Doomsday Warrior 18 - American Dream Machine (17 page)

Later, as they lay all sweated up, smoking the Pall Mall cigarettes she had brought along in her purse, she opened up finally: Ronette talked about her work at the prosti-service. Her job was simple: she was a Class A-1 woman, a clone of Kimetta’s. She would make bed with a man, like all the other unattached women on Esmerelda, for credits paid by the asteroid government. Only if the transaction had the government’s approval of course. She couldn’t pick her partners. “Only
real
women like Kimetta Langdon can
pick
their sex partners.”

“Why?”

“The man has to be worthy of the relaxation, that’s why.”

“It doesn’t sound great,” he commented. “Do you ever get a vacation?”

She didn’t even know what it meant. “I haven’t heard of that,” she shrugged. “Is ‘vacation’ a good position?”

“No, I don’t suppose there are vacations around here,” he muttered.

Ronette, looking at the alarm clock, said, “I have been in this room longer than any other time I’ve been sent to service a man. It is time for me to go.”

But she stood slowly, dressed slowly, and said softly, “You must ask for me again. They allow preferences. I’m K-51 Ronette. Don’t forget.”

“I won’t.”

“Is that a promise?”

“Of course.”

Not until after Ronette had left and he was relocking his door, did Rock turn toward the bureau and see a ten-credit note. He had been on Esmerelda long enough to recognize the square piece of red glow-paper. His smile ended, he flushed deeply. He found himself feeling sorry for that delightful girl. She had made bed with many males, but had enjoyed herself only once.

And the only sure way she knew to show that enjoyment was to
pay
him!

Twenty-One

R
ockson was taken out to a parts factory that day, in what he thought of as the morning. After his first long look around he wished he had never gone to the place. He wondered what was going to happen to him if he didn’t take a job soon, though.

The large building, three stories tall, was unpainted concrete, a
blank
from the outside. The “receiving room” was large and wide, with head-high file cabinets. A prim, brunette woman in a gray nurse’s outfit sat behind a desk the shape of a lima bean and filled out audi-writing cubes by micropen. The cubes were then deposited into one of the ten-drawer cabinets opening ten on a side. There were millions of cubes already filed.

“Why did you want me to see this?” Rock asked, more loudly than he had expected. “What is this place?”

“Sort of a morgue,” Broomak admitted. “Come see.”

Rock’s throat seemed to catch as the “nurse” let them into a well-lighted, vast, white room. A man in a gray smock was standing beside a table on which a bluish human corpse lay. The corpse’s eyes had been removed and put onto a bed of soft plasti-seal material. Another man in a smock was sawing off the body’s legs, while a third checked out nasal passages with a small machine that dilated the nostrils. For a second, Rockson thought the corpse was
himself.

“Deviated septum,” that man mumbled into a recorder. “No use for that. What about the sexual parts?”

The first man in gray consulted the section of audi-writing in his hand. “Excellent condition, but there’s no need for penis transplantation anywhere at this time; we’ll store it, all the same. I want a report on the liver and kidneys and spleen and stomach, Henry. The heart problem killed him, so we do without that. He’s been hearted before, hasn’t he?”

“A transplant only twelve weeks ago, the second, after his third attack. This guy couldn’t get used to the residues in the air at his L-Kromide factory. Allergy, I guess.”

A buzzer sounded twice.

“Oh hell, I have a new patient. Henry, you finish with the testicles right away. I don’t want to busy with this one any longer.”

As the assistant started removing the parts, Rock couldn’t prevent the tension that made him cup both palms over his crotch. “I’m getting out of here,” he whispered, and Broomak and he went back to the file room.

The nurse looked up and smiled. They rushed past and Rock was surprised to see the bearded Ezlin himself waiting outside the main door.

“That’s the one place even I myself find it hard to stay in,” Ezlin confessed, drawing a deep breath. “It’s all that talk about transplanting livers and spleens that disturbs me.”

“I guess each of us is disturbed by different things,” Rock remarked. “I didn’t know a parts factory meant human parts.”

“It occurred to me that you might not feel so sensitive, and could consider working here. I see that I was wrong.”

“You surely were,” Rock considered. “I’d rather work with the living.”

“A nobler sentiment would be to collect spare parts for the needy.”

Had the usually controlled Ezlin stooped to sarcasm?

“I can be noble.”

“Let’s see if that’s true. Broomak—take him to the Life School. If he doesn’t want that job—you’ve failed and—” Ezlin threw up his hands.

“Fine.”

For a moment Rockson and Broomak seemed to like each other, because it was obvious neither liked Ezlin.

The Life School was a five-story, unpainted building without windows. Lots of blanks on this planetoid!

There were sounds of raised voices as they stepped out of the compu-car. A square door burst open, and a dozen men and women in pink tights and no tops rushed out to the artificial air. One of the young men was being pelted by all the others’ clenched fists.

“What
is this?” an outraged Broomak demanded sharply. “Why are you all wasting time?”

A buxom, bare-breasted girl answered, “It’s
his
fault! He is responsible for making our lives a living Earth!” But now the entire entourage stopped and quieted down.

Rock didn’t smile at hearing the name of his home planet used as another word for hell. All the same, he’d keep this memory for quite a while. The petite blond bounced wonderfully.

“What’s he done?” Broomak demanded.

“Among other things,” she fumed, “Breel-49 kept some important audi-writing out from the library for six weeks.” She glowered at the young, finely built male wilting under her glare. “When he was forced to give it back, he had x’ed out important write-parts that would have helped other students of the Life School!”

Another young man said, “And I myself caught him breathing on a culture in a lab experiment of mine, so it wouldn’t work out right. I
caught
Breel-49, do you hear?”

“That’s even more despicable.” Broomak glared. He evidently felt more respect for lab work than library material. “You deserve whatever these fellow-students do to you, Breel-49—continue!”

The guilty student tried to run, but was pulled to the ground and pummeled as Rock and Broomak walked on into the building.

“Students fight each other for unfair advantages in the name of hard work,” Broomak said. “It makes for resourceful members of the community. Competition is godly.”

“No it isn’t.”

“I’m sorry Rockson, if your ethical concepts are being shaken. Or should I say
un
ethical concepts!”

Inside the plain building was a corridor lined with doors. They went inside a classroom. It was empty, but there were book-machines and piles of audi-cubes on each of a hundred desks.

“Here the young study the history of work, to develop the logic inescapable, derived by the great Foncluson Klossam himself. The great statement that nothing in this universe matters except work.”

“That’s the Life School?”

“That’s it! Do you think you could be a proctor here? Good work for an intellectual man of the galaxy! And you get to study the words of Klossam!”

“Rather not,” Rock said. “Hate School.”

“You are incorrigible! Well—maybe I’ll give you
one
last chance to find employment, Rockson. Do you think you’d like to see the police forces at work? You might understand why certain security measures are necessary, might want to join them for your stay here.”

“I wasn’t meant to hold people down, even if what they’re doing is wrong,” Rock said. “Others can do that, but not me. I’m no cop!”

Broomak began to sputter and redden. He said,
“Very
well,
then.”

Broomak paused, once they got in the compu-car, with a hand over the destination slot beneath the wheel. “Do you have
any
opinion about what you’d like to see? I’ve been consistently wrong. You might be able to solve the problem of work
yourself.”

Rock considered a long time. “I’d like to see
little
kids. I don’t think that, even here, kids want pain.”

“Perhaps you’d like to teach small children?”

“Maybe I would.” Rock didn’t add,
“before it’s too late.”
Maybe he could do a little good on this damned work-asteroid after all in the few months he’d be staying.

The compu-car took them to a very large, purple-and red-spotted building set in a grove with three others of the same seven-story size. It looked like a set of crazed-out beehives! The sign on the buildings Rock saw filled him with a long moment’s unhappiness. “Busy Bee Schools? Oh
no!”
He added, “No windows?”

“There isn’t any need to distract the children,” Broomak said. “Come on—let’s go into a school unit.”

A ramp took them up to a narrow door by electric power. A chance for the happy playboy to exercise his feet again!

In a well-lit classroom, a robot looked out at sixty bald-shaven boys and girls, all about six years old. Rock was struck by their quiet, by the absence of rustling or whispering. Were they doped up?

“Now you will take out your audi-writings,” the robo-teacher said. “You will turn to the first blank section after yesterday’s lesson.”

Noises this time, but not many. The children moved with the minimum of fuss and stirring. Rock, who’d never seen anything like it from youngsters, just stared.

“You will audi-write the following,” the robo-teacher began. When the robot spoke, there was a hard sound of the words being repeated by all the youngsters, like a responsive reading in church, said without meaning. They were repeating, of course, some words by the work-mad philosopher, Klossam.

“What
is
all this?” Rock couldn’t help asking. “Those kids look and sound like they’ve been programmed—is anything wrong with them? Why the hair shaved off?”

“Of course they are quiet. This is
work.
They should all look and sound alike. Why not?”

“They are being turned into zombies! Don’t tell me something hasn’t been done to them! I’ve seen healthy kids learning their lessons, and it’s nothing like this! They must be drugged!”

Broomak took it on himself once more to explain in quiet tones, “On Esmerelda we’ve eliminated nonsense from children by giving them Barlox-39 in their tiblets. Barlox-39 makes them calm and attentive over a twenty-four-hour period. They go to sleep when told, they recite when told—always well behaved. At age eight years, they’re switched to Koors-Connets pills for a full twelve months, which allows for memorizing jobs with complex responsibility. After that, they’re considered to be fully grown citizens, and they’re sent to work.”

“You’re turning the kids into monsters!”

“No, quite the contrary. They escape unpleasant ‘squirmy’ phases that children on other planets and asteroids have to go through; the pains of growing up are avoided.”

“But people have to be
alive,
to go through
phases.
You can’t take away from children the right to live through a normal phase, even though it’s a hard one. When you do that, you force them to be less alive. It’s worse than uncivilized.”

“We can’t afford to waste time with children in emotional difficulties,” Broomak insisted. “Every child is a needed unit.”

“Every child is
important.
Everyone is
unique!”

Broomak pointed out sadly, “Ezlin and the council are right. You
never
will agree.”

“That’s the best thing you could have said to me.”

“You reject life, when you reject order,” Broomak recited from the Book of Kossam. “I doubt your high-placed girlfriend can help you now, you, you ingrate!”

Twenty-Two

R
ockson again faced the council. Ezlin received Broomak’s admission that he had failed to “correct” Rockson. He nodded and reached down to raise a visi-screen from a lower shelf. He flipped through images. “We’ve exhausted every resource but one—aside from execution. One last chance, Rockson. You might want to work in the area that provides
pleasure
for the people of Esmerelda.”

“That sounds—interesting,” Rock said automatically, feigning interest. “That’s it! That’s the work I’d like to do! You thought of it, at long last.”

Ezlin smiled. “You will begin your job as trainer right n—”

Then Rock looked wary. “Wait just a minute! I’ve only heard of
one
pleasure that Esmereldans share. The so-called games!”

“Correct, and I feel that room can be made for arena employment by someone as interested as you in improving the quality of life here!”

With a flick of the visi-screen dial, Ezlin turned on the image, a picture unmistakably clear. A photograph of the death-arena appeared. The ritual of death it seemed had started once again. The Zrano was recovered from Rockson’s attack of gloom. The deadly gate was opening, a mortally frightened man stood on the sands of despair. There was a pause for the stadium audience to bid him farewell. The lumbering nightmare-beast charged to kill.

Rockson couldn’t keep his eyes from the screen, despite his disgust. He was hardly aware that Ezlin was now talking to him, saying, “If you want to improve the games, you have a good chance to do it, in your new job.”

“What do you mean?” Rock watched the victim make a run for it. He was young and ran very fast in a zigzag, but the Zrano kept at his heels. Three legs were faster than two. A psychotic, multitoothed piano stool versus a mere human.

“You of all people can surely think of some ways to ease the strain on the gladiators’ lives. I feel that you might be interested—”