The programmed people

The glow from the dome decreased, suddenly, as the center of the dais unfolded back into fifteen equal wedge-segments, like a blossoming flower, and the Speakster rose into view amid a solemn hush. Bright golden light made the white velvet robe shimmer like a slippery flame, and made the shadowy aspect of the cowl-hidden features all the more terrible. The golden light spilled upward from the surfaces of the fifteen triangular "petals", bathing the Speakster thoroughly in bright radiance, leaving the remainder of the Temple in even darker darkness by contrast.

The arms of the Speakster rose slowly, angling domeward over his unseen head, until the folds of the weighty sleeves slid back a trifle at the cuff, exposing the wax-white hands, fingers spread wide apart, palms toward the beginning of the dome-curve, as though warding off impending dangers. Lloyd shivered, suddenly, despite the suffocating warmth of the crowd. This would not be a regular Service. That was the Danger-stance. Unconsciously, he held his breath, listening, as the mass tension grew unbearably electric.

"There cannot be Service tonight!" thundered the Speakster. "We are polluted from within. It would be sacrilege to have Service with a traitor in our midst!" Then, over the rising gasp that arose from the multitude, "She has been traced to this holy place, in a fiendish attempt to lose herself among the masses, to hide her rottenness amid the healthy flesh of the Kinsmen! Remain in your places--!" cried the Speakster, as a short-lived Brownian Movement began in the close-packed mob. People froze in place at the peremptory shout. "The Goons have been alerted, and are even now converging through the arcades!" said the Speakster. A sigh of relief whispered like a concerted zephyr over the up-turned faces. "She will be found out, have no fear. When I depart and the Light-of-Day returns, you must exit through the arcade by which you entered. You will be checked by a squad of Goons on your way out. Remember, a good Kinsman has nothing to fear!"

The outstretched arms swung down until the pallid palms came firmly together before the Speakster's chest, the cowled head bowed low, and then the figure on the dais descended from sight, the stiff "petals" re-closing over the spot on which the Speakster had stood, and the golden light vanishing as the Light-of-Day sprang bluely into harsh life against the crystal dome. Lloyd turned obediently, as soon as movement was possible in the dispersing crowd, and started toward his point of entrance, the arcade that would lead him into his sector of the Hive.

Without warning, the Proposition Screens flickered on, and the crowd's movement jerked to a confused halt. Then, as though collectively realizing that there was time enough to be checked by the Goons after the Vote, people formed into neat lines, queuing up before the Vote Boxes that lined the walls.

Lloyd took another look at his watch. Five past eight. That gave him till ten past to arrive at the Vote Box. With mounting anxiety, he counted heads in the line before him. He was twelfth. If each person took the allotted thirty seconds--He'd miss his Vote, have to be hospitalized for Readjustment. He tried to stay calm as the line advanced.

With two minutes to go, he found four people before him. The first, a grey-suited man with very little hair, nocked his plate in the slot--Then stood and pondered. It was fully twenty-five seconds before he depressed one of the buttons in the Vote Box's interior, where his choice would remain secret. Another few seconds to retrieve his plate, and then a full six precious seconds while the next person, a skinny woman very near the compulsory retirement age, fumbled in a deep leather purse for her card. And she pondered....

Sweat sprang out on Lloyd's forehead. There wouldn't be enough time. There couldn't be ... unless--

"Miss!" he said, to the back of the small blonde head in front of him. The girl spun about to face him, dark green eyes wide in fright, breath hissing between parted lips. "I didn't mean to startle you," he said, contritely. "It's just that--" It was terrible, telling such an awful confidence to a total stranger, but it was the only way to convince her quickly. "I've missed twice this quarter," he blurted. "Not my fault. I'm a good Kinsman, honestly. It was line-jams, both times. Too many people for too few Vote Boxes. You must believe me!"

"What--" she said, a little dazedly. "What can I do?"

"Let me have your place in line!" begged Lloyd. "I've timed it. Less than a minute left till Count, and two ahead of me, including yourself. Please help me!"

"I--" she said, with a funny, almost hysterical smile. "I don't know why you should be so--" Then she stepped aside, swiftly. "Go ahead. Hurry!"

Lloyd leaped into the breach without even pausing to voice his thanks. As the young man before him stepped away, Lloyd jammed his plate into the slot, and shoved his fingers inside the handspace. A fumble, and he had a button, he didn't know which one. Pro was right, Con was left, but he just prodded it inward without checking its location. Then the light died on the screen, and his plate popped out of the slot. He caught it deftly, sighed in quavery relief, and turned to thank his benefactor. He saw her, trailing after the departing people toward one of the arcades, shuffling her feet, apparently in no hurry. Then an uncomfortable thought struck him, and he ran to catch up with her.

"Miss--!" he said, taking her arm. Again the brief look of fear on her features, then she smiled. It was a small, very tired smile. "You needn't thank me--" she began.

"I wasn't going to--" said Lloyd. Then, embarrassed, "I mean, of course I'd thank you, but that isn't why I came after you. I just realized--Have you missed any Votes this quarter? I'd hate to be the cause of your Readjustment...."

"There's no danger," she said softly, "of my getting in trouble for non-voting."

"They'll get you anyhow," he said flatly, with a note of near-pity in his voice. "By rights, I should raise a cry right this instant, to save the Goons the trouble of checking all the good Kinsmen." A secondary thought hit him, and he took a very short step backward. "And you're diseased. The longer you remain in contact with the crowd, the more likely a spread of the contagion."

"I'm not!" she almost shouted, then clenched her jaws, and got control of herself. Bright moisture began to trickle from the corners of her eyes, and she dabbed angrily at the warm salty drops. "I was hurt, yes!" she said, suddenly pulling back the long sleeve of her bright green dress, for a brief moment. Lloyd saw the ragged, pink-edged cicatrix on the underside of her forearm, and winced. "It's healed," she said. "I didn't need the hospital, don't you see?"

Lloyd saw, and stood there, his mind fumbling dizzily for a direction to take. The last straggling ends of the crowd were moving into the arcades, now. Lloyd took his bearings, saw that only one or two people were now headed for his own arcade, and began to back off in that direction, saying, "I'm sorry, I'm so terribly sorry. I must go, now."

She nodded, once, then turned her back on him, and stood, small and helpless, in the growing void that was the Temple proper. Lloyd turned from her and started toward his arcade. Then he stopped and looked back at her. She was healed, after all.... He remembered with a sense of shame the time he'd broken a finger, and hadn't reported for hospital assignment, because a favorite cowboy was at the neighborhood theatre that afternoon. He never had gone in, then, being fearful lest the examining doctors notice that he'd delayed. The finger had healed itself, a trifle crookedly, and Lloyd had never told anyone of his dereliction, not even his father. Especially not his father.

"Wh--Who?" gasped the girl, startled by his reappearance. "_Who_ know me?" Then, catching his meaning, "The goons, you mean?" Lloyd nodded impatiently. "No, they don't. But they don't have to. I--I have no Voteplate."

"Can't you girls hang onto anything?!" he muttered. "Don't tell me yours fell in the sea from a Tourgyro?"

"You say that as though you know somebody whose did," said the girl.

"My fiancee," he explained, adding, with an embarrassed grin, "I'll be twenty-five just after next Marriage Day. I found her in the phonebook listings."

"But--What'd she do?" the girl persisted. "Without a Voteplate, she could be picked up any time, in the first Goon inspection that arose."

"Take this," he urged, pressing something into her hand. "Your arcade is third over from mine. When you get outside, wait. I'll meet you there and get this back. Don't fail me, please."

He spun about and dashed toward his arcade, leaving her standing in the center of the floor, staring dumbfounded at the flat metal plate in her hand. Trembling, she turned toward the indicated arch, and followed swiftly after the stragglers entering it, her perspiring fingers clamped rigidly upon the engraved face of the Voteplate.

Lloyd didn't like Goons. He knew he was supposed to recognize in them the ultimate in police efficiency, but they still gave him chills. A Goon, a Governmental Opposer of Neutrality, was a fearful sight. All were of a size, equal to a micrometer-breadth, a monstrous eight feet of thick metal and ponderous wheels, bathed from base to apex in the blurry grey pulsations of their protective force-fields, through which no power on Earth could penetrate. The metal arms were multi-jointed and dextrous to a fantastic degree, despite the clumsy look of the thick tripodal fingers at the ends of the arms. The "eyes" were wide-set telelenses, a pair of them, to report back all they saw to the Brain itself, deep beneath the teeming streets of the Hive. And each Goon spoke with the cold, inflectionless tones of the Brain, the flatly indifferent voice that could only emanate from a mind of glowing vacuum tubes and magnetic fields. From any or all of a Goon's six fingertips could spring the dreaded Snapper Beam, an electronic refinement of vibrations that struck the human nervous system almost identically with the chemical effect of strychnine poisoning, except that a Snapper Beam worked instantly, and always fatally. A brush of the invisible force, and a man's face creased into the frenzied grin of a madman, his legs danced wildly, uncontrollably, and the muscles of his back contracted tightly, relentlessly, remorselessly, until his spine cracked in two.