Bryce Walton

“ Phil was there waiting. He hadn't mentioned anyone else being there, and Kane certainly didn't expect anyone else. He didn't know anyone really, no one other than Phil except Martin and Legmann. But there was Phil, and a number of people around him, and they were all rushing toward Kane, smiling, shouting, waving their arms. Phil looked much the same, tall and flashily dressed, thin and good looking as always, but with hair slightly greying.
The others, men, women, various ages and sizes, waving scarfs and circling eagerly around Kane, broke out in a happy chorus of mixed voices:
Greetings! ”

“ Kane said. "We're getting a saucer and then we're going to Sunny Hill. You know where Sunny Hill is?"
Number one ran his hand nervously through his dark brushcut. He had a boyish face that seemed deeply insulted by what Kane had done. Insulted and shocked as though he had been a good boy all his life and then someone had slapped his hand—for no reason at all.
Kane doubled his fists. Number one winced and looked shocked again, and very frightened. A great deal more frightened than anyone would be who was afraid only of physical injury.
"Yes, that's part of a big Group Housing Project downtown." ”

“ Kane said. "Do you want to get out?"
"It's impossible to get out."
"I've got to try."
"What's the use of trying if you know you can't get away? Where can anyone go?"
"There must be people who break away," Kane said. "There have to be."
"There's supposed to be an underground, some secret group of some kind that helps people get out." ”

“ Wouldn't a healthy person enjoy sleeping with others merely because they were there? Doesn't one sleep best among friends, knowing he isn't alone, knowing even his sleep is shared—"
There was a great deal more, but it all boiled down to the same thing.
Kane was wrong.
And he didn't have the right to be wrong.
They, or rather it, the Staff, seemed to concentrate on the whole question of why Kane had ever volunteered for a job demanding extreme isolation in the first place. The point was that apparently Kane had been anti-social, a Group Spirit deviant from the beginning. ”

“ What it is to try to get away, be alone, be by yourself, when you can't. When no matter what you do you're with the Group, night and day, even in your dreams. You knew it for a while, but imagine it for years, not days. ”

“ Phil said. Kane heard laughter in the background and the high-pitched choral voices from the jukebox. "We'll be all right. We figured there would be a little trouble here and there, at first."
"I don't give a damn about a little trouble there! Phil, I'm talking about me, here! I'm locked in. And my luggage. Where is it? And—"
Kane's stomach jumped. A kind of terror hit him like a cold breath. "Phil! My briefcase. Where's my briefcase?"
"We have it somewhere—" Phil was saying. "Just don't let us worry."
Kane heard a clicking sound somewhere and he yelled into the phone but nothing came back. ”

“ But Kane wasn't happy, that was the important thing wasn't it?
Could a knowledge of how rapidly the Universe was expanding contribute to the happiness of a human being living on Madison Avenue in Manhattan?
Obviously the answer to that was no.
Kane was going to be happy. He wouldn't concern himself with the stars any more. He wouldn't practice a self-imposed barren isolation of himself any more. Kane was going to be happy. He was going to be one of the Group. ”

“ Once Kane tried to find out about his old friends, Professors Legmann, and Martin over at New York University. Phil avoided the question for a time, then finally admitted that Martin was still there in the archeology department, but that Legmann had quit the profession years ago. "He quit teaching and became a plumber."
"A plumber?" Kane whispered. "Legmann?"
"That's right," Phil grinned.
"We're all plumbing together," Laura lisped.
"But—that's preposterous!" Kane almost yelled. "Legmann—why he was the finest research chemist—"
"But he wasn't really happy in his profession," Phil said. ”

“ The data would be run through more machines.
Kane would be happy.
All he had to do was wait.
Kane awoke with a galvanic start and stared at the prison of his room.
The walls began coming alive. Phil, Laura, Lucille, Herby, Clarence, Jenny, Ben, the happy happy Group, always there, always waiting, always reliable, sharing everything, pleasure and pain.
"How we feeling now, Prof," Phil yelled. He was stark naked.
"You look so cuddly," Laura giggled, and for an instant there, Kane could almost feel her snuggling in beside him. ”

“ Kane didn't want to touch them anyway. He wanted them to go away, altogether.
His room was crammed with phantoms from the cocktail lounge. In fact, his room was fused with the cocktail lounge. It was all there somehow.
"Go to sleepy-bye," Laura whispered and made a very suggestive gesture. Her cheeks were flushed as she leaned into and through him.
"Take ourselves a good long snooze," Phil grinned. "Don't worry. The Gang's all here."
Lucille said, hardly smiling at all. "No, don't worry, Professor. We'll all sleep with you." ”

“ Phil was an Integrator for the Isotopic Corporation, a sort of personnel man whose main duty was the integration of the employees' private lives.
When Kane tried to find out about the work itself, no one seemed interested enough to respond. The work was relatively unimportant. The emphasis seemed to be centered almost completely on how people got along together. If your Reacto cards reported a general reaction that strayed too far from your Group norm, you were either sent to another group, or sent to a Staff. ”

“ Kane said. "And just pretend everything is happy and that we're relating beautifully to one another. Now listen—I'll kill you if you try anything else. I hope you believe it because I really will. What you fellows intend doing with me, as far as I'm concerned, is worse than murder."
They stepped onto one of several saucers decorating the roof of the Midtown Hotel. ”

“ Interest and excitement rose in Kane as the car moved through the mist toward the terminal where he was to meet Phil. It would probably do him good, get away from his work, different surroundings, just rest up a little. Even live it up a little perhaps. There would be parties, and he wanted to see a little of the country. Maybe visit some of Helen's relatives in the Middle West, and he certainly wanted to have some long bull sessions with Professors Martinson and Legmann over at the University. ”

“ On the way to the Midtown Hotel, Jenny asked Phil how he liked the new best-seller, Love Is Forever, and Phil took a small card out of his wallet and they all compared Reacto Cards in order to determine relative reactions to Love Is Forever. ”

“ Phil finally said.
"I'm really tired," Kane said to Phil as they went on past the Midtown Hotel toward Lucille's apartment. "I was intending to go directly to the hotel and rest up a while—"
"We'll relax at Lucie's," Jenny said. "We got music, we got music, we got music, who could ask for anything more?"
"But—" Kane started to protest at least mildly, but the rest of the sentence was blotted out by a long kiss from Laura.
They had all crowded into an elevator, and then rushed into Lucille's apartment on a high level of The Sunny Hill building near Washington Square. ”

“ Laura said.
"The ayes always have it," Kane heard Lucille whisper near him.
Phil said, with a kind of shaky joviality. "Martinis—"
"Gin makes me ill," Kane said. "For me, it has to be Scotch."
Phil whispered. "Scotch."
"Scotch," the waiter said.
A jukebox in a far corner blasted out from a sea of bubbling, multicolored light.
We're all pals togetherrrrrrrr.
The Gang knows no bad weatherrrrrrr.
We're all for us all for us,
And we're rolling do-own life's highway,
On our crowded busssssss!
Laura whispered huskily in his ear. "Don't worry about any little old thing. We're one together, man." ”

“ Jenny and Ben were making love on a couch. Kane tried to keep on watching them as though he suffered no embarrassment, but it was impossible.
"I've a full schedule planned for today," Phil yelled up. "Soon we'll all be going to the Office. You'll be going with us soon too, Prof!"
He would belong to the happy Group. Sharing everything. But maybe it wouldn't be this happy Group. Maybe the machines would decide that he belonged in some other Group. Whatever Group it was it would be happy. That was a fact. ”

“ This antagonism to the group spirit."
"You mean my reaction to Phil and his friends?"
"Your friends. Your Group," The Staff said.
"But I don't dislike those people," Kane insisted. "Certainly, I have no aversion to them! Hell, I don't even know them."
"But they're people," the Staff said. "Part of the family of man."
"I know that. But I was tired and wanted to sleep!"
"You'll find the true group Spirit," the Staff said. "Let us ask you this, Professor Kane. If you really had no aversion to people generally, why would you object to them being with you? ”

“ A quasi-totalitarian society in which means of communication had largely replaced force as the apparatus of compulsion. Communication, fear, insecurity. In his isolation and insecurity, man clung to his Group, to the majority, the accepted opinions. ”

“ Kane glanced at the elevator, then they ran back toward the saucer.
"You'll have to pilot this thing," Kane said. "It's a little crowded up there for me."
She started the motor and the saucer lifted abruptly. "The terminal at La Guardia?" she said.
"No. The ship's at least two miles from the Terminal. We'll go directly to the ship." He hesitated. "The only thing is—it isn't due to blast out of here until the 25th."
"That doesn't matter," she said.
"Why doesn't it? We're flaunting the law. They're after us. They won't let us just hide away on that ship until the 25th." ”

“ Three o'clock in the morning, but the fact was Kane wasn't sure about the day. He backed out of the bathroom, slammed the door.
"The Staff is ready, Prof," Phil said.
"We're all with you, aren't we?" Laura giggled.
The closet.
Kane ran into the closet and slammed the door. There was something immediately cozy in the narrow black confines of the closet. Either closet walls weren't TV screens, or they had decided to let him sleep at last. Probably the former. Better convert closets to Television. In case kiddies misbehave and get locked in the closet, they'll not be alone in there.... ”

“ He told them that as far as he was concerned the social setup was now deadly, a kind of self-garrisoned mental concentration camp in which free thought was impossible. A stagnate, in fact a regressive state of affairs. Proficiency in skills would go, science would die. ”

“ I reserved a suite, or at least I understood that my friend, Phil Nordson, reserved a suite. I certainly didn't demand this!"
"But—but of course you did. We have to have a single when we're—not getting along well with ourselves."
Kane started for the door, but the two men backed out and shut it in his face. He tried the knob. ”

“ Lucille said, watching him carefully.
"Fun time's only starting for us," the young man protested, and the fat man and Jenny and all of them protested loudly together, laughing all the while.
Kane was backing away. The hell with them. He turned and ran for the elevator. Then he remembered that he didn't know what room he was supposed to be checked into. He didn't have a key either. He—
Two smiling men, were on either side of him. In a mirror he could see the half smiling, half concerned faces of Phil and Laura, and the slightly sardonic eyes of Lucille. ”