Daddy realized that under these conditions the Dingoes might accept a “religion” of demonology and sympathetic magic. When the gods are malign, men turn to jujus and totems.
But wax dolls and devil masks would no longer do, for the first law of sympathetic magic is that “Like produces like.” The Masters were electromagnetic phenomena: then what better talisman than a dry cell? In any elementary physics text, there was a wealth of arcane lore, hieratic symbols, and even battle cries. Children were taught Kirchoff’s laws in their cradles, and revolutionaries wore cork helmets to ward off the Masters—since cork was a good insulator. It was nonsense, but it was effective nonsense. The Revolutionary Inductance Corps won an overwhelming majority in the council of the Dingoes on the slogan: ELECT RIC. Daddy became Diode in the revolutionary government, next in authority to the High Cathode himself. Everyone was ready to begin the revolution, and no one had the least idea how to go about it.
Which goes to show that it’s good to be prepared, because that was when the providential sunspot short-circuited the Masters. The leaders of the Dingoes had managed to take credit for their own good luck, but now a month had passed since S-Day, and gradually the Masters were reasserting their old claims to dominion. Electric light and power were back on (though the Dingoes refused to use them); the kennels were back in place beneath their force-field domes; the captured pets were being systematically repossessed, the most imposing demonstration of this having been the massive escape from Needlepoint Hill. In a very short time the Mastery would be established stronger than ever, unless the Dingoes found a way to stop them.
Cork helmets may be good for morale, but in a real contest I’d as soon defend myself with a popgun. If the Dingoes had made any serious plans, Daddy wasn’t telling me about them.
Daddy, Julie, and I had been waiting in the lobby of the St Paul Hotel for fifteen minutes, and in all that time we hadn’t seen one room clerk or bellboy. There weren’t even any guests, for Earth had become so depopulated during the Mastery that a roof and a bed were always easy to come by. What you couldn’t find anywhere was labor. Even the best hotels and restaurants were self-service.
Finally Bruno and Rocky (for this had come to seem a better name for her than Roxanna) finished dressing and came down to the lobby. Bruno was wearing an unpressed cotton suit and a bowling shirt open at the neck, so that a little bit of the bandage about his chest peeped out. Rocky was dressed to kill; Darling, Julie looked as staid as a nun by comparison. But when you’re only twenty years old you don’t have to try as hard as when you’re thirty-eight.
We exchanged pleasantries, decided on a restaurant, and went out to Daddy’s car—and thus began the ghastliest evening of my life.
Bruno was returning to his post in Duluth the next day, and we’d been unable to put him off any longer. For weeks he’d been insisting that the five of us—the two Schwarzkopfs and the three Whites—“make a night of it”. I felt guilty toward Bruno, and at that time I hadn’t yet learned to live with a guilty conscience. I gave in.
I should have been suspicious of overtures of friendship from a man I’d nearly murdered, or I might have simply supposed that, like most Dingoes, Bruno was chiefly interested in making my father’s acquaintance. However, his first overture had come before he knew my father was Tennyson White, and so it was hard to doubt his sincerity. I decided that he was only mad.
If I felt guilty and awkward toward Bruno, I can’t imagine how Rocky felt toward me. When she revealed my identity to the Dingoes, she couldn’t have known that my father was the second-in-command of their forces—not, as she had supposed, their arch-enemy. Only initiated members of the RIC knew who their leaders were, and his novel, The Life of Man, which had won her over to the Dingo viewpoint (to the degree that Bruno hadn’t accomplished this purpose), had been published pseudonymously. She had intended to see me executed; instead she had saved my life. Now we were sitting next to each other in the back seat of Daddy’s limousine, talking about old times. When we got out, she managed to bring her spiked heel down on my instep with lethal accuracy, and once, in the middle of dinner, smiling brightly and chattering all the while, she kicked me square in the shin, underneath the tablecloth.
The meal wouldn’t have gone beyond the main course if it hadn’t been that almost all of Rocky’s remarks went over Bruno’s head. He was dauntlessly ebullient, and when he started to talk, he could go on indefinitely. To shut off Rocky (who couldn’t hear enough about our wedding; she was so glad that dear little Petite wasn’t a bastard any more), I questioned Bruno about his childhood, which had been spectacularly awful—or so it seemed to me. For the majority of Dingoes, life is one long battle: against the world, against their families, against their teachers, and against the decay of their own minds and bodies. No wonder Bruno was the aggressive lout that he was. But knowing this didn’t make me like him any better.
When the dinner was done and I thought we might make our escape, Bruno brought out an envelope from his coat-pocket and announced, as though he really expected us to be pleased, that he had five tickets for the fight.
“What fight?” I asked.
“The boxing match at the armory. Kelly Broughan’s there tonight, so it should be worth seeing. I bet you don’t see many good fights out there in the asteroids, do you?”
“No,” I said in defeated tones. “None at all.”
“There are some beautiful gymnastic competitions though,” Julie put in. “And fencing, though no one is ever hurt.”
Bruno’s laugh was the bellow of a wounded bull. Gymnastics was a good joke; beautiful was even better. “You’re a card, Julie. Dennis, that girl’s a card.”
Rocky’s eyes gleamed wickedly, intent upon prey. “Dennis, you really must come, seeing that you’re such a little scrapper yourself. And you too, Mr White. You look worn out. A man in your position needs diversions now and then.”
“What the hell,” Daddy said, “let’s all go! And afterwards we’ll watch the fireworks.”
“Oh, I love fireworks,” Julie said with forced cheer.
We got up from the table with one accord. Bruno and Rocky were as happy as two children. Julie and I were glum. But Daddy…
Daddy was in so profound an abyss of depression and defeat that he was quite literally unaware of most of what was going on around him. He knew, as we did not, that the Masters had presented their ultimatum to the Dingoes that day. It had been decided that mankind could not be entrusted with its own affairs. All men were henceforth to be put in kennels; there would be no more distinction between Dingoes and pets. The High Cathode had been thrown into a panic by this threat, and it had been determined, despite Daddy’s pleading to the contrary, that the Dingoes would shoot their wad that evening.
The Dingoes’ wad—as Daddy knew, and as they apparently did not—wasn’t worth a plugged nickel. All they had was atom bombs.
Whether it was because Bruno knew the gate-attendant or because Daddy was with us, I don’t know, but our general-admission tickets got us seats at ringside. The audience in the smoky indoors stadium made the crowd at the parade sound like a bevy of tranquilized sheep. One woman near us (and I am convinced that it was the same who had kissed me in Duluth and cursed me at the gallows) was screaming: “Murder him! Murder the m——!” And the fight hadn’t even begun!
A bell rang. Two men, modestly nude except for colored briefs, approached each other, moving their arms in nervous rhythms, circling about warily. One (in red trunks) lashed out at the other with his left hand, a feint to the stomach. With his right hand, he swung at the other man’s face. There was a cracking sound as his naked fist connected with his opponent’s cheekbone. The crowd began to scream.