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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 59588 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
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+
+
+                            THE HAPPY HERD
+
+                            BY BRYCE WALTON
+
+              _Everyone was thoughtful, considerate, kind
+              and very happy. But where was the right of
+              dignity or individuality? It was like being
+              dropped into the middle of a nightmare. The
+            kind that finds you running naked in a crowd._
+
+           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
+              Worlds of If Science Fiction, October 1956.
+         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
+         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
+
+
+The Captain told Kane to take his cushion pills, that they were
+contacting the pits at La Guardia within half an hour.
+
+"I still can't figure you," the Captain said. "Up there, just you and
+your wife for sixteen years. That's a hell of a long time."
+
+Kane smiled. He had been almost completely out of touch with the world
+for sixteen years, and it surprised him a little that anyone thought it
+remarkable in any way. Particularly the Captain who spent most of his
+time, too, alone.
+
+But the Captain was genuinely perturbed about it. The authorities had
+abandoned the space-station project. Abandoned the Martian project.
+They had taken away the other three ships from the Moon-run, and there
+was no explanation for it at all.
+
+The rest of the Captain's crew, except an old atomics man, had drifted
+away and never come back, and the Captain had been unable to find out
+anything whatsoever about what had happened to them. He had never heard
+from them again. They had never been replaced.
+
+But the Captain couldn't seem to define what it was he was warning Kane
+to be wary of down there.
+
+"I haven't left my ship for years, Professor Kane, and that's the
+truth. I take on supplies and see to the ore getting into the holds but
+when those machines up there that do the digging and loading wear out,
+they won't be replaced. Just no interest in space any more. I can tell.
+
+"I stay on the ship, with my wife, see. And the few guys down there
+around the field at La Guardia I have to rub up against--why, sir, they
+treat me as if I had some kind of contagious disease!
+
+"But they need this ore I'm bringing back here now, so they leave me
+alone."
+
+"Who leaves you alone?"
+
+"Whoever didn't leave the rest of my crew alone. Whoever sang 'em the
+old siren song, that's who. Once a spaceman, always a spaceman, sir.
+And not a one of those men pulled out because he wanted to do it!
+That's what I'm saying. And I'm telling you to watch out. I'm blasting
+off for the Moon again on the 25th. I hope you're aboard."
+
+Kane shrugged as the Captain bowed out, making disgruntled noises in
+his throat. He was getting along in years, Kane reasoned, and was
+probably just expressing that fact, externalizing some way or another.
+Still, what he had said was odd--
+
+The truth was, Kane had been inexcusably out of contact with the world.
+
+The pills dulled his senses and he began to fall asleep on the
+pneumatic couch. He thought of the years of work on his theories
+concerning the unified fields in the formulation of spatial matter.
+He thought of Helen, the good years together before her sudden death,
+sharing love and work, how complete and full and good it had been.
+During all those sixteen years he couldn't recall a moment of real
+boredom.
+
+He hadn't missed life on Earth. When a man has one full love and his
+work, he's isolated no matter where he is, even in the middle of New
+York City.
+
+He had ten notebooks full of notes in his briefcase. It would open
+their eyes, a really basic new theory that would defy the pessimistic
+theory of entropy, and its assurance of an inevitable death of all
+things.
+
+Finding another wife to replace Helen wouldn't be easy of course. A new
+relationship would be different, but it should be as good. It might
+require some difficulties which he had anticipated and was prepared
+for. He was only forty-six. He had a long time to look. He was in
+excellent physical condition and was not unattractive, though of course
+that wasn't the real issue either way.
+
+He wanted love, a companion, someone who could truly share in his work.
+Who would love that observatory in Albetagnius crater as a home for the
+rest of her life.
+
+He woke up, and prepared to leave the ship. He carried his briefcase
+with his notes in it. The rest of his luggage would follow later.
+According to Phil Nordson, there was a suite reserved for him at the
+Midtown Hotel at 50th and Madison Avenue.
+
+He climbed down the ladder to the exit. The door was open and a heavy
+fog drifted past the opening, but a small dark car with two drivers
+waited outside.
+
+As Kane stepped down the gangplank, one of the figures, a woman in a
+light blue uniform, jumped out and opened the door for him.
+
+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.
+
+Then there was the question of meeting the right kind of woman. That
+was something only the fates could decide, Kane thought. He was no
+romantic, but that sort of thing wasn't something you could figure out
+in advance, plot out like an equation. It wasn't anything you could
+handle with personality charts, though they had been trying that when
+he'd left. The personality you could measure with gadgets was such a
+small part of it really....
+
+But Phil would arrange for the social activities. As he recalled his
+old schoolmate, he remembered that Phil was a very social kind of
+fellow. Phil had thought it was absurd, Kane's volunteering for that
+job in Albetagnius. Phil hadn't even gone on to post-graduate work in
+electronics, his chosen field. Phil had gone right out to accept a
+position with Isotopics Unlimited, somewhere in New Jersey.
+
+They had corresponded for a while; and the cablegram from Phil had
+expressed Phil's delight at Kane's decision to return to Earth.
+
+The car stopped before the well-lighted entrance to terminal building
+No. 214 and the woman hopped out, opened the door for Kane. He went
+inside the building, feeling the abnormally heavy pull of gravity. He
+had grown accustomed to the gravity on the Moon, and though his body
+was already starting to adapt itself, it would take time, and he was
+beginning to feel the drag.
+
+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! Welcome, Old Friend Kane!
+    Welcome home to Earth again._
+
+Kane felt a brief compulsion to retreat, but that was absurd.
+
+"Good to see you, Prof!" Phil shouted.
+
+"Hello, Phil." Someone grabbed his briefcase. Kane tried to get it back
+but it was gone among the frothing arms and milling bodies.
+
+"We'll take care of it, Kane boy," Phil said. His arm was over Kane's
+shoulders. Several women were hanging onto Kane's arms. Healthy,
+tanned, lovely women.
+
+"Sure glad to see you, Prof. Aren't we?"
+
+A chorus enthusiastically shrieked, "Yes!"
+
+Kane felt some embarrassment. He was being crowded out an exit toward a
+line of cabs. Several shiny ten-foot saucers with railings around them
+whirred past and disappeared in the fog. All of them had two or more
+people on them, and from the sound, there were quite a number of them
+up in the fog somewhere.
+
+"We've all got a saucer now," Phil said. "Only we have to take cabs
+over to Lucie's house. This way we can all ride together. We can all
+get into two cabs, can't we, gang?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"Lucie?" Kane asked as they crowded around the two cabs. Who were these
+people? Friends of Phil's of course.
+
+"We're Lucie," the woman said softly. Kane caught a glimpse of a mature
+face and a lovely figure. The face was odd, Kane thought, the maturity
+seeming to be disguised by an insincere smile. What a peculiar way of
+introducing oneself....
+
+"We're having a little party at the house," Lucille said. "Aren't we?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"We've got lots of fun planned for us, Kane boy," Phil said.
+
+Kane remembered a look of sardonic mockery in Lucille's eyes as her
+face disappeared and was replaced by several others.
+
+Somehow, Kane couldn't figure out how, five of them were jammed into
+the back seat of one of the cabs and then they were moving away through
+the fog.
+
+Someone who said "We're Laura," with a tight tanned body was wriggling
+on Kane's lap and her arm was around Kane's neck. She had bright teeth
+and she breathed scentedly into Kane's face.
+
+"Nothing to worry about, Kane boy," he heard Phil say in a muffled joy.
+"We're the gang."
+
+"'It's always fair weather, the Sunhill Gang is always together,'"
+Laura was crooning. The red-faced fat man next to Kane laughed and then
+Kane saw that the red-faced man whose name seemed to be Ben and the
+woman on his lap whom he called Jenny, were kissing one another. There
+was something embarrassingly intimate about the way they did it. It was
+suddenly much more than a mere spontaneous show of affection.
+
+Kane looked away. Beyond a certain point, he felt that love-making was
+something that should be reserved for privacy.
+
+That sort of thing might be expected to change, of course. Customs
+changed, and as Kane recalled, one could say the trend had been
+somewhat in that direction.
+
+There were two drivers up front. That was a change too. Every cab had
+had two drivers, a man and a woman.
+
+It was all a bit overdone, Kane thought. Still, they were friends of
+Phil's. A friend of yours is a friend of mine.
+
+But it affected Kane adversely. He felt uneasy. He didn't really know
+them at all. In fact, he scarcely even knew Phil.
+
+"We're so glad with you," the girl on Kane's lap said. She crushed her
+lips over his mouth and pressed her body against him. Kane couldn't say
+that was affecting him adversely. In fact, if there weren't all these
+other people around--
+
+"We're nice together," Laura breathed against his lips.
+
+Everyone was so damn glad to see him. All they needed were banners,
+little pins. Official Welcoming Party to Greet the Arrival of Professor
+Larry Kane.
+
+Kane managed to look out the window as they crossed the Tri-Borough
+Bridge at 125th Street and started up the East River Drive.
+
+"Things haven't changed much," Kane said. "Not nearly so much traffic
+though."
+
+"The saucers," Phil said. "Most of the traffic's up in the air."
+
+"We're looking at things," Laura said.
+
+"Great old town," Ben said and laughed, on and on. Jenny laughed too,
+then said. "It looks just the same almost as when we left."
+
+They're all speaking for me. Kane thought. Funny, a damned funny
+custom. It was a reflection of something else. What did it really
+mean? His feeling of unease seemed exaggerated. But then their efforts
+to make him welcome seemed pretty exaggerated too....
+
+"Everybody happy?" the fat man yelled.
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"We're happy aren't we, honey," Laura said.
+
+"Sure," Kane said.
+
+Why not?
+
+Kane noticed the amazing dearth of traffic on Madison Avenue.
+
+No traffic cops either. That had changed too. One thing you had always
+been sure of seeing and that was a cop in New York.
+
+When Kane asked about it, the smiles almost fled from every face, and
+the moment of silence seemed like a form of shock. Kane realized then
+that there hadn't been even a second of silence before then.
+
+"It's hard to realize we've been away so long," 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. The apartment consisted of one huge room with a circular couch
+in the middle upon which everyone immediately sat.
+
+Laura sat beside Kane who was getting more tired every minute. There
+was just enough room for the gang to squeeze up tight to one another in
+a circle around a table supporting some kind of machine with wires that
+were immediately run from it and attached to everyone's wrist, and to a
+narrow metal headband with which everyone's head was crowned.
+
+Kane was listening to music. It was like being dropped unexpectedly
+into the middle of a large symphony orchestra. The sound seemed to
+pulse and vibrate gigantically all around him. It was more than merely
+listening. He was in it. He felt himself a part of it, swimming in it,
+and almost fighting to keep from being carried away by what seemed to
+be perfectly recorded music that was now being delivered by some final
+form of hi-fi.
+
+The music itself was familiar enough. Instrumentalized opera arias
+orchestrated on a fantastic scale. The quantity was so great that
+sensitivity as to quality was dulled. Kane, shocked by thunderous
+sweeps of sheer volume gave way before the sound. It wasn't sleep.
+He could hardly say he rested, but he was in a semi-stupor. When he
+glanced at his watch sometime later, two hours and some minutes had
+passed.
+
+The wires were being removed from wrists, headbands from heads. Kane's
+head ached slightly. Everyone was reaching as cards fell out of the
+machine in the middle.
+
+Laura handed one to Kane. It was covered with symbols in the form of
+some kind of graph, but he couldn't decipher it.
+
+There was a great deal of chatter, musical jargon, colloquial in both
+space and time, most of it eluding comprehension. Kane stood there
+holding his card as everyone milled around one another.
+
+Phil said, "Let's see how we liked it, Prof?"
+
+That seemed to have been the general idea--how much everyone liked the
+music. And each one looked at his card, and they were all comparing
+cards and exclaiming over them.
+
+Phil was looking at Kane's card, comparing it with his own and with
+some other cards.
+
+"Well, not bad," Phil was saying, "Is it, gang?"
+
+"Not bad at all!" they chorused.
+
+"What isn't bad?" Kane asked.
+
+"Our taste, man," Laura said. "You'll fit so good."
+
+The odd one, Lucille, raised an eyebrow, with some mockery in it still,
+at Kane.
+
+"You'll sure belong, Professor. Don't worry," Lucille said. She held up
+her card. "We liked it."
+
+"Of course it'll take a little time," Phil said as he threw his arm
+over Kane's shoulder. "A few sessions and you'll match up just right."
+
+"I really don't believe I understand," Kane said vaguely.
+
+"You will," Lucille said as she moved away from him. "You sure will,
+Professor." She was tall, and with long lithe legs. She was a handsome
+woman, Kane thought.
+
+As Phil explained casually on the way toward the Midtown Hotel, they
+had just had a music session. Everything was done in sessions, in
+groups that is. Everyone had his group, and his group did everything
+together.
+
+Anyway, they had had a music session. The machine in the middle was
+a Reacto. The cards were Reacto Cards. It was really a kind of taste
+tester, and the point was that the Reacto tested everyone's reaction to
+the music.
+
+The cards enabled everyone to check their reactions, check them against
+the reactions of all the others. It involved conformity ratings, and
+tendencies to stray from the group norm.
+
+The important thing about the taste rate cards was that they enabled
+you to find out just how much group spirit you had. The closer your
+card resembled that of all the others in your group, the more GS you
+had.
+
+"My GS rating's gone up," Laura kept burbling all the way to the
+Midtown Hotel. "It's gone up!"
+
+The same process applied to reading, movies, television, eating,
+anything involving the elements of reacting. The important thing was
+not how you yourself felt, but how you felt in relation to the feelings
+of the group. The problem seemed to be that of reducing deviation
+tendencies to a minimum.
+
+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_.
+
+Good God! _You had to look at a card to find out how you liked
+something!_ It was frightening as hell.
+
+Kane wondered how wide-spread, how universal, it really was, this
+incredible conformity, this collective thinking.
+
+This appalling sacrifice of individuality.
+
+Kane was too tired to give much thought to it right then. He was
+anxious to get to the Hotel, and he was beginning to fantasize a bed,
+cool sheets, his body stretching and sinking down into blissful slumber.
+
+But as appalling as the situation seemed at the time, Kane soon found
+that he had only circled on the fringes of it. This was only the
+beginning.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Here we are, here were are, gang!" someone shouted as they piled out
+of the cabs and Kane was being hustled toward the suddenly formidable
+glint of a revolving door.
+
+So here we are, Kane thought. It was nice being here all right. He was
+glad, very glad. But it sounded as though someone might swoon over the
+fact.
+
+There was some difficulty with the revolving door. No one seemed able
+to move first, and there were spontaneous group lunges ending in
+jamming chaos in which someone hurt their arm. Kane thought it was the
+fat man, Ben.
+
+"We're hurt!" Jenny screamed.
+
+"Oh--it's not bad," Ben said, laughing all the time he was groaning.
+"Just bruised a little, gang. We're just bruised a little."
+
+Kane grabbed his advantage and ventured alone through the revolving
+doors into the lobby. A pair of desk clerks nodded across the lobby.
+A group was emerging from behind drapes and beyond them Kane saw an
+ornate, subtly lighted, cocktail lounge.
+
+Kane was heading for the elevator when the gang overtook him.
+
+Laura had hold of one of his arms, and Phil the other.
+
+"We're having cocktails," Laura said.
+
+Phil repeated it, and Ben and Jenny joined in. The young man, Clarence,
+was singing as he herded the others toward the drapes of the cocktail
+lounge, and they were all whisking Kane away before he could voice any
+protest.
+
+"What'll the gang have?" the waiter asked, smiling. Only he wasn't
+really smiling at any of them, Kane thought. He had picked out a center
+point of focus and was smiling at that so as not to appear to be
+smiling at any one, but at everyone.
+
+"Martinis!" several voices said.
+
+The waiter nodded, whirled away.
+
+"Ah, waiter," Kane said. "I'll have a double shot of Scotch. No ice."
+
+The waiter seemed shocked, unable to come to grips with Kane's
+seemingly simple order. "But--but I thought you said Martini."
+
+The gang was still smiling, but faintly. The waiter was backing away.
+
+"No," Kane insisted. "He said Martinis, and she said Martinis, and so
+did several others. But I didn't say Martinis. I said Scotch, no ice."
+
+"But Martinis--"
+
+Ben forced a pained laugh. "But we ordered Martinis."
+
+"Martinis," 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+God, he was tired. He was so tired he could hardly sit there. He felt
+numb, and there was desperation under the numbness. Kane wanted to get
+off somewhere by himself so he could rest, sleep, and think. He wanted
+to think....
+
+Bits of information drifted haphazardly into Kane's consciousness from
+the conversation. He had ordered another double Scotch and was almost
+through with it. He was passing out, but held to conscious awareness by
+the unceasing banter, laughter and the jukebox--like a marionette held
+up with wires.
+
+If he suddenly found himself alone in silence, he knew he would
+collapse instantly.
+
+It seemed that this was a group with a certain common Reacto level, and
+they all worked in the same place, and lived in the same section of a
+big housing project, a place called Sunny Hill.
+
+Phil was their Integrator, and he was also an Official in the Isotopic
+Corporation where the Group worked. 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.
+
+A Staff was a rather vague term for specialists in Integration on a
+clinical level.
+
+The job was always referred to as "our job", and the Gang seemed to do
+practically everything together.
+
+Someone mentioned that a friend hadn't been competent in group
+relations at school and had been Processed. Kane didn't like the words
+they were so casually throwing around. In fact Kane didn't like any of
+it, and he was liking it less all the time.
+
+Another term that referred to some sort of adjustment process was the
+word homogenized. Someone had been "homogenized".
+
+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. "As I
+recall--he just wasn't well adjusted as a research chemist and teacher."
+
+"Who said he wasn't?"
+
+"Why the Staff."
+
+"What Staff--?"
+
+"Anyway, he's a plumber now somewhere," Phil said. "He's happy now."
+
+Kane felt a coldness on his neck. His stomach seemed to turn completely
+over. The devil with this, he thought. His eyeballs felt as though they
+were covered with sand, and his lids seemed leaded weights. He pushed
+back his chair.
+
+"You'll excuse me," he said. "But I'm really tired out. I'm going to
+get some rest--"
+
+"But the night's young for us, man," Laura shrieked.
+
+"We're having more Scotch," 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.
+
+"Don't worry, Gang," he heard Phil say. "We're taking a Special room.
+We'll be together again soon."
+
+"This way," the two young smiling men said. They wore uniforms and
+appeared to be bellhops. "We'll show you to our room."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The two bellhops started to back out of the room. "What's special
+about it?" Kane asked. "Only thing I can see about it that could be
+considered special is that it's about big enough to be someone's
+closet! I reserved a suite. What kind of a run-around is this anyway?"
+
+It was hardly bigger than a large closet. A white room, with only a
+single bed in it, and a bureau. Through a narrow, partly open door, he
+could see a bathroom, and that was it.
+
+"Well," the bellhop said, smiling. "It's our Single."
+
+"You mean you call it special because it's a single," Kane asked.
+
+The bellhops nodded.
+
+"Why?" Kane insisted. "What's special about a single?"
+
+"We only have one single here," the bellhops said. "We hope you are
+comfortable with us, Professor Kane."
+
+"Look here! Why should you only have one single in this entire hotel?
+And what's so special about it?"
+
+"This single is seldom demanded by guests," the bellhop said.
+
+"I didn't demand it. 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. The door was locked. He turned quickly
+and scanned the room, but there was no key visible. Then one of the
+curtains moved as he walked toward it, and he saw that the narrow
+window was barred.
+
+As he swept the curtains aside to look out through the bars, and
+grabbed at the bars in a kind of instinctual gesture, a metal panel
+slid noiselessly across and shut out a flash of neon light.
+
+He was alone, locked up like a dangerous madman!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By the head of the narrow bed that resembled something antiseptic in a
+barracks, Kane saw the black eye of a phone peeking out of a niche in
+the wall.
+
+He pulled it out and jabbed at a button. His throat felt tight and he
+could feel the pounding of his heart as he leaned against the wall.
+
+"This is Professor Kane, room 2004."
+
+"Yes, we're here."
+
+"And I'm here! In this ridiculous closet. I'm locked in. There must be
+some sort of mistake. The window--"
+
+"We'll be all right. We'll be fine in a little while."
+
+"Look here--connect me with the cocktail lounge. I want to speak with
+Phil Nordson. Yes, he's there--"
+
+He heard nothing, absolutely nothing, except his own heart. No clock in
+the room either. The walls and ceiling had a peculiar grained look.
+
+"Hello, Prof!"
+
+"Phil! Phil, listen, what in the name of God goes on here? I'm locked
+in! You said you reserved a suite for me, and this room--"
+
+"We aren't going to worry," 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. He released the phone and it was sucked back into
+the wall.
+
+He sank down on the bed and fumbled absently at his coat and then at
+his necktie. The walls had a blurred quality and he felt on the edge
+of passing out. He kept thinking of the briefcase, with years of work
+in it, the equations, more than could be preserved entirely in a man's
+head.
+
+It was too sickening to think about, the possibility of them losing his
+briefcase. Phil didn't seem concerned. No one was concerned with his
+briefcase, that was obvious. The only thing they were concerned about
+was that he didn't get along with the Gang.
+
+The hell with the Gang, every last one of the Gang. If he never heard
+of the Gang or saw the Gang again, he would consider himself extremely
+fortunate.
+
+He felt numb, too tired to think about anything. He fumbled at one
+shoe, got it off, then worked vaguely at the other one. He would rest,
+sleep, sleep for a long time, then he would be able to think. He might
+find this all exaggerated, unreal, once he slept, rested, woke up again.
+
+A man certainly had rights. There was some authority he could contact
+of course. He was just too upset to think about it anymore.
+
+He had his shirt, his undershirt off. He had his shoes and socks off
+and he flexed his feet in ecstasy. He unzipped his fly and as he
+started to stand up to take his pants off, he groaned with fright and
+fell backward onto the bed.
+
+A chair fused with the bed. Laura was there, sitting on the chair, but
+also practically sitting in Kane's lap.
+
+He blinked rapidly and reached out, and his hand moved through the
+image of Laura, only Laura seemed solid, three-dimensional, very real
+indeed. Too real.
+
+"Get out," he whispered. "What--"
+
+Glass clinked loudly right in the room with him. The jukebox blared.
+
+Kane couldn't move. He sat rigidly, and the table was there, and all
+the Gang around it, and Phil there smiling and they were all around
+Kane drinking Scotch, double shots of Scotch, no ice.
+
+Lucille looked across the table and shook her lovely head slightly.
+There was concern, genuine concern, a kind of sadness, behind the false
+smile. The smile, he knew, was for the others. But the concern was for
+him.
+
+Phil raised his glass. Nine glasses were in the air.
+
+"Here's to us, happy Gang, Prof," Phil shouted.
+
+"Here's to us! Here's to Sunny Hill!" they shouted.
+
+Kane slowly moistened his lips. The three walls and the ceiling had
+come alive. They were actually huge TV screens, and the effect was
+startlingly three-dimensional. Only the absence of touch could break
+the illusion. But the visual and the audial made up for the absence
+of touch. 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."
+
+He zipped his pants back up and slid back through several phantom
+shapes and pressed against the wall.
+
+"Phil," he finally said. "Phil!"
+
+"Aren't you sleepy now?" Phil asked.
+
+"He's sleepy," Laura said. "We're sleeping with you, Professor man."
+
+"Yes, yes I am sleepy. Goodnight now," Kane said. "Goodnight."
+
+He waited. They didn't take the hint. To them it was no hint at all.
+He knew they weren't going away. He knew that no matter what he said
+or did, they wouldn't go away. That was the thing he understood,
+incredible as it was, he knew now that no matter what he said or did,
+they wouldn't go away.
+
+They only understood that he was somehow ill. He knew that too. They
+were right, so he was wrong. They thought they were doing what was best
+for him. That was obvious. It was all over their faces and actions. If
+they had any idea how he felt, they still considered his feelings only
+symptoms of some kind, and they seemed confident that Kane would soon
+be all right.
+
+But his being all right had nothing to do with their going away.
+
+Kane decided not to give way, not to scream or anything absurd like
+that. It wouldn't do any good. Calm, be calm and--well maybe just try
+pretending they're not there at all.
+
+Then he remembered the bathroom and ran through several chairs, a
+table, and three people, and into the bathroom. He slammed the door and
+leaned against it and let out a long relieved breath.
+
+He was taking off his shorts when the bathroom walls and the ceiling
+came alive.
+
+What had been labeled "Boy's Room" down in the cocktail lounge was
+being projected into the bathroom of room 2004.
+
+It wasn't false modesty that prompted Kane's moan. It wasn't any form
+of prudishness that moved Kane to clutch his undershorts to his body
+and leap into the shower stall.
+
+It was a panicky realization of the absolutely involuntary nature of
+the way things were. Strangers, with friendly smiles, everywhere around
+him all the time, and he, Larry Kane, had nothing--_absolutely nothing
+to say about it_.
+
+The shower stall with the pulled curtain was no refuge either. There
+was a superimposed sink in there on the wall with a phantom shape using
+an electric razor.
+
+Phil and Ben were leaning through the shower curtain. They weren't
+there for anything specific. They were just there, chatting, smiling,
+bantering.
+
+Others came in and out of the "Boy's Room" of the cocktail lounge.
+Everyone said hello, or directed some sort of friendly comment casually
+at Kane as though superimposed washrooms were the quintessence of
+social normalcy. And, Kane thought pushing hard at panic, they probably
+were.
+
+Phil and Ben were there for no other reason than to keep Kane company.
+To help him. He could see that. No matter how tortured he seemed, their
+attitude remained that of beneficence. The trouble was all his, and
+they gave no indication of seeing his side of anything.
+
+Evidently, to them, being alone was the worst thing that could happen
+to anybody. If he wanted to be alone then he was wrong, he was sick, he
+was put in a special room. A single. But they wouldn't go away.
+
+He managed to turn on the shower, and he turned his face up to the icy
+water and closed his eyes and imagined he was back in blessed isolation
+in the study of the observatory on the Moon. But it was a long long way
+back to the Moon.
+
+It worked both ways. He could see and hear them. They could hear and
+see him too, but he determined to do his best to ignore them. The idea
+of social amenities no longer bothered Kane. Being impolite was an
+absurdity. Social decency was a mutual thing, and these people weren't
+considering his rights at all.
+
+He finished his shower and draped the towel around his waist and went
+back out into the closet they had given him. He walked toward the bed,
+sidestepping people, chairs, tables still unable to realize fully that
+these things weren't really here.
+
+The jukebox got louder. A couple danced through him. Suddenly, Kane
+stood shivering, a raw panic taking hold. Control fled before the
+rising jukebox clangor, the laughter, the waving and shouting and
+hideous unwelcome demons of camaraderie.
+
+He felt himself wildly waving his arms about and shouting at the walls.
+
+"Get out! For God's sake get out and let me sleep!"
+
+Ben was staring at Kane from only a few inches away.
+
+"You," Kane pointed a finger at the three dimensional ghost. "You--fade
+out, go away somewhere. No--no, Phil, not you. Get these other people
+out. I want to talk to you--Phil--"
+
+"Easy now," Phil said soothingly. "We'll be all right. In a little
+while now--"
+
+"I am all right, but I won't be if I can't sleep. Phil--can't all this
+just--just be tuned out or something?"
+
+Kane tried to imagine none of the others were there. Just the small
+room, himself, and Phil. But the others were all looking at Kane, all
+of them looking, all of them smiling. Lucille was looking too, but
+somehow he was sure he could see a reflection of his own feelings in
+her eyes, hidden, but there.
+
+"We'll be with you all the way," Phil said.
+
+"But how can I sleep with a cocktail lounge full of people all over my
+bed? Tell me. I'm listening. Tell me how!"
+
+Phil's smile disappeared completely for a brief second. He whispered,
+close to Kane's ear. "Try to do it, Larry. Please--_try_!"
+
+Kane ran to the wall, clicked the light switch. He knew that the lights
+in his room went out, but the slightly dimmer lights projected from the
+cocktail lounge remained. Somehow, that was even worse. It seemed to
+resemble the implacable characters of a persisting nightmare. Subdued,
+with the coruscating bubbling play of multicolored light from the
+jukebox turning a rainbow over and over the ceiling and the bed, and
+the Gang, the Gang all there like ghosts with greenish faces smiling,
+sitting, whispering round the bed.
+
+Kane threw himself on the bed and covered his eyes with his arms.
+
+He was going mad with fatigue, and yet he knew he could never sleep,
+never rest, under these circumstances. It wasn't just the figures
+there, the lights, the laughter and whispering and the chorus breaking
+from the jukebox. It was what their being there really meant, the
+suggestion of the bigger cause behind what was happening to Kane.
+
+A man who fears to sleep in the dark is not really afraid of the dark.
+But of what is hiding in it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Shadows moved above his closed lids. Glass tinkled with ice cubes.
+Under his sweating forearm, his eyes throbbed and his body felt as
+though the skin had been scraped all over until it was raw.
+
+Kane propped himself on an elbow, and looked to one side at Phil. Phil
+grinned sympathetically. Laura was in the same cushioned chair, but
+she seemed to be sitting beside Kane on the bed. Lucille was avoiding
+looking at Kane.
+
+"Phil."
+
+"Well, Prof, we thought we were getting our sleep!"
+
+"No," Kane whispered. "I can't sleep. I'm asking you, you Phil, and all
+the rest of you, to let me sleep. I'm asking you to help me in that
+way, just for a while. I'm imploring you really to just tune yourselves
+out for a while and let me sleep."
+
+There was something blank, uncomprehending in the way they smiled at
+him. Kane knew then that they could never allow themselves to try to
+understand his situation, because then they might question their own.
+For example, if they've taken refuge in one another from a terrible
+fear of insecurity, anxiety, and aloneness, then Kane could only
+represent the threat of reawakened fear.
+
+What was the use?
+
+"We'll turn the lights down low, how would that be, Prof?" Phil asked.
+
+"We'd like that," Laura whispered.
+
+"Don't be afraid, we're with you," Ben said.
+
+"We'll sing you into dreamland," Jenny said.
+
+"Don't be afraid. We're all together and our Gang is with you," someone
+else said. It didn't matter who really, Kane thought, because they all
+spoke not as individuals but as the Gang.
+
+"Through sunshine and in shadow," Lucille said.
+
+The lights dimmed slowly as Kane curled up on the bed and clenched his
+eyes shut. He pulled the sheet up over his face. He pressed his fingers
+into his ears. But it wouldn't work. Nothing like that would do any
+good. You couldn't shut off indignity such as this. You couldn't block
+out such an intrusion of spirit and human dignity by burying your head,
+or pressing your ears.
+
+You could try, but not very long, not when you knew it wouldn't do any
+good.
+
+He had no idea now what time it was, how long he had been here. He had
+tried to spot a wall clock somewhere in the cocktail lounge, but none
+was within view. That didn't help either, this timeless feeling. That
+only enhanced the similarity it all had to a persisting nightmare.
+
+It was a gnawing murmur all around him. It was like a hollow tooth. The
+softened sounds of their voices going on and on was maddening because
+they were softened. Softened for him, yet they were still there. He
+felt like an irritated baby sleeping while adults talked, pretending to
+soften their voices.
+
+His body was slimy with sweat, and his head pounded with a dull ache.
+He jumped out of bed and ran straight through Laura to the wall and
+jerked the phone from its slot.
+
+He yelled into it.
+
+"This is Professor Larry Kane. Room 2004. I'm checking out. Send
+someone up here with a key! I said send someone up here...."
+
+"We understand, Professor Kane."
+
+"Then you'll send someone up immediately with a key!"
+
+"Please don't get upset. The Staff has been busy, but now the Staff
+will soon be with you."
+
+The Staff....
+
+"I just want a key, I want to get the hell out of here!"
+
+Kane yelled several times into the phone after the click, but no voice
+came back. He had grabbed up the table, the metal table at the head
+of the bed, and flung it into the wall before he realized what he was
+doing.
+
+The shadows moved toward him. Phil, Laura, Ben, Jenny, Lawrence,
+Lucille, all the others, nameless, what did it matter anyway, their
+names?
+
+They were smiling, holding out their arms to him. Compassionate,
+sympathy, they had it all. All they wanted to do was help him.
+
+He ran through them back toward the bathroom. It was still full of men
+from the downstairs john. "What time is it?" Kane yelled at someone
+with a paper towel pressed to his eyes.
+
+"'Bout three I'd say, what a night!"
+
+"Three--"
+
+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 curled up on the floor in the pitch blackness and almost immediately
+began to drift off into sleep. The narrow darkness tightened around him
+like a thick comforting blanket on a cold night....
+
+Sometime later--he had no idea how much time had passed--a light
+was blinking at his lids. He opened them slowly and stared into a
+flickering yellow eye.
+
+A doorhinge creaked. Up there somewhere a voice said pleasantly:
+
+"Professor Kane, your Staff is here."
+
+"Staff?" he whispered, trying to see above the blinking light.
+
+"We're here."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The TV walls were dead now, but that was hardly consoling. The overhead
+light was glaring with an intense whiteness. The three members of the
+Staff were busy, and Kane was being Tested.
+
+Kane had emerged from the closet determined to remain as rational as
+possible, to control his emotions, and find out what he could about his
+human rights as an individual.
+
+That was easy to find out and only required a few questions honestly
+and frankly answered.
+
+As a minority, Kane had no rights whatsoever.
+
+He had one big right, the right to think as the majority did. But that
+didn't count for much yet because Kane was ill, maladjusted and had
+anti-group feeling.
+
+The Staff was going to test him, find out what was wrong with Kane. And
+this of course implied that when they found out what was wrong, the
+difficulty would be taken care of.
+
+The Staff was kind, considerate, almost excessively polite considering
+the circumstances. They were young efficient men with crewcuts,
+briefcases, and wearing tight conservative dark suits. Only slight
+differences in build distinguished them one from another, but this
+superficial outward difference only seemed to emphasize the Staff's
+basic unity, its Group Spirit, its Staff Consciousness.
+
+Every public institution, every business establishment, every school,
+club, hotel, factory, office building--in short, everywhere that people
+congregated in official Groups, there was a regular Staff on duty
+twenty-four hours a day.
+
+They were Integrators. Glorified personnel men.
+
+Electrodes were clamped on Kane's head and wrists. Something was
+strapped around his chest. Wires ran into a miniature Reacto. A stylus
+began to make jagged lines on a strip of moving tape.
+
+"We're getting a complete personality checkup," the Staff said.
+
+It was indeed complete. It was as complete as a personality checkup
+could be short of an actual dissection.
+
+Kane looked at countless ink-blots. He was shown a great many pictures
+and whether he answered verbally or not was of no concern of the Staff.
+
+Whatever his reactions were, they were all analyzed by the machines.
+Words weren't necessary. The Staff had a shortcut to personality
+checkups. From the mind right into the machine.
+
+The Staff only interpreted the results, or maybe they didn't even do
+that. It was more likely that machines did that too.
+
+Kane protested for a while, but he was too tired to protest very long.
+He asked them a great many questions, and they answered them willingly
+enough--up to a point. They were interested in his questions too. He
+was an interesting symptom, but actually he knew that they already had
+him pretty well tabbed.
+
+They answered his questions the way big-hearted adults answered
+inquisitive children.
+
+"We must," the Staff said, "determine why you don't fit in."
+
+Kane talked about his work, his theories, his years of devotion to what
+he had always considered to be a contribution to society. They hardly
+seemed interested. What good was all that--astronomy and such--when a
+man was not happy with others?
+
+"What about this aversion to people?" the Staff said, in a kindly way.
+"This--well--clinically, this de-grouping syndrome. 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? Why should the
+presence of people disturb your sleep? 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.
+
+Kane tried to explain it, calmly at first, then more emotionally.
+Either way, he knew that whatever he said was only additional grist to
+their syndrome recording mill. Being alone in order to do certain kinds
+of work demanding isolation seemed to be beside the point.
+
+The point was that being on the Moon deprived a man of Groups. It was
+a kind of psychological suicide. Now that he was back home they would
+straighten him out. The question of returning to the Moon was ignored.
+To them, this was an absurdity. What did Kane want?
+
+Kane was in no position to know what he really wanted--yet. They were
+going to help him decide what he really wanted. But they already knew
+that. It only remained for Kane to agree with them.
+
+The majority was always right.
+
+He explained his values to them. They listened. 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. A herd
+state. Individuality lost. Depersonalized. Tyranny of the Majority.
+Integration mania. Collective thinking. Mass media. Lilliput against
+Leviathan....
+
+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.
+
+Time went by. He was given sedatives. He slept at last. He awoke and
+was tested and went to sleep again, many times. He was fed too, given
+injections with needles of energy and vitamins and proteins and glucose
+and carbohydrates, because he refused to eat any other way.
+
+Vaguely he remembered episodes of babbling under the influence of
+hypnotic drugs.
+
+He kept remembering the briefcase. In a dream the Group had it,
+throwing it around among them like a basketball. The clasp broke. The
+papers, thousands of papers spilled out and drifted away over New York
+and Kane was running through a maze looking up at them and then he was
+lost.
+
+Now he knew what had happened to the other Moon ships, and to the rest
+of the Captain's crew, where they had gone to and never come back from.
+
+Space was lonely and dark. Space was empty. Space was frightening.
+
+They had gone back to the closeness and warmth and security of their
+Group.
+
+How many were there left such as the Captain, and Kane--Kane for a
+while yet perhaps? How many were there?
+
+Could he escape?
+
+At some unrelated point on the Testing chart, the Staff closed up their
+briefcases, politely said good-bye, and left.
+
+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 lay there in a dim superimposed puzzle of furniture, moving forms,
+corners of rooms jutting out of the wrong walls, bodies walking through
+beds and one another, and then a naked figure curving into the air,
+falling toward him in a graceful arc, down, getting larger and larger,
+plunging right for Kane's face.
+
+Kane rolled frantically. And then somewhere under him he heard a splash
+and there was the vague ripple of unreal water as Phil swam away across
+his cool blue pool.
+
+There--that was Laura, only in a boudoir, standing before a mirror
+wearing only a pair of very brief panties, and nothing else. Her
+reflection in the mirror smiled at Kane as she brushed her hair.
+
+"Morning, Prof honey. How we feeling this morning?"
+
+It was morning. Some morning on some day during some year.
+
+There was Lucille on this morning lying in a sunchair, her black hair
+shining in the sunlight somewhere. Probably in the Group house at Sunny
+Hill. In a while now, Kane knew, the Group would all go away together
+to their office, and they would do their work, concentrating on getting
+along together until they could return to Sunny Hill together.
+
+Lucille was reading a newspaper, and she glanced up at Kane. There was
+a pale line around her mouth and she pulled her eyes quickly away as
+though she didn't want to look at him. She wasn't like the others. She
+was different. Of course. It had to be a matter of degree. Nothing was
+black and white. There had to be differences of opinion, some degree of
+individuality--somehow. Somewhere. Perhaps Lucille--
+
+"Good morning, good morning to all of us!" Kane shouted suddenly.
+
+"Did we have a good rest, Prof?"
+
+Phil was yelling from his pool. He seemed greatly pleased with Kane's
+enthusiastic social response. Not that Kane was really trying to fool
+anybody. He was pretty sure the Staff wouldn't be fooled. Somewhere
+the machines were scanning the data. Soon, the Staff would have a full
+analysis of Kane, what was wrong, and what would make it right. What he
+should have done, and what he should be.
+
+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.
+
+_Could he escape? Could he, perhaps, get back to the La Guardia Pits,
+and the Captain of the Moonship?_
+
+The windows still barred, paneled in metal. The door locked. If he
+managed to get out of this Single, say, and out of the Midtown Hotel,
+and into the street, then what?
+
+That didn't matter. If he could only get that far--
+
+Laura was standing there naked, close to Kane. "We're having our
+wedding at five," she whispered.
+
+"Who?" Kane said, startled.
+
+"Ben and Jenny. They're right for all of us together."
+
+From a number of rooms, people were watching Ben and Jenny being right
+for all of us together, but Kane couldn't look.
+
+"See us all," Laura shouted and dived through the floor. A spray of
+water spilled up and fell unfelt through Kane's flinching torso. Ben
+and Jenny ran away.
+
+Kane was practically alone with Lucille. It was the first time in he
+had no idea now how long that he had been this much alone with any one
+other person.
+
+She glanced rather sadly at Kane above the paper she was reading.
+
+"You know how I feel, Lucie?"
+
+She nodded, almost imperceptibly.
+
+"How can you stand it, all the time this way?" he asked.
+
+"Some of us learn to be in it, with a part of us out of it. A kind
+of self-hypnosis, a retreat of some kind. Into fantasy, that's what
+it really is. But--but I don't think any of us can keep on doing it
+forever. We will all give way completely--sooner or later."
+
+"I've got to get out," 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."
+
+"Get out--where? Out of the country?"
+
+"It's pretty much like this everywhere. But there are supposed to be
+areas where it isn't. Islands somewhere. Hidden places right here in
+the country. Supposed to be places in the Kentucky Mountains, and in
+New Mexico, places like that."
+
+"The Moon," Kane said. "That's a place I know of. I've been there."
+
+Her eyes were bright for a moment. "I know. It must have been
+wonderful. Why on Earth did you ever leave?"
+
+"I didn't know what it was like here. And--my wife died. I wanted and
+needed another wife. More than a wife really. Someone who could share
+that kind of a life with me, someone who would be interested in the
+work too."
+
+She turned quickly back to the paper.
+
+"You might be able to get out of the hotel," she said. "But you would
+be too conspicuous."
+
+"Because I would be traveling alone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"If you came with me, there would be two of us. We wouldn't be
+conspicuous that way."
+
+He saw the flush move up through her face. "Is that the only reason?"
+
+"You know it isn't."
+
+She knew it. They both knew it and had probably known it for a long
+time. They had a lot in common, a minority of two.
+
+And then he remembered. She wasn't really there in the Midtown with
+him. She was in Sunny Hill, wherever that was. They couldn't leave
+inconspicuously together because they weren't together now, and they
+couldn't get together without the Gang being together too.
+
+The rooms, furniture, sounds, everything began to fade.
+
+"Goodbye," Lucille said.
+
+"Get sick or something," Kane said quickly. "Don't go with the Group to
+work. Stay there, wherever you are! _Stay there_--"
+
+Faintly, her voice came to him out of a kind of melting mask of a face.
+"I'll try--"
+
+Kane was alone in the single room and the door opened. The smiling
+Staff came in and shut the door.
+
+The three of them stood there happily holding their briefcases.
+
+"We're happy to report that we have completed your personality
+breakdown."
+
+The word was a bit premature, Kane thought. "What is it?" he asked.
+
+"Excellent," the Staff beamed. "You should never have been an
+astronomer. You took up that profession as a way of escaping from
+people. Actually, of course, you love people and hate your profession.
+
+"Have you determined what I should be if not an astronomer?"
+
+"Naturally, it's all in the breakdown."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Generally, you prefer physical work, not mental work. Mental work
+is a constant strain on your psychological balance. You have done it
+neurotically to reinforce your need to avoid people."
+
+"Physical work? What kind?"
+
+"Specifically, it seems that you are best suited for the profession of
+plumbing."
+
+"Plumbing?" Kane said. "Plumbing what?"
+
+"Plumbing, the art of pipe-fitting, the study of water mains, sewage
+lines, and so forth."
+
+"Plumbing." Kane said.
+
+"Of course, you react antagonistically to it now. But that will be
+changed."
+
+Kane had nothing against plumbers or plumbing. Once, as a kid, he
+remembered having a long interesting talk with a plumber who was
+unstopping the kitchen sink. He had fascinating tools, and at that
+time, Kane had said he would be a plumber when he grew up. But he had
+also wanted to be any number of other things when he grew up, including
+an astronomer.
+
+Now he had no desire whatsoever to be a plumber.
+
+Kane drew the metal bedside table up hard and the edge of it caught
+number one of the Staff under the chin. Kane attacked, violently. He
+did it knowing that something more was at stake than his life--his
+identity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Number one fell down on his knees and whimpered. He wasn't hit hard.
+But he squatted there blubbering as though he had suffered some
+horrible shock. Numbers two and three gaped as though equally shocked
+without ever having been hit at all.
+
+That was Kane's initial advantage. The Staff seemed incapable of
+understanding that anyone would do what Kane was doing. Kane hit number
+two four times before number two covered up his face with his hands and
+started to cry. Kane ran him into the closet and locked the door.
+
+Number three swung his briefcase at Kane's head, fluttering his other
+hand wildly. Kane was heavier than he should have been because he
+was accustomed to the Moon. But he was desperate and that was some
+compensation. He had some experience, a very little, as a boxer in
+college, but that had been years ago. But as little experience as he
+had at this sort of thing, he was way ahead of number three. Number
+three kept swinging his briefcase, and Kane hit him on the chin and
+then in the stomach and then on the back of the neck. Number three lay
+unconscious on the floor.
+
+Kane stared at his bleeding knuckles a moment, then dragged Number one
+up onto his feet.
+
+"You're going to help me," 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."
+
+"Where can we get a saucer?"
+
+"The roof."
+
+"Unlock the door," 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. The rotary blades in the ten foot platform whirred under
+them, and Kane felt the saucer rise up to a thousand feet, then dip
+downtown. The air was full of them and only some kind of sixth-sense
+seemed to keep them from jamming into one another.
+
+There was never less than two on a saucer. And Kane noticed that most
+of the saucers were flying in Groups like aimless geese.
+
+Kane jumped from the saucer and ran across the roof landing of the
+Sunny Hill project building. There were a number of them like huge
+blocks arranged in some incomprehensible plan.
+
+Kane glanced back to see number one leaping from the saucer and running
+in the opposite direction. Kane ran on toward the elevator. He knew he
+didn't have much time, but what bothered him was the authority he was
+running against. Public opinion was a general attitude, not a cop car,
+or a squad of officers with guns. Getting out of line, Kane figured,
+was usually its own punishment--isolation, loneliness, social ostracism.
+
+But what about the exception? The guy who fought conformity and the
+majority opinion.
+
+Who would they put on Kane? Or what? It would help to know what he was
+running from. What concrete force or power would try to stop him.
+
+Then he saw her running toward him.
+
+Her face was flushed and the wind blew her dress tightly against her
+slim body as she stopped and looked at him.
+
+He took hold of her arm.
+
+"We've got to hurry," she said. "The Group knows I've run away. The
+Staff will be after me."
+
+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."
+
+"They?"
+
+He stared at her. "You said yourself we had to hurry, because the
+Staff--"
+
+"But don't you see, there's no one to stop us now. The Staff at Sunny
+Hills could have, but here there isn't any Staff. There's none at the
+ship either, is there?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well then, we'll just wait on the ship until--we go to the Moon."
+
+"But you were afraid, Lucie. You talked about undergrounds, and how it
+was impossible--"
+
+She touched his arm and then took hold of his hand. "You don't
+understand I guess. Maybe you never will."
+
+"Understand what?"
+
+"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. There's no place to hide. Wherever you go the Group goes with
+you. That's why I said you couldn't get away--"
+
+"Then there isn't any law to prevent us from going to the Moon?"
+
+"Only the law of the majority, of Public Opinion," she said. "But you
+can't stay here and fight it, not for very long. Finally you have to
+give in to it. You become what they are or go mad. And there are Groups
+even for them."
+
+The saucer dropped down to the fog draped earth and they were walking
+toward the pits where the Moonship waited.
+
+It looked like such a wonderful world, he thought. Everyone happy,
+everyone smiling all the time. No wars. No externalized authority.
+
+The Manufacturers of consent. 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.
+
+The majority did not need to force a man now. No need for police, or
+armies.
+
+They _convinced_ him.
+
+The only way you could keep from being convinced was to get out.
+
+The hatch slid open.
+
+"Welcome aboard," the Captain said.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Happy Herd, by Bryce Walton
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 59588 ***