Rolltown

IV

She stared at him. “Don’t be ridiculous. Why, you’ve been lecturing me like a professor of economics for the past twenty minutes.”

He made a face. “Don’t confuse learning with intelligence, Di. I didn’t have much formal schooling. In fact, practically none at all. When I was a kid we still had the ghettos and slums and my family was as lower class as you could get. But during the Asian War I copped one and was in the hospital for quite a spell. I learned to read there. No, I mean literally. Before that I couldn’t do much more than read comic books and sign my own name. But I learned to read. You know the first book I read? The Bible, of all things. It made an agnostic out of me but it also goosed my intellectual curiosity.” He twisted his worried face into self-deprecation again. “Such as I’m capable of.”

“Oh, for crissakes stop drooling self-pity.”

“Sorry. At any rate I became a reader. A compulsive reader, an inveterate reader, I suppose you call it. I spend all my free time reading.”

“Well, that shows you’re really intelligent.”

“No it doesn’t,” he said doggedly. “All it shows is that I’m a compulsive reader. You can be slowish as far as intelligence is concerned and still do a lot of reading. Maybe you don’t read as fast as the quiz kid type does, but you wade through it eventually. You even learn the twenty-dollar words, but you mustn’t kid yourself, it doesn’t make you any smarter. If your I.Q. is 90, it’s still 90. And in the Meritocracy it’s exposed. There is no room for the stupid.”

She tightened her mouth in rejection. “How do you know your I.Q. is 93?”

He chuckled wryly. “When I first entered the army I worked for a while in records… I snuck a look at my examinations. By the way, what’s yours?”

She made a gesture of shivering. “I’ve never tried to find out.”

“Any citizen, any alien for that matter, is entitled to check his National Data Bank dossier if he wants to. Gives you a chance to refute any misinformation that might have crept in.”

It was her turn to be rueful. “Sure, but I’ve always been afraid to check up on my I.Q. Afraid that I might be, uh, inadequate.”

“I don’t blame you,” he laughed. “It’s the reaction of a good many of us, and probably well-founded. Sometimes, I’m sorry that curiosity ever hit me in the army. I’d be happier if I didn’t know.”

She leaned forward. “But look, Bat, there are fields in which I.Q. doesn’t particularly enter. The arts, for, instance. Some of the great artists of the world were lamebrains#longdash#excuse me, I shouldn’t have used that term.”

He spread his hands in a gesture of submission. “Yeah, but I haven’t any particular aptitude for any of the arts. Believe me, I’ve messed around in them.”

“But there are other fields…”

“Sure, and I’ve held down jobs in some. Somebody like I can still be a servant. I used to curry horses for one of the big mucky-mucks in Kentucky. But I don’t like being a servant.”

“It’s honorable work.”

“All right, but I don’t like it.”

“In a way, you’re a servant now, a public servant.”

“All right, once again. But now, here in New Woodstock I’m an honored member of the community. With a few exceptions, I’m welcome in everybody’s home. I get invited to the parties; I’m often brought in for lunch or dinner. Hell, the Robertsons named their new baby after me.”

She stared at him in frustration.

He said doggedly, “Here I belong. Here I am wanted. Here I can be of use. The Meritocracy doesn’t need me and I refuse to sit around in the New America collecting my NIT and not being able to return anything of value to society. I don’t like charity. I think it’s bad for those who have to take it. Most certainly it is for healthy young people still in their prime.”

Jeff Smith, who seemed to be listing slightly to starboard, passed by them, heading back to his home from the direction of the site’s cantina.

He glowered at them, his eyes particularly going over Diana Sward’s bared bosom. There was an element of sneer in his voice when he slurred, “Yawl having a good time?”

He was past before either of them could think of anything to say.

Bat chuckled and said to her, “I think Jeff sports the last of the southern accents. How does he maintain it in this day of TV and movies? And what’s that chip on his shoulder, anyway?”

“He invited me to have a drink a little earlier,” Di said distastefully. “I turned him down. He’s been trying to lay me ever since I entered the community. Frankly, small men have never appealed to me.”

Ferd Zogbaum came up, a scowl on his face. A scowl wasn’t normal on Ferd. He was an easygoing, generous type, pushing thirty, pushing six feet, pushing a hundred and sixty pounds and was as nearly universally liked by everybody in New Woodstock as is possible to be liked without being completely wishy-washy. And Ferd wasn’t wishy-washy.

He said, “Hi, folks.”

They exchanged the amenities and Di suggested he get himself a chair. She stood. “I think I’d better put on some more clothes, it’s cooling off.”

Ferd said to Bat, “Could I talk to you a minute?” His tone indicated that he meant alone.

“Sure, why not?” Bat said, coming to his feet. “Let’s go over to my place. See you later, Di.”

“Right on.” Di looked at Ferd. “Don’t forget. You were coming over for supper.”

He grinned his shy, overgrown-boy grin. “Do I look crazy? You’re the best cook in town.”

“Flattery will get you nowheres, laddy buck. Besides, at best you could say I’m the nearest thing to a cook in town. Cooking is an art, a lost art, and doesn’t even exist any more in an art colony.”

Bat and Ferd started to the former’s mobile home, sauntering along easily. It was the time of day Bat liked best in the mobile art colony. Two of the younger set, known to be considering marriage, went by slowly, hand in hand. The boy had a blanket over one arm. They were probably strolling down to the river bank for a quick roll in the hay, Bat figured. They had been consummating their marriage#longdash#before marriage#longdash#for some time now. Off in the distance, a guitar, poorly played, was starting up a folk song. The kids were beginning to emerge from their homes; a ball game was shaping up. There weren’t many children in New Woodstock, about a hundred, but their presence added a needed something, even in an art colony.

They passed Bette and Bea, two models who shared a small mobile home. Bette was taking strenuous exercises. She had formerly been a dancer and made a policy of keeping herself in trim. She had one of the most beautiful complexions Bat had ever seen, being a somewhat light sepia. She was also noted for putting out for any man who asked her to lie down.

Bat said to Ferd, in the way of make-conversation, “Getting any work done?”

Ferd said, virtuously, “Some people might work from sun to sun, but a writer’s work is never done.”

Bat looked at him from the side of his eyes. “Oh? You don’t seem to be wearing yourself to a frazzle.”

“I’m working right this very minute,” Ferd said, in put-on protest. “One of these days I’ll do an article about you. How’s this for a title: Last of the Neighborhood Cops?”

“It’ll never sell. Besides, the word cop is antiquated. They call us pigs, these days. Do you place much of your stuff, Ferd?”

“Some. Not enough to negate my NIT, but some. That’s one advantage of NIT, I suppose. Gives somebody who’s trying to break into the arts the opportunity to survive while he’s learning the tools of his trade.”

“No more starving in garrets, eh?” Bat snorted. “I wonder if that starving in garrets didn’t have its values so far as the development of art was concerned. It eliminated those who didn’t have the necessary push, the gumption, the belief in himself.”

Ferd looked over at him. “You sound slightly sour.”

Bat shook his head. “Not really. But that’s what Di and I were just talking about; NIT, the Meritocracy, the elimination of just about everybody from contributing in society.”

They had reached his vehicle and Bat Hardin opened the door and allowed Ferd Zogbaum to precede him.

The Hardin mobile home consisted of a fairly large living room, a mini-kitchen, a bath and a bedroom. In the tradition of house trailers, since their inception, everything was compactly efficient; refrigerator, automatic bar, electronic stove, TV screen, tucked away here and there with a minimum expenditure of space.

Ferd slumped into an easy chair and Bat went over to the bar. “What’ll you have?” he said.

“I don’t know. What have you got it set up for?”

“Not much, actually. I’m not particularly fancy about my grog. There’s pseudo-whiskey, gin, rum, brandy, vermouth, both dry and sweet, tequila, now that we’re in Mexico, and the usual mixers.”

“It’s been a hot day. How about a Cuba Libra?”

“Sounds good to me,” Bat said, dialing the rum and coke and a dash of lime juice. He paused a brief moment, then opened the compartment and brought forth two long, chilled plastic glasses. He handed one to Ferd and took a chair himself.

Ferd took up the conversation where they had dropped it. “So what’s wrong with the Meritocracy?”

“There’s no room for anybody except those with a lot of merit,” Bat said wryly.

Ferd sipped his drink and thought about it. “That’s not my beef. What it’s done is eliminated the democratic ethic.”

“Don’t say that near any professional propagandist, or he’ll wash your mouth out with soap.”

“One dollar, one vote,” Ferd said. “Some democracy.”

“One earned dollar, one vote,” Bat amended, working at his own drink. “It does make a difference. Dividends, rents, pension income, income from a trust; none of them count. The slogan is pragmatism. The theory is, the most useful members of society have the most voice in running it.”

“Yeah, that’s the slogan. And the majority of the citizenry is disenfranchised.”

“So when was it different?”

Ferd looked at him and scowled. “How do you mean?”

“Listen, we seem to get into the habit of thinking in labels. Democracy is a label. So far as I’m concerned it’s a great idea but there’s been precious little of it since primitive times when government was based on the clan and there were few enough people in a society so that all could participate. But take a look at democracy come down through the ages. The great example always given us is the Golden Age of Greece and particularly Athens. But who voted so democratically? The male citizens of Athens. And for every citizen there was a flock of slaves who had no say at all, no matter how intelligent, no matter how productive a member of society. Or bring it down more recently. Did you labor under the illusion that when George Washington’s army won their revolution that they were allowed to vote in the new society? They did if they had enough property. Otherwise, they were disenfranchised. Right on down to modern times, it wasn’t one man, one vote; there were various ways to keep one whale of a percentage of the population from having their full say. The United States is usually used as an example of all-out democracy, but the slaves weren’t freed until 1863, and women weren’t given the vote until after the First World War.”

Ferd said, a bit on the dogged side, “I get the feeling that you’re just arguing for the sake of it, that you don’t really disagree with me. You’re not any more eligible to vote than I am.”

Bat chortled and finished his drink. “Man, they had us when they rang the NIT in on us. Obviously, most citizens who had to be subsidized in their income by the State were second-rate citizens. When it started, the so-called floor under everybody’s income was at $3,500, the poverty level at that time. Everybody poor enough to have to take the Negative Income Tax was so damn anxious to get it that they’d put up with anything. When the Constitution was rewritten, to fit it in with post-industrial society, there were few to put up a howl about one-dollar-one-vote. They wanted that dole, that security. So now we’ve got it.”

Ferd said, “Yeah, and about ten percent of the population have the vote and of those about three percent, the real ranking members of the Meritocracy, control enough votes to swing any election.”

“Well, and isn’t the government more efficient and less corrupt than ever before?”

Ferd laughed, a note of deprecation there. “How would I know? It is according to them but they’re the ones who control the mass media, the libraries, the schools and all the other means of spreading the good word about themselves. I don’t like dictatorship, even a benevolent dictatorship. It’s up to the dictators to decide what’s benevolent.”

Bat was getting tired of the subject. He said, “Another drink?”

“No, I guess not.”

Bat said, “What was it that you wanted to see me about, Ferd?”

The other’s face worked unhappily for a moment before he answered. He said, “I don’t know exactly how to put it, but Bat, something’s wrong.”

Bat took him in.

Ferd said, “I can’t exactly put my finger on it. It’s kind of intuitive. But, for one thing, where are the local people?”

“How do you mean?” Bat said, scowling.

He had run into this intuitive feeling of Ferd Zogbaum’s before. The other hadn’t been with New Woodstock very long but on two occasions he had come up with this intuitive feeling, or whatever it was, and had been astonishingly accurate. That time, for instance, in Colorado when they had parked in an almost dry river bed, strung out along the side of the trickling stream. Ferd, frowning unhappily, as he was frowning now, had suddenly snapped “A cloud burst,” although there wasn’t much in the way of clouds in the sky. He had been proven right. They had barely gotten the town out of the river bed before the flood was upon them. Two of the mobile homes had been lost, though happily the occupants survived.

Now Ferd said stubbornly, “The last time I was in Mexico, about five years ago, the locals used to hang around the site when a group of American homes came through. Some were there just to gawk, but some had souvenirs and such to sell. Where are they this time?”

Bat scowled again. “Damned if I know. Possibly so many Americans have been coming through that we’re no longer a novelty.”

Ferd shook his head. “That wouldn’t apply to peddlers, or beggars. It especially wouldn’t apply to kids. Kids never get tired of gaping at strangers and different ways of doing things.”

Bat thought about it, biting his lower lip. He said slowly, “Did you notice at the border this morning a, well, kind of a sullen quality about some of the authorities?”

“As a matter of fact, I did. We had all of our papers, permission to enter and all, but I got a distinct feeling that most of them hated to see us pass.”

Bat said suddenly, “Look, what do you say we go into town this evening after we eat? Take a look around.”

Ferd came to his feet, pulled out his pocket phone and dialed the time. “Okay,” he said. “I’ve got to get back over to Di’s now.”

“Pick me up here when you’re through,” Bat said. “I’ll have to whomp up my own supper, you lucky jazzer.”

Ferd grinned at him. “Virtue is its own reward,” he said mockingly.

“And where’ll it get you? In the end?” Bat growled back.

After Ferd Zogbaum had gone, Bat went back into his mini-kitchen, opened the refrigerator-freezer and scowled in at the purchases he had made earlier. He wasn’t particularly hungry after the heat of the day.

In honor of their first stop in Mexico, he brought forth a container-dish of chili con carne and placed it in the electronic heater and gloomily watched as the container top melted, becoming part of the prepared contents.

The chili con carne heated but the dish remained at room temperature and Bat took the food over to the small table in the living room. From a cabinet he brought forth a set of utensils, some crackers and another plastic of beer and sat down to eat. He wasn’t going to need the knife with this meal so he ate it along with the chili.

Come to think of it, he remembered that chili con carne wasn’t actually a Mexican dish. Something like chop suey which had been invented by a dishwasher in San Francisco, many years ago, chili con carne was an American version of what the norteamericanos thought the Mexicans ought to eat. It had actually been devised in the American border states, probably Texas or Arizona. However, he liked the dish, hearty, filling and flavorful.

When he had finished, he ate the plate and the spoon and fork and went back to his favorite chair to wait for Ferd Zogbaum.

He considered dialing himself an after-dinner drink but decided not to. He had no idea of what they might run into in Linares and didn’t want to be even slightly befuddled. He spotted the two plastic glasses he and Ferd had drunk from and got up again to toss them into the sink where they could melt away and go down the drain. Bachelor-like, he hated to have the place cluttered up with dirties.

He reached up for a book from his shelves and sat again. He could have, of course, sat before his library TV screen and dialed practically any book ever published. Long since, the National Data Banks had recorded every volume in the Library of Congress, the British Museum Library and the libraries of every university in the West, all available on his screen for free if the books were on the public domain or at a very nominal sum, automatically deducted from his credit account, if the copyright was still in the hands of the author. However, there was something in Bat Hardin that appreciated the feel of book-in-hand while he was reading. The size of his mobile home prevented him from collecting a large library but he carried with him his favorites, usually to the amusement of visitors to his home.