Harry Collins 2029

: The Crowded Earth

The guards at Stark Falls were under strict orders not to talk. Each

prisoner here was exercised alone in a courtyard runway, and meals

were served in the cells. The cells were comfortable enough, and while

there were no telescreens, books were available--genuine, old-style

books which must have been preserved from libraries dismantled fifty

years ago or more. Harry Collins found no titles dated later than

1975. Every ay or so an attendant wheeled around a cart piled high

with the dusty volumes. Harry read to pass the time.



At first he kept anticipating his trial, but after a while he almost

forgot about that possibility. And it was well over a year before he

got a chance to tell his story to anyone.



When his opportunity came, his audience did not consist of judge or

jury, doctor, lawyer or penologist. He spoke only to Richard Wade, a

fellow-prisoner who had been thrust into the adjoining cell on the

evening of October 11th, 2013.



Harry spoke haltingly at first, but as he progressed the words came

more easily, and emotion lent its own eloquence. His unseen auditor on

the other side of the wall did not interrupt or question him; it was

enough, for Harry, that there was someone to listen at last.



"So it wasn't a bit like I'd expected," he concluded. "No trial, no

publicity. I've never seen Leffingwell again, nor Manschoff. Nobody

questioned me. By the time I recovered consciousness, I was here in

prison. Buried alive."



Richard Wade spoke slowly, for the first time. "You're lucky. They

might have shot you down on the spot."



"That's just what bothers me," Harry told him. "Why didn't they kill

me? Why lock me up incommunicado this way? There aren't many prisons

left these days, with food and space at such a premium."



"There are no prisons left at all--officially," Wade said. "Just as

there are no longer any cemeteries. But important people are still

given private burials and their remains secretly preserved. All a

matter of influence."



"I've no influence. I'm not important. Wouldn't you think they'd

consider it risky to keep me alive, under the circumstances? If

there'd ever be an investigation--"



"Who would investigate? Not the government, surely."



"But suppose there's a political turnover. Suppose Congress want to

make capital of the situation?"



"There is no Congress."



Harry gasped. "No Congress?"



"As of last month. It was dissolved. Henceforth we are governed by the

Cabinet, with authority delegated to department heads."



"But that's preposterous! Nobody'd stand still for something like

that!"



"They did stand still, most of them. After a year of careful

preparation--of wholesale exposes of Congressional graft and

corruption and inefficiency. Turned out that Congress was the villain

all along; the Senators and Representatives had finagled

tariff-barriers and restrictive trade-agreements which kept our food

supply down. They were opposing international federation. In plain

language, people were sold a bill of goods--get rid of Congress and

you'll have more food. That did it."



"But you'd think the politicians themselves would realize they were

cutting their own throats! The state legislatures and the governors--"



"Legislatures were dissolved by the same agreement," Wade went on.

"There are no states any more; just governmental districts. Based upon

sensible considerations of area and population. This isn't the

old-time expanding economy based on obsolescence and conspicuous

consumption. The primary problem at the moment is sheer survival. In

a way, the move makes sense. Old-fashioned political machinery

couldn't cope with the situation; there's no time for debate when

instantaneous decisions are necessary to national welfare. You've

heard how civil liberties were suspended during the old wars. Well,

there's a war on right now; a war against hunger, a war against the

forces of fecundity. In another dozen years or so, when the Leff shot

generation is fullgrown and a lot of the elderly have died off, the

tensions will ease. Meanwhile, quick action is necessary. Arbitrary

action."



"But you're defending dictatorship!"



Richard Wade made a sound which is usually accompanied by a derisive

shrug. "Am I? Well, I didn't when I was outside. And that's why I'm

here now."



Harry Collins cleared his throat. "What did you do?"



"If you refer to my profession, I was a scripter. If you refer to my

alleged criminal activity, I made the error of thinking the way you

do, and the worse error of attempting to inject such attitudes in my

scripts. Seems that when Congress was formally dissolved, there was

some notion of preparing a timely show--a sort of historical review of

the body, using old film clips. What my superiors had in mind was a

comedy of errors; a cavalcade of mistakes and misdeeds showing just

why we were better off without supporting a political sideshow. Well,

I carried out the assignment and edited the films, but when I drafted

a rough commentary, I made the mistake of taking both a pro and con

slant. Nothing like that ever reached the telescreens, of course, but

what I did was promptly noted. They came for me at once and hustled me

off here. I didn't get a hearing or a trial, either."



"But why didn't they execute you? Or--" Harry hesitated--"is that what

you expect?"



"Why didn't they execute you?" Wade shot back. He was silent for a

moment before continuing. "No, I don't expect anything like that, now.

They'd have done it on the spot if they intended to do so at all. No,

I've got another idea about people like you and myself. And about some

of the Congressmen and Senators who dropped out of sight, too. I think

we're being stockpiled."



"Stockpiled?"



"It's all part of a plan. Give me a little time to think. We can talk

again, later." Wade chuckled once more. "Looks as if there'll be ample

opportunity in the future."



And there was. In the months ahead, Harry spoke frequently with his

friend behind the wall. He never saw him--prisoners at Stark Falls

were exercised separately, and there was no group assembly or

recreation. Surprisingly adequate meals were served in surprisingly

comfortable cells. In the matter of necessities, Harry had no

complaints. And now that he had someone to talk to, the time seemed to

go more swiftly.



He learned a great deal about Richard Wade during the next few years.

Mostly, Wade liked to reminisce about the old days. He talked about

working for the networks--the commercial networks, privately owned,

which flourished before the government took over communications media

in the '80s.



"That's where you got your start, eh?" Harry asked.



"Lord, no, boy! I'm a lot more ancient than you think. Why, I'm

pushing sixty-five. Born in 1940. That's right, during World War II. I

can almost remember the atomic bomb, and I sure as hell remember the

sputniks. It was a crazy period, let me tell you. The pessimists

worried about the Russians blowing us up, and the optimists were sure

we had a glorious future in the conquest of space. Ever hear that old

fable about the blind men examining an elephant? Well, that's the way

most people were; each of them groping around and trying to determine

the exact shape of things to come. A few of us even made a little

money from it for a while, writing science fiction. That's how I got

my start."



"You were a writer?"



"Sold my first story when I was eighteen or so. Kept on writing off

and on for almost twenty years. Of course, Robertson's thermo-nuc

formula came along in '75, and after that everything went to pot. It

knocked out the chances of future war, but it also knocked out the

interest in speculation or escape-fiction. So I moved over into

television for a while, and stayed with it. But the old science

fiction was fun while it lasted. Ever read any of it?"



"No," Harry admitted. "That was all before my time. Tell me,

though--did any of it make sense? I mean, did some of those writers

foresee what was really going to happen?"



"There were plenty of penny prophets and nickel Nostradamuses," Wade

told him. "But as I said, most of them were assuming war with the

Communists or a new era of space travel. Since Communism collapsed and

space flight was just an expensive journey to a dead end and dead

worlds, it follows that the majority of fictional futures were founded

on fallacies. And all the rest of the extrapolations dealt with

superficial social manifestations.



"For example, they wrote about civilizations dominated by advertising

and mass-motivation techniques. It's true that during my childhood

this seemed to be a logical trend--but once demand exceeded supply,

the whole mechanism of stimulating demand, which was advertising's

chief function, bogged down. And mass-motivation techniques, today,

are dedicated almost entirely to maintaining minimum resistance to a

system insuring our survival.



"Another popular idea was based on the notion of an expanding

matriarchy--a gerontomatriarchy, rather, in which older women would

take control. In an age when women outlived men by a number of years,

this seemed possible. Now, of course, shortened working hours and

medical advances have equalized the life-span. And since private

property has become less and less of a factor in dominating our

collective destinies, it hardly matters whether the male or the female

has the upper hand.



"Then there was the common theory that technological advances would

result in a push-button society, where automatons would do all the

work. And so they might--if we had an unlimited supply of raw

materials to produce robots, and unlimited power-sources to activate

them. As we now realize, atomic power cannot be utilized on a minute

scale.



"Last, but not least, there was the concept of a medically-orientated

system, with particular emphasis on psychotherapy, neurosurgery, and

parapsychology. The world was going to be run by telepaths, psychosis

eliminated by brainwashing, intellect developed by hypnotic

suggestion. It sounded great--but the conquest of physical disease has

occupied the medical profession almost exclusively.



"No, what they all seemed to overlook, with only a few exceptions, was

the population problem. You can't run a world through advertising when

there are so many people that there aren't enough goods to go around

anyway. You can't turn it over to big business when big government has

virtually absorbed all of the commercial and industrial functions,

just to cope with an ever-growing demand. A matriarchy loses its

meaning when the individual family unit changes character, under the

stress of an increasing population-pressure which eliminates the

old-fashioned home, family circle, and social pattern. And the more we

must conserve dwindling natural resources for people, the less we can

expend on experimentation with robots and machinery. As for the

psychologist-dominated society, there are just too many patients and

not enough physicians. I don't have to remind you that the military

caste lost its chance of control when war disappeared, and that

religion is losing ground every day. Class-lines are vanishing, and

racial distinctions will be going next. The old idea of a World

Federation is becoming more and more practical. Once the political

barriers are down, miscegenation will finish the job. But nobody

seemed to foresee this particular future. They all made the mistake of

worrying about the hydrogen-bomb instead of the sperm-bomb."



Harry nodded thoughtfully, although Wade couldn't see his response.

"But isn't it true that there's a little bit of each of these concepts

in our actual situation today?" he asked. "I mean, government and

business are virtually one and the same, and they do use propaganda

techniques to control all media. As for scientific research, look at

how we've rebuilt our cities and developed synthetics for food and

fuel and clothing and shelter. When it comes to medicine, there's

Leffingwell and his inoculations. Isn't that all along the lines of

your early science fiction?"



"Where's your Underground?" Richard Wade demanded.



"My what?"



"Your Underground," Wade repeated. "Hell, every science fiction yarn

about a future society had its Underground! That was the whole gimmick

in the plot. The hero was a conformist who tangled with the social

order--come to think of it, that's what you did, years ago. Only

instead of becoming an impotent victim of the system, he'd meet up

with the Underground Movement. Not some sourball like your friend

Ritchie, who tried to operate on his own hook, without real plans or

system, but a complete sub rosa organization, bent on starting a

revolution and taking over. There'd be wise old priests and wise old

crooks and wise old officers and wise old officials, all playing a

double game and planning a coup. Spies all over the place, get me?

And in no time at all, our hero would be playing tag with the top

figures in the government. That's how it worked out in all the

stories.



"But what happens in real life? What happened to you, for example? You

fell for a series of stupid tricks, stupidly perpetrated--because the

people in power are people, and not the kind of synthetic

super-intellects dreamed up by frustrated fiction-fabricators. You

found out that the logical candidates to constitute an Underground

were the Naturalists; again, they were just ordinary individuals with

no genius for organization. As for coming in contact with key figures,

you were actually on hand when Leffingwell completed his experiments.

And you came back, years later, to hunt him down. Very much in the

heroic tradition, I admit. But you never saw the man except through

the telescopic sights of your rifle. That was the end of it. No

modern-day Machiavelli has hauled you in to play cat-and-mouse games

with you, and no futuristic Freud has bothered to wash your brain or

soft-soap your subconscious. You just aren't that important, Collins."



"But they put me in a special prison. Why?"



"Who knows? They put me here, too."



"You said something once, about stockpiling us. What did you mean?"



"Well, it was just an old science fiction idea, I suppose. I'll tell

you about it tomorrow, eh?"



And so the matter--and Harry Collins--rested for the night.



The next day Richard Wade was gone.



Harry called to him and there was no answer. And he cried out and he

cursed and he paced his cell and he walked alone in the courtyard and

he begged the impassive guards for information, and he sweated and he

talked to himself and he counted the days and he lost count of the

days.



Then, all at once, there was another prisoner in the adjacent cell,

and his name was William Chang, and he was a biologist. He was

reticent about the crime he had committed, but quite voluble about the

crimes committed by others in the world outside. Much of what he said,

about genes and chromosomes and recessive characteristics and

mutation, seemed incomprehensible to Harry. But in their talks, one

thing emerged clearly enough--Chang was concerned for the future of

the race. "Leffingwell should have waited," he said. "It's the

second generation that will be important. As I tried to tell my

people--"



"Is that why you're here?"



Chang sighed. "I suppose so. They wouldn't listen, of course.

Overpopulation has always been the curse of Asia, and this seemed to

be such an obvious solution. But who knows? The time may come when

they need men like myself."



"So you were stockpiled too."



"What's that?"



Harry told him about Richard Wade's remarks, and together they tried

to puzzle out the theory behind them.



But not for long. Because once again Harry Collins awoke in the

morning to find the adjoining cell empty, and once again he was alone

for a long time.



At last a new neighbor came. His name was Lars Neilstrom. Neilstrom

talked to him of ships and shoes and sealing-wax and the thousand and

one things men will discuss in their loneliness and frustration,

including--inevitably--their reasons for being here.



Neilstrom had been an instructor under Vocational Apt, and he was at a

loss to explain his presence at Stark Falls. When Harry spoke of the

stockpiling theory, his fellow-prisoner demurred. "It's more like

Kafka than science fiction," he said. "But then, I don't suppose

you've ever read any Kafka."



"Yes, I have," Harry told him. "Since I came here I've done nothing

but read old books. Lately they've been giving me microscans. I've

been studying up on biology and genetics; talking to Chang got me

interested. In fact, I'm really going in for self-education. There's

nothing else to do."



"Self-education! That's the only method left nowadays." Neilstrom

sounded bitter. "I don't know what's going to become of our heritage

of knowledge in the future. I'm not speaking of technological skill;

so-called scientific information is carefully preserved. But the

humanities are virtually lost. The concept of the well-rounded

individual is forgotten. And when I think of the crisis to come--"



"What crisis?"



"A new generation is growing up. Ten or fifteen years from now we'll

have succeeded in erasing political and racial and religious

divisions. But there'll be a new and more dangerous differentiation; a

physical one. What do you think will happen when half the world is

around six feet tall and the other half under three?"



"I can't imagine."



"Well, I can. The trouble is, most people don't realize what the

problem will be. Things have moved too swiftly. Why, there were more

changes in the last hundred years than in the previous thousand! And

the rate of acceleration increases. Up until now, we've been concerned

about too rapid technological development. But what we have to worry

about is social development."



"Most people have been conditioned to conform."



"Yes. That's our job in Vocational Apt. But the system only works when

there's a single standard of conformity. In a few years there'll be a

double one, based on size. What then?"



Harry wanted some time to consider the matter, but the question was

never answered. Because Lars Neilstrom went away in the night, as had

his predecessors before him. And in succeeding interludes, Harry came

to know a half-dozen other transient occupants of the cell next to

his. They came from all over, and they had many things to discuss, but

always there was the problem of why they were there--and the memory

of Richard Wade's premise concerning stockpiling.



There came a time when the memory of Richard Wade merged with the

memory of Arnold Ritchie. The past was a dim montage of life at the

agency and the treatment center and the ranch, a recollection of lying

on the river bank with women in attitudes of opisthotonos or of lying

against the boulders with a rifle.



Somewhere there was an image of a child's wide eyes and a voice

saying, "My name is Harry Collins." But that seemed very far away.

What was real was the cell and the years of talking and reading the

microscans and trying to find a pattern.



Harry found himself describing it all to a newcomer who said his name

was Austin--a soft-voiced man who became a resident of the next cell

one day in 2029. And eventually he came to Wade's theory.



"Maybe there were a few wiser heads who foresaw a coming crisis," he

concluded. "Maybe they anticipated a time when they might need a few

nonconformists. People like ourselves who haven't been passive or

persuaded. Maybe we're the government's insurance policy. If an

emergency arises, we'll be freed."



"And then what would you do?" Austin asked, softly. "You're against

the system, aren't you?"



"Yes. But I'm for survival." Harry Collins spoke slowly,

thoughtfully. "You see, I've learned something through the years of

study and contact here. Rebellion is not the answer."



"You hated Leffingwell."



"Yes, I did, until I realized that all this was inevitable.

Leffingwell is not a villain and neither is any given individual, in

or out of government. Our road to hell has been paved with only the

very best of intentions. Killing the engineers and contractors will

not get us off that road, and we're all on it together. We'll have to

find a way of changing the direction of our journey. The young people

will be too anxious to merely rush blindly ahead. Most of my

generation will be sheeplike, moving as part of the herd, because of

their conditioning. Only we old-time rebels will be capable of

plotting a course. A course for all of us."



"What about your son?" Austin asked.



"I'm thinking of him," Harry Collins answered. "Of him, and of all the

others. Maybe he does not need me. Maybe none of them need me. Maybe

it's all an illusion. But if the time ever comes, I'll be ready. And

meanwhile, I can hope."



"The time has come," Austin said, gently.



And then he was standing, miraculously enough, outside his cell and

before the door to Harry's cell, and the door was opening. And once

again Harry stared into the wide eyes he remembered so well--the same

wide eyes, set in the face of a fullgrown man. A fullgrown man, three

feet tall. He stood up, shakily, as the man held out his hand and

said, "Hello, Father."



"But I don't understand--"



"I've waited a long time for this moment. I had to talk to you, find

out how you really felt, so that I'd be sure. Now you're ready to join

us."



"What's happening? What do you want with me?"



"We'll talk later." Harry's son smiled. "Right now, I'm taking you

home."