go back to taking them! But I can't keep this up! I just
can't!"
"Clara, darling, I don't know what to say or do. I think
we ought to call the Medicorps."
Intensely frightened, she rose and clung to him, begging,
"Oh, no, Conrad, that isn't necessary! It isn't necessary at
all. I've only neglected to take my sleeping compound and it
won't happen again. All I need is a sleeping compound.
Please get my pharmacase for me and it will be all right."
She was so desperate to convince him that Conrad got the
pharmacase and a glass of water for her only to appease the
white face of fright.
Within a few minutes of taking the sleeping compound, she
was calm. As he put her back to bed, she laughed with a
lazy indolence.
"Oh, Conrad, you take it so seriously. I only needed a
sleeping compound very badly and now I feel fine. I'll sleep
all day. It's a rest day, isn't it? Now go race a rocket and
stop worrying and thinking about calling the medicops."
But Conrad did not go rocket racing as he had planned.
Clara had been asleep only a few minutes when there was
a call on the visiophone; they wanted him at the office. The
city of Santa Fe would be completely out of balance within
twelve shifts if revised plans were not put into operation im-
mediately. They were to start during the next five days while
he would be out of shift. In order to carry on the first day
of their next shift, he and the other three traffic managers
he worked with would have to come down today and famil-
iarize themselves with the new operations.
There was no getting out of it. His rest day was spoiled.
Conrad resented it all the more because Santa Fe was clear
out on the edge of their traffic district and could have been
revised out of the Mexican offices just as well. But those
boys down there rested all five days of their shift.
Conrad looked in on Clara before he left and found her
asleep in the total suspension of proper drug level. The
unpleasant memory of her behaviour made him squirm, but
now that the episode was over, it no longer worried him.
It was typical of him that, things having been set straight
in the proper manner, he did not think of her again until
late in the afternoon.
As early as 1950, the pioneer communications engineer
Norbert Wiener had pointed out that there might be a close
parallel between disassociation of personalities and the dis-
ruption of a communication system. Wiener referred back
specifically to the first clear description, by Morton Prince,
of multiple personalities existing together in the same human
body. Prince had described only individual cases and his ob-
servations were not altogether acceptable in Wiener's time.
Nevertheless, in the schizophrenic society of the 29th Cen-
tury, a major managerial problem was that of balancing the
communicating and non-communicating populations in a
city.
As far as Conrad and the other traffic men present at the
conference were concerned, Santa Fe was a resort and retire-
ment area of 100,000 human bodies, alive and consuming
more than they produced every day of the year. Whatever
the representatives of the Medicorps and Communications
Board worked out, it would mean only slight changes in the
types of foodstuffs, entertainment and so forth moving into
Santa Fe, and Conrad could have grasped the entire traffic
change in ten minutes after the real problem had been set-
tled. But, as usual, he and the other traffic men had to sit
through two hours while small wheels from the Medicorps
and Communications acted big about rebalancing a city.
For them, Conrad had to admit, Santa Fe was a great deal
more complex than 100,000 consuming, moderately produc-
ing human bodies. It was 200,000 human personalities, two
to each body. Conrad wondered sometimes what they would
have done if the three and four personality cases so common
back in the 20th and 21st Centuries had been allowed to
reproduce. The 200,000 personalities in Santa Fe were diffi-
cult enough.
Like all cities, Santa Fe operated in five shifts. A, B, C,
D, and E.
Just as it was supposed to be for Conrad in his city, today
was rest day for the 20,000 hypoalters on D-shift in Santa
Fe. Tonight at around 6.00 P.M. they would all go to shifting
rooms and be replaced by their hyperalters, who had differ-
ent tastes in food and pleasure and took different drugs.
Tomorrow would be rest day for the hypoalters on E-shift
and in the evening they would turn things over to their hyper-
alters.
The next day it would be rest for the A-shift hyperalters
and three days after that the D-shift hyperalters, including
Bill Walden, would rest till evening, when Conrad and the D-
shift hypoalters everywhere would again have their five-day
use of their bodies.
Right now the trouble with Santa Fe's retired population,
which worked only for its own maintenance, was that too
many elderly people on the D-shift and E-shift had been
dying off. This point was brought out by a dapper young
department head from Communications.
Conrad groaned when, as he knew would happen, a Medi-
corps officer promptly set out on an exhaustive demonstra-
tion that Medicorps predictions of deaths for Santa Fe had
indicated clearly that Communications should have been
moving people from D-shift and E-shift into the area.
Actually, it appeared that someone from Communications
had blundered and had overloaded the quota of people on
A-shift and B-shift moving to Santa Fe. Thus on one rest day
there weren't enough people working to keep things going,
and later in the week there were so many available workers
that they were clogging the city.
None of this was heated exchange or in any way emotional.
It was just interminably, exhaustively logical and boring. Con-
rad fidgeted through two hours of it, seeing his chance for a
rocket race dissolving. When at last the problem of balanced
shift-populations for Santa Fe was worked out, it took him and
the other traffic men only a few minutes to apply their
tables and reschedule traffic to co-ordinate with the popula-
tion changes.
Disgusted, Conrad walked over to the Tennis Club and had
lunch.
There were still two hours of his rest day left when
Conrad Manz realized that Bill Walden was again forcing an
early shift. Conrad was in the middle of a volley-tennis game
and he didn't like having the shift forced so soon. People
generally shifted at their appointed regular hour every five
days, and a hyperalter was not supposed to use his power to
force shift. It was such an unthinkable thing nowadays that
there was occasional talk of abolishing the terms hyperalter
and hypoalter because they were somewhat disparaging to
the hypoalter, and really designated only the antisocial power
of the hyperalter to force the shift.
Bill Walden had been cheating two to four hours on Con-
rad every shift for several periods back. Conrad could have
reported it to the Medicorps, but be himself <vas guilty of a
constant misdemeanour about which Bill had not yet com-
plained. Unlike the sedentary Walden, Conrad Manz enjoyed
exercise. He overindulged in violent sports and put off sleep,
letting Bill Walden make up the fatigue on his shift. That
was undoubtedly why the poor old sucker had started cheat-
ing a few hours on Conrad's rest day.
Conrad laughed to himself, remembering the time Bill Wal-
den had registered a long list of sports which he wished Con-