Read Online The Best of Fritz Leiber by Fritz Leiber - Free Book Online

long listing of specific categories. It went into effect all right, but with a little rider attached: ‘unless you really want to.’ That seemed absolutely necessary, you know.” His fingers worked furiously with the gasoid. “As for the prohibition of various stimulating beverages—well, in this locality they’re still served under other names, and an interesting custom has grown up of behaving very soberly while imbibing them. Now when we come to that matter of the eight-hour working day—”
    Almost involuntarily, Carrsbury had got up and walked over to the outer wall. With a flip of his hand through an invisible U-shaped beam, he switched on the window. It was as if the outer wall had disappeared. Through its near-perfect transparency, he peered down with fierce curiosity past the sleekly gleaming facades to the terraces and parkways below.
    The modest throngs seemed quiet and orderly enough. But then there was a scurry of confusion—a band of people, at this angle all tiny heads with arms and legs, came out from a shop far below and began to pelt another group with what looked like foodstuffs. While, on a side parkway, two small ovoid vehicles, seamless drops of silver because their vision panels were invisible from the outside, butted each other playfully. Someone started to run.
    Carrsbury hurriedly switched off the window and turned around.
    Those were just off-chance occurrences, he told himself angrily. Of no real statistical significance whatever. For ten years mankind had steadily been trending toward sanity despite occasional relapses. He’d seen it with his own eyes, seen the day-by-day progress—at least enough to know. He’d been a fool to let Phy’s ramblings effect him —only tired nerves had made that possible.
    He glanced at his timepiece.
    “Excuse me,” he said curtly, striding past Phy’s chair, “I’d like to continue this conversation, but I have to get along to the first meeting of the new Central Managerial Staff.”
    “Oh but you can’t!” Instantly Phy was up and dragging at his arm. “You just can’t do it, you know! It’s impossible!”
    The pleading voice rose toward a scream. Impatiently Carrsbury tried to shake loose. The seam in the side wall widened, became a doorway. Instantly both of them stopped struggling.
    In the doorway stood a cadaverous giant of a man with a stubby dark weapon in his hand. Straggly black beard shaded into gaunt cheeks. His face was a cruel blend of suspicion and fanatical devotion, the first directed along with the weapon at Phy, the second— and the somnambulistic eyes—at Carrsbury.
    “He was threatening you?” the bearded man asked in a harsh voice, moving the weapon suggestively.
    For a moment an angry, vindictive light glinted in Carrsbury’s eyes. Then it flicked out. What could he have been thinking, he asked himself. This poor lunatic World secretary was no one to hate.
    “Not at all, Hartman,” he remarked calmly. “We were discussing something and we became excited and allowed our voices to rise. Everything is quite all right.”
    “Very well,” said the bearded man doubtfully, after a pause. Reluctantly he returned his weapon to its holster, but he kept his hand on it and remained standing in the doorway.
    “And now,” said Carrsbury, disengaging himself, “I must go.”
    He had stepped on to the corridor slidewalk and had coasted halfway to the elevator before he realized that Phy had followed him and was plucking timidly at his sleeve.
    “You can’t go off like this,” Phy pleaded urgently, with an apprehensive backward glance. Carrsbury noted that Hartman had also followed—an ominous pylon two paces to the rear. “You must give me a chance to explain, to tell you why, just like you asked me.”
    Humor him
. Carrsbury’s mind was deadly tired of the drone, but mere weariness prompted him to dance to it a little longer. “You can talk to me in the elevator,” he conceded, stepping off the slidewalk. His finger