All were handmaidens to the Stackman Selector.
Not to mention Com-Burs, the committee made up of the chiefs of the twenty-five top bureaus. Com-Burs framed the questions. Bu-Q passed on the questions. BIG RUBBER STAMP. Bu-Opp filed away the answers which were then laws.
May the Majority rule.
Always spell Majority with a capital M.
Strange how the top jobs became family property. Helmut Glass was the fourth of his family to be The Coor. Occasionally he stepped down for another bureau chief, allowed the man to serve a year. Even The Coor has to have a vacation.
At the Bureau of Communication, in a small room just under the transmission tower, a man would punch out the code numbers and question.
“Code 449:
“Is compulsory teaching of any subject an invasion of privacy?”
A straightforward question. Speaks right out like a man. But look at those pushbuttons: “compulsory” and “invasion of privacy.”
“No man’s going to tell me to do something I don’t want to do!”
Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick into the Computer Section of Bu-Opp. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, no (kick out his number for investigation; lotta Seps around Paris), yes, yes, yes, undecided, yes, yes…
File it away in the master retainers. It’s a law now. Opinion RE40407770877TX: No education subject may be compulsory.
Compulsory teaching of Semantics? Low-opp!
“Well then we’ll just offer the classes for whoever wants them.”
Semantics teaches that words can dispose a man to think in a certain manner, that they can compel his thinking. Low-opped.
“We’ll set up a counseling service: How to Keep People From Influencing You.”
This is Semantics under another name. Negative compulsion. Low-opped.
Sixty-one thousand new recruits for the penalty services. A few escaped by public denunciation of their teachings. Quilliam London was one of these. When the carefully prepared riots came, his wife and older daughter did not escape.
Side effects crept into the system—forced conformity. If the Majority rules, there must be standardization. Standard clothing, standard buttons, standard decorations, standard cosmetics, standard housing, standard entertainment, standard foods.
Portland, Maine, to Peshwar. STANDARD.
And there were some slip-ups. The year the Bureau of Research tried to get a grant for the development of space flight they ran into a Coor who was a religious fanatic. A great uncle of Helmut Glass.
“If the Lord wanted us gallivanting all over the universe, he’d have given us wings. We’ll put it to the question.”
And there was a big row, but the question had spoken of bringing back strange diseases, of calling down the wrath of God.
There it was in the Bu-Opp files. Opinion CG819038331BX: It is forbidden that man may plan, devise or manufacture any machine intended for transporting humans to any other heavenly body.
“See the mail rocket, Junior. With about thirty days of work it could take ten men to the moon and back.”
“Why don’t they do it then?”
“Low-opped.”
“Oh.”
Standard gravitational attraction of the planet Earth.
Only the people were not standard. In their standard beds they continued to produce humans of odd shapes and sizes and colors. The last stronghold of non-conformity: the standard bed.
Perhaps there was another holdout, too. The language.
High-Opp and Low-Opp were part of the lexicon and all of the derivations thereof. The terms were not always complimentary. A High-Opp could be a person who held a position he didn’t deserve. To High-Opp a person could mean to take advantage of him. A Low-Opp was a person of little worth. To Low-Opp a man could mean to do a man an evil turn or to reduce him in rank. And always in this definition was the implication that the low-opp was by foul means.
Then there were the statuettes. They seemed to appear out of nowhere. Obscene statuettes labeled High-Opp and Low-Opp. Bu-Con was always making raids, uncovering stores of them, sending someone off to the ALP. Still the evil little plastic objects kept appearing.
“Where do they get the materials? Why do they do these things? The State takes care of their needs. (The barren demands of survival.) They have everything they could possibly want. (Their dreams, their Festivals, their two percentum beer, their standard beds. Not to forget the plastic with which to make obscene statuettes.) It’s just perversity!”
Let them eat cake!
But she got her head chopped off.
“What do they want now?”
Let them read the ancient books.
“Don’t be a fool!”
The scramble in the middle ranks was for privileges, for extra personal possessions, symbols of power. An extra rung on the ladder and what went with it.
Meet Daniel Movius, scrambler. Listen to him.
Low-opped.
Low-opped.
Low-Opped!
Movius pounded his pillow. It was the sense of drabness, eternal drabness. Already he wished for something different. Anything at all, as long as it was different. This was the attraction of the secret Thrill Parlours, the scattered, clandestine schools of the outlawed Separatist Party and their philosophy of Individualism.
Each Man A Separate Individual.
EMASI!
“Individualism in a standardized world? Impossible!”
But the initials blossomed on sidewalks, on walls. EMASI! Scrawled inside a stylized side view of a skunk with its tail raised. Stamped in the middle of a sheet of paper which a Com-Burs secretary picked from the fresh stack in the box. Carved on the underside of a toilet seat. And once, just once, painted with an evil-smelling, sticky, tarry substance on The Coor’s bedroom walls.
They were still investigating that one.
There were times when the world seemed full of Seps.
Movius wondered if Navvy was a Sep. He turned on his back, stared up at the ceiling. So close. The walls. So close. A cell after his Upper Rank apartment. A brown-walled cell. A Warren.
Was Navvy a Sep? It would make sense. It wasn’t difficult to imagine Navvy scrawling EMASI! Somewhere, on a wall. On the seat of the Liaitor’s new suit.
Movius sat bolt upright. Great Roper! Could that have been Navvy? Slowly, thoughtfully, he eased himself back to the pillow.
The afternoon wore on, a grey progression of bitter thoughts and unanswered questions. Who did this to me? Glass?
He became aware of a new sensation, one he had to think far back in memory to recall. Hunger. He glanced at his wristwatch. Six. Serving time. The bed creaked as he stood up. He felt stiff, as though he’d spent a full hour on the wrestling mat with Okashi.
The Warren dining room was a place of droning conversation, clattering crockery, steaming odors of pallid foods. His tray was shoved back to him with the Standard Thursday Evening Meal. Movius carried the food to an isolated table in the corner. Fried mush, mashed potatoes with synthetic gravy containing vegetable minerals and vitamins. Something that passed for coffee and in a cracked cup. A bowl of pale green jelly substance for dessert.
Movius was aware of the eyes following him, of the unasked questions. The little silences. He picked up his fork. The first bite brought back another memory of his father, the bitter father. “Swill! Make a man’s world flat and insipid enough and he won’t care if you send him to an early grave!”