of all the kids, Luke was the only one whose father had actually been a part of the foundation of the Second Republic and Luke was the only kid who would go to school. Luke never tired of hearing his father tell about the march. «What they did,» his father would say, «was force us to fight, boy.» «How'd they do that, Dad?» «Well, they done things like make kids go to school.» «All kids?» «Every last one.» «Gee.» «And they made 'em go to school with people they didn't want to go to school with.» «Who?» «Oh, I dunno. Fare kids, I guess.» Luke had nothing to do with the Fare kids in the neighborhood. Fare parents never worked, never marched with Baxley, never did anything but sit back and draw the Fare checks and fight with knives and complain about the government, although not out loud. No one complained too much about the government, because you never knew when the Brotherfuzz would be listening and, although the Brothers were fair to all and gave equal justice to all, Fare, Tired, or Tech, talking against the government just wasn't done. When Luke heard a couple of Fare kids complaining, he told them if they didn't like it they could go off to South America or somewhere. And then he told his father and his father said, «Some people are never satisfied. Back in the old days, people like the Fares had to beg and steal and stand in line to get pennies from the government. Wasn't like it is now when the Fare checks are delivered once a week to the mailbox and no man has to go hungry.» As Luke approached ten, time to enter the University, he did some serious thinking. He went to the library and looked at film and saw how, back in the bloody days of the First Republic, people actually fought each other on the streets of the cities and marched in protest and went out on strike. Going on strike, he guessed, although it wasn't clear to him, meant that the Techs wouldn't go to work and the assembly lines came to a halt and the new ground cars didn't come rolling out and, he guessed, people didn't get a new car every year. That was a terrible thing. Even the Fares who never worked got new cars once a year. They didn't get the big, fancy models like the Techs and the city workers, but they got cars, all new and
shiny, and if they were careful, a car would last a whole year until another new one came and the old one was pushed or towed outside the city to be loaded onto the big, flat-bottomed barges for dumping outside the harbor. Some of the really old films fascinated Luke. He especially liked the ones which showed the country as it was when everyone ate animal meat. Now and then, when his father was feeling plush, they would have real
fish, tender little morsels fried gently in oil until they browned and tasted like pure heaven. However, he had never tasted actual animal flesh and didn't know anyone who had. There was one film in particular which Luke liked. It showed vast, unpeopled mountains and clear streams and weird-looking animals such as those which were preserved in lifelike poses in the museum alive and running around. It was a truly old film, made long before the last big war. It was in a place called a national park. Luke talked with the librarian and the old woman told him that there wasn't any more national park, because the space had been needed, after the great influx, for people, and that made Luke sad. «Why didn't they just tell the people to live somewhere else?» he asked. «There were too many of them,» the old woman said. «After the great Communist powers had their war, whole continents were made uninhabitable. All of Asia was a radioactive wasteland. Most of Europe was also contaminated. People were dying by the millions and our government."—-she paused—"I mean the First Republic, because the people were dying, took them in. Millions of them. Would you like to see films of that?» He watched the films. People. People. People with suppurating sores and missing limbs and bald heads. People dying from the radiation sickness, but mostly people who would live and cause the cities to build upward and outward, swelling the already overblown population to disastrous proportions. But they came. By huge planes carrying hundreds, by ships carrying thousands. America, the last uncontaminated area, was the bloodbank of mankind, taking in the Europeans, the Asians, the Africans. They brought with them what wealth and technology survived the war, but it wasn't enough to cushion the blow to the American continent. Cities doubled their size in a decade, grew, and reeked with uncontrolled rot. The medical system broke down under the overload. Those who had been exposed to radiation died by the thousands, the millions. Those who didn't die passed along their weaknesses to their offspring. The nation existed in a state of anarchy with the effete government of the First Republic trying to fight the change with outdated methods. Out of chaos, the Brothers were born. Luke liked the historical film which told of the foundation of the Christian Party. The man who talked had a good voice and he made you feel it. «It was clear.» the man related. «to some, that old values had to be discarded, that old methods were sadly insufficient to cope with the anarchy. The influx had brought with it millions who had no sympathy with the Republican form of government. For long years, the nation teetered on the brink of anarchy. Communism, or worse.» Luke didn't really understand Communism, except that it was what caused the war and left all but the Western Hemisphere unfit for humanity And he knew that Communists hated God. «At first,» the man who talked on the film said, «those who saw no hope except in radical change called themselves the Silent Majority. That was a phrase coined by a President of the First Republic in the last thirty years of the last century. It indicated the solid people, the Godfearing people, those who, even in early times, deplored the Godless demonstrations of drug-crazed young people, who cried out against the abuses of big labor. The Christian Party actually has its foundations in the twentieth century when a few brave pioneers fought the Communistic leanings of the leaders in minor actions such as resistance to a governmental order saying that their children had to attend school, sometimes by being transported out of their own neighborhoods, with people they didn't like. The first advance of the party came in the complete breakdown of the public school system, thus removing the youth of the country from the leftist influences of the central government. However, progress was always slow and painful until,