The Reign of Brainwash: Dystopia Box Set. Эдгар Аллан По

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      He had an automatic pistol.

      Loveland was not beaten much, because he managed to keep his mouth shut. But Little was so hysterical that they laid him on a kitchen table and decorated his naked back with forty slashes of a steel ramrod. They had found that Clarence wore yellow silk underwear, and the M.M.'s from factory and plowland laughed—particularly one broad young inspector who was rumored to have a passionate friendship with a battalion-leader from Nashua who was fat, eyeglassed, and high-pitched of voice.

      Little had to be helped into the truck that took Loveland and him to the Trianon concentration camp. One eye was closed and so surrounded with bruised flesh that the M.M. driver said it looked like a Spanish omelet.

      The truck had an open body, but they could not escape, because the three prisoners on this trip were chained hand to hand. They lay on the floor of the truck. It was snowing.

      The third prisoner was not much like Loveland or Little. His name was Ben Trippen. He had been a mill hand for Medary Cole. He cared no more about the Greek language than did a baboon, but he did care for his six children. He had been arrested for trying to strike Cole and for cursing the Corpo régime when Cole had reduced his wages from nine dollars a week (in pre-Corpo currency) to seven-fifty.

      As to Loveland's wife and babies, Lorinda took them in till she could pass the hat and collect enough to send them back to Mrs. Loveland's family on a rocky farm in Missouri. But then things went better. Mrs. Loveland was favored by the Greek proprietor of a lunch-room and got work washing dishes and otherwise pleasing the proprietor, who brilliantined his mustache.

      The county administration, in a proclamation signed by Emil Staubmeyer, announced that they were going to regulate the agriculture on the submarginal land high up on Mount Terror. As a starter, half-a-dozen of the poorer families were moved into the large, square, quiet, old house of that large, square, quiet, old farmer, Henry Veeder, cousin of Doremus Jessup. These poorer families had many children, a great many, so that there were four or five persons bedded on the floor in every room of the home where Henry and his wife had placidly lived alone since their own children had grown. Henry did not like it, and said so, not very tactfully, to the M.M.'s herding the refugees. What was worse, the dispossessed did not like it any better. "'Tain't much, but we got a house of our own. Dunno why we should git shoved in on Henry," said one. "Don't expect other folks to bother me, and don't expect to bother other folks. Never did like that fool kind of yellow color Henry painted his barn, but guess that's his business."

      So Henry and two of the regulated agriculturists were taken to the Trianon concentration camp, and the rest remained in Henry's house, doing nothing but finish up Henry's large larder and wait for orders.

      "And before I'm sent to join Henry and Karl and Loveland, I'm going to clear my skirts," Doremus vowed, along in late January.

      He marched in to see County Commissioner Ledue.

      "I want to quit the Informer. Staubmeyer has learned all I can teach him."

      "Staubmeyer? Oh! You mean Assistant Commissioner Staubmeyer!"

      "Chuck it, will you? We're not on parade, and we're not playing soldiers. Mind if I sit down?"

      "Don't look like you cared a hell of a lot whether I mind or not! But I can tell you, right here and now, Jessup, without any monkey business about it, you're not going to leave your job. I guess I could find enough grounds for sending you to Trianon for about a million years, with ninety lashes, but—you've always been so stuck on yourself as such an all-fired honest editor, it kind of tickles me to watch you kissing the Chief's foot—and mine!"

      "I'll do no more of it! That's certain! And I admit that I deserve your scorn for ever having done it!"

      "Well, isn't that elegant! But you'll do just what I tell you to, and like it! Jessup, I suppose you think I had a swell time when I was your hired man! Watching you and your old woman and the girls go off on a picnic while I—oh, I was just your hired man, with dirt in my ears, your dirt! I could stay home and clean up the basement!"

      "Maybe we didn't want you along, Shad! Good-morning!"

      Shad laughed. There was a sound of the gates of Trianon concentration camp in that laughter.

      It was really Sissy who gave Doremus his lead.

      He drove to Hanover to see Shad's superior, District Commissioner John Sullivan Reek, that erstwhile jovial and red-faced politician. He was admitted after only half an hour's waiting. He was shocked to see how pale and hesitant and frightened Reek had become. But the Commissioner tried to be authoritative.

      "Well, Jessup, what can I do for you?"

      "May I be frank?"

      "What? What? Why, certainly! Frankness has always been my middle name!"

      "I hope so. Governor, I find I'm of no use on the Informer, at Fort Beulah. As you probably know, I've been breaking in Emil Staubmeyer as my successor. Well, he's quite competent to take hold now, and I want to quit. I'm really just in his way."

      "Why don't you stick around and see what you can still do to help him? There'll be little jobs cropping up from time to time."

      "Because it's got on my nerves to take orders where I used to give 'em for so many years. You can appreciate that, can't you?"

      "My God, can I appreciate it? And how! Well, I'll think it over. You wouldn't mind writing little pieces for my own little sheet, at home? I own part of a paper there."

      "No! Sure! Delighted!"

      ("Does this mean that Reek believes the Corpo tyranny is going to blow up, in a revolution, so that he's beginning to trim? Or just that he's fighting to keep from being thrown out?")

      "Yes, I can see how you might feel, Brother Jessup."

      "Thanks! Would you mind giving me a note to County Commissioner Ledue, telling him to let me out, without prejudice?—making it pretty strong?"

      "No. Not a bit. Just wait a minute, ole fellow; I'll write it right now."

      Doremus made as little ceremony as possible of leaving the Informer, which had been his throne for thirty-seven years. Staubmeyer was patronizing, Doc Itchitt looked quizzical, but the chapel, headed by Dan Wilgus, shook hands profusely. And so, at sixty-two, stronger and more eager than he had been in all his life, Doremus had nothing to do more important than eating breakfast and telling his grandson stories about the elephant.

      But that lasted less than a week. Avoiding suspicion from Emma and Sissy and even from Buck and Lorinda, he took Julian aside:

      "Look here, boy. I think it's time now for me to begin doing a little high treason. (Heaven's sake keep all of this under your hat—don't even tip off Sissy!) I guess you know, the Communists are too theocratic for my tastes. But looks to me as though they have more courage and devotion and smart strategy than anybody since the Early Christian Martyrs—whom they also resemble in hairiness and a fondness for catacombs. I want to get in touch with 'em and see if there's any dirty work at the crossroads I can do for 'em—say distributing a few Early Christian tracts by St. Lenin. But of course, theoretically, the Communists have all been imprisoned. Could you get to Karl Pascal, in Trianon, and find out whom I could see?"

      Said Julian, "I think I could. Dr. Olmsted gets called in there sometimes on cases—they hate him, because СКАЧАТЬ