Chapter 17

PUNSUNBY'S WORLD

Many parsecs distant from the remotest outpost of civilization there was a planet known

to its inhabitants only as The World. The World and everything pertaining to it, including

the People and the Sun and the Moons and the little night-lights in the sky, had been

created by The Company on Compday, January First in the Year One; and this day-also

a Compday, of course-was the two hundred twenty sixth anniversary of that date: Jan. 1,

226. There was no celebration or ceremony-in fact, there were no words in the language

to express any such concept-but, since it was Compday, all Operators worked only half

a shift.

In the Beginning the Company had decreed that there were to be three hundred eighty

four days (plus an extra Compday, to be announced by the Highest Agent, once every

few years) in each year. Each year had twelve months; each month four weeks; each

week eight days Compday, Sonday, Monday, Tonday, Wonday, Thurday, Furday, and

Surday. All Operators were to work exactly half of each of those days except Compday,

upon which they were to work only a quarter; the other quarter was to be devoted to

being happy and to thinking pleasant thoughts of the Company, of its goodness in

furnishing them all with happiness and with life and its comforts.

No other World had ever been created or ever would be, nor any other People. The

Company and The World comprised the Cosmic All.

The World had not changed and it never would change; The Company had so decreed.

Not to the People directly, of course; the Company was an immaterial, omniscient,

omnipotent entity that, except in the matter of punishment, dealt with People only through

Company Agents. These Agents were not People, but were supermen and superwomen

far above People; so far above People that the lowest-caste Company Agents had qual-

ities that not even the highest-caste People could understand.

Upon very rare occasions the Company, whose symbol was A A A A A A A, appeared in

a form of flesh to the Highest Agent, the Comptroller General of The World, whose

symbol was A A A A A A B; and, emitting the pure mercury-vapor Light of the Company

and in the sight and the hearing of the highest-caste Company Agents, uttered sacred

Company Orders.

Company Agents of various high castes transmitted these Orders to the Managers, who

told the Assistant Managers, who told the Chiefs, who told the Assistant Chiefs, who told

the Heads, who told the Assistant Heads, who told the Foremen, who told the Shift

Bosses, who told the lower-caste People who were the Operators what to do and saw

to it that they did it.

At the time of the World's creation The Company had issued a three-fold Prime Directive;

which was immutable and eternal: ALL PEOPLE MUST: 1) Be happy. 2) Produce more

and more People. 3) Produce more and more Goods.

If a Person obeyed these three injunctions all his life, his immaterial Aura-the thing that

made him alive, not dead, and that made him different from all other Persons-when he

became dead was absorbed into the Company and he would be happy forever.

On the other hand, there were a few who did not follow the Prime Directive literally and

exactly. These were the mals-the malcontents, the maladjusts, the malefactors-the

thinkers, the questioners, the unbelievers -the unhappy for any cause. They were blasted

out of existence by the Company itself and that was the end of them, auras and all.

And that was fair enough. Every Person was born into a caste. He grew up in that caste.

He was trained to do what his ancestors had done and what his descendants would do.

He had children in that caste, all of whom became of it. He lived his whole life in that

caste and died in it. That was, is, and ever shall be the way of life, and that is precisely

the way it should be: for in pure order, and only in pure order, lies security; and in

security, and only in security, lies happiness; and happiness is the First Consideration of

the Prime Directive. Mals of all kinds are threats to order, to security, and to happiness;

therefore all mals must die. So it was, is, and ever shall be. Selah. It is written.

Following the Prime Directive was easy enough; for most people, in fact, easier than not

following it. Since happiness was simply the state of not being unhappy, and there was

nothing in the normal life to be unhappy about, happiness was the norm.

Producing People, too, was a normal part of life. Furthermore, since the Company

punished pre-family sexual experience with Company wrath just a few volts short of

death, the family state brought a new and different kind of happiness. Every female

Person's job assignment was to produce, between the ages of eighteen and thirty, ten

children, and then to keep on running her family unless and until she was transferred to

some other job. Since every nubile girl wanted a man of her own, and since children were

a source of happiness on their own account, not one woman in a thousand had to be

brainwashed at all to really like the job of running a family.

And as for producing Goods-why not? That was what People were created for, and that

was all that men were good for-except, of course, for fathering children. Also, there was

much happiness to be had in keeping a machine right at the peak of performance, turning

out, every shift, an over-quota of passes and an under-permittance of rejects-zero

rejects being always the target.

No Person in his right mind ever even thought of wondering what the Goods he produced

were for, or what became of them. That was Company business and thus

incomprehensible by definition.

On this Compday forenoon, then, in a vast machineshop in City One of the World, a

young man was hard at work-sitting at ease in a form-fitting chair facing an

instrument-board having a hundred-odd dials, meters, gauges, lights, bells, whistles,

buzzers, and what-have-you.

Occasionally a green light would begin to shade toward amber and a buzzer would begin

to talk to him in Morse code; whereupon he would get up, walk around back of the board

to his machine, and make almost imperceptible manual adjustments until the complaining

monolog stopped. If, instead of stopping, the signal had turned into a Klaxon blare, he

would have been manufacturing rejects, but he was far too good a machiner to make:

any such error as that. He hadn't turned out a single reject in eighteen straight shifts. He

knew everything there was to be known about his machine-and the fact that he knew

practically nothing whatever else had never bothered him a bit. Why should it have? That

was precisely the way it should be in this, the perfect World: that was precisely what the

all-powerful Company had decreed.

He was of medium height and medium build; trimly, smoothly muscular; with large,

strong, and exquisitely sensitive hands. He had a shock of rather unkempt brown hair,

clear gray eyes, and a lightly-tanned, unblemished skin. lie wore the

green-and-white-striped coveralls of his caste-Machiner Second-and around his neck, on

a hard-alloy chain, there hung a large and fairly thick locket. This locket, which had been

put on him one minute after he was born and which his body would wear into the

crematorium, and which-he firmly believed-could not be opened or removed without

causing his death, had seven letters of the English alphabet cut deeply into its face. This

group of letters-V T J E S O Q -was his symbol. As far as he knew, the only purpose of

the locket was to make him permanently and unmistakably identifiable.

At twelve o'clock noon the machine stopped; for the first time in exactly one week. At the

same time he heard the sound of fast-stepping hard heels and turned to see a Company

Agent approaching him-the first Agent to come to him in all his twenty years of life. This

Agent was a young female, whose spectacular build was spectacularly displayed by a

sleeveless, very tight yellow sweater and even tighter black tights. Her boots, laced to

the knees, were of fire-engine-red leather. Her short-bobbed hair was deep russet brown

in color. Low on her forehead blazed the green jewel of her rank. This jewel, which

resembled more than anything else a flaring green spotlight about the size of a half dollar

piece and not much thicker, was mounted in platinum on the platinum drop-piece of a

plain platinum headband. Under her sweater she, too, wore a locket; upon which was

engraved the symbol A C B A A B A.

Be happy, Veety!" the Agent snapped.

"Be happy, Agent." The machiner raised his arms and put both hands flat on the top of

his head.

"At ease, Veety! Follow me!"

Whirling on the ball of her left foot, she led the way down a narrow corridor; sharp right

into a wider one; sharp left into the main hall and straight into the crowd of operators

going off shift. She did not even slow down -the crowd dissolved away from her like

magic. They Jell all over themselves to get out of her way; for to touch a Company

Agent, however accidentally or however lightly, was to receive a blast of Company wrath

that, while not permanently harmful, was as intolerable as it was inexplicable.

Through the huge archway, along a wide walkway she led him, to the second archway on

the right. She stopped and whistled sharply through her teeth. The exiting operators

stopped in their tracks, put hands on heads, and stood motionless.

"V T J R S Y X-forward!" she snapped, and a green and-white-coveralled, well-built

girl-People had to be good physical specimens or they did not live to grow up-came up to

within a few feet of the Agent and stopped. She was neither apprehensive nor pleased;

merely acquiescent.

"Be happy, Veety!" "Be happy, Agent."

"Job transfer. Come with me and this other veety to that aircar over there."

The Agent slipped lithely into the single front seat of the vehicle, at the controls; the two

Machiners Second got into the back seat. The aircar bulleted upward, screamed across

City One to Suburb Ten, and dropped vertically downward to a high-G landing on the

beautifully-kept grounds of a small plastic house.

"Out," the Agent said, and led the couple into a large, comfortably-furnished living room.

"Stand there . hold hands . . . V T J R S Y X-job transfer. You're eighteen today, so you

stop machinering and start running a family. Permanent assignment. The Company

knows that you two know each other and like each other. That liking will now become

love. The Company knows all."

"The Company knows all," the two intoned in unison, solemnly.

"Press your right thumbs here . . . you are mated for life. This house is

yours-permanently. Four rooms and bath to start. It's expandable; one additional room

per child. Here are your family coupon books; throw your single-person ones into the

disposer. This special mating coupon gives you free time from now until hour seventeen,

when you go to the band concert at Shell Nineteen. Amuse yourselves, you two." The

Agent smiled suddenly, a smile that made her hard young face human and beautiful.

"Have fun-in the bedroom, perhaps? Be happy, both of you." The Company Agent

executed a snappy about-face and strode toward the door.

"Be happy, Agent," the newlyweds said; and, as the door closed, went into each others

arms.

They amused themselves and were very happy indeed. They were still very happy while,

as hour seventeen neared, they walked, arms around each other, toward Bandshell

Nineteen. A man of their own caste, an older man, fell into step beside them.

"I'm V T B L Q Q M," he introduced himself. "I found out a thing after bed-hour last night

that everybody has got to know. . . ."

"Shut up!" the young man barked. "We don't want to know one single damn thing that we

don't know already." "But listen!" the stranger whispered, intensely. "This is important!

The most important thing that ever happened in the World! There's a meeting tonight-I'll

pick you up-but I tell you this right now. There ain't any such thing as the Company. It's

just those damn snotty Agents and they're just as human as we are; they've been

suckering us all our lives. If we had the gadgetry they've got we could knock them all off

and take . . ."

"Shut up!" the girl screamed, and sprang away from him in horror. "You're a mal-you're

unhappy-that means death!"

"Death, hell!" came the whispered snarl. "I got the straight dope-the real poop-last night

and I'm still alive, ain't I? We're going to get some special insulation tonight and I'm going

to grab one of those high nosed bitches of Agents and choke her plumb to death after I. .

.

The man stopped whispering and screamed in utterly unbearable agony. His every

muscle writhed and twisted, convulsively and impossibly. After a few seconds his body

slumped bonelessly to the pavement; limp, motionless, dead.

"How terrible," the girl remarked, in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone of voice. Then, with

arms again around each other and as blissful as before, the two lovers stepped over the

body and went on their interrupted way. Mals had no right whatever to live. Therefore the

All-Wise, All-Powerful Company had put that mal to death. Everything was perfect, in this

their perfect World.

And in one minute flat a ground-car, a light-truck type, came up beside the corpse and

stopped. Two husky men, wearing the dark-gray-on-light-gray of Sanitationers Fourth,

got out of it, picked the body up, and tossed it nonchalantly into the back of their truck.

Perce and Cecily Train 'ported the Explorer to a point in space well outside Pluto's orbit;

well out of detector range of any of the strange warships englobing Earth. Aboardship

this time, in addition to the regular complement of spacemen and psiontists, were a

couple of dozen graduates of the University, who were making the trip for advanced

study.

"If any of us'd thought of it and if we'd stayed and if we'd had the techniques we've got

now, we could've 'ported bombs aboard those jaspers and blown 'em clear out of the

ether," Train said, while they were getting ready to go to work.

"One ifs enough, why use three?" Deston countered. "But I got a lot better idea than that

one, especially since Bobby is just slightly allergic to killing people in job lots. We'll find

out where they come from, 'port each one of 'em back to his own house, tuck him gently

into his own bed and present all those nice subspacers to Fleet Admiral Guerdon Dann,

with the compliments of the University of Psionics-for a small consideration, of course."

"Now you're chirping, birdie!" Barbara exclaimed. "You do get an idea once in a while,

don't you? That one is really a dilly. Ready, everybody? Let's go."

They went . . . and they studied . . . and the more they studied the more baffled they

became. The captains of the ships were, to a man, from Tellus. They were based on

Teneriffe.. . .

Deston shot the linked minds to the planet Teneriffe. The base was there-an immense

one-but that was all it was. Just a base. There were no facilities to build much of

anything; to say nothing of such an immense complex as would be necessary to produce

any important part of that fleet.

Few of the captains had even wondered where the war-ships had been built. What

difference did that make? That, or anything else pertaining to logistics or supply, was

none of their business.

The Vice-Admirals and Admirals had wondered; but, since they had not been told, none

of them had ever asked. Asking impertinent questions was a thing that simply was not

done.

The Fleet Admiral did not know; neither did the Base Commander on Teneriffe. They got

their orders via nondirectional subspace radio from the Company of the World= World,"

of course, meaning Earth. It wasn't only a company, really, it was a new government, still

very QT and TS, that was going to take over Tellus and all the planets, they both

supposed. They had the power to do it, so why not? To any hard-nosed man of war

might is right, and if they wanted to play it cosy and call themselves The Company of the

World that was all right, too.

And as for the lower echelons ...

"My ... God. . . ." Cecily said slowly, aloud, into the dense silence that had lasted through

a long fifteen minutes of stupefied investigation. "The Eternal, Omniscient, Omnipotent,

Omnipresent Company created the World and the People on Company-Company Day,

that is-January First of the Year One. No other World nor any other People-capitalized,

please note, even in thought-ever were created or ever will be. Will some or one of you

nice people please tell me what in all the infinite reaches of all the incandescent and

viridescent hells of all total space we have got ourselves into now?" "I'll never know,

Curly." Deston, who had been holding his breath for a good two minutes, let it all out at

once. "And the poor dumb meatheads believe that comet-gas with every cell of their

minds . . . and take everything that's going on right in stride-it's all Company business

and as such is naturally incomprehensible to the mind of man . . . 'My God!' is correct,

Curly. Check."

But look! Look in here!" Barbara put in, excitedly. "Not the caste system-above

it-Company Agents! Angels, suppose? Or something? None here with the Fleet; all back

on the World. Those spotlight-jewels gorgeous! I'd love to wear one of those myself.

Power packs, do you think?"

"Maybe," Jones said. "That's certainly something we'll have to look into. But what do we

do now, Babe?"

"I know what I'm going to do-report to the boss in person-you people stay right here 'til I

get back." Deston disappeared.

Maynard was alone, so Deston 'ported himself unceremoniously into the private office. "I

don't want even Doris in on this until you let her in," he explained, then reported

everything.

As he listened, Maynard's face turned gray.

"So you see, chief," Deston concluded, "it's an unholy mess. What was it you said? A

planet . . . `run for years in a way that would make the robber barons of old sick at the

stomach.' You said it. You certainly said it. Have you got any idea as to who could be

monster enough to pull a stunt like that?"

"More than an idea, son. This explains a lot of things I've wondered about, but I couldn't

let my mind run wild enough. Two of 'em are why Plastics, one of the biggest of the big,

never played ball, and how they got that way. It's Plastics, and Lord Byron Punsunby is

head man."

That makes sense, so I'll do a flit. . . ."

"Not yet ... that's such a staggering thing . . . what year is it, of theirs?"

"Two hundred twenty six."

"Um ... um ... m. Call it nine generations. At their breeding rate, with a start of only a few

hundred thousand, they'll have population. The first three or four generations would know

something, but by falsification of records, history, and so on ... and no press ... brain-

washing and hypnosis ... it could be done. Definitely. So they've had at least five

generations of . , . of .

"Of serfs. A perfect serf set-up."

"Check. And one of their castes is of top-notch engineers who don't know anything else

and put everything they've got into it. And castes of scientists and so on."

"That's right. As a 'troncist I'm here to testify that that locket is one beautiful job of work.

Transmits everything except what the guy ate for breakfast, and maybe even that."

"To Central Intelligence ... each checked as frequently as desired . . . or even recorded .

. . God, what a system!" Maynard shook his head. "And those Company Agents. Special

castes, too. Charged, of course. Insulated boots. Magic no end. They could even live in a

charged environment."

"Could be. I told you, it's a mell of a hess."

"One more thing. You've never thought of the real problem here, apparently. How can

we-how can anybody-rehabilitate any race that has been driven that far off coarse?"

Deston's jaw dropped. "Huh? Wow! It's a little soon, though isn't it, to have to think about

that?"

"I'll have to think about it, I'm afraid, whether I want to or not . . . but that's more in my

department than yours, I suppose . . . well, I'll let you go now. Thanks for reporting.

Good luck."

"Leek, chief. 'Bye," and Deston 'ported himself back into the main lounge of the Explorer.

Since the Plastics Building was one of the largest office buildings on Earth, it was very

easy to find; and it was even easier to find the blatantly magnificent private office of

"Lord" Byron Punsunby, the president of Plastics Incorporated. Deston got into his mind

and put it through the wringer. Punsunby knew a great deal that was new. He knew all

about the business end-by what devious routes the goods were smuggled into the

markets of Earth, how and through what underground channels they were sold, how

incredibly vast the hidden holdings of Plastics were, and how all this skullduggery had

been performed-but even he did not know the general direction from Sol of Plastics'

ultra-secret planet, The World, which had never been given a name.

It was and had always been Company policy that no Tellurian should know The World's

coordinates. Only two living men were to know them; the Comptroller General of the

World, who came to Earth to report to Punsunby after the close of business of each of

The World's calendar quarters; and the captain-who was also the only navigating

officer-of the one ship that ever made the direct run from The World to Earth and back.

There were only two records of those figures in existence; one in each of the personal

safe-deposit boxes of those two men.

Deston kept on reading. Yes, there were a few unscheduled vists; more than he liked of

late ... he didn't like to use subspace radio, it could be tapped ... changing conditions ...

trouble . . .

AM That was what Deston wanted. There hadn't been enough generations yet to wipe

out all the genes of throwbacks to the independent, intractable type. Conditioning might

not hold; it was possible that some of them were even smart enough to pose as

tractable, although the electronicists swore that their instruments were far too sensitive

and comprehensive for that. Whatever the cause, in any case of real trouble checking the

lockets even once every day wasn't enough. Occasionally Punsunby himself had to go to

The World to order whatever steps might have to be taken to be sure of the elimination

of all mals before too much harm was done.

Deston pulled back and set his jaw. "Now ain' t that a damn something!" he gritted. "Well,

the regular quarterly visit is only twelve clays away-and maybe there'll be an

emergency-I hope!-so we'll sit here and keep Lord Byron under surveillance every

minute. I know you girls don't like this kind of Peeping Tomming, so you'll be excused.

Perce?"

"Sure." "Here?" "Okay by me."

"That's three. Talk to some of the graduates, will you, Perce, so we won't have to maker

the shifts too long? I'll take the first shift, starting now."