The Chief Engineer gave a quick smile of acknowledgment and thanks and aimed his flashlight at the group, the beam focused down to a slender, intense needle of light.
One of the technicians looked up, and Gaines snapped the light on and off in a repeated, irregular pattern. A figure detached itself from the group, and ran toward them.
It was a slender young man, dressed in dungarees and topped off with earpads and an incongruous, pillbox cap, bright with gold braid and Insignia. He recognized the Chief Engineer and saluted, his face falling into humorless, boyish intentness.
Gaines stuffed his torch into a pocket and commenced to gesticulate rapidly with both hands-clear, clean gestures, as involved and as meaningful as deaf-mute language. Blekinsop dug into his own dilettante knowledge of anthropology and decided that it was most like American Indian sign language, with some of the finger movements of hula. But it was necessarily almost entirely strange, being adapted for a particular terminology.
The cadet answered him in kind, stepped to the edge of the causeway, and flashed his torch to the south. He picked out a car, still some distance away, but approaching at headlong speed. It braked, and came to a stop alongside them.
It was a small affair, ovoid in shape, and poised on two centerline wheels. The forward, upper surface swung up and disclosed the driver, another cadet. Gaines addressed him briefly in sign language, then hustled Blekinsop ahead of him into the cramped passenger compartment.
As the glassite hood was being swung back into place, a blast of wind smote them, and the Australian looked up in time to glimpse the last of three much larger vehicles hurtle past them. They were headed north, at a speed of not less than two hundred miles per hour. Blekinsop thought that he had made out the little hats of cadets through the windows of the last of the three, but he could not be sure.
He had no time to wonder - so violent was the driver's getaway. Gaines ignored the accelerating surge; he was already calling Davidson on the built-in communicator. Comparative silence had settled down once the car was closed. The face of a female operator at the relay station showed on the screen.
"Get me Davidson-Senior Watch Office!"
"Oh! It's Mr. Gaines! The Mayor wants to talk to you, Mr. Gaines."
"Refer him-and get me Davidson. Move!"
"Yes, sir!"
"And see here-leave this circuit hooked in to Davidson's board until I tell you personally to cut it."
"Right." Her face gave way to the Watch Officer's.
"That you, Chief? We're moving-progress O.K.-no change."
"Very well You'll be able to raise me on this circuit, or at Subsector Ten office. Clearing now." Davidson's face gave way to the relay operator.
"Your wife is calling, Mr. Gaines. Will you take it?"
Gaines muttered something not quite gallant, and answered, "Yes."
Mrs. Gaines flashed into facsimile. He burst into speech before she could open her mouth. "Darling I'm all right don't worry I'll be home when I get there I've go to go now." It was all out in one breath, and he slapped the control that cleared the screen.
They slammed to a breath-taking stop alongside the stair leading to the watch office of Subsector Ten, and piled out. Three big lorries were drawn up on the ramp, and three platoons of cadets were ranged in restless ranks alongside them.
A cadet trotted up to Gaines, and saluted. "Lindsay, sir-Cadet Engineer of the Watch. The Engineer of the Watch requests that you come at once to the control room."
The Engineer of the Watch looked up as they came in. "Chief-Van Kleeck is calling you."
"Put him on."
When Van Kleeck appeared in the big visor, Gaines greeted him with, "Hello, Van. Where are you?"
"Sacramento Office. Now, listen-"
"Sacramento? That's good! Report."
Van Kleeck looked disgruntled. "Report, hell! I'm not your deputy any more, Gaines. Now, you-"
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Listen, and don't interrupt me, and you'll find out. You're through, Gaines. I've been picked as Director of the Provisional Central Committee for the New Order."
"Van, have you gone off your rocker? What do you mean-the New Order?"
"You'll find out. This is it-the functionalist revolution. We're in; you're out. We stopped strip twenty just to give you a little taste of what we can do."
Concerning Function: A Treatise on the Natural Order in Society, the bible of the functionalist movement, was first published in 1930. It claimed to be a scientifically accurate theory of social relations. The author, Paul Decker, disclaimed the "outworn and futile" ideas of democracy and human equality, and substituted a system in which human beings were evaluated "functionally" - that is to say, by the role each filled in the economic sequence. The underlying thesis was that it was right and proper for a man to exercise over his fellows whatever power was inherent in his function, and that any other form of social organization was silly, visionary, and contrary to the "natural order."
The complete interdependence of modern economic life seems to have escaped him entirely.
His ideas were dressed up with a glib mechanistic psendopsychology based on the observed orders of precedence among barnyard fowls, and on the famous Pavlov conditioned-reflex experiments on dogs. He failed to note that human beings are neither dogs, nor chickens. Old Doctor Pavlov ignored him entirely, as he had ignored so many others who had, blindly and unscientifically dogmatized about the meaning of his important, but strictly limited, experiments.
Functionalism did not take hold at once-during the thirties almost everyone, from truckdriver to hatcheck girl, had a scheme for setting the world right in six easy lessons; and a surprising percentage managed to get their schemes published. But it gradually spread. Functionalism was particularly popular among little people everywhere who could persuade themselves that their particular jobs were the indispensable ones, and that, therefore, under the "natural order" they would be top dog. With so many different functions actually indispensable such self-persuasion was easy.
Gaines stared at Van Kleeck for a moment before replying. "Van," he said slowly, "you don't really think you can get away with this, do you?"
The little man puffed out his chest. "Why not? We have gotten away with it. You can't start strip twenty until I am ready to let you, and I can stop the whole road, if necessary."
Gaines was becoming uncomfortably aware that he was dealing with unreasonable conceit, and held himself patiently in check. "Sure you can, Van-but how about the rest of the country? Do you think the United States Army will sit quietly by and let you run California as your private kingdom?"
Van Kleeck looked sly. "I've planned for that. I've just finished broadcasting a manifesto to all the road technicians in the country, telling them what we have done, and telling them to arise, and claim their rights. With every road in the country stopped, and people getting hungry, I reckon the President will think twice before sending the army to tangle with us. Oh, he could send a force to capture, or kill me - I'm not afraid to die! - but he doesn't dare start shooting down road technicians as a class, because the country can't get along without us - consequently, he'll have to get along with us - on our terms!"
There was much bitter truth in what he said. If an uprising of the road technicians became general, the government could no more attempt to settle it by force than a man could afford to cure a headache by blowing out his brains. But was the uprising general?
"Why do you think that the technicians in the rest of the country will follow your lead?"