They walked across the platform, her practiced eye noting with satisfaction its state of decay and disrepair. Her reaction was the same to the ill-lit, trash-strewn terminal. Outside its doors, the main street of Centerville gave similar evidence of neglect and lack of upkeep. Pot holes in the street, vandalized signs, garbage festering in alleys and clogging sewer drains all offered proof that, in the ten years since the elimination of state and local taxes, what some intellectuals attempted to glorify as “the public sphere” had, in accordance with John Glatt’s Fifteen Year Plan, been allowed to rot into a nutrient-rich mulch to be used to fertilize the private sector. Private property, embodiments of the highest achievement of civilization, flourished: store fronts, office buildings, and private residences all looked new, and all displayed the logo of a corporation called Centervillecorp.
“You… you’re Dragnie Tagbord, aren’t you?”
The question, which carried with it an undertone of surprised pleasure, had come from a bum loitering nearby. His greasy coat was shabby and threadbare; he had not shaved in weeks. The weathered, soiled state of his face made his age unreadable. He could have been twenty-five or three times that. Banden gently grasped Dragnie’s arm as though to guide her away from what he perceived as possible danger, but she met the bum’s gaze and said, “Yes.”
“Well, ma’am, I just want to thank you.”
Dragnie chuckled with a chuckle. “Thank me? For what?”
The bum gestured broadly, indicating the entire main street. “For this. I was against it, at first. You see, Miss Tagbord, I used to be a professor of political science. Oh, my name is of no importance. What matters is that I used to feel that society had an obligation to attend to the public, social aspect of man’s nature. I used to think that that’s what society was, a way to reconcile private desires and needs with public needs and amenities. And so when John Glatt and his colleagues took over the country ten years ago, I feared the worst. I thought their radical form of individualism would do nothing more than serve a narrow constituency of private interests at the expense of the vast majority of the American people, that a philosophy lionizing ‘producers’ was merely a self-serving bit of cant to advance the interests of the wealthy. But over ten years of such policies I’ve realized my error. As every public institution, from the Federal government down to the local street-cleaning crew, was denied funding or eliminated altogether, I realized how fragile and weak a creature government is. Government can be hobbled or eviscerated by the actions of any ignorant mob. All that’s required is for the stupid, the frightened, the resentful, the credulous, and the desperate to vote in candidates whose interest in working in government consists in wanting to cripple it. Government is therefore like a servant, who must do what his master tells him, and if his master is a fool, so much the worse for him. Whereas corporations are like heroes! Or, really, super-heroes, such as those adolescents read about in lurid comic book periodicals. The powers and resources of super-heroes dwarf those of mere men. Why, then, would a society wish to be ruled by individuals elected by idiots, when it could be guided by experts and demi-gods? Granted, we have filthy streets. The state university I worked for has gone out of business. Our local privatized fire department has just raised its rates again. A flu shot costs an average week’s wages. Criminal gangs of disaffected youth, led by unscrupulous professional crime lords, rule the night. But in exchange for that, we have our individual freedoms guarded by a Superman, who grows more powerful and invincible each day. As you can see, Centervillecorp has taken over every business in town, including nail salons and the ice cream shop. Imagine its power, its scale, its scope! And now, with the new anti-anti-trust laws being promulgated by your husband, it will be capable of even more! Business will at long last be free of the lingering restrictions and inhibitions still left over from the old we-know-best, eat-your-peas, play-fair-or-go-to-your-room nanny state. Successful companies will at last be free to acquire less successful companies, with the large subsuming the small until each industry will be free to be dominated by one or two hyper-efficient behemoths. The resulting layoffs will not only tarnish the image of the U.S. in the eyes of the rest of the world, but will also free millions of American citizens, who were previously employed by pre-existing companies, to start their own corporations—to compete with the giants, to be swallowed up by them, and so make them even mightier and more magnificent. So thanks, Miss Tagbord, both to you and to your visionary, heroic husband.”
“We’re not married.”
“Boyfriend, then.”
“You’re welcome,” Dragnie said.
“One question, fellow,” Banden said. “What do you live on?”
The bum shrugged. “Bottle deposits, petty crime, and restaurant refuse.”
“That’s terrible!” Banden cried.
“I get by,” the bum said.
Later, lying together in Dragnie’s executive car on a full-sized bed made expressly for rail travel by a top bed maker, Banden grew reflective. “When I said ‘that’s terrible’ to that man, I was serious.”
“I know it,” Dragnie replied.
“How, in this day and age, can there still be such a thing as bottle deposits?”
Dragnie smiled in amused amusement. She turned toward him, the dim light playing fleetingly over his strong, youthful body and her admittedly twenty-five-years older but no less toned, attractive torso. “We’re working on it,” she murmured, and reached for him, and he reached for her, and after several forays into the realm of highest desire, in which her body was able to communicate to her her own deepest values even while his exertions vouchsafed promises of physical consciousness that were not kept, they voluntarily submitted themselves to a self-extinguishing of consciousness and the thorough obliteration of their awareness and love of existence, and slept.
The appearances in Chicago went well, as Dragnie gathered data on the public’s widespread endorsement of the Strike. The next morning the Tagbord Special set off north, to Milwaukee, and from there northwest, toward Minneapolis. En route, gazing from the clear bubble dome of the observation car, Dragnie and Banden beheld a tableau of American freedom, as motorists stranded for lack of money for gas, and farmers on stubble-strewn fields following behind plows drawn by patient, aged horses, and shopkeepers undisturbed by deliveries of goods or by customers to demand them, all glanced up as the train hurtled by, and raised their hands in triumphant celebration of their shared national resolve. This, Dragnie thought, is proof of what men are capable of.
It took three days, traveling northwest, to reach Spokane, Washington. En route the Special made sporadic stops in small villages and hamlets, where occasionally a welcoming committee met it at the station, and men in their one decent suit offered handfuls of cash if only they could board the silver train and ride it to any destination that wasn’t the present town, and shy little girls in party dresses were pushed forward by their noble, clear-eyed mothers to hand to Dragnie a plate of cookies or a jar of lemonade, along with a note asking for one thing or another—a job; money; or simply that Dragnie adopt the child and raise her as her own daughter. In each instance the gift was received gratefully and its receipt logged by Nathan A. Banden, except for the offered children, which were politely declined. When Banden asked the assembled well-wishers how they felt about the Strike, no one, other than rotters or bums, replied with anything but praise. “Well, sir, I don’t rightly know much about inter-whatchamacallit politics,” mused a former grain dealer, squinting into the distance and divulging meaning from his consciousness. “But the way I figure it, anything that gets the rest of the world to buy our yams, that’s what I’m for.”