Sidney's Comet Read online

  They shouldn’t move like that, Sidney thought. The Conservation of Motion Doctrine. . . . I’m not the only one with shortcomings!

  At a stoplight, Sidney watched a maple tree shed plastic leaves and sprout new ones. Workcrews in bright orange windbreakers carried plastic bags emblazoned with the Bu-Maintenance crest, which they filled with leaves and litter. The air was still.

  The car accelerated, gliding on its air cushion past the Black Box of Democracy, an opaque doorless and windowless megalith surrounded by rolling green plastic lawn. There were people reading an inscription plaque on the structure, and others taking pictures. Children played on the lawn.

  In the next block, the Uncle Rosy Tower fronted a curving section of the boulevard. Sidney looked up through the glassplex top of his autocar as it rolled by the tower, he could barely make out the ring of the revolving Sky Ballroom on top of the structure.

  It’s Thursday, he thought. Only two more days until my reunion. Just think . . . twenty years.

  Now Technology Square was directly ahead, and Sidney saw the sun peeking through a swirling cloud over New City’s skyline, reflecting off tinted glass windows on the government office towers that ringed the square. A Bu-Cops car sped by, its purple lights flashing and siren wailing. Other sirens screamed in the distance. Throngs of people stood in the square, and more streamed in from all directions.

  Something big’s going on, Sidney thought.

  His car stopped as programmed several hundred meters from the square, and he short-stepped out onto a platform. As his car disappeared into an underground parking tube, Sidney mentoed his moto-shoes. They flipped out of their plastic ankle cases and lifted him gently onto their wheels, and he began to roll down a ramp to the skatewalk. A warm breeze blew across his face as he picked up speed. Changing lanes expertly on the crowded skatewalk, he moved to the slow lane and took an exit designated TECHNOLOGY SQUARE.”

  The square was dotted with planter boxes, white plastic benches and modernistic government-commissioned sculptures. A large fountain at the center adjacent to Uncle Rosy’s towering mechanical likeness sprayed the air with a thin, metallic moisture. The air was alive with people noises. Angry noises, Sidney realized.

  Recognizing his regular datemate in the crowd of jeering onlookers watching a demonstration, Sidney rolled up beside her. As he came to a stop, Sidney focused upon Carla Weaver’s high cheekbones with a red painted beauty mark on one side. Her nose was distinctly Roman and classically perfect. Curly, golden brown hair swirled about the shoulders of her carmine red pantsuit.

  “What’s going on, Carla?” he asked.

  “Doomies,” Carla said with a glance in Sidney’s direction. “Real freakos. They say a comet is coming!” She laughed, looked full at Sidney with heavy-lidded lavender eyes. “It’s supposed to destroy us all!”

  Carla studied Sidney, noted fat pouches and chubby cheeks beneath large round hazel eyes which stared back innocently. Dark, curly lashes framed the eyes, overhung by thick, dark eyebrows, a high forehead and curly black hair that was thinning at the temples. He’s not very good-looking, she thought, concentrating upon Sidney’s pug nose and ears which protruded like wings. And he couldn’t he as good in bed as my new pleasie-meckie.

  “We’ve all heard rumors the past few days,” Sidney said, wondering why Carla continued to stare at him.

  “Lies,” she shot back without a shade of doubt in her tone. “You saw the President speak last night, of course.”

  “Yeah. I saw.” Sidney shook his head negatively as a young girl with straw-blond hair attempted to hand him a pamphlet. On the cover he saw a picture of a terrifying fireball streaking toward New City while people panicked in the streets below. Large red and yellow letters on the pamphlet proclaimed: “ARRIVAL OF THE GREAT COMET!”

  “Go on, get out of here,” Carla said to the girl. Then Carla touched a button on her belt to activate a synchronized autoclapper recording and joined in as a group of onlookers jeered, “Chicken Little! Chicken Little! The sky is falling!”

  Uncomfortable in the crowd of jeerers, Sidney considered an excuse that would permit him to leave. But a sudden numbness hit his brain. With it he heard the echoes of distant, murmuring voices. It was an angry cacophony of sound, and Sidney thought he heard the words “filth” and “unfit.” As he rubbed his forehead, the murmuring receded, and he peered through the crowd at the focus of their attention.

  A tall man with pale skin and high cheekbones stood at the base of Uncle Rosy’s mechanical likeness, speaking through a bullhorn. Thick clusters of standing supporters protected him on all sides, their arms locked in defense against a contingent of electro-stick-wielding Bu-Cops. As each supporter fell to the onslaught, others rushed to close the hole. Sidney saw them bear their pain heroically, silently. Other doomies attempted unsuccessfully to distribute literature through the crowd.

  In an emotion-laden voice, with his Adam’s apple bobbing, the tall man implored, “FLEE WHILE YOU CAN! A TERRIBLE BLOOD-COLORED FIREBALL WILL DESCEND UPON US! AS THE GREAT COMET NEARS, THERE WILL BE PANIC, LOOTING AND MURDER! THE SEAS WILL RUSH ACROSS THE LAND! SEEK HIGH GROUND! FLEE WHILE YOU CAN!”

  Although the man was fervent, Sidney detected an inner serenity about him . . . a deep strength that showed when he stopped speaking, lowered his bullhorn and looked from face to face across the crowd. Sidney felt a sudden urging to catch the man’s gaze, to be recognized as someone different in a sea of sameness.

  But as the speaker’s gaze moved toward Sidney, a woman with dark, ringletted hair interrupted his concentration to call out, “HOW ABOUT A BOAT, NOAH? SHALL WE BUILD A BIG BOAT?”

  The crowd roared with laughter.

  “I KNOW WHAT!” the woman exclaimed, moto-shoeing forward and turning to face the crowd. She removed a vial from her purse, held her hands high and poured white pills into one hand. “COMET PILLS!” she screeched. “THE VERY LATEST ITEM, LADIES AND GENTS, GUARANTEED TO WARD OFF ANY EVIL INFLUENCES THE DREADED STAR MAY IMPORT! ONLY THREE FOR A DOLLAR! STEP RIGHT UP!”

  Catcalls and the staccato thunder of auto-clappers drowned out the man with the bullhorn.

  Sidney looked past him and up to the giant mechanical likeness of Uncle Rosy. A rotund, friendly-looking fellow, Uncle Rosy sat in a great armchair with his hands outstretched, palms turned to the heavens. In his left hand he held a cross, and in the right a machine gear, symbolizing the unity between religion and technology. Sidney looked beyond this to the new Bu-Industry Tower under construction on the southwest side of the square, and then over the building tops to scan a cerulean blue, nearly cloudless sky. Could it be? he thought.

  “Do you notice anything strange about his appearance?” Carla asked.

  “Eh?” Sidney dropped his gaze, met the eyes of his questioner. “Sorry, Carla. What did you say?”

  Carla glared disapprovingly, as if to say that only non-patriots dared look for fireballs in the sky. “I SAID,” she repeated angrily, “do you notice anything strange about his appearance?” And she cast her gaze toward the man with the bullhorn.

  Sidney studied the demonstration leader again, noted wrinkled, worn clothing, milky white skin and a mane of disheveled black hair. “Yes.” Sidney spoke carefully: “His skin is unusually pale. He doesn’t glow like the test of us.”

  “Right! Obviously, he’s had his mento thought transmitter disconnected. Some of those other freaks are the same way. It’s positively un-AmFed and unconsumptive!”

  “Yes,” Sidney said. Then he intoned: ‘Truly we are blessed.”

  The police reached their prey now, pouncing upon the man with the bullhorn in a great phalanx of blue uniforms, gold buttons and flashing electro-sticks. The bullhorn was ripped away, and Sidney grimaced as he saw a club smash against the man’s face. With the blow, Sidney felt a surge of intense pain on his own cheek and nose.

  The reality of this sensation was more shocking to Sidney than the pain. How can I feel what is happening to him? he wondered, lifting a h
and to his face.

  “Oh my . . . oh!” Sidney exclaimed.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Carla asked.

  “I’m okay,” Sidney lied, closing his eyes while trying to overcome the pain. He dropped his hand, opened his eyes and saw Carla staring at him with a perplexed expression. “I shouldn’t feel this way,” he said, “but the violence is so sickening—” Sidney watched in horror as the demonstration leader clutched at his face. Blood oozed through the man’s fingers, trickling down his arm.

  “That doomie deserves it,” Carla said.

  Now the murmuring, angry voices returned to Sidney’s awareness, and they grew louder quickly until he was able to make out complete sentences:

  “You suffer, eh, fleshcarrier?” a tenor voice said. ‘Think of our plight then, mired in the decaying rot of Earth garbage!”

  “What a stinking, terrible thing to do!” shouted another, deeper voice.

  The voices faded as quickly as they had come, leaving Sidney stunned. He glanced around nervously, caught Carla’s inquisitive gaze.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Yes, yes,” Sidney snapped.

  “You’re behaving so strangely. . . . ”

  “Don’t worry. I’m fine.” Sidney cleared his throat, looked away.

  They watched three policemen kick the demonstration leader along the ground with steel-toed boots. The man curled into a ball in a pitiful attempt to protect himself. Strangely, Sidney felt sharp pains on his head, arms and torso, as if he too were being kicked and beaten, and he heard cruel, cackling laughter in a distant cavern of his brain. Sidney chewed at his lower lip, struggling not to show discomfort. The crowd clapped and called out derisively as the man’s unconscious and bleeding form was dragged to a waiting van.

  When the van doors slammed shut and it began to roll away, Sidney’s pain subsided. That was the damnedest thing, he thought, turning to leave. “See you at coffee,” he said, feeling his moto-shoes click into gear.

  Carla nodded, but she continued to stare at him curiously.

  Now the comet pill woman called out again: “THESE DOOMIES ARE DOING US A GREAT SERVICE! MORE NUTS FOR OUR THERAPY ORBITERS MEANS MORE EMPLOYMENT IN BU-MED!”

  Saddened at the spectacle, Sidney moto-shoed across smooth concrete toward a massive white-glass office tower which bordered the square. Pausing at an electronic security monitor just outside the main entrance, he pressed his palm against an identity plate and mentoed: G.W. seven-five-oh, Malloy, Sidney . . . Central Forms.

  A vacuum surge pulled against his hand, then released him as a red light on the monitor turned to green. Glass doors slid open, and he rolled into the lobby.

  Sidney paused at the elevator bank marked “SUB 501—SUB 700,” gazing above the hypnotic dance of blue floor indicator lights to one of many pictures of Uncle Rosy that ringed the lobby. The soft background notes of Harmak played a “Melody For Progress,” causing visions of home furnishings, autocars and bright clothing to float across his brain. Uncle Rosy seemed to look directly at him with concerned, benign eyes, and Sidney felt a force compelling him to reach for his back pocket. Dutifully, he brought forth a tiny red, yellow and blue volume. Gold leaf lettering on the cover announced its title: Quotations From Uncle Rosy.

  Touching a button on the book cover, Sidney auto-leafed through the pages, only half-conscious of people around him doing the same thing.

  “I can’t believe our Uncle Rosy wrote this more than three centuries ago,” a woman said. Then, in the precise and emotionless tone of a Freeness Studies Instructor, she commanded, “Turn to page one-three-four.”

  She paused momentarily as pages auto-flipped.

  “There will always be non-believers,” the woman read reverently, “dangerously insane people who will stop at nothing in their attempts to disrupt our holy order. They will predict all manner of plague and catastrophe, insisting that God disapproves of the manner in which we live.” She closed the volume, and Sidney looked up to see her smile softly. She had flaxen hair, and with a glance toward the square she said, “They are wrong, citizens. This is God’s land.”

  The group closed their volumes, murmured, “Truly we are blessed.”

  Sidney waited as people destined for lower floors took places in the back of a large elevator, then he roiled on and stood at the front. Mentoing sub-five-oh-three, Sidney felt a click in the back of his brain as the car’s computer accepted his command. The doors closed.

  * * *

  Sayer Superior Lin-Ti looked up, and his words slowed as he stopped reading from the text. “Those voices,” he said, “you understand who they were?”

  A short youngsayerman rose and responded: “Yes, Sayer Superior. They were the beings whose realm was invaded by Earth’s garbage. The ones who turned the garbage into a fiery boomerang comet.”

  “And why did they speak to Malloy?”

  “We have heard stories, Sayer Superior. I believe Malloy was a . . . well . . . a dolt of some sort. And they wanted him to botch up Earth’s plan to stop the comet.”

  “That is correct. To put it bluntly, Sidney Malloy was a no-talent jerk . . . working in the lowest level of the most useless department in the government. . . . ”

  * * *

  It was shortly after noonhour, the beginning of Carla’s daily shift. Her rotatyper platform stood to one side of the sprawling Presidential Secretaries Pool, and beyond the tap-tap-whir of memo-activated machinery she heard the faint, gelatinous purr of Harmak.

  She thought of Sidney as she adjusted her earphones, of the strange way he had behaved at the demonstration and of his attempts to be more than a datemate with her. Lately, Sidney had been most persistent.

  Carla watched the letter “e” appear on her rotatyper screen, then called out, “Lower case V period, return, tab, upper case.”

  She paused to make an entry on a Time and Motion form, then watched the typists encircling her platform as they mento-activated the keyboards in front of their chairs. One did upper case, another lower case, yet another was responsible for numbers, and so on. Six typists sat around each rotatyper caller, although Carla had heard of a new machine developed by the Sharing For Prosperity people that would accommodate ninety-five typists, each having only one key to operate.

  All across the floor Carla could see great mounds of paper. There were stacks of paper on desks, on sidechairs, on windowsills, on the floor, spewing out of computers and in autocarts which rolled back and forth down each aisle delivering and removing. Brown and gold pamphlet meckies rolled along the aisles as well, full to bursting on all four sides with red, green, yellow and blue government pamphlets. A round, four-faced head on a stick neck rose from the center of each meckie’s rack, above which was a square top hat that proclaimed “TAKE SEVERAL” in flashing purple lights on all sides. Department of Quality Control personnel wearing black uniforms and shiny yellow half-lemon helmets rolled from machine to machine, checking to be certain that all equipment malfunctioned according to standard.

  Carla focused upon a sign on the back of one Quality Control Technician which read, “EACH BREAK IS A NEW TASK.” Then she noticed a typist glaring at her and removed her earphones to ask, “What is it now, Margaret? Don’t you like the way I’m calling out punctuation again?”

  Margaret shook her puff-curled silver hair before replying haughtily, “I don’t like the way you call out anything. You think you’re better than we are.” She glared at Carla, then added in a sing-song tone: “We’ve all seen you making goo-goo eyes at Chief of Staff Birthright!”

  “I don’t think I’m better than any of you,” Carla huffed, looking back with hostility in her lavender eyes.

  “You don’t even go to coffee with us now that you’re a G.W. two-five-four. Well lah-dee-dah!” Margaret rolled her eyes upward. “That’s still only one two-hundred-fifty-fourth of a job! My brother is a G.W. fifteen!”

  “You’re just bitter because you didn’t receive a higher calling, Margaret. I got th
e assignment you wanted.”

  Margaret whirled around angrily on her swivel chair, rose and then sat back down abruptly. A hush fell across the floor as ten white-robed men carrying grey urns emblazoned with the Presidential Seal rolled single file into the department. Margaret recognized General Munoz at the head of the procession.

  “The Council of Ten!” Carla whispered excitedly. “But they were just here yesterday for their regular—”

  “Shuttup!” Margaret commanded, her voice a hostile whisper. “We can see who it is!”

  Everyone rose silently, bowing their heads.

  “Bless this mess,” the council ministers called out, reaching into their urns and scattering confetti as they rolled through the department. “Bless this mess. . . . ”

  From his oval office on the two hundred eighty-fifth floor of the White House Office Tower, President Euripides Ogg heard the distant whine of police sirens. The President was a massive black man in a satin gold leisure suit—in his early fifties but with a lineless face. The eyebrows were dark and bushy, contrasting with a wave of golden hair that was combed straight back from a widow’s peak.

  Ogg stared intently at a desk-mounted video screen as the Technology Square demonstration broke up, squinting his blue-green eyes as sunlight from a solar relay panel outside the window glinted off the screen. He took a deep puff on a tintette, and exhaled blue smoke thoughtfully. Ogg snapped a glance at a sign above the doorway, mouthed the familiar words: “Faith, Consumption, Freeness.” A half-read Sharing For Prosperity report lay on the desk in front of him, and he tried to get back into it. Forty-two additional tasks that could be shared—Uncle Rosy’s Thousand Year Plan. . . .

  He sighed.

  The President looked up, and through drifting blue smoke saw Chief of Staff Bulie Birdbright standing in the doorway. A handsome, tanned man of middle years with bright yellow hair and a small dimple in the center of his chin, Birdbright was in constant demand as a bedmate with the ladies of the office.