Rolltown. Mack Reynolds

the majority. Overnight, comparatively, that changed. The old system of bringing the product to the consumer was antiquated as was no other branch of our socio-economic system. Hundreds of thousands of individually operated stores, dispensing the same products, had been the past. Hundreds of thousands of repairmen, servicemen, tinkerers, had been involved in keeping our gadgets in repair.

      “Very well. The ultra-market finished off the small shopkeepers in much the same manner that agricultural automation finished off the small farmer. And automation also finished off the small repairman when it became cheaper to throw away a mixer, a refrigeration power unit, or even a TV set or the replaceable engine of a car than it was to repair it.”

      Di said in impatience, “What’s all this got to do with your Meritocracy?”

      “Just this. The majority of our population became un-needed in our socio-economic system. What John Kenneth Galbraith, the old economist, once called the Technostructure, in short, management, became for all practical purposes all of the working population. Practically everybody who worked was part of management; from scientists, through engineers to technicians. The blue collar worker was an anachronism. Happily—I guess—by this time production was at such a scale that the unneeded were not forced into starvation. Simultaneously with the advent of Meritocracy came the movement toward Guaranteed Annual Income, the Negative Income Tax and other floors beneath the income of every family in the country, employed usefully or not. In short, the dole.”

      Diana Sward said, “Goddammit to hell, stop lecturing me largely about things I already know. What’s this got to do with you not being a loafer, not going up and getting yourself a job?”

      He said bitterly, “There’s not enough work to go around, Di. And that which is available requires both I.Q. and education. You need both. I.Q. without education is, of course, worthless, but you need the I.Q. to get the education, in the schools that count, at least. I’ve never seen figures but I suspect that the average person who works today in American industry has an I.Q. of something like 130. The number that have an I.Q. of a hundred or less must be infinitesimal.

      “Di, when you apply for a position with any corporation in the nation, the first thing they do is check your dossier in the National Data Banks. And shortly after your name and identity number is your good old Intelligence Quotient, which they have been testing periodically ever since you entered kindergarten. Di, half the population of the United States is below average, that is, half have I.Q.s of less than 100. When a fraction of the population can hold down all the jobs needed, why should any corporation in its right mind hire somebody with an I.Q. of less than 100?”

      “What in the name of Good Jesus has that got to do with you?”

      “I’ve got an I.Q. of 93, Di.”

CHAPTER 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 lame-brains—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.