Robert F. Young

“ We were aboard the 'copter in an instant. Julia's experienced fingers made deft maneuvers on the control panel and then we were aloft, soaring over the amphitheater, the sky blue above us, the stoning platform a chiaroscuro of gray- and black-garbed men and women below us. The arena proper was a bleak expanse of packed dirt, unrelieved by a single blade of grass. I could hear the obscene murmur of the crowd above the whirring of the blades. ”

“ By the time I regained my vision the 'copter was high above the lombardies, the exhumed car-casket swinging wildly beneath the still-opened hatch.
Don't shoot! my mind screamed to Kester. Don't shoot! But the words were locked in my throat and I could not utter them. I could only stand there helplessly, waiting for the disintegrating beam to lance out from the tower, waiting for the 'copter and the ghouls—and my conniving Julia—to become bright embers in the night sky. ”

“ There is a higher purpose behind the automobile trust funds than the mere preservation of twentieth century vehicles. In setting those funds aside, the ancient automakers were endeavoring to return, symbolically and in a different form, the elements they had taken from the Earth. It was a noble gesture, Bartlett, a very noble gesture, and the fact that we today disapprove of the Age of Wanton Waste does not obviate the fact that the Age of Wanton Waste could—and did—produce art. The symbolic immortality of that art is our responsibility, our mission. ”

“ I could hear the distant shuffling of feet on the stoning platform and the faraway murmur of many voices.
Taigue was still fasting. Ordinary MEP officers were usually content to fast their required day per week and to let it go at that. But Taigue was not an ordinary MEP officer. He stood before me like a Bunyanesque caricature. Caverns had appeared above the ridges of his cheek bones and his eyes had retreated into their depths where they burned like banked fires.
"Short hair becomes you, Mr. Bartlett," he said, but his irony lacked its usual edge. ”

“ Taigue went on implacably, "is the most despicable crime a citizen can commit against his society; that adultery has many subtle phases, among the subtlest being the proclivity on the part of some husbands and husbands-to-be to look at women other than their wives or wives-to-be—and lust! You do devoutly believe these things, do you not, Mr. Bartlett?" ”

“ Bartlett?"
"You can put it that way if it makes it easier for you."
"And what do you think your confession is worth?"
"You know how much it's worth, Taigue. It's worth Julia's life—and mine."
"You try my patience, Mr. Bartlett."
"You try mine too."
"My wanting your confession is a purely personal matter. Both you and Julia will die in the arena regardless of your decision. Adultery charges are irrevocable."
"I'm not asking you to revoke any charges," I said. "All I'm asking you to do is to get Julia and me out of here alive. You can do it." ”

“ The silence between Julia and myself became intolerable. I pondered the meaning of the word "compatibility," and wondered why unconscious rapport should manifest itself in conscious hatred.
I remembered my own lonely childhood—the long evenings spent in my parents' hive apartment, the endless dissension between my mother and my father, my father's relegation to the parlorette couch and my mother's key in the bedroomette door, their suicidal leap twenty stories to the street when I was nineteen years old. ”

“ Bartlett?"
"Senior Sentry at the Cadillac Cemetery."
She raised her eyes. Her hair was combed tightly back into a chignon and her face looked round and full like a little girl's.
"Oh. Have there been any exhumings recently, Mr. Bartlett?"
"Not at Cadillac," I said.
"I'm glad. I think it's a shame the way the ghouls carry on, don't you? Imagine anyone having the effrontery to rob a sacred car-grave!" ”

“ Pilgrims who want no more of a civilization victimized by an outdated biblical exhortation, exploited by false prophets hiding behind misinterpretations of Freudian terminology."
The hives were flickering beneath us, gaunt precipices flanking narrow canyons. The verdure of the Cadillac Cemetery showed in the distance, and beyond it, eroded hills rolled away.
"I'm glad you did alter our data cards," I said after a while. "But I wish you'd done it for a different reason. I wish you could have loved me, Julia."
"I do love you," Julia said. ”

“ Why? Had he overheard my conversation with Julia? I did not think so. With the confused murmur of hundreds of other voices all around him, he could scarcely have singled out mine, especially in view of the fact that I had spoken softly.
But perhaps not softly enough. In any event, he was looking at me as though I were a hopeless habitué of Vanity Fair desperately in need of an Evangelist. I felt like walking over to his desk and asking him the way to the Coelestial City. But I didn't. ”

“ But the Cadillac Sexton took a dim view of my suggestion when he showed up the next morning. He glowered at me from behind his desk in the caretaker's office and I could tell from the deepening of the creases in his bulbous forehead that I was in for a lecture.
"Trees are rare enough on Earth as it is without wantonly destroying them," he said, when I had finished talking. "And these particular trees are the rarest of the rare."
He shook his head deploringly. "I'm afraid you don't quite understand the finer points of our mission, Bartlett. ”

“ Prison cells are ideal for objective thinking. There is a quality about their drab walls that brings you face to face with reality.
The Coliseum cell in which I was confined possessed the ultimate in drab walls. The reality with which I was faced was the ultimate in unpleasantness....
On our wedding night, Julia had told me that she had worked at Marriage Administration Headquarters for three years. But when I mentioned Taigue's concern over her, she was amazed. She said she hardly even knew him, that he had never spoken a word to her, had never—to her knowledge—even looked at her. ”

“ Now listen. You stay by your blaster and keep your eyes and your ears open. I'm coming over to see if I can locate the 'copter. If I do locate it I'll throw a flare under it, and if they try to rise, you burn them. If they don't try to rise and we can take them alive, so much the better. I'd like to see a real live ghoul. But otherwise, you burn them! If we lose another car-corpse, we'll all be out on our ears."
"All right," Kester said. The screen went blank.
Descending the tower ladder, I wondered what kind of a guard detail I had. Last night, Betz's negligence had cost me a Cadillac. ”

“ Not that it was the first marriage I'd computed, but all the others—like Betz's and Kester's—involved people who were working on the ship, people who were already in love. There—there wasn't anyone in the group whom I cared for myself, so I had to look elsewhere. You and I are ideally suited, Roger. I didn't need the data cards to tell me that—all I needed was my eyes."
We were high above the Cadillac Cemetery and she was looking anxiously ahead at the rolling, dun-colored hills. "If only they haven't left yet," she said. "The last Cadillac we exhumed provided enough metal to finish the ship. ”

“ Marriage, according to all the old literature I'd read on it, was a pretty complex undertaking, so replete with subtleties that it was difficult to imagine a computing machine, no matter how intricate it might be, capable of dealing with them. ”

“ Deploring the appetites of one's ancestors is a frustrating pastime. I did not indulge in it now. Climbing the four flights of stairs to my apartment, I thought instead of my imminent marriage, hoping to take the edge off my loneliness. ”

“ The only way he could realize his love for her was by elevating that love to a higher plane. This had necessitated his elevating Julia also.
Taigue loathed sex. He could tolerate it only when it came as a result of a society-sanctioned marriage. With respect to Julia, he could not tolerate it at all, because the intrusion of sex upon his exquisite vase of flowers sullied both flowers and vase.
When he discovered that the Marriage Integrator had matched Julia with an ordinary mortal, he could not accept the validity of the computation ”

“ No, Bartlett, we can never resort to the sacrilegious leveling of trees and shrubbery in an attempt to solve our problem. Its solution lies in greater vigilance on the part of sentries, particularly senior sentries. Our mission is a noble one, one not lightly to be regarded. ”

“ Maybe Betz really hadn't seen or heard anything until it was too late. Maybe Kester really hadn't been sure that the sound he was hearing was the turning of a borer.
But I was sure, and the closer I got to Tower 11, the surer I became. I timed my approach with the swath of the searchlight, made certain there was plenty of concealment available whenever it passed my way. That wasn't hard to do, with all the lombardies, the arborvitae, the hills, dales and gardens that infested the place. But for once the ancient automakers' passion for landscaping was benefitting me instead of the ghouls. ”

“ What we want consciously is invariably different from what we want unconsciously, Mr. Bartlett. The Marriage Integrator's true benefit to humanity arises from the fact that it matches marriageable men and women in accordance with their unconscious rather than with their conscious desires. However, any information you may care to impart will be entered on your data card and might influence the final decision. ”

“ A wife, according to the pamphlet that had accompanied my marriage summons, guaranteed to be my ideal mate, emotionally, intellectually, and physically. A wife who would personify my unconscious conception of a goddess, who would fulfill my unconscious standards of feminine beauty, who would administer faithfully to my unconscious emotional needs. ”

“ Guarding interred Cadillacs was far from being an ideal way to spend my wedding night, but after the way things had been going I hadn't dared to ask the Sexton for an extra night off. I donned my sentry suit in the darkness, moving quietly so as not to awaken Julia, then I descended to the street and hailed a rickshaw. It was past 2300 and I had to ride all the way to the cemetery in order to get there on time. ”

“ There was one way. It was drastic and it might not work; but it was worth a try. "All right, Taigue," I said. "I understand your position. Bring Julia here and I'll confess."
"Bring her here? Why? All you have to do is admit you coerced her to alter the data cards. Her presence isn't necessary."
"It's necessary to me."
He looked at me for a moment, then turned abruptly and left the cell. He told the patrolman, whom he had posted by the door, to wait, then he disappeared down the corridor. The patrolman closed the cell door but didn't bother to lock it. He didn't need to. ”

“ My Julia breathed loudly. Moreover, she breathed with a regularity hard to associate with a human being—a regularity reminiscent of a machine. Specifically, a malfunctioning machine, and more specifically yet, the turning of a borer shaft in a well-oiled, but worn, sleeve.
Alert now, I tried to locate the sound. At first it seemed to be all around me, a part of the night air itself, but I finally narrowed it down to the northeast section of the cemetery. Tower 11's territory.
I called 11. Kester's lean young face came into focus on the telescreen. "You should be hearing a borer," I said. ”

“ I'd been profoundly distrustful of machine-made marriages ever since my parents' suicide, and the surreptitious reading I'd done on the various occasions when I had access to the book dump had increased that distrust. ”

“ The ancient automakers anticipated neither the future value of their enshrined products nor the sacrilegious exhumings that were to begin a century later, and when they laid out their car cemeteries, they stressed beauty rather than practicality. ”

“ Bartlett."
The shock of finding him on my doorstep had left me numb. But I remembered my rights. "You've no right to ask me questions," I said. "I'm a single man."
"I was invested with the right today when you applied for a wife. A husband-to-be is as securely bound to the laws of matrimony as an actual husband is."
He began to move through the doorway. I either had to get out of the way or be pushed aside. I got out of the way. Taigue shut the door behind him and sat down in the parlorette chair. ”

“ There was an element of irony in using a super-highway for a footpath.
I hailed a rickshaw at the out-skirts of the city and rode in style to my apartment. There was a letter in my mail receptacle. The return address said: MARRIAGE ADMINISTRATION HEADQUARTERS. I waited till I got to my roomettes before I opened it. I wouldn't have opened it then if I'd dared not to.
The message was brief:
Report 1500, City Cathedral, Chapel 14, for marital union with one Julia Prentice, cit. no. 14489304-P, as per M. I. directive no. 38572048954-PR.
I read it again. ”

“ And if the ship has already blasted, it will be a far more serious situation."
"What ship are you talking about?"
"The Cadillac-ship; the Ford-ship; the Plymouth-ship. Call it what you will. Cars are made of metal, so are spaceships. By applying the right temperatures, and the right techniques, dedicated people can transform Cadillacs and Fords and Plymouths into highways to the stars."
I was staring at her. "The ghouls—"
"Are people like myself—the new Pilgrims, if you like. ”

“ They were both newly-married men (Kester had applied for a wife the same day Betz had) and, since women were forbidden to work after marrying, both of them certainly needed the better wages Cadillac paid. Why should they deliberately jeopardize their status? ”

“ And the frugal way of life already adopted by the people was ideal for a world down to its last inch of topsoil. The Marriage Integrator fitted into the new scheme of things nicely, for it justified the stern enforcement of the new marriage laws. ”