C. M. Kornbluth

“ In spite of the beard and the cigar, there was something of a sly, teasing child about him. "So what do you say to slipping one of our own people into the Government to find out whether they're dealing in assassination or not?"
Charles Orsino alone was naive enough to speak; the rest knew that the old man had something up his sleeve. Charles said: "You can't do it, sir! They have lie-detectors and drugs and all sorts of things—" His voice died down miserably under Falcaro's too-benign smile and the looks of irritation verging on disgust from the rest. ”

“ The town had an improvised look which was strange to Orsino. There was a sanitation reactor every hundred yards or so, but he mistrusted the look of the ground-level mains that led to it from, the houses. There were house flies from which he shied violently. Every other shack on the waterfront was a bar or a notch joint. He sampled the goods at one of the former and was shocked by the quality and price. He rolled out, his ears still ringing from the belt of raw booze; as half a dozen sweatered Guards rolled in, singing some esoteric song about their high morale and even higher venereal rate. ”

“ Red danger lights burned on the walls. Charles flipped the pistol to semi-automatic as they passed a red-painted bulkhead with valves and gages sprouting from it. He turned and fired three deliberate shots into it. The last was drowned out by a dull roar as gasoline fumes exploded. Pipe fittings and fragments of plate whizzed about them like bullets as they raced on.
Somebody ahead loomed, yelling querulously: "What the hell was that, Mac? What blew?"
"Where's the reactor room?" Charles demanded, jamming the pistol into his chest. The man gulped and pointed. ”

“ Taylor went on, "a roundup or a registration, or mass treatment or any such violation of the Syndic's spirit."
Charles exploded: "Damn it, this is a matter of life or death to the Syndic!"
"No, Charles. Nothing can be a matter of life or death to the Syndic. When anything becomes a matter of life or death to the Syndic, the Syndic is already dead, its morale, is already disintegrated, its credit already gone. What is left is not the Syndic but the Syndic's dead shell. I am not placed so that I can say objectively now whether the Syndic is dead or alive. I fear it is dying. ”

“ There was a choked little cry from Martha. "Hell's fire," she said. "Like breaking a leg!"
"What are you talking about, little girl?" Lee asked, coldly alert.
"It's all right," Charles said wearily. "Don't you know my voice? I'm Orsino. You turned me in back there because they don't give, citizenship to women and so your de-conditioning didn't get triggered off. I managed to break for the woods. A bunch of natives got me. I busted loose with the help of Martha here. Among her other talents, the kid's a mind reader. I remember the triggering shocked me out of a year's growth; how do you feel?" ”

“ Doubtless they were cursing the goddess obscenely; doubtless that was what the smithymen all did when their mouths were not stuffed with food.
She thought of the man called Kennedy who forged spearheads and arrowpoints for her people—he was a strange one, touched by the goddess, which proved her infinite power. She could touch and turn the head of even a smithyman. He was a strange one. Well now, to get on with it. She wished the power were working stronger in her; she was tired and could hardly see. But by the grace of the goddess there would be two new heads over her holy hut come dawn. ”

“ She wanted to know: "The hell with what, darling?"
"Everything. Tell me about psychology. I can't go on playing polo forever."
It was an hour before she got around to telling him about psychology: "The neglect has been criminal—and inexplicable. For about a century it's been assumed that psychology is a dead fallacy. Why?"
"All right," he said amiably, playing with a lock of her hair. "Why?"
"Lieberman," she said. "Lieberman of Johns-Hopkins. He was one of the old-line topological psychology men—don't let the lingo throw you, Charles; it's just the name of a system. ”

“ He looked at the two of them and shrugged. "Lee, so stern, Charles so grim," he said. "I suppose you're dedicated now." He looked at the desk.
He thought: I have a faint desire to take the pistol from my desk and shoot you both. I have a nervous feeling that you're about to embark on a crusade to awaken Syndic Territory to its perils. You think the fate of civilization hinges on you. You're right, of course. The fate of civilization hinges on every one of us at any given moment. We are all components in the two-billion-body problem. ”

“ And if I hear one goddammed word about 'efficiency'—" he glared the rest and strode out, puffing and leaning on Charles' arm. "Efficiency," he growled in the corridor. "Every so often a wise guy comes to me whimpering that people are getting away with murder, collections are ten per cent below what they ought to be, the Falcaro Fund's being milked because fifteen per cent of the dough goes to people who aren't in need at all, eight per cent of the people getting old-age pensions aren't really past sixty. Get efficient, these people tell me. Save money by triple-checking collections. ”

“ He unkinked himself, stretched and lay down on the sand floor thinking bitterly: why try? You'll be dead in a few days or a few weeks; kiss the world good-bye. Back in Syndic Territory, fat, sloppy, happy Syndic Territory, did they know how good they had it? He wished he could tell them to cling to their good life. But Uncle Frank said it didn't do any good to cling; it was a matter of tension and relaxation. When you stiffen up a way of life and try to fossilize it so it'll stay that way forever, then you find you've lost it.
Little Martha wouldn't understand it. ”

“ Magic, ritual, the power of the goddess, fear of iron, fear of the jeep's vine enclosure—cursed, no doubt—what went on in such a mind? Could she throw things like a poltergeist-girl? They didn't have 'em any more; maybe it had something to do with electric fields or even iron. Or were they all phonies? An upset adolescent girl is a hell of a lot likelier to fake phenomena that produce them. Little Martha hadn't been faking her despair, though. The witch-girl—her sister, wasn't she?—didn't fake her icy calm and power. Martha'd be better off without such stuff—
"Charles," a whisper said. ”

“ Since Buffalo, he had never been sorry for anybody. Something awful had happened there, some terrible betrayal ... he passed his bony hand across his forehead. He didn't want to think about it.
"Would I live here if I weren't?" T. G. asked him. "Sometimes I can help them. There's nobody else to help them. They're old and sick and they don't fit anywhere. That's why they're savage. You're young—the only young man I've ever seen in Riveredge. There's so much outside for the young. But when you get old it sometimes throws you."
"The Goddammed Syndic," Wyman snarled, full of hate. ”

“ Kennedy had turned to the hearth and the small, fierce fire glowing on it and began to pound a red-hot lump of metal. There were spear heads and arrow heads about in various stages of completion, as well as files and a hone.
"What's the matter?" he demanded. "Aren't you interested?"
"Of course I'm interested," Kennedy said. "But we've got to begin at the beginning. You're too general." His voice was mild, but reproving.
"You're right," Charles said. "I guess you've made a try or two yourself. But now that there are two of us, what do you suggest? Can you drive a jeep? ”

“ It's better to sock the man you hate and stand a chance of having him sock you back than it is just to hate him and let the hate gnaw you like a grave-worm."
"What've you got against the Syndic?"
"Nothing, Max. Nothing against it and nothing for it. What I'm for is people. The Syndic is people. You're people. Slug 'em if you want and they'll have a chance to slug you back. Maybe you'll pull down the Syndic like Samson in the temple; more likely it'll crush you. But you'll be doing something about it. That's the great thing. That's the thing people have to learn—or they wind up in Riveredge." ”

“ People harden into a pattern. They always had fun, they think they always will. Then half of the pattern's gone and they can't stand it, some of them. You got it early. What was the ringing bell?"
Wyman collapsed into the bay of the I-beam as if he'd been kicked in the stomach. A wave of intolerable memory swept over him. A ringing bell, a wobbling pendulum, a flashing light, the fair face of his betrayer, the hateful one of Hogan, stirred together in a hell brew. "Nothing," he said hoarsely, thinking that he'd give his life for enough booze to black him out. "Nothing." ”

“ You'll be a young man who hates the Syndic. We'll tear down your present personality a gray cell at a time. We'll pump you full of Seconal every day for a quarter of a year.... We'll obliterate your personality under a new one. We'll bury Charles Orsino under a mountain of suggestions, compulsions and obsessions shoveled at you sixteen hours a day while you're too groggy to resist. ”

“ I'm just a bagman for the New York police. I wouldn't even be that if it weren't for Uncle Frank, and you're a Falcaro. It's just barely thinkable that I could make a pass at you. I guess that held me off and I didn't want to admit it so I got mad at you instead. Hell, I could have swum back to the base and made a damned fool of myself trying to find Grinnel, but down inside I knew better. The kid's gone."
"We'll make a psychologist of you yet," she said.
"Psychologist? Why? You're joking."
"No. It's not a joke. You'll like psychology, darling. You can't go on playing polo forever, you know." ”

“ The only thing to do is make the poison again. As you grow in experience you make fewer mistakes. That is how it will be with my men when they work the jeep and the guns."
She nodded ever so slightly at one of the men and he took a firmer grip on his spear.
Death swooped low.
"No!" Charles exploded. "You don't understand! This isn't like anything you do at all!" He was sweating, even in the late afternoon chill. "You've got to have somebody who knows how to repair the jeep and the gun. If they're busted they're busted and no amount of starting over again will make them work!" ”

“ Charles scribbled again and said at last, flatly: "They're running collision courses on us. Automatically computed, I suppose, from a radar. We're through."
He spun the wheel to 180 again, and studied the crawling green spark on the radarscope. "This way we give 'em the longest run for their money and can pray for a miracle. The only way we can use our speed to outrun them is to turn around and head back into Government Territory—which isn't what we want. Relax, Lee. Maybe if the weather thickens they'll lose us—no; not with radar." ”

“ Grinnel, tolerant, fatherly, amused: "Now, men, have your fun but keep it quiet."
"Don't be afraid, kid—" There was an animal howl from Martha's throat that made Lee Falcaro shake hysterically and Charles grind his fingernails into his palms.
Grinnel: "Sergeant, you'd better tie your shirt around her head and take her into the O.N.I. building."
"Why, commander! And let that lousy little yeoman in on it?"
Grinnel, amused, a good Joe, a man's man: "That's up to you, men. Just keep it quiet." ”

“ Love and loyalty die, but not as if they had never been. Their ghosts remain, Max Wyman and you are haunted by them. They hound you from Buffalo to Erie, but there is no oblivion deep enough in the Mex joints, or in Tampa tequila or Pittsburgh zubrovka or New York gin.
You tell incurious people who came to the place on the corner for a shot and some talk that you're the best breakdown man that ever came out of Erie ”

“ I won't pretend I think old man Regan is a balanced, dependable person. I won't pretend I think the Mob clients are enjoying anywhere near the service that Syndic clients enjoy. I'm perfectly aware that on our visits of state to Mob Territory we see pretty much what our hosts want us to see. But I cannot believe that any group which is rooted on the principles of freedom and service can have gone very wrong.
"Maybe I'm mistaken, gentlemen. But I cannot believe that a descendant of Jimmy Regan would order a descendant of Amadeo Falcaro murdered. We will consider every other possibility first. ”

“ With a rumor, a dubious commerce-raider report and a note on a man's hobby, you want us to sweep the bastards from the sea, don't you—just the way you always have?"
"I am not ashamed of my expressed attitude on the question of the so-called United States Government and will defend it at any proper time and place."
"Shut the hell up, you two," Edward Falcaro growled. "I'm trying to think." He thought for perhaps half a minute and then looked up, baffled. "Has anybody got any ideas?"
Charles Orsino cleared his throat, amazed at his own temerity. ”

“ Charles said: "A fighting fleet and an army."
Lee said: "Mass diagnosis of the unstable. Screening of severe cases and treatment where it's indicated. Riveredge must be a plague-spot of agents."
Taylor shook his head and told them: "It won't do."
Charles was aghast. "It won't do? Uncle Frank, what the hell do you mean, it won't do? Didn't we make it clear? They want to invade us and loot us and subject us!"
"It won't do," Taylor said. "I choose the devil we know. A fighting fleet is out. We'll arm our merchant vessels and hope for the best. A full-time army is out. ”

“ Suppose this Sunday you preach a howlin' strong sermon against usury, what? That chap in the village, the goldsmith fellow, has the infernal gall to tell me I've got to give him Fallowfield! Forty acres, and he has the infernal gall to tell me they aren't mine any more. Be a good chap, padre, and sort of glare at him from the pulpit a few times to show him who you mean, what?"
"Usury is a sin," Father Ambrosius said cautiously, "but how does Fallowfield enter into it?"
Sir Baldwin twiddled the drooping ends of his limp, blond mustache with a trace of embarrassment. ”

“ Bless the Greeks for restricting population so the well-fed few could kindle a watch-tower in the west, and damn the prostitution and sodomy and wars of colonization by which they did it. Bless the Romans for their strength to smash down every wall that hemmed their building genius, and damn them for their weakness that never broke the bloody grip of Etruscan savagery on their minds. ”

“ I see no reason why ours should not go down into the darkness with them, nor do I see any reason why we should not meanwhile enjoy ourselves collecting sense-impressions to be remembered with pleasure in old age. ”

“ Charles smacked one fist against the sand floor in impotent rage. He was going as crazy as Kennedy. Did the witch girl—and Martha—have hereditary psi power? He mocked himself savagely: that's such a general question!
Neurotic adolescent girls in kerosene-lit farmhouses, he thought vaguely. Things that go bump—and crash and blooie and whoo-oo-oo! in the night. Not in electric lit city apartments. Not around fleshed-up middle-aged men and women. ”

“ Charles Orsino was not good at arguments or indeed at any abstract thinking. He knew it. He knew the virtues that had commended him to F. W. Taylor were his energy and an off-hand talent for getting along with people. But something rang terribly false in Lee's words.
"That kind of thinking doesn't get you anywhere, Lee," he said slowly. "I didn't absorb much from Uncle Frank, but I did absorb this: you run into trouble if you make up stories about the world and then act as if they're true. The Syndic isn't somebody sitting around. The Government isn't wolves. The Mobsters aren't maniacs. ”

“ Dull-eyed sailors watched them incuriously, and there were a couple of anvil-jawed men with a stance and swagger Charles had come to know. Guardsmen—he would have staked his life on it. Guardsmen of the North American Government Navy—aboard a Mob Territory ship and acting as if they were passengers or high-rated crewmen.
Regan smirked: "I'm on the horns of a dilemma. There are no accomodations that are quite right for you. There are storage compartments which are worse than you deserve and there are passenger quarters which are too good for you. ”

“ Have people who might be working check on collections instead, and make enemies to boot whenever we catch somebody short. Make the Fund a grudging Scrooge instead of an open-handed sugar-daddy—and let people worry about their chances of making the Fund instead of knowing it'll take care of them if they're caught short. Set up a vital statistics system from birth to death, with numbers and finger-prints and house registration and maybe the gas-chamber if you forget to report a change of address. You know what's wrong with the wise guys, Charles? ”