"We've got thousands of them," Hauck said. "A warehouse full. Nobody'll notice one missing."
At the dinner table, during the meal, the kids scrupulously studied every word of the instructions that accompanied the game. They were aware of nothing else.
"Don't read at the table," Mrs. Hauck said reprovingly.
Leaning back in his chair, Joe Hauck continued his account of the day. "And after all that time, what did they release? One lousy item. We'll be lucky if we can push enough to make a profit. It was that Shock Troop gimmick that would really have paid off. And that's tied up indefinitely."
He lit a cigarette and relaxed, feeling the peacefulness of his home, the presence of his wife and children.
His daughter said, "Dad, do you want to play? It says the more who play, the better."
"Sure," Joe Hauck said.
While his wife cleared the table, he and his children spread out the board, counters, dice and paper money and shares of stock. Almost at once he was deep in the game, totally involved; his childhood memories of game-playing swam back, and he acquired shares of stock with cunning and originality, until, toward the conclusion of the game, he had cornered most of the syndromes.
He settled back with a sigh of contentment. "That's that," he declared to his children. "Afraid I had a head start. After all, I'm not new to this type of game." Getting hold of the valuable holdings on the board filled him with a powerful sense of satisfaction. "Sorry to have to win, kids."
His daughter said, "You didn't win."
"You lost," his son said.
"What?" Joe Hauck exclaimed.
"The person who winds up with the most stock loses," Lora said.
She showed him the instructions. "See? The idea is to get rid of your stocks. Dad, you're out of the game."
"The heck with that," Hauck said, disappointed. "That's no kind of game." His satisfaction vanished. "That's no fun."
"Now we two have to play out the game," Bobby said, "to see who finally wins."
As he got up from the board, Joe Hauck grumbled, "I don't get it. What would anybody see in a game where the winner winds up with nothing at all?"
Behind him, his two children continued to play. As stock and money changed hands, the children became more and more animated. When the game entered its final stages, the children were in a state of ecstatic concentration.
"They don't know Monopoly," Hauck said to himself, "so this screwball game doesn't seem strange to them."
Anyhow, the important thing was that the kids enjoyed playing Syndrome; evidently it would sell, and that was what mattered. Already the two youngsters were learning the naturalness of surrendering their holdings. They gave up their stocks and money avidly, with a kind of trembling abandon.
Glancing up, her eyes bright, Lora said, "It's the best educational toy you ever brought home, Dad!"
If There Were No Benny Cemoli
Scampering across the unplowed field the three boys shouted as they saw the ship: it had landed, all right, just where they expected, and they were the first to reach it.
"Hey, that's the biggest I ever saw!" Panting, the first boy halted. "That's not from Mars; that's from farther. It's from all the way out, I know it is." He became silent and afraid as he saw the size of it. And then looking up into the sky he realized that an armada had arrived, exactly as everyone had expected. "We better go tell," he said to his companions.
Back on the ridge, John LeConte stood by his steam-powered chauffeur-driven limousine, impatiently waiting for the boiler to warm. Kids got there first, he said to himself with anger. Whereas I'm supposed to. And the children were ragged; they were merely farm boys.
"Is the phone working today?" LeConte asked his secretary.
Glancing at his clipboard, Mr. Fall said, "Yes, sir. Shall I put through a message to Oklahoma City?" He was the skinniest employee ever assigned to LeConte's office. The man evidently took nothing for himself, was positively uninterested in food. And he was efficient.
LeConte murmured, "The immigration people ought to hear about this outrage."
He sighed. It had all gone wrong. The armada from Proxima Centauri had after ten years arrived and none of the early-warning devices had detected it in advance of its landing. Now Oklahoma City would have to deal with the outsiders here on home ground – a psychological disadvantage which LeConte felt keenly.
Look at the equipment they've got, he thought as he watched the commercial ships of the flotilla begin to lower their cargos. Why, hell, they make us look like provincials. He wished that his official car did not need twenty minutes to warm up; he wished -
Actually, he wished that CURB did not exist.
Centaurus Urban Renewal Bureau, a do-gooding body unfortunately vested with enormous inter-system authority. It had been informed of the Misadventure back in 2170 and had started into space like a phototropic organism, sensitive to the mere physical light created by the hydrogen-bomb explosions. But LeConte knew better than that. Actually the governing organizations in the Centaurian system knew many details of the tragedy because they had been in radio contact with other planets of the Sol system. Little of the native forms on Earth had survived. He himself was from Mars; he had headed a relief mission seven years ago, had decided to stay because there were so many opportunities here on Earth, conditions being what they were…
This is all very difficult, he said to himself as he stood waiting for his steam-powered car to warm. We got here first, but CURB does outrank us; we must face that awkward fact. In my opinion, we've done a good job of rebuilding. Of course, it isn 't like it was before… but ten years is not long. Give us another twenty and we'll have the trains running again. And our recent road-building bonds sold quite successfully, in fact were oversubscribed.
"Call for you, sir, from Oklahoma City," Mr. Fall said, holding out the receiver of the portable field-phone.
"Ultimate Representative in the Field John LeConte, here," LeConte said into it loudly. "Go ahead; I say go ahead."
"This is Party Headquarters," the dry official voice at the other end came faintly, mixed with static, in his ear. "We've received reports from dozens of alert citizens in Western Oklahoma and Texas of an immense -"
"It's here," LeConte said. "I can see it. I'm just about ready to go out and confer with its ranking members, and I'll file a full report at the usual time. So it wasn't necessary for you to check up on me." He felt irritable.
"Is the armada heavily armed?"
"Naw," LeConte said. "It appears to be comprised of bureaucrats and trade officials and commercial carriers. In other words, vultures."
The Party desk-man said, "Well, go and make certain they understand that their presence here is resented by the native population as well as the Relief of War-torn Areas Administrating Council. Tell them that the legislature will be calling to pass a special bill expressing indignation at this intrusion into domestic matters by an inter-system body."
"I know, I know," LeConte said. "It's all been decided; I know."
His chauffeur called to him, "Sir, your car is ready now."
The Party desk-man concluded, "Make certain they understand that you can't negotiate with them; you have no power to admit them to Earth. Only the Council can do that and of course it's adamantly against that."
LeConte hung up the phone and hurried to his car.
Despite the opposition of the local authorities, Peter Hood of CURB decided to locate his headquarters in the ruins of the old Terran capital, New York City. This would lend prestige to the CURBmen as they gradually widened the circle of the organization's influence. At last, of course, the circle would embrace the planet. But that would take decades.