Jack Sharkey

“ When Stanton did not respond, Bodger said, "I think I can tell you. Chaos. Noise. A riot of sound and fury that knocked you clear off your chair and broke the circuit before it destroyed you. Because the Brain knew, of course. It's smart, Fred. It can predict with better accuracy than a human mind. ”

“ From any or all of a Goon's six fingertips could spring the dreaded Snapper Beam, an electronic refinement of vibrations that struck the human nervous system almost identically with the chemical effect of strychnine poisoning, except that a Snapper Beam worked instantly, and always fatally. A brush of the invisible force, and a man's face creased into the frenzied grin of a madman, his legs danced wildly, uncontrollably, and the muscles of his back contracted tightly, relentlessly, remorselessly, until his spine cracked in two. ”

“ The city of Helox, the magnificent Hive, seemed doomed to lie untenanted high in the mountains until the crack of doom.
And then Bodger—who alone was unaffected by the Hive, perhaps due to his ingrained rapport with things which were destined to live forever—thought of children. "Why not," he begged the American people in a telecast which was Barnaby's last official concession to the development of the Hive, "let me have the orphans, the unwanted children of the nation! A child's psychology cries out for what the Hive can offer. ”

“ The leaders of the growing army of angry citizens had more sense than to attack the Hive itself; Helox, unpopular or not, was already in use nationally in an expensive series of ashtrays, pocket combs, and other small items, and was known, by general experience, to be as indestructible as had been claimed by its proponents. They would strike, instead, at the robots who taught the children. "When they're all gone bust," one of the rabble-rousers cried to his impromptu constituency, "Bodger'll have to let the kids go. He can't keep 'em there if they don't get no learning!" ”

“ The ceremonies completed, and Lloyd Bodger installed as second-in-command to a city that as yet had no first-in-command, but one thing remained to be done: Populate the city. And here again, the dream of Lester Murdock ran into an unexpected snag: The first million people selected to dwell in the Hive were hospitalized in a week's time, due to a mass outbreak of what the nation's foremost doctors diagnosed as a combination of claustrophobia and anthrophobia, a sort of panic at the thought of being sealed into something with a vast throng of people. ”

“ Lloyd and Andra were awaiting the lift at Sub-Level one, guided in the blackness by the Goon who had led them to the control chamber, when Bodger and the others arrived. Stanton, only semi-conscious, was being held upright in the arms of the prop-Goon, lest a real Goon pick him up for "treatment" because of his bruises, one on the back of his head where Frank had connected, the other glowing a steadily darker purple on his jaw where Bodger's knockout punch had landed earlier. ”

“ In vain did Bodger and Barnaby try to point out the benefits of the Hive: It was never too hot, never too cold, spacious, airy, bright, and a strong element of ultraviolet in the lighting made the breeding of disease germs impossible. It was a paradise of scientific achievements; anybody should be happy to live there. ”

“ Drunk too much, pinched a waitress's rump, scratched a four-letter word on a Temple?"
"Don't take this too lightly, fellow Speakster," said Stanton, purposefully. "Running the Hive is like walking on eggs in hot cleats. You're either careful or things get a mite sticky."
"We always have the Goons," said Bodger.
"A Hive full of ten million back-broken corpses isn't much of a domain," snapped the President. "Have you forgotten that extra-marital peccadillos are frowned upon in Hive society? People who play around get hospitalized, quick." ”

“ Bodger informed the leaders of this group, "it can be overcome with ease. Have you all forgotten the gigantic pool of knowledge encased in the Brain beneath the Hive, more knowledge than any three of you possess in concert? Schooling can be direct from the Brain, tapping its near-endless informational resources." ”

“ I'm just picturing two grown men, frowning in earnest concentration, their ears separated by a few inches of plastic, and it's funny."
"Not if you're correct, it isn't," said Lloyd, and Andra stopped smiling. "As soon as he hears you, the jig's up."
"Maybe—" She leaned forward with eager hope. "Maybe it would be a good thing, Lloyd. He's a powerful man in the Hive. If he knew your problem, he could use his influence to do something, couldn't he?"
"My father loves me, sure," said Lloyd, with a wry quirk to his lips. "But I don't think he loves anything so much as his position in our society. ”

“ Its own what?!" Stanton yelled, grabbing Bodger's head by the hair and banging it violently upon the flooring. Bodger, his eyes rolling, coughed painfully, then sighed, as one who names a long-awaited friend, "... death."
"Danger!" said the Brain. A wild tootling began in its depths as its metal mind tried to spare it its terrible fate.
"What danger?" Stanton roared into the microphone, leaping to the chair before the control panel. "Tell me! I'll find a way out!"
"Danger!" said the Brain. "Danger! Danger!" ”

“ Half-way to Grace's level, a red light glowed on the level-indicator. When they reached their getting-off place, the buttons would function no more until one o'clock. It saved needless crowding if lunching workers remained on their own levels. Otherwise, if a line were too long, a worker might be tempted to try his luck lower down, and if too many decided simultaneously, the bland flow of human traffic might be imbalanced, agglomerated beyond the capacity of the transportation systems. ”

“ When the sirens halted, Ultrablack swept the room from their ken like a velvet curtain. Then Frank turned a dial, and the room reappeared on the screen, like a negative image, with white for black, and vice-versa.
"Now we can go," Frank said, releasing a brake. The prop-Goon began to roll ponderously toward the door to the street, carrying its two perspiring conspirators. "I only wish," Frank said tensely, guiding their movement out into the Kinsmen-deserted street of the sector, "that this thing had Snapper-Beams, too. But I guess an underground movement can't have everything." ”

“ Tier upon tier of lightweight metal scaffolding rose on all sides of a twenty-foot-square area of flooring. Riveted across the angles of the scaffolding were coils and condensors, insulators and sparking forks of synaptic wiring, whirling cams and clattering selectors, banks of glowing lights that danced on random pattern, deepset labyrinthine nests of wire that glowed a brilliant orange, then faded to dull grey, then glowed again, accompanied by a rising and falling hum of urgent power. ”

“ Bodger sighed. "In the past sixteen hours, the son of the Secondary Speakster has blithely violated the social and political ethics of the Hive, to the extent that his destruction—"
"Bodger!" Stanton flared. "You have a rotten habit of—"
"Pretty words don't alleviate the truth of the situation. You know, and I know, what Readjustment is! A one-way trip down the incinerator chute!" ”

“ A mob could be efficiently halted by a sweeping Snapper Beam, to fall like broken puppets. Goons never lost a film battle. Or a real one.
"Name," said the Goon, as the woman in front of Lloyd moved quickly out of the arcade. Goons could not inflect. You had to sense their questions.
"Lloyd Bodger, Junior," said Lloyd, extending his Voteplate for perusal. The three fingers took the plate from his fingers, and slid it into a slot in the chest. A sharp click, and the plate was returned to him, his number now on file in the vast memory banks of the Brain.
"Your sector," said the Goon. ”

“ No one in the Hive was the necessary thirty-five years of age. The Brain, arguing with its own circuits, then declared that, to obviate any longer wait than necessary for a President, the first inmate to achieve the age of thirty-five would be elected by automatic default of the others. Bodger, trying in vain to give orders to the Brain from his office, descended in the lift to discover that the great lead-concrete barrier was closed, and the Brain-control chamber was out of reach of any human agency. ”

“ The Brain will memorize his voice at his first public speech, and then he can countermand Stanton's orders."
"Then it is safe to kill Stanton?" Andra asked.
Lloyd turned and started toward the ladder. "It's more than safe; it's an absolute necessity. Stanton's orders to the Brain are his own death warrant."
Grace watched the perspiring face of the man on the bed and dug her fingers into her palms, suffering in unison with him as he twitched and contorted the muscles of his face. Their Goon escort had departed, many minutes before, and Bodger had not awakened. ”

“ If it's death—"
"Grace—" Lloyd said warningly, taking her arm. She turned on him.
"Darling, if we're to die in any event, let's die now! At least we'll have the satisfaction that a hundred other people aren't dying afterward, because of us!"
"She's right, Fred," Bodger said, smiling for the first time since his arrival at Grace's Unit. "If you kill us now, you'll never find anything out. At least our lives will have accomplished something, if only continued secrecy about the movement."
"A Snapper Beam needn't kill, if used briefly enough," Stanton said mildly. ”

“ His eyes, when they met Andra's, were woeful. "We're really in a bind. I have Stanton's Voteplate, but it's no good to me without Stanton himself. The clever, scheming monster!"
"That means we don't dare kill him, even!" Andra realized aloud. "Or the Brain and robots will keep us from ever putting the Plan into effect, even if we find it."
"No," Lloyd said grimly, "it doesn't mean that. You heard the wording, Andra; the Brain recognizes rank before identity. Primal Speakster can countermand it. Which means that—if Stanton dies—a new election would bring a new man into office. ”

“ Bodger shook his head. "Not at all, Lloyd. A Goon, you must remember, doesn't 'see' as we do. Its television lenses are only geared to recognize streets, Units, sectors, and so on, and to tell Goons from Kinsmen. Anything as delicate as actual recognition of a face would involve the building of a Brain greater in mass than the current one. No, Voteplates were the only answer to identification problems; that's half the reason they exist. As to fingerprints—They will serve in identifying an individual, it's true, if a person's identity is in doubt. ”

“ By now, of course, memory of life outside the Hive was a dim phantasm to most of the inmates, and the idea of living anywhere else would have appalled them. The robots did all the heavy labor, patrolled the streets in super-efficient anti-crime campaigns, and possessed enough knowledge—via the Brain—to make a lot of fact-learning superfluous. ”

“ Goons," he said, depressing a switch beside a small cathode-screen inside the hollow body, "see by cutting off the sensitivity of their lenses to light or inverted light, it doesn't matter which. Then the Hive is bright as day-light to them."
Lennick clambered up beside him and helped Frank dog the metal panel shut. Side by side, hunched over the pale blue glow of the screen, they watched the interior of the prop room through the lens-eyes of their grotesque conveyance. ”

“ Lloyd said excitedly. "The Hive is not one city, it's ten. And, while it takes a large portion of the people to run the equipment in any tier, the city—or cities—can be run by people! The Brain isn't necessary, Andra. And the radiation outside the Hive is gone...." ”

“ Late in 2026, on November 12th, his thirty-fifth birthday, Fredric Stanton was elected President of the Hive. By now, the Hive's population was nearly at the ten million mark, most of the children marrying in their late teens. In order to have the weddings properly performed, the Brain had sent crews of robots to modify the ancient rocket engines on the fifth level of each section, turning the firing chamber into a vast temple, and the enormous thrust-tubes into long arcades by means of which the inmates of each sector could enter and leave. ”

“ That any damage could occur to the Brain was impossible, President Barnaby pointed out to the nation during the gala inauguration ceremonies of the indestructible city. When the threat of nuclear war still hung over the world, he told his listeners, the Brain was prudently constructed in the heart of the mountain on which the Hive now rests, its entrance being protected by a ceiling twenty-five feet thick, of concrete and lead, which could close hermetically tight and successfully block any power in possession of civilized man. ”

“ The Brain, sending information to a point to which it was no longer connected, created a synaptic syndrome in itself, and flared with enough power to throw every circuit-breaker in its cubic miles of wiring. Instantly, the robots ceased walking the streets, the lifts jammed to a halt, and Light-of-Day flickered and went out, being replaced by, not power-generated Ultrablack, but simple inter-Hive darkness. ”

“ Stanton, before Bodger's statement could bring the others in a unified wave against him, pointed the muzzle of the Snapper directly at the man's chest and pressed the firing stud. A whine of power came from the weapon as the invisible forces lashed out. ”

“ The collapse of the John Birch movement in 1965, during the nationwide riots which sprang up during that bloody year, had still not removed one of the foremost contentions of that organization, to wit: One must either be pro-American or anti. The idea of any citizen being indifferent to the success or failure of a government proposal was distasteful to the masses, and this feeling grew in intensity up until the year of Murdock's election. ”

“ Lennick said with chagrin.
"Bob, you did what any of us could have done: Nothing. One man can't fight off a Goon Squad. We would have lost two members, instead of just Andra, if you'd put up a fuss."
"But about Ultrablack," Bob said, frowning. "I know you people have meetings after Light-of-Day goes off. How you do it is beyond me, with the streets alive with Goons, and darkness everywhere, even indoors."
"If there were a chance of rescuing Andra when tonight's Ultrablack came on, I'd tell you, Bob," Frank said sincerely. ”

“ Time to figure out some way of telling the Hive what's happening to it!"
"You know I've gone farther than I should, already."
"I know," she said. She took the Voteplate from her handbag, and held it musingly in her fingers. "I really should keep this," she said, then saw the sudden anxiety in his eyes and relented. "Here, take it." She slid it under his hand. Lloyd palmed it gratefully. "Our movement could use a hammerlock on a higher-up," she said, almost wistfully. "But you're too nice a guy to put the screws on. It'd be a cruel way to show my gratitude for what you did tonight." ”