"Verrick quacked!" the machines cried, as they moved among the groups of people. "Prestonite bottled to One! A twitch of the bottle this morning at nine-thirty Batavia time! Verrrrrick totally quaaaaaackedl"
The random power-twitch had come, the event the harbingers had anticipated. Verrick had been twitched from the number One position; he was no longer Quizmaster. He had plunged to the bottom, out of the Directorate completely.
And Benteley had sworn an oath to him.
It was too late to turn back. He was on his way to the Farben Hill. All of them were caught up together in the rush of events that was shivering through the nine-planet system like a breathless winter storm.
TWO
EARLY in the morning Leon Cartwright drove carefully along the narrow, twisting streets in his ancient '82 Chevrolet, his competent hands firmly gripping the wheel, his eyes on the traffic ahead. As usual, he wore an outmoded but immaculate double-breasted suit. A shapeless hat was crushed against his head, and in his vest pocket a watch ticked to itself. Everything about him breathed obsolescence and age; he was perhaps sixty, a lean, sinewy-built man, very tall and straight, but small-boned, with mild blue eyes and liver-spotted wrists. His arms were thin, but strong and wiry. He had a quiet, almost gentle expression on his gaunt face. He drove as if not completely trusting either himself or the aged car.
In the back seat lay heaps and stacks of mailing-tapes ready to be sent out. The floor sagged under heavy bundles of metalfoil to be imprinted and franked. An old raincoat was wadded in the corner, together with a stale container of lunch and a number of discarded overshoes. Wedged under the seat was a loaded Hopper popper, stuck there years ago.
The buildings on both sides of Cartwright were old and faded, thin peeling things of dusty windows and drab neon signs. They were relics of the last century, like himself and his car. Drab men, in faded pants and workjackets, hands in their pockets, eyes blank and unfriendly, lounged in doorways and against walls. Dumpy middle-aged women in shapeless black coats dragged rickety shopping carts into dark stores, to pick fretfully over the limp merchandise, stale food to be lugged back to their stuffy urine-tinged apartments, to their restless families.
Mankind's lot, Cartwright observed, hadn't changed much, of late. The Classification system, the elaborate Quizzes, hadn't done most people any good. The unks, the unclassified, remained.
In the early twentieth century the problem of production had been solved; after that it was the problem of consumption that plagued society. In the 1950's and '60's, consumer commodities and farm products began to pile up in vast towering mountains all over the Western World. As much as possible was given away—but that threatened to subvert the open market. By 1980, the pro tem solution was to heap up the products and burn them: billions of dollars worth, week after week.
Each Saturday, townspeople had collected in sullen, resentful crowds to watch the troops squirt gasoline on the cars and toasters and clothes and oranges and coffee and cigarettes that nobody could buy, igniting them in a blinding conflagration. In each town there was a burning-place, fenced off, a kind of rubbish and ash heap, where the fine things that could not be purchased were systematically destroyed.
The Quizzes had helped, a trifle. If people couldn't afford to buy the expensive manufactured goods, they could still hope to win them. The economy was propped up for decades by elaborate give-away devices that dispensed tons of glittering merchandise. But for every man who won a car and a refrigerator and a tv set there were millions who didn't. Gradually, over the years, prizes in the Quizzes grew from material commodities to more realistic items: power and prestige. And at the top, the final exalted post: dispenser of power—Quizmaster, and that meant running the Quiz itself.
The disintegration of the social and economic system had been slow, gradual, and profound. It went so deep that people lost faith in natural law itself. Nothing seemed stable or fixed; the universe was a sliding flux. Nobody knew what came next. Nobody could count on anything. Statistical prediction became popular... the very concept of cause and effect died out. People lost faith in the belief that they could control their environment; all that remained was probable sequence: good odds in a universe of random chance.
The theory of Minimax—the M-Game—was a kind of Stoic withdrawal, a nonparticipation in the aimless swirl in which people struggled. The M-game player never really committed himself; he risked nothing, gained nothing... and wasn't overwhelmed. He sought to hoard his pot and Strove to outlast the other players. The M-Game player sat waiting for the game to end; that was the best that could be hoped for.
Minimax, the method of surviving the great game of life, was invented by two twentieth century mathematicians, von Neumann and Morgenstern. It had been used in the Second World War, in the Korean War, and in the Final War. Military strategists and then financiers had played with the theory. In the middle of the century, von Neumann was appointed to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission: recognition of the burgeoning significance of his theory. And in two centuries and a half, it became the basis of Government.
That was why Leon Cartwright, electronics repairman and human being with a conscience, had become a Prestonite.
Signalling, Cartwright pulled his ancient car to the curb. Ahead of him the Society building gleamed dirty white in the May sun, a narrow three-story structure of wood, its single sign jutting up above the laundry next door: PRESTON SOCIETY Main Offices at Rear.
This was the back entrance, the loading platform. Cartwright opened the back of the car and began dragging cartons of mailing literature onto the sidewalk. The people swarming by ignored him; a few yards up a fishmonger was unloading his truck in similar fashion. Across the street a looming hotel shielded a motley family of parasitic stores and dilapidated business establishments: loan shops, cigar stores, girl houses, bars.
Rolling a carton onto his knees, Cartwright trundled it down the narrow walk and into the gloomy storage room of the building. A single atronic bulb glowed feebly in the dank darkness; supplies were stacked on all sides, towering columns of crates and wire-bound boxes. He found an empty spot, set down his heavy load, and then passed through the hall and into the cramped little front office.
The office and its barren reception room were—as usual-empty. The front door of the building was standing wide open. Cartwright picked up a heap of mail; sitting down on the sagging couch, he spread the mail out on the table and began going through it. There was nothing of importance: bills for printing, freight, rent, overdue penalties for power and garbage collection, water and raw supplies.
Opening a letter, he removed a five dollar bill and a long note in a shaky, old-woman's handwriting. There were a few more microscopic contributions. Adding it up, he found that the Society had taken in thirty dollars.
"They're getting restless," Rita O'Neill said, appearing in the doorway behind him. "Maybe we should begin."
Cartwright sighed. The time had come. Pulling himself to his feet, he emptied an ashtray, straightened a pile of dog-eared copies of Preston's _Flame Disc_, and reluctantly followed the girl down the narrow hall. Below the fly-specked photograph of John Preston, just to the left of the row of scarf-hooks, he stepped forward and passed through the false slot into the vague interior passage that ran parallel to the ordinary corridor.
At sight of him, the roomful of people ceased talking abruptly. All eyes were turned; an eager hope mixed with fright shuddered around the room. Relieved, a few of the people edged toward him; the murmur boiled up again and became a babble. Now they were all trying to get his attention. A ring of excited, gesturing men and women, formed about him as he moved toward die center.