“Imagine that! Did you hear that?” People gathered round them and cheered. The good-natured jostling continued until someone said: “Five minutes to go!”
Wendell checked his watch. Somewhere in the pile at least one element was coming to life, a metal arm reaching out for brother metal to engulf in its cybernetic sweep.
“They’re coming!” A line of six shiny new slaggers came rumbling into the open with military precision. They moved along slowly, prolonging the pleasures of anticipation, then broke rank, each seeking its assigned point around the pile of appliances gathered for destruction.
“The latest improved models,” said the loudspeakers. “They will first perform fifteen minutes of automatic maneuvers.” The military music resumed and each slagger turned, as if circling a coin, in clanking rhythm to it.
“The three hundred and sixty degree turn. Next, making a box on the Plaza floor….”
The voice stopped, appalled.
An avalanche of metal slid down one side of the pile and the crowd gasped. The downward movement viscously slowed; then the metal, suddenly alive with the capacity to defy gravity, circled upward. Jagged limbs started flailing about.
“Disintegrator attack!” screamed the loudspeakers. “Attack!”
The maneuvers stopped. For one brief moment prior to changeover the Plaza was dead still, except for the deafening rumble in the pile. The slaggers broke the spell, rushing full speed toward the pile, evaporator beams working.
One by one they faltered and were sucked into the destructive pyre.
The crowd fell further back. The whole pile came alive like a mineral octopus. Then the squirming thing collapsed, every makeshift circuit irreparably broken and dead. Everything had been happening too fast for any pronounced reaction to accompany it; but now the world went crazy.
“Stand firm!” pleaded the loudspeakers. “We will get reinforcements as soon as celebrations are finished elsewhere.”
A barrage of enormous boos came from the disintegrating mob. “Never again! Fakes! It’s finished, done for!”
“Stand firm!”
But the breakup down side avenues continued. “I don’t understand,” Marie shuddered. “Everything’s crazy. We’ve been deceived, Wendell. Who’s been deceiving us?”
“Nobody—unless it’s ourselves.”
“I don’t understand that either.” Saucer-eyed she watched a great clump of disgruntled people push past. “I have to think!”
Suddenly, as they came around a corner, they were facing Burnett.
Hart tried to disregard him but the group leader would have none of that. He rushed up to Hart. “Good to see a friendly face. Shocking developments!” His face was grim, but tiny wrinkles at the corners of his eyes betrayed an amusement that could only be discovered by those who looked for it.
“Mr. Burnett,” he explained to Marie. “A librarian at the main building. Mr. Burnett, my wife Marie.”
“I am most happy to meet you, Mrs. Hart. Have you heard the latest?”
“No, Mr. Burnett.”
“The same things have been happening everywhere! They announced it on the radio and they’re saying it’s due to anti-social elements. Shocking!”
She shook her head stubbornly. “I don’t know what to think. Maybe we shouldn’t be shocked, maybe we should be. I just don’t know, Mr. Burnett. I came to enjoy myself and look how it’s ended.” She bravely held back a sob, “Maybe we’d have been better off if we’ve never heard about High Holy Days!”
Burnett looked about with feigned apprehension. “You have to be careful what you say. The government says there’s even talk—subversive handbills—about trying to rehabilitate some of the stuff in the piles.”
“The government ought to keep quiet!” she exploded. “They said this couldn’t happen. You can’t believe anything they say any more. The people decide and the government will have to listen, that’s what I say! And I’m a pretty typical person, not one of your intellectual kind. No criticism of present company intended.”
“None taken, Mrs. Hart. Our human future,” said Burnett, exchanging a grin with his aide, “remains, as it always has really been. Interesting—to say the least!”
HIGH DRAGON BUMP
by Don Thompson
A young and very beautiful girl with golden blond hair and smooth skin the color of creamed sweet potatoes floated in the middle of the windowless metal room into which Wayne Brighton drifted. The girl was not exactly naked, but her few filmy clothes concealed nothing.
Wayne cleared his throat, his apprehension changing rapidly to confusion.
“You are going to reduce me?” he asked.
“The word is seduce, mister,” the girl said. “They told me reduce, too, but they don’t talk real good, and I think I’m supposed to seduce you so you’ll tell ’em something, and then they’ll let me go. I guess. I hope. What is it they wantcha to tell ’em?”
Wayne cleared his throat again, striving merely to keep a firm grip on his sanity. Things had been happening much too fast for him to have retained anything like his customary composure.
He said, “Well, they want me to get them a, uh—well, a high dragon bump.” He pronounced the words carefully.
“So why dontcha?” the girl asked.
Wayne’s voice rose. “I don’t even know what it is. I told them and they don’t believe me. Now you’re here! I suppose if I can’t be reduced—seduced—into getting them one, it will wind up with torch hair. Believe me, I never heard of a high dragon bump.”
“Now, don’t get panicky!” the girl pleaded. “After all, I’m scared too.”
“I am not scared!” Wayne replied indignantly. But he realized that he was.
So far, in the hour or so he’d been a captive of the Cirissins, he’d managed to keep his fright pretty well subdued. He’d understood almost at once what had happened, and his first reaction had not been terror or even any great degree of surprise.
He was a scientist and he had a scientist’s curiosity.
And at first the Cirissins—or the one that had done all the talking—had been cooperative in answering his questions. But then, when he wasn’t able to comprehend what they meant by high dragon bump, they’d started getting impatient.
“What’s your name?” he asked the girl. She was making gentle swimming motions with her hands and feet, moving gradually closer to him.
“Sheilah,” she said. “Sheilah Ralue. I’m a model. I pose for pitchers. You know—for sexy magazines and calendars and stuff like that.”
“I see. You were posing when—?”
“When they snatched me, yeah. Couple hours ago, I guess. The flash bulb went off and blinded me for a second like it always does, and I seemed to be falling. Then I was here. Only I still don’t even know where here is. Do you? How come we don’t weigh nothing? It’s ghastly!”
“We’re in a space ship,” Wayne told her. “In free fall, circling earth a thousand miles or so out. I thought you at least knew we were in a space ship.”
The girl said, “Oh, bull. We can’t be in no space ship. How’d we get here so fast?”
“They have a matter transmitter, but I haven’t the slightest idea of how it works. Obviously it’s limited to
