High-Opp Read online

  His father had started him on this road. The old man had died when Movius was twenty, the year he’d made the Calculation Corps. He couldn’t remember his mother. She had died in the educator purges. “The people must have a scapegoat, Dan. Give them their own knowledge to fight. Laugh while they destroy their salvation!” That was his father again; his father in the bitter mood, showing the growing son how to adopt protective coloration: “Act dumb when you’re with the dumb; act smart when you’re with the smart. But never act more intelligent than the man above you.”

  The old man had taught too well.

  Movius twisted on the bed. Damned low-opp mattress!

  Where had it all begun? Ah, the history books again, the forbidden, hate-provoking history books. Low-opped all! It had started in the Twentieth Century with polls to predict the outcome of the crude elections of that era. Sampling methods were improved for almost a century during which emphasis on the sample poll became greater and greater.

  Then along came Julius Stackman, born in the Twenty-First Century, following the wars which ended in world government. Stackman and his queer mind which linked a series of electronic relays into the Brownian Movement Regulator. Absolute random.

  Give the machine a job: Supply a nine-digit code number for every responsible adult of age sixteen or over. Next, select three numbers. Every person in the world with those three numbers repeated in his code and in that series step up to a registration kiosk. Give code number, name and thumbprint. Click, click, click, click. Answer the question, please. If you don’t register and answer and you haven’t an adequate excuse, off you go the Arctic Labor Pool or the Sewer Maintenance Gangs. Who wants to be in the ALP or the SMG? Better to get up from your sickbed, answer the question. Register your opp.

  Unless you happen to know somebody in the Very-High-Opp.

  “Bill was with me. Official business.”

  You might also know somebody in the Seps, too, who could get you a rubber stamp of your thumbprint. Then a friend could register your opp. But this method wasn’t well known.

  Give the machine a job!

  “What would be an absolute formalization of randomness?”

  Out of this came the Mathematics of Impellation, reducing the so-called “laws of chance” to a set of usable factors and reducing the correlative error in a sample-poll to something negligible.

  All of this from the square root of minus one.

  And more, too. For a time there was a boom in small hand computers for games such as chess. The computers showed the optimum move under any set of conditions. With both players using them, it became evident that the person making the first move always won. A few purists barred the computers, but they were always running into flashy winners with hidden computers. Interest died. Almost fifty years passed before the invention of a new type of game based on Rorschach cards. The ink blots elicited strictly personal reactions under which the rules of the game changed. Formalization was loose. Some people still played these games. Nathan O’Brien of Bu-Psych was an expert.

  They gave the machine the job and the machine became the government.

  There developed around the poll-taking function a hierarchy of bureaus—The Bureau of the Census (Bu-Sen), The Bureau of Opinions (Bu-Opp), The Bureau of Questionnaires (Bu-Q), The Bureau of Control (Bu-Con), The Bureau of Information (now Bu-Blah even in its own halls), The Bureau of Psychology (Bu-Psych), The Bureau of Transportation (Bu-Trans), The Bureau of Communication (Bu-Comm) and on top of the pyramid, The Bureau of Coordination (The Bureau).

  All were handmaidens to the Stackman Selector.

  Not to mention Com-Burs, the committee made up of the chiefs of the twenty-five top bureaus. Com-Burs framed the questions. Bu-Q passed on the questions. BIG RUBBER STAMP. Bu-Opp filed away the answers which were then laws.

  May the Majority rule.

  Always spell Majority with a capital M.

  Strange how the top jobs became family property. Helmut Glass was the fourth of his family to be The Coor. Occasionally he stepped down for another bureau chief, allowed the man to serve a year. Even The Coor has to have a vacation.

  At the Bureau of Communication, in a small room just under the transmission tower, a man would punch out the code numbers and question.

  “Code 449:

  “Is compulsory teaching of any subject an invasion of privacy?”

  A straightforward question. Speaks right out like a man. But look at those pushbuttons: “compulsory” and “invasion of privacy.”

  “No man’s going to tell me to do something I don’t want to do!”

  Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick into the Computer Section of Bu-Opp. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, no (kick out his number for investigation; lotta Seps around Paris), yes, yes, yes, undecided, yes, yes . . .

  File it away in the master retainers. It’s a law now. Opinion RE40407770877TX: No education subject may be compulsory.

  Compulsory teaching of Semantics? Low-opp!

  “Well then we’ll just offer the classes for whoever wants them.”

  Semantics teaches that words can dispose a man to think in a certain manner, that they can compel his thinking. Low-opped.

  “We’ll set up a counseling service: How to Keep People From Influencing You.”

  This is Semantics under another name. Negative compulsion. Low-opped.

  Sixty-one thousand new recruits for the penalty services. A few escaped by public denunciation of their teachings. Quilliam London was one of these. When the carefully prepared riots came, his wife and older daughter did not escape.

  Side effects crept into the system—forced conformity. If the Majority rules, there must be standardization. Standard clothing, standard buttons, standard decorations, standard cosmetics, standard housing, standard entertainment, standard foods.

  Portland, Maine, to Peshwar. STANDARD.

  And there were some slip-ups. The year the Bureau of Research tried to get a grant for the development of space flight they ran into a Coor who was a religious fanatic. A great uncle of Helmut Glass.

  “If the Lord wanted us gallivanting all over the universe, he’d have given us wings. We’ll put it to the question.”

  And there was a big row, but the question had spoken of bringing back strange diseases, of calling down the wrath of God.

  There it was in the Bu-Opp files. Opinion CG819038331BX: It is forbidden that man may plan, devise or manufacture any machine intended for transporting humans to any other heavenly body.

  “See the mail rocket, Junior. With about thirty days of work it could take ten men to the moon and back.”

  “Why don’t they do it then?”

  “Low-opped.”

  “Oh.”

  Standard gravitational attraction of the planet Earth.

  Only the people were not standard. In their standard beds they continued to produce humans of odd shapes and sizes and colors. The last stronghold of non-conformity: the standard bed.

  Perhaps there was another holdout, too. The language.

  High-Opp and Low-Opp were part of the lexicon and all of the derivations thereof. The terms were not always complimentary. A High-Opp could be a person who held a position he didn’t deserve. To High-Opp a person could mean to take advantage of him. A Low-Opp was a person of little worth. To Low-Opp a man could mean to do a man an evil turn or to reduce him in rank. And always in this definition was the implication that the low-opp was by foul means.

  Then there were the statuettes. They seemed to appear out of nowhere. Obscene statuettes labeled High-Opp and Low-Opp. Bu-Con was always making raids, uncovering stores of them, sending someone off to the ALP. Still the evil little plastic objects kept appearing.

  “Where do they get the materials? Why do they do these things? The State takes care of their needs. (The barren demands of survival.) They have everything they could possibly want. (Their dreams, their Festivals, their two percentum beer, their standard beds. Not to forget the plastic wit
h which to make obscene statuettes.) It’s just perversity!”

  Let them eat cake!

  But she got her head chopped off.

  “What do they want now?”

  Let them read the ancient books.

  “Don’t be a fool!”

  The scramble in the middle ranks was for privileges, for extra personal possessions, symbols of power. An extra rung on the ladder and what went with it.

  Meet Daniel Movius, scrambler. Listen to him.

  Low-opped.

  Low-opped.

  Low-Opped!

  Movius pounded his pillow. It was the sense of drabness, eternal drabness. Already he wished for something different. Anything at all, as long as it was different. This was the attraction of the secret Thrill Parlours, the scattered, clandestine schools of the outlawed Separatist Party and their philosophy of Individualism.

  Each Man A Separate Individual.

  EMASI!

  “Individualism in a standardized world? Impossible!”

  But the initials blossomed on sidewalks, on walls. EMASI! Scrawled inside a stylized side view of a skunk with its tail raised. Stamped in the middle of a sheet of paper which a Com-Burs secretary picked from the fresh stack in the box. Carved on the underside of a toilet seat. And once, just once, painted with an evil-smelling, sticky, tarry substance on The Coor’s bedroom walls.

  They were still investigating that one.

  There were times when the world seemed full of Seps.

  Movius wondered if Navvy was a Sep. He turned on his back, stared up at the ceiling. So close. The walls. So close. A cell after his Upper Rank apartment. A brown-walled cell. A Warren.

  Was Navvy a Sep? It would make sense. It wasn’t difficult to imagine Navvy scrawling EMASI! Somewhere, on a wall. On the seat of the Liaitor’s new suit.

  Movius sat bolt upright. Great Roper! Could that have been Navvy? Slowly, thoughtfully, he eased himself back to the pillow.

  The afternoon wore on, a grey progression of bitter thoughts and unanswered questions. Who did this to me? Glass?

  He became aware of a new sensation, one he had to think far back in memory to recall. Hunger. He glanced at his wristwatch. Six. Serving time. The bed creaked as he stood up. He felt stiff, as though he’d spent a full hour on the wrestling mat with Okashi.

  The Warren dining room was a place of droning conversation, clattering crockery, steaming odors of pallid foods. His tray was shoved back to him with the Standard Thursday Evening Meal. Movius carried the food to an isolated table in the corner. Fried mush, mashed potatoes with synthetic gravy containing vegetable minerals and vitamins. Something that passed for coffee and in a cracked cup. A bowl of pale green jelly substance for dessert.

  Movius was aware of the eyes following him, of the unasked questions. The little silences. He picked up his fork. The first bite brought back another memory of his father, the bitter father. “Swill! Make a man’s world flat and insipid enough and he won’t care if you send him to an early grave!”

  In spite of his hunger, Movius had to force himself to eat. He told himself it was the lack of spices to which he had become accustomed in the privileged dining rooms, that the food was the same. He knew it wasn’t true. In spite of all the Bu-Blah shouting to the contrary, he knew it wasn’t the same food. The Upper Ranks might be eating mashed potatoes and gravy tonight, but there’d be butter in the potatoes, real meat in the gravy. The fried mush might contain chicken and fresh vegetables. The coffee would be real coffee and the dessert would have fresh fruit in it.

  Privileges.

  How many generations had counted good foods a privilege?

  He was finishing the mashed potatoes when a man bent over his table. The man exuded a steaming odor of perspiration.

  “New here, ain’t you?” He touched Movius’ lapel. “What’s a Third Ranker doing eating in a Warren Dining Room? Get caught out late?”

  They were never as bold as this in the streets. Only among their own, with that solid feeling of approval, of common hate behind them.

  “I live here,” said Movius.

  “Oh?” The man’s eyes were two tiny ink dots, bird eyes, unwinking. “What’s a Third Ranker doing living in a Warren?”

  “I’m back where I started,” said Movius.

  The man reached out, grasped Movius’ lapel, jerked it. “Then get rid of that damn’ T, mister. An’ put some dye on that fancy color. You ain’t no bettern’ the rest of us!”

  “Leave him alone, Mike.”

  Movius looked up to his left. The speaker was a giant of a woman in a cook’s uniform and carrying a long cleaver. “He just come in today,” she said. “Low-opped this morning.”

  “Keep your nose out of this, Marie Cotton,” said the man. “We know he was just low-opped.”

  She leaned toward him. “You want a little something extra in your mashed potatoes? Some glass, maybe?” She held the cleaver under his chin. “Some of your own gore?”

  The man drew back.

  The cook stared at him, pressing him back with her eyes until he returned to his seat, face red. She turned to Movius. “Our seamstress is just down the hall from you. She’ll do that job on your lapels for some extras from your rations or some loose credits.” The woman turned, marched toward the kitchen, suddenly stopped and announced to the room, “We got a peaceful Warren here. We ain’t never had no trouble and we ain’t gonna have none.”

  Memory came back to Movius out of his childhood. The cooks ran the Warrens. District Housing appointed managers, of course, but tenants laughed at a manager’s orders. A manager was just one step above an LP. Look at’im puttin’ on airs! A cook, though—she could make your food bitter, put something in it to make you sick, give you short portions. You didn’t cross a cook.

  Just one element of the situation bothered Movius. Why had the cook defended him? A fresh low-opp should have been fair game. He took his tray to the wash dump, returned to his room. The question about the book was put out of his mind. It was almost time to follow the instructions given by Navvy’s sitter. If he was going to follow them. What was her name? Gladys? No. Grace. That was it, Grace. He remembered Navvy talking about her and about their father. The old man had a peculiar first name. Quilliam, Quilliam London. He’d been a professor of some kind once until his classes were low-opped.

  Her instructions said he was to go to the Carhouse, see this Clancy. Well, why not? At least it was something different. And Navvy was right this morning. (Damn his secretive manner.)

  The dusk flowed with after-dinner noises of children, giggling couples, cat-calls. A man standing across the street watched Movius’ retreating back, threw down a cigaret, turned and followed. Soon he picked up a companion. They strolled along, not talking like the other strollers.

  Movius turned a corner, saw a long car facing him, dim in the gathering darkness. The car headlights turned on, blinding him and in that instant something sharp bit into his arm. A needle! Unconsciousness swept over his mind. He didn’t even feel the hands support him, ease him into the car. Just time for one brief thought: I should have been more caref . . .

  It was a cell, barren of everything except a hard pallet. Movius opened his eyes, felt the pallet beneath him, absorbed a first awareness of his surroundings. The memory came back slowly—the street, the headlights, the stinging in his arm. He jerked upright, stared around him. The cell was about eight feet long, six wide, eight high. No doors or windows. That was odd. And the walls, a disturbing shade of red. He swung his feet to the floor, rubbed his arm where the needle had punctured it. Who?

  The answer came almost immediately. An end wall swung back, admitting a pinch-faced man carrying a canvas chair. Movius recognized him immediately: Nathan O’Brien, chief of Bu-Psych. What does Bu-Psych want with me? And O’Brien? Movius remembered him as a man who always held something in reserve, never fully committing himself.

  O’Brien opened his canvas chair, sat down opposite Movius, calculated, deliberate movements. The dark eyes
snapped up at Movius. “Hello, Dan.”

  What does he expect me to say? Hello, Nate? Movius stared back silently, waiting.

  “Sorry if we’ve inconvenienced you in any way.”

  “I’ll bet you are,” said Movius. He decided he had enough hate left over for O’Brien, another part of the system that had degraded him.

  “We had to do it that way,” said O’Brien. “Two of the Coor’s men were following you. No time to explain. They were waiting for a quiet stretch in which to pick you up.”

  Movius jerked his head around, looked into O’Brien’s eyes. “Pick me up? Why would the Coor want me? I thought he was just going to send me off to the ALP.”

  O’Brien rubbed at a greying temple. “I see you already know. And why is he doing it? Let’s say that he likes to demonstrate that he can do away with a person and he doesn’t want you running out on his plans. You happen to be a . . . well, an inconvenience. It’s a much greater demonstration of power when you use violent methods on a mere inconvenience.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “That’s your privilege, Dan.”

  Movius felt the anger rising in him. He raised his voice. “How could he do it? Can he predict the opp? And if so, how?” He almost shouted the last words.

  O’Brien spoke in a quiet, even voice. “The Coor could predict the opp several ways. He and the rest of Com-Burs—myself included—can frame the question to make the answer practically a foregone conclusion. When The Coor wants to be absolutely certain, he sends the question out with a code number held only by a selection of people who know how to answer things his way.”

  “He can’t bypass the Selector,” said Movius, his voice more subdued.

  “Do you really believe that?” asked O’Brien.

  Movius shrugged. What could he believe? As sure as Roper, Glass had made a point of telling him the answer to the question was known before it should have been known.