This Crowded Earth

  8. Harry Collins--2029

  The guards at Stark Falls were under strict orders not to talk. Eachprisoner here was exercised alone in a courtyard runway, and mealswere served in the cells. The cells were comfortable enough, and whilethere were no telescreens, books were available--genuine, old-stylebooks which must have been preserved from libraries dismantled fiftyyears ago or more. Harry Collins found no titles dated later than1975. Every day or so an attendant wheeled around a cart piled highwith the dusty volumes. Harry read to pass the time.

  At first he kept anticipating his trial, but after a while he almostforgot about that possibility. And it was well over a year before hegot a chance to tell his story to anyone.

  When his opportunity came, his audience did not consist of judge orjury, doctor, lawyer or penologist. He spoke only to Richard Wade, afellow-prisoner who had been thrust into the adjoining cell on theevening of October 11th, 2013.

  Harry spoke haltingly at first, but as he progressed the words camemore easily, and emotion lent its own eloquence. His unseen auditor onthe other side of the wall did not interrupt or question him; it wasenough, for Harry, that there _was_ someone to listen at last.

  "So it wasn't a bit like I'd expected," he concluded. "No trial, nopublicity. I've never seen Leffingwell again, nor Manschoff. Nobodyquestioned me. By the time I recovered consciousness, I was here inprison. Buried alive."

  Richard Wade spoke slowly, for the first time. "You're lucky. Theymight have shot you down on the spot."

  "That's just what bothers me," Harry told him. "Why didn't they killme? Why lock me up _incommunicado_ this way? There aren't many prisonsleft these days, with food and space at such a premium."

  "There are _no_ prisons left at all--officially," Wade said. "Just asthere are no longer any cemeteries. But important people are stillgiven private burials and their remains secretly preserved. All amatter of influence."

  "I've no influence. I'm not important. Wouldn't you think they'dconsider it risky to keep me alive, under the circumstances? Ifthere'd ever be an investigation--"

  "Who would investigate? Not the government, surely."

  "But suppose there's a political turnover. Suppose Congress want tomake capital of the situation?"

  "There is no Congress."

  Harry gasped. "No Congress?"

  "As of last month. It was dissolved. Henceforth we are governed by theCabinet, with authority delegated to department heads."

  "But that's preposterous! Nobody'd stand still for something likethat!"

  "They did stand still, most of them. After a year of carefulpreparation--of wholesale _exposes_ of Congressional graft andcorruption and inefficiency. Turned out that Congress was the villainall along; the Senators and Representatives had finagledtariff-barriers and restrictive trade-agreements which kept our foodsupply down. They were opposing international federation. In plainlanguage, people were sold a bill of goods--get rid of Congress andyou'll have more food. That did it."

  "But you'd think the politicians themselves would realize they werecutting their own throats! The state legislatures and the governors--"

  "Legislatures were dissolved by the same agreement," Wade went on."There are no states any more; just governmental districts. Based uponsensible considerations of area and population. This isn't theold-time expanding economy based on obsolescence and conspicuousconsumption. The primary problem at the moment is sheer survival. Ina way, the move makes sense. Old-fashioned political machinerycouldn't cope with the situation; there's no time for debate wheninstantaneous decisions are necessary to national welfare. You'veheard how civil liberties were suspended during the old wars. Well,there's a war on right now; a war against hunger, a war against theforces of fecundity. In another dozen years or so, when the Leff shotgeneration is fullgrown and a lot of the elderly have died off, thetensions will ease. Meanwhile, quick action is necessary. Arbitraryaction."

  "But you're defending dictatorship!"

  Richard Wade made a sound which is usually accompanied by a derisiveshrug. "Am I? Well, I didn't when I was outside. And that's why I'mhere now."

  Harry Collins cleared his throat. "What did you do?"

  "If you refer to my profession, I was a scripter. If you refer to myalleged criminal activity, I made the error of thinking the way youdo, and the worse error of attempting to inject such attitudes in myscripts. Seems that when Congress was formally dissolved, there wassome notion of preparing a timely show--a sort of historical review ofthe body, using old film clips. What my superiors had in mind was acomedy of errors; a cavalcade of mistakes and misdeeds showing justwhy we were better off without supporting a political sideshow. Well,I carried out the assignment and edited the films, but when I drafteda rough commentary, I made the mistake of taking both a pro and conslant. Nothing like that ever reached the telescreens, of course, butwhat I did was promptly noted. They came for me at once and hustled meoff here. I didn't get a hearing or a trial, either."

  "But why didn't they execute you? Or--" Harry hesitated--"is that whatyou expect?"

  "Why didn't they execute _you_?" Wade shot back. He was silent for amoment before continuing. "No, I don't expect anything like that, now.They'd have done it on the spot if they intended to do so at all. No,I've got another idea about people like you and myself. And about someof the Congressmen and Senators who dropped out of sight, too. I thinkwe're being stockpiled."

  "Stockpiled?"

  "It's all part of a plan. Give me a little time to think. We can talkagain, later." Wade chuckled once more. "Looks as if there'll be ampleopportunity in the future."

  And there was. In the months ahead, Harry spoke frequently with hisfriend behind the wall. He never saw him--prisoners at Stark Fallswere exercised separately, and there was no group assembly orrecreation. Surprisingly adequate meals were served in surprisinglycomfortable cells. In the matter of necessities, Harry had nocomplaints. And now that he had someone to talk to, the time seemed togo more swiftly.

  He learned a great deal about Richard Wade during the next few years.Mostly, Wade liked to reminisce about the old days. He talked aboutworking for the networks--the _commercial_ networks, privately owned,which flourished before the government took over communications mediain the '80s.

  "That's where you got your start, eh?" Harry asked.

  "Lord, no, boy! I'm a lot more ancient than you think. Why, I'mpushing sixty-five. Born in 1940. That's right, during World War II. Ican almost remember the atomic bomb, and I sure as hell remember thesputniks. It was a crazy period, let me tell you. The pessimistsworried about the Russians blowing us up, and the optimists were surewe had a glorious future in the conquest of space. Ever hear that oldfable about the blind men examining an elephant? Well, that's the waymost people were; each of them groping around and trying to determinethe exact shape of things to come. A few of us even made a littlemoney from it for a while, writing science fiction. That's how I gotmy start."

  "You were a writer?"

  "Sold my first story when I was eighteen or so. Kept on writing offand on for almost twenty years. Of course, Robertson's thermo-nucformula came along in '75, and after that everything went to pot. Itknocked out the chances of future war, but it also knocked out theinterest in speculation or escape-fiction. So I moved over intotelevision for a while, and stayed with it. But the old sciencefiction was fun while it lasted. Ever read any of it?"

  "No," Harry admitted. "That was all before my time. Tell me,though--did any of it make sense? I mean, did some of those writersforesee what was really going to happen?"

  "There were plenty of penny prophets and nickel Nostradamuses," Wadetold him. "But as I said, most of them were assuming war with theCommunists or a new era of space travel. Since Communism collapsed andspace flight was just an expensive journey to a dead end and deadworlds, it follows that the majority of fictional futures were foundedon fallacies. And all the rest of the extrapolations dealt withsuperficial social manifestations.

  "For example, they wrote about civili
zations dominated by advertisingand mass-motivation techniques. It's true that during my childhoodthis seemed to be a logical trend--but once demand exceeded supply,the whole mechanism of _stimulating_ demand, which was advertising'schief function, bogged down. And mass-motivation techniques, today,are dedicated almost entirely to maintaining minimum resistance to asystem insuring our survival.

  "Another popular idea was based on the notion of an expandingmatriarchy--a gerontomatriarchy, rather, in which older women wouldtake control. In an age when women outlived men by a number of years,this seemed possible. Now, of course, shortened working hours andmedical advances have equalized the life-span. And since privateproperty has become less and less of a factor in dominating ourcollective destinies, it hardly matters whether the male or the femalehas the upper hand.

  "Then there was the common theory that technological advances wouldresult in a push-button society, where automatons would do all thework. And so they might--if we had an unlimited supply of rawmaterials to produce robots, and unlimited power-sources to activatethem. As we now realize, atomic power cannot be utilized on a minutescale.

  "Last, but not least, there was the concept of a medically-orientatedsystem, with particular emphasis on psychotherapy, neurosurgery, andparapsychology. The world was going to be run by telepaths, psychosiseliminated by brainwashing, intellect developed by hypnoticsuggestion. It sounded great--but the conquest of physical disease hasoccupied the medical profession almost exclusively.

  "No, what they all seemed to overlook, with only a few exceptions, wasthe population problem. You can't run a world through advertising whenthere are so many people that there aren't enough goods to go aroundanyway. You can't turn it over to big business when big government hasvirtually absorbed all of the commercial and industrial functions,just to cope with an ever-growing demand. A matriarchy loses itsmeaning when the individual family unit changes character, under thestress of an increasing population-pressure which eliminates theold-fashioned home, family circle, and social pattern. And the more wemust conserve dwindling natural resources for people, the less we canexpend on experimentation with robots and machinery. As for thepsychologist-dominated society, there are just too many patients andnot enough physicians. I don't have to remind you that the militarycaste lost its chance of control when war disappeared, and thatreligion is losing ground every day. Class-lines are vanishing, andracial distinctions will be going next. The old idea of a WorldFederation is becoming more and more practical. Once the politicalbarriers are down, miscegenation will finish the job. But nobodyseemed to foresee this particular future. They all made the mistake ofworrying about the hydrogen-bomb instead of the sperm-bomb."

  Harry nodded thoughtfully, although Wade couldn't see his response."But isn't it true that there's a little bit of each of these conceptsin our actual situation today?" he asked. "I mean, government andbusiness _are_ virtually one and the same, and they do use propagandatechniques to control all media. As for scientific research, look athow we've rebuilt our cities and developed synthetics for food andfuel and clothing and shelter. When it comes to medicine, there'sLeffingwell and his inoculations. Isn't that all along the lines ofyour early science fiction?"

  "Where's your Underground?" Richard Wade demanded.

  "My _what_?"

  "Your Underground," Wade repeated. "Hell, every science fiction yarnabout a future society had its Underground! That was the whole gimmickin the plot. The hero was a conformist who tangled with the socialorder--come to think of it, that's what _you_ did, years ago. Onlyinstead of becoming an impotent victim of the system, he'd meet upwith the Underground Movement. Not some sourball like your friendRitchie, who tried to operate on his own hook, without real plans orsystem, but a complete _sub rosa_ organization, bent on starting arevolution and taking over. There'd be wise old priests and wise oldcrooks and wise old officers and wise old officials, all playing adouble game and planning a _coup_. Spies all over the place, get me?And in no time at all, our hero would be playing tag with the topfigures in the government. That's how it worked out in all thestories.

  "But what happens in real life? What happened to you, for example? Youfell for a series of stupid tricks, stupidly perpetrated--because thepeople in power _are_ people, and not the kind of syntheticsuper-intellects dreamed up by frustrated fiction-fabricators. Youfound out that the logical candidates to constitute an Undergroundwere the Naturalists; again, they were just ordinary individuals withno genius for organization. As for coming in contact with key figures,you were actually on hand when Leffingwell completed his experiments.And you came back, years later, to hunt him down. Very much in theheroic tradition, I admit. But you never saw the man except throughthe telescopic sights of your rifle. That was the end of it. Nomodern-day Machiavelli has hauled you in to play cat-and-mouse gameswith you, and no futuristic Freud has bothered to wash your brain orsoft-soap your subconscious. You just aren't that important, Collins."

  "But they put me in a special prison. Why?"

  "Who knows? They put me here, too."

  "You said something once, about stockpiling us. What did you mean?"

  "Well, it was just an old science fiction idea, I suppose. I'll tellyou about it tomorrow, eh?"

  And so the matter--and Harry Collins--rested for the night.

  The next day Richard Wade was gone.

  Harry called to him and there was no answer. And he cried out and hecursed and he paced his cell and he walked alone in the courtyard andhe begged the impassive guards for information, and he sweated and hetalked to himself and he counted the days and he lost count of thedays.

  Then, all at once, there was another prisoner in the adjacent cell,and his name was William Chang, and he was a biologist. He wasreticent about the crime he had committed, but quite voluble about thecrimes committed by others in the world outside. Much of what he said,about genes and chromosomes and recessive characteristics andmutation, seemed incomprehensible to Harry. But in their talks, onething emerged clearly enough--Chang was concerned for the future ofthe race. "Leffingwell should have waited," he said. "It's the_second_ generation that will be important. As I tried to tell mypeople--"

  "Is that why you're here?"

  Chang sighed. "I suppose so. They wouldn't listen, of course.Overpopulation has always been the curse of Asia, and this seemed tobe such an obvious solution. But who knows? The time may come whenthey need men like myself."

  "So you were stockpiled too."

  "What's that?"

  Harry told him about Richard Wade's remarks, and together they triedto puzzle out the theory behind them.

  But not for long. Because once again Harry Collins awoke in themorning to find the adjoining cell empty, and once again he was alonefor a long time.

  At last a new neighbor came. His name was Lars Neilstrom. Neilstromtalked to him of ships and shoes and sealing-wax and the thousand andone things men will discuss in their loneliness and frustration,including--inevitably--their reasons for being here.

  Neilstrom had been an instructor under Vocational Apt, and he was at aloss to explain his presence at Stark Falls. When Harry spoke of thestockpiling theory, his fellow-prisoner demurred. "It's more likeKafka than science fiction," he said. "But then, I don't supposeyou've ever read any Kafka."

  "Yes, I have," Harry told him. "Since I came here I've done nothingbut read old books. Lately they've been giving me microscans. I'vebeen studying up on biology and genetics; talking to Chang got meinterested. In fact, I'm really going in for self-education. There'snothing else to do."

  "Self-education! That's the only method left nowadays." Neilstromsounded bitter. "I don't know what's going to become of our heritageof knowledge in the future. I'm not speaking of technological skill;so-called scientific information is carefully preserved. But thehumanities are virtually lost. The concept of the well-roundedindividual is forgotten. And when I think of the crisis to come--"

  "What crisis?"

  "A new generation is growing up. Ten or fifteen years from
now we'llhave succeeded in erasing political and racial and religiousdivisions. But there'll be a new and more dangerous differentiation; a_physical_ one. What do you think will happen when half the world isaround six feet tall and the other half under three?"

  "I can't imagine."

  "Well, I can. The trouble is, most people don't realize what theproblem will be. Things have moved too swiftly. Why, there were morechanges in the last hundred years than in the previous thousand! Andthe rate of acceleration increases. Up until now, we've been concernedabout too rapid technological development. But what we have to worryabout is social development."

  "Most people have been conditioned to conform."

  "Yes. That's our job in Vocational Apt. But the system only works whenthere's a single standard of conformity. In a few years there'll be adouble one, based on size. What then?"

  Harry wanted some time to consider the matter, but the question wasnever answered. Because Lars Neilstrom went away in the night, as hadhis predecessors before him. And in succeeding interludes, Harry cameto know a half-dozen other transient occupants of the cell next tohis. They came from all over, and they had many things to discuss, butalways there was the problem of _why_ they were there--and the memoryof Richard Wade's premise concerning stockpiling.

  There came a time when the memory of Richard Wade merged with thememory of Arnold Ritchie. The past was a dim montage of life at theagency and the treatment center and the ranch, a recollection of lyingon the river bank with women in attitudes of opisthotonos or of lyingagainst the boulders with a rifle.

  Somewhere there was an image of a child's wide eyes and a voicesaying, "My name is Harry Collins." But that seemed very far away.What was real was the cell and the years of talking and reading themicroscans and trying to find a pattern.

  Harry found himself describing it all to a newcomer who said his namewas Austin--a soft-voiced man who became a resident of the next cellone day in 2029. And eventually he came to Wade's theory.

  "Maybe there were a few wiser heads who foresaw a coming crisis," heconcluded. "Maybe they anticipated a time when they might need a fewnonconformists. People like ourselves who haven't been passive orpersuaded. Maybe we're the government's insurance policy. If anemergency arises, we'll be freed."

  "And then what would _you_ do?" Austin asked, softly. "You're againstthe system, aren't you?"

  "Yes. But I'm _for_ survival." Harry Collins spoke slowly,thoughtfully. "You see, I've learned something through the years ofstudy and contact here. Rebellion is not the answer."

  "You hated Leffingwell."

  "Yes, I did, until I realized that all this was inevitable.Leffingwell is not a villain and neither is any given individual, inor out of government. Our road to hell has been paved with only thevery best of intentions. Killing the engineers and contractors willnot get us off that road, and we're all on it together. We'll have tofind a way of changing the direction of our journey. The young peoplewill be too anxious to merely rush blindly ahead. Most of mygeneration will be sheeplike, moving as part of the herd, because oftheir conditioning. Only we old-time rebels will be capable ofplotting a course. A course for all of us."

  "What about your son?" Austin asked.

  "I'm thinking of him," Harry Collins answered. "Of him, and of all theothers. Maybe he does not need me. Maybe none of them need me. Maybeit's all an illusion. But if the time ever comes, I'll be ready. Andmeanwhile, I can hope."

  "The time has come," Austin said, gently.

  And then he was standing, miraculously enough, outside his cell andbefore the door to Harry's cell, and the door was opening. And onceagain Harry stared into the wide eyes he remembered so well--the samewide eyes, set in the face of a fullgrown man. A fullgrown man, threefeet tall. He stood up, shakily, as the man held out his hand andsaid, "Hello, Father."

  "But I don't understand--"

  "I've waited a long time for this moment. I had to talk to you, findout how you really felt, so that I'd be sure. Now you're ready to joinus."

  "What's happening? What do you want with me?"

  "We'll talk later." Harry's son smiled. "Right now, I'm taking youhome."