stop worrying, now, you hear?" she whispered in his ear.
"Descent into the Maelstrom," he thought wearily, and closed his eyes, and gave himself over to the one sequence of events that had never failed to provide a beginning, a middle, and a satisfactory end.
"I love you, Paul," she murmured. "I don't want my little boy to worry. You're not going to quit, sweetheart. You're just awfully tired."
"Mmmm."
"Promise not to think any more about it?"
"Mmmm."
"And, we are going to Pittsburgh, aren't we?"
"Mmmm."
"And what team is going to win at the Meadows?"
"Mmmm."
"Paul--"
"Hmmm?"
"What team is going to win?"
"Blue," he whispered sleepily. "Blue, by God, Blue."
"That's my boy. Your father would be awfully proud."
"Yup."
He carried her across the wide-board floor into the pine-wainscoted bedroom and laid her down on a patchwork quilt on a bird's-eye maple bed. There, Mr. Haycox had told him, six independent people had died, and fourteen had been born.
19
DOCTOR PAUL PROTEUS, for want of a blow severe enough to knock him off the course dictated by the circumstances of his birth and training, arrived uneventfully at the day when it was time for men whose development was not yet complete to go to the Meadows.
The crisis was coming, he knew, when he would have to quit or turn informer, but its approach was unreal, and, lacking a decisive plan for meeting it, he forced a false tranquillity on himself--a vague notion that everything would come out all right in the end, the way it always had for him.
The big passenger plane, after an hour in the air, circled over the shore, where the pine forest met the waters at the source of the St. Lawrence. The plane dropped lower, and the landing strip in the forest could be seen, and then the cluster of log lodges and dining hall and shuffleboard courts and tennis courts and badminton courts and softball diamonds and swings and slides and bingo pavilion of the Mainland, the camp for women and children. And jutting into the river was a long dock and three white yachts, the port of embarkation for men going to the island called the Meadows.
"I guess this is just about goodbye," said Paul to Anita, as the plane came to a stop.
"You look wonderful," said Anita, straightening his blue captain's shirt for him. "And what team is going to win?"
"Blue," said Paul. "Gott mit uns."
"Now, I'm going to be working on Mom here, while--"
"Ladies over here!" boomed the public address system. "Men will assemble over on the dock. Leave your luggage where it is. It will be in your cabins when you arrive."
"Goodbye, darling," said Anita.
"Goodbye, Anita."
"I love you, Paul."
"I love you, Anita."
"Come on," said Shepherd, who had arrived on the same plane. "Let's get going. I'm anxious to see just how hot this Blue Team is."
"Blue Team, eh?" said Baer. "Worried about the Blue Team, are you, eh? Eh? White. White's the one to look out for, boy." He stretched out his white shirt for them to admire. "See? See? That's the shirt to look out for. See? Aha, aha--"
"Where's Doctor Kroner?" said Shepherd.
"Went up yesterday," said Paul. "He's among the official greeters, so he's already on the island." He waved once more to Anita, who was going down a gravel path toward the Mainland's buildings with a dozen other women, Katharine Finch and Mom Kroner among them, and a handful of children. All day, planes would be bringing more.
Anita sidled up to Mom and took her fat arm.
Concealed loudspeakers in the virgin forest burst into song:
"To you, beautiful lady, I raise my eyes;
My heart, beautiful lady, to your heart sighs.
Come, come, beautiful lady, to Paradise ..."
The song died in a clatter in the loudspeaker, a cough, and then a command: "Men with classification numbers from zero to one hundred will please board the Queen of the Meadows; those with numbers from one hundred to two hundred and fifty will board the Meadow Lark; those with numbers above two hundred and fifty will get on the Spirit of the Meadows."
Paul, Shepherd, Baer, and the rest of the contingent from the Albany-Troy-Schenectady-Ilium area walked out onto the dock where earlier arrivals were waiting. All put on dark glasses, which they would wear during the next two weeks to protect their eyes from the unrelenting glare of the summer sun on the river, and on the whitewashed buildings, white gravel paths, white beach, and white cement courts of the Meadows.
"Green's going to win!" shouted Shepherd.
"You tell 'em, Cap!"
Everyone shouted and sang, the marine engines burbled and roared, and the three yachts shot toward the island in V-formation.
Squinting through spray, Paul watched the Meadows come closer and closer, hot, bleached, and sanitary. The white serpent stretching the island's length could now be seen as a row of white cubes, the insulated cement-block structures called, in Meadows parlance dating back to more primitive facilities, tents. The amphitheater on the island's northernmost tip looked like a dinner plate, and the sports area around it was a geometric patchwork of every imaginable kind of court. Whitewashed rocks everywhere framed the paths and gar--
The air quaked with a sharp, painful crash. And another. Another. "Blam!"
Rockets from the island were exploding overhead. In another minute the three yachts were rumbling and fuming into their slips, and the band was pl
aying "The Star-Spangled Banner."
"And the rockets red glare,
The bombs bursting in air ..."
The bandmaster held up his baton, and the bandsmen paused significantly.
"Vuuuuzzzzzzip!" went a rocket. "Kablooooom!"
"Gave proof through the night,
That our flag was still there ..."
After the anthem came a cheery kaleidoscope of "Pack Up Your Troubles," "I Want a Girl," "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," "Working on the Railroad."
The new arrivals scrambled over the decks to catch the hands extended from the wharf by a rank of older men, most of whom were fat, gray, and balding. These were the Grand Old Men--the district managers, the regional managers, the associate vice-presidents and assistant vice-presidents and vice-presidents of the Eastern and Middle-Western divisions.
"Welcome aboard!" was the greeting, and always had been. "Welcome aboard!"
Paul saw that Kroner was reserving his big hand and welcome for him, and he picked his way across the deck until he reached the hand, took it, and stepped to the wharf.
"Good to have you aboard, Paul."
"Thank you, sir. It's good to be aboard." A number of the other older men paused in their greetings to look in friendly fashion at the bright young son of their departed wartime leader.
"Report to the Ad Building for registration, then check into your tents to make sure your luggage is there," said the public address system. "Get to know your tentmate, then lunch."
With the band leading them, the new arrivals swung along the gravel walk to the Administration Building.
Across the building's entrance was a banner declaring: "The Blue Team Welcomes You to the Meadows."
There were cries of good-natured outrage, and human pyramids were built in a twinkling, with the top men clawing down the infuriating message.
A young member of the Blue Team slapped Paul on the back. "What an idea, Cap'n!" he crowed. "Boy, that really showed 'em who's got the wide-awake outfit. And we'll go on showing these guys, too."
"Yep," said Paul, "you bet. That's the spirit." Apparently this was the youngster's first visit to the Meadows. In this state of nature he didn't know that the banner was the work of a special committee whose sole mission was to stir up team rivalry. There would be more such goads at every turn.
Inside the door was a green placard: "Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Don't Wear Green Shirts!"
Shepherd whooped delightedly, brandished the placard overhead, and in the next second was thrown to the floor by a wave of Blues, Whites, and Reds.
"No roughhousing indoors!" said the loudspeaker sharply. "You know the rules. No roughhousing indoors. Save your ginger for the playing field. After registration, report to your tents, get to know your buddies, and be back for lunch in fifteen minutes."
Paul arrived at his tent ahead of his as yet unknown buddy. The two of them, according to the foreword in the Song Book, would develop a sort of common-law brotherhood as a result of their having shared so much beauty, excitement, and deep emotion together.
The chill of the air-conditioned room made him feel dizzy. Coming out of this flicker of vertigo, Paul's eyes focused on a dinner-plate-size badge on the pillow of his bunk. "Dr. Paul Proteus, Wks. Mgr., Ilium, N. Y.," it said. And, below this, "Call Me Paul or Pay Me $5." The second part of the legend was on every badge. The only man who was not to be called by his first name at the Meadows was the Old Man himself, the successor of Paul's father, Doctor Francis Eldgrin Gelhorne. He, National Industrial, Commercial, Communications, Foodstuffs, and Resource Director, was damn well Doctor Gelhorne, sir, at any hour of the night or day, and anywhere he went.
And then Paul saw the badge on his buddy's pillow: "Dr. Frederick Garth, Wks. Mgr., Buffalo, N. Y. Call Me Fred or Pay Me $5."
Paul sat down on the edge of his bed and struggled against the uneasy perplexity the sight of Garth's badge had precipitated. He had known many men, Shepherd for instance, who were forever seeing omens and worrying about them--omens in a superior's handshake, in the misspelling of a name in an official document, in the seating arrangement of a banquet table, in a superior's asking for or offering a cigarette, in the tone of ... Paul's career, until recent weeks, had been graceful and easy all the way, and he'd found omen analysis dull, profitless. For him the omens were all good--or had been until now. Now, he, too, was growing aware of possibly malevolent spooks, revealing themselves in oblique ways.
Was it chance or ignorance or some subtle plot that had put him in the same cell with Garth, the other candidate for Pittsburgh? And why had Shepherd been made a captain, when the honor was reserved for those who were going high and far indeed? And why.... Manfully, Paul turned his thoughts into other channels, superficially, at least, and managed to laugh like a man who didn't give a damn about the system any more.
His buddy walked in, gray at the temples, tired, pale, and kind. Fred Garth wanted desperately to be liked by everyone, and had achieved a sort of social limbo, affecting no one very much one way or the other. He had risen because of this quality rather than in spite of it. Time and time again two powerful personalities, backed by impressive factions, had aspired for the same job. And the top brass, fearing a split if they chose one faction's man over the other, had named Garth as an inoffensive compromise candidate. There was a feeling, general enough not to be branded sour grapes, that Garth was all but over his head in the big assignments compromise politics had handed him. Now, though he was only in his early fifties, he seemed terribly old--willing, good-hearted, but apologetically weak, used up.
"Doctor Proteus! I mean Paul." Garth shook his head, laughed as though he'd done a comical thing, and offered a five-dollar bill to Paul.
"Forget it, Doctor Garth," said Paul, and handed it back to him. "I mean Fred. How are you?"
"Fine, fine. Can't complain. How's the wife and children?"
"All fine, fine, thanks."
Garth blushed. "Oh say, I'm sorry."
"About what?"
"I mean, that was silly of me, asking about your children when you haven't got any."
"Silly of me not to have any."
"Maybe, maybe. It's a trial, though, watching your kids grow up, wondering if they've got what it takes, seeing 'em just about killing themselves before the General Classification Tests, then waiting for the grades--" The sentence ended in a sigh. "I've just gone through that GCT business with my oldest, Brud, and I've got to live through the whole nightmare twice more still, with Alice and little Ewing."
"How'd Brud make out?"
"Hmmm? Oh--how'd he make out? His heart's in the right place. He wants to do well, and he boned up harder for the tests than any kid in the neighborhood. He does the best he can."
"Oh--I see."
"Well, he's going to get another crack at the tests--different ones, of course. He was under the weather when he took them the first time--tail end of some virus business. He didn't miss by much, and the Appeal Board made a special ruling. He gets his second chance tomorrow, and we'll have the grades around suppertime."
"He'll make it this time," said Paul.
Garth shook his head. "You'd think they'd give a kid something for trying, wouldn't you? God, you oughta see the little guy plugging away."
"Nice day," said Paul, changing the distressing subject.
Garth looked out of the window abstractedly. "It is, isn't it. God smiles on the Meadows."
"Probably did before we occupied it."
"I didn't make that up."
"Make what up?"
"About God smiling. That's from Doctor Gelhorne, of course. Remember? He said that last year on the closing day."
"Yep." Doctor Gelhorne said so many memorable things, it was hard for a person to stow them all away in his treasure house of souvenirs.
"Lunch!" said the loudspeakers. "Lunch! Remember the rule: get to know somebody new at each meal. Have your buddy on one side, but a stranger on the other. Lunch! Lunch!" Irrelevantly, the speakers blared "Oh How I Ha
te to Get Up in the Morning." Paul and Garth and five hundred other pairs walked across the parade ground to the dining hall.
As the crowd bore Paul and his buddy through the swinging screen doors, Kroner caught his arm and drew him to one side. Garth, like the good buddy he wanted to be, stepped out of line and waited.
"Tomorrow night," said Kroner. "The big meeting is tomorrow night--after the keynote play and bonfire."
"Fine."
"I told you the Old Man himself is coming. It's going to be that important. You're going to be that important. I don't quite know what's up, but I've a hunch it's going to be the biggest thing in your career."
"Gosh."
"Don't worry. With the blood you've got in your veins, you've got more than what it'll take to do the job--whatever it is."
"Thanks."
Paul got back in line with Garth. "He certainly likes you, doesn't he?" said Garth.
"Old friend of my father's. Said it was good to have me aboard."
"Oh." Garth looked a little embarrassed. Paul's bald lie had pointed up for the first time their competitive situation. He let the lie pass. Shepherd would have hounded Paul, and, more subtly, Kroner, until he'd learned every word that had passed between them.
Paul felt real warmth for Garth. "Come on, buddy, let's find a couple of strangers."
"It's going to be tough. We've been around a long time, Paul."
"Look for some apple-cheeked youngster fresh out of school."
"There's one."
"Berringer!" said Paul, amazed. When the machines had made a list of Ilium men eligible for the Meadows, Berringer's card had stayed in its slot. He was the last man in the whole Works who deserved an invitation. Yet, here he was.
Berringer seemed to know what was going through Paul's head, and he returned Paul's gaze with an insolent smile.
Baer stepped between them. "Forgot, forgot--supposed to tell you," he said. "Berringer, about Berringer. Kroner said to tell you, and I forgot, forgot."
"How the hell did he get up here?"
"Kroner brought him up. Last minute thing, see? Hmm? Kroner thought it'd break his father's heart if the boy wasn't asked, and after what happened to Checker Charley and all."
"There goes the merit system," said Paul.
Baer nodded. "Yep--there it goes, there it goes, all right." He shrugged and raised his eyebrows quizzically. "Zip zip, out the window."
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