It cost twenty thousand dollars.
While he was gazing silently at the massive display, one of the salesmen stepped out onto the dark sidewalk, on his way to the cafeteria. “Hi, sonny,” he said automatically, as he passed Mike Foster. “Not bad, is it?”
“Can I go inside?” Foster asked quickly. “Can I go down in it?”
The salesman stopped, as he recognized the boy. “You’re that kid,” he said slowly, “that damn kid who’s always pestering us.”
“I’d like to go down in it. Just for a couple minutes. I won’t bust anything—I promise. I won’t even touch anything.”
The salesman was young and blond, a good-looking man in his early twenties. He hesitated, his reactions divided. The kid was a pest. But he had a family, and that meant a reasonable prospect. Business was bad; it was late September and the seasonal slump was still on. There was no profit in telling the boy to go peddle his newstapes; but on the other hand it was bad business encouraging small fry to crawl around the merchandise. They wasted time; they broke things; they pilfered small stuff when nobody was looking.
“No dice,” the salesman said. “Look, send your old man down here. Has he seen what we’ve got?”
“Yes,” Шее Foster said tightly.
“What’s holding him back?” The salesman waved expansively up at the great gleaming display. “We’ll give him a good trade-in on his old one, allowing for depreciation and obsolescence. What model has he got?”
“We don’t have any,” Mike Foster said.
The salesman blinked. “Come again?”
“My father says it’s a waste of money. He says they’re trying to scare people into buying things they don’t need.
He says ”
“Your father’s an anti-P?”
“Yes,” Mike Foster answered unhappily.
The salesman let out his breath. “Okay, kid. Sorry we can’t do business. It’s not your fault.” He lingered. “What the hell’s wrong with him? Does he put in on the NATS?” “No.”
The salesman swore under his breath. A coaster, sliding along, safe because the rest of the community was putting up thirty per cent of its income to keep a constant-defense system going. There were always a few of them, in every town. “How’s your mother feel?” the salesman demanded. “She go along with him?”
“She says ” Mike Foster broke off. “Couldn’t I go
down in it for a litde while? I won’t bust anything. Just once”
“How’d we ever sell it if we let kids run through it?
We're not marking it down as a demonstration model— we’ve got roped into that too often.” The salesman’s curiosity was aroused. “How’s a guy get to be an anti-P? He always feel this way, or did he get stung with some* thing?”
“He says they sold people as many cars and washing machines and television sets as they could use. He says NATS and bomb shelters aren’t good for anything, so people never get all they can use. He says factories can keep turning out guns and gas masks forever, and as long as people are afraid they’ll keep paying for them because they think if they don’t they might get killed, and maybe a man gets tired of paying for a new car every year and stops, but he’s never going to stop buying shelters to protect his children.”
“You believe that?” the salesman asked.
“I wish we had that shelter,” Mike Foster answered. “If we had a shelter like that I’d go down and sleep in it every night. It’d be there when we needed it.”
“Maybe there won’t be a war,” the salesman said. He sensed the boy’s misery and fear, and he grinned good-naturedly down at him. “Don’t worry all the time. You probably watch too many vidtapes— get out and play, for a change.”
“Nobody’s safe on the surface,” Mike Foster said. “We have to be down below. And there’s no place I can go.”
“Send your old man around,” the salesman muttered uneasily. “Maybe we can talk him into it. We’ve got a lot of time-payment plans. Tell him to ask for BUI O’Neill. Okay?”
Mike Foster wandered away, down the black evening street. He knew he was supposed to be home, but his feet dragged and his body was heavy and dull. His fatigue made him remember what the athletic coach had said the day before, during exercises. They were practicing breath suspension, holding a lungful of air and running. He hadn’t done well; the others were still red-faced and racing when he halted, expelled his air, and stood gasping frantically for breath.
“Foster,” the coach said angrily, “you’re dead. You know that? If this had been a gas attack ” He shook
his head wearily. “Go over there and practice by yourself. You’ve got to do better, if you expect to survive.”
But he didn’t expect to survive.
When he stepped up on the porch of his home, he found the living-room lights already on. He could hear his father’s voice, and more faintly his mother’s from the kitchen. He closed the door after him and began unpeeling his coat.
“Is that you?” his father demanded. Bob Foster sat sprawled out in his chair, his lap full of tapes and report sheets from his retail furniture store. “Where have you been? Dinner’s been ready half an hour.” He had taken off his coat and rolled up his sleeves. His arms were pale and thin, but muscular. He was tired; his eyes were large and dark, his hair thinning. Restlessly, he moved the tapes around, from one stack to another.
“I’m sorry,” Mike Foster said.
His father examined his pocket watch; he was surely the only man who still carried a watch. “Go wash your hands. What have you been doing?” He scrutinized his son. “You look odd. Do you feel all right?”
“I was down town,” Mike Foster said.
“What were you doing?”
“Looking at the shelters.”
Wordless, his father grabbed up a handful of reports and stuffed them into a folder. His thin lips set; hard lines wrinkled his forehead. He snorted furiously as tapes spilled everywhere; he bent stiffly to pick them up. Mike Foster made no move to help him. He crossed to the closet and gave his coat to the hanger. When he turned away his mother was directing the table of food into the dining room.
They ate without speaking, intent on their food and not looking at each other. Finally his father said, “What’d you see? Same old dogs, I suppose.”
“There’s the new ’72 models,” Mike Foster answered.
“They’re the same as the ’71 models.” His father threw down his fork savagely; the table caught and absorbed it. “A few new gadgets, some more chrome. That’s all.” Suddenly he was facing his son defiantly. “Right?”
Mike Foster toyed wretchedly with his creamed chicken. “The new ones have a jamb-proof descent lift. You can’t get stuck half-way down. All you have to do is get in it, and it does the rest.”
“There’ll be one next year that’ll pick you up and carry you down. This one’ll be obsolete as soon as people buy it. That’s what they want—they want you to keep buying. They keep putting out new ones as fast as they can. This isn’t 1972, it’s still 1971. What’s that thing doing out already? Can’t they wait?”
Mike Foster didn’t answer. He had heard it all before, many times. There was never anything new, only chrome and gadgets; yet the old ones became obsolete, anyhow. His father’s argument was loud, impassioned, almost frenzied, but it made no sense. “Let’s get an old one, then,” he blurted out. “I don’t care, any one’ll do. Even a second-hand one.”