Galaxies Like Grains of Sand Read Online Free PDF Page B

conference in ten more minutes.
    “Not mad?” the psychodynamician asked, his voice assuming a bantering note. “No, Ployploy’s not mad; the Mating Centre only refused her the right to breed, that’s all. Imperial Government only refused her the right to a televote, that’s all. United Traders only refused her a Consumption Rating, that’s all. Education, Inc., only restricted her to beta recreations, that’s all. She’s a prisoner here because she’s a genius, is that it? You’re crazy, Gunpat, if you don’t think that girl’s stark, staring mad. You’ll be telling me next, out of that grotesque, flapping mouth of yours, that she hasn’t got a white face.”
    Gunpat made gobbling sounds.
    “You dare to mention that!” he gasped. “And what if her face is — that colour?”
    “You ask such fool questions, it’s hardly worth while bothering with you,” Smithlao said mildly. “Your trouble, Gunpat, is that you’re totally incapable of absorbing one single simple historical fact. Ployploy is white because she is a dirty little throwback. Our ancient enemies were white. They occupied this part of the globe until our ancestors rose from the East and took from them the ancient privileges they had so long enjoyed at our expense. Our ancestors intermarried with such of the defeated as survived, right?
    “In a few generations, the white strain was obliterated, diluted, lost. A white face has not been seen on earth since before the terrible Age of Overpopulation — fifteen hundred years, let’s say, to be generous. And then — then little Lord Recessive Gunpat throws one up neat as you please. What did they give you at Mating Centre, Gunnyboy, a cave woman?”
    Gunpat exploded in fury, shaking his fist at the screen.
    “You’re fired, Smithlao,” he snarled. “This time you’ve gone too far, even for a dirty, rotten psycho! Get out! Go on, get out, and never come back!”
    Abruptly, he bellowed to his auto-operator to switch him over to the conference. He was just in a ripe mood to deal with Automotion.
    As Gunpat’s irate image faded from the screen, Smithlao sighed and relaxed. The hate-brace was accomplished. It was the supreme compliment in his profession to be dismissed by a patient at the end of a session; Gunpat would be the keener to reengage him next time. All the same, Smithlao felt no triumph. In his calling, a thorough exploration of human psychology was needed; he had to know exactly the sorest points in a man’s make-up. By playing on those points deftly enough, he could rouse the man to action.
    Without being roused, men were helpless prey to lethargy, bundles of rag carried around by machines. The ancient drives had all but died out.
    Smithlao sat where he was, gazing into both past and future.
    In exhausting the soil, man had exhausted himself. The psyche and a vitiated topsoil could not exist simultaneously; it was as simple and as logical as that.
    Only the failing tides of hate and anger lent man enough impetus to continue at all. Else, he was just a dead hand across his mechanized world.
    “So this is how a species becomes extinct!” thought Smithlao, and wondered if anyone else had thought about it. Perhaps Imperial Government knew, but was powerless to do anything; after all, what more could you do than was being done?
    Smithlao was a shallow man — inevitable in a caste-bound society so weak that it could not face itself. Having discovered the terrifying problem, he set himself to forget it, to evade its impact, to dodge any personal implications it might have. With a grunt to his sedan, he turned about and ordered himself home.
    Since Gunpat’s robots had already left, Smithlao travelled back along the way he had come. He was trundled outside and back to the vane, standing silent below the elms.
    Before the sedan incorporated itself back into the vane, a movement caught Smithlao’s eye. Half-concealed by a veranda, Ployploy stood against a corner of the house. With a