ible?" Wolzek's voice was a mocking echo. "You sit here in this
tomb and when somebody tells you that the world you know has died, you
refuse to believe it. Even though every night, after you sneak home
and huddle up inside your room trying not to be noticed, ten guards
patrol this place with subatomics, so the Yardstick gangs won't break
in and take over. So they won't do what they did down south--overrun
the office buildings and the factories and break them up, cut them
down to size for living quarters."

"But they were stopped," Eric objected. "I saw it on the telescreen,
the security forces stopped them--"

"Crapola!" Wolzek pronounced the archaicism with studied care. "You
saw films. Faked films. Have you ever traveled, Eric? Ever been down
south and seen conditions there?"

"Nobody travels nowadays. You know that. Priorities."

"I travel, Eric. And I know. Security forces don't suppress anything
in the south these days. Because they're made up of Yardsticks now;
that's right, Yardsticks exclusively. And in a few years that's the
way it will be up here. Did you ever hear about the Chicagee riots?"

"You mean last year, when the Yardsticks tried to take over the
synthetic plants at the Stockyards?"

"Tried? They _succeeded_. The workers ousted management. Over fifty
thousand were killed in the revolution--oh, don't look so shocked,
that's the right word for it!--but the Yardsticks won out in the end."

"But the telescreen showed--"

"Damn the telescreen! I know because I happened to be there when it
happened. And if _you_ had been there, you and a few million other
ostriches who sit with your heads buried in telescreens, maybe we
could have stopped them."

"I don't believe it. I can't!"

"All right. Think back. That was last year. And since the first of
this year, what's happened to the standard size meat-ration?"

"They cut it in half," Eric admitted. "But that's because of Ag
shortages, according to the telescreen reports--" He stood up,
gulping. "Look here, I'm not going to listen to any more of this kind
of talk. By rights, I ought to turn your name in."

"Go ahead." Wolzek waved his hand. "It's happened before. I was
reported when I blasted the Yardsticks who shot my father down when he
tried to land his jet in a southern field. I was reported when they
killed Annette."

"Annette?"

"You remember that name, don't you, Eric? Your first girl, wasn't she?
Well, I'm the guy who married her. Yes, a