from science fiction and fantasy by
Robert A. Heinlein

Not that he was a soft boss. He was quite capable of saying, “Boys, we need to fertilize this oak tree. Jump in that hole at its base and I’ll cover you up.”

We’d have done it. Any of us would.

And the Old Man would bury us alive too, if he thought that there was as much as a fifty-three-per-cent probability that it was the Tree of Liberty he was nourishing.

The Old Man’s unique gift was the ability to reason logically with unfamiliar, hard-to-believe facts as easily as with the commonplace. Not much, eh? Most minds stall dead when faced with facts which conflict with basic beliefs; “I-just-can’t-believe-it” is all one word to highbrows and dimwits alike.

“Don’t be cynical. There isn’t time.”

I switched off my ears; free speech gives a man the right to talk about the “psychology” of an amoeba, but I don’t have to listen.

“You know, when I was a little girl, I had a funny idea.”

“Spill it.”

“I was happy myself, but as I grew up I could see that my mother wasn’t. And my father wasn’t. My teachers weren’t—most of the adults around me weren’t happy. I got an idea in my head that when you grew up you found out something that kept you from ever being happy again. You know how a kid is treated: ‘You’re not old enough to understand, dear.’ and ‘Wait till you grow up, darling, and then you’ll understand.’ I used to wonder what the secret was they were keeping from me and I’d listen behind doors to try and see if I couldn’t find out. [...] But I could see that, whatever it was, it didn’t make the grown-ups happy; it made ’em sad. Then I used to pray never to find out.”

“I sure wouldn’t want anything to happen to you, kid.”

She brushed it away. “It’s not me; it’s us. If anything happens to us, I want it to be the same thing.”

My eye fell on “The By-Laws of Time,” over my bed:

They didn’t inspire me the way they had when I was a recruit [...]

Americans are considered crazy anywhere in the world.

They will usually concede a basis for the accusation but point to California as the focus of the infection. Californians stoutly maintain that their bad reputation is derived solely from the acts of the inhabitants of Los Angeles County. Angelenos will, when pressed, admit the charge but explain hastily, “It’s Hollywood. It’s not our fault—we didn’t ask for it; Hollywood just grew.”

The people in Hollywood don’t care; they glory in it.

“Never have to worry about my driving,” he assured Mrs. Bailey, turning his head as he did so, while he shot the powerful car down the avenue and swung onto Sunset Boulevard, “it’s a matter of power and control, a dynamic process, just my meat—I’ve never had a serious accident.”

“You won’t have but one,” she said bitingly. “Will you please keep your eyes on the traffic?”

It was undeniably the greatest show ever assembled for the wonderment of mankind. It was twice as big as all outdoors, brighter than bright lights, newer than new, stupendous, magnificent, breathtaking, awe inspiring, supercolossal, incredible—and a lot of fun. Every community in America had sent its own best to this amazing show. The marvels of P.T. Barnum, of Ripley, and of all Tom Edison’s godsons had been gathered in one spot. From up and down a broad continent the riches of a richly endowed land and the products of a clever and industrious people had been assembled, along with their folk festivals, their annual blow-outs, their celebrations, and their treasure carnival customs. The result was as American as strawberry shortcake and as gaudy as a Christmas tree, and it all lay there before him, noisy and ful of life and crowded with happy, holiday people.

“How can you read while watching for someone?”

“Ah, but I know what is in the book—” He held it up; it was The Hunting of the Snark. “—so that leaves my eyes free for watching.”

Johnny began to like this young man. “Are there boojums about?”

“No, for we haven’t softly and silently vanished away. But would we notice it if we did? I must think it over.”

“Have to write a column about something, Pappy. ‘Last night Hizzoner the Mayor, surrounded by a glittering galaxy of highbinders, grifters, sycophants, and ballot thieves, was the recipient of a testimonial dinner celebrating—’ Got to write something, Pappy; the cash customers expect it. Why don’t I brace up like a man and go on relief?”

The telephone jingled. He picked it up and said, “Okay—you started it.”

“What I don’t get is why you sent Dugan. I hear he’s so dumb you don’t even let him collect the pay-off on his own beat.”

“That’s a lie!” put in Dugan. “I do so—”

It was not physically possible to drive safely in those crowded metropolises. Pedestrians were sardonically divided into two classes, the quick and the dead.

But a pedestrian could be defined as a man who had found a place to park his car. The automobile made possible huge cities, then choked those same cities to death with their numbers.

Although possessed of a keen intelligence, his nature was dominated by a warm, human sympathy, without which no politician, irrespective of other virtues or shortcomings, is long successful.

Because of this trait he distrusted instinctively any mind which was guided by logic alone. He was aware that, from a standpoint of strict logic, no reasonable case could be made out for the continued existence of the human race, still less for the human values he served.

“It is true that most religions which have been offered me teach immortality, but note the fashion in which they teach it. The surest way to lie convincingly is to tell the truth unconvincingly. They did not wish me to believe.”

“The world is explained in either one of two ways; the commonsense way which says that the world is pretty much as it appears to be and that ordinary human conduct and motivations are reasonable, and the religio-mystic solution which states that the world is dream stuff, unreal, insubstantial, with reality somewhere beyond.

“WRONG—both of them. The common-sense scheme has no sense to it of any sort. Life is short and full of trouble. Man born of woman is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. His days are few and they are numbered. All is vanity and vexation. Those quotations may be jumbled and incorrect, but that is a fair statement of the common-sense world-is-as-it-seems in its only possible evaluation. In such a world, human striving is about as rational as the blind dartings of a moth against a light bulb. The common-sense world is a blind insanity, out of nowhere, going nowhere, to no purpose.

“As for the other solution, it appears more rational on the surface, in that it rejects the utterly irrational world of common sense. But it is not a rational solution, it is simply a flight from reality of any sort, for it refuses to believe the results of the only available direct communication between the ego and the Outside. Certainly the ‘five senses’ are poor enough channels of communication, but they are the only channels.”