Part 1

Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

THE HAPPY HERD

BY BRYCE WALTON

_Everyone was thoughtful, considerate, kind and very happy. But where was the right of dignity or individuality? It was like being dropped into the middle of a nightmare. The kind that finds you running naked in a crowd._

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, October 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The Captain told Kane to take his cushion pills, that they were contacting the pits at La Guardia within half an hour.

"I still can't figure you," the Captain said. "Up there, just you and your wife for sixteen years. That's a hell of a long time."

Kane smiled. He had been almost completely out of touch with the world for sixteen years, and it surprised him a little that anyone thought it remarkable in any way. Particularly the Captain who spent most of his time, too, alone.

But the Captain was genuinely perturbed about it. The authorities had abandoned the space-station project. Abandoned the Martian project. They had taken away the other three ships from the Moon-run, and there was no explanation for it at all.

The rest of the Captain's crew, except an old atomics man, had drifted away and never come back, and the Captain had been unable to find out anything whatsoever about what had happened to them. He had never heard from them again. They had never been replaced.

But the Captain couldn't seem to define what it was he was warning Kane to be wary of down there.

"I haven't left my ship for years, Professor Kane, and that's the truth. I take on supplies and see to the ore getting into the holds but when those machines up there that do the digging and loading wear out, they won't be replaced. Just no interest in space any more. I can tell.

"I stay on the ship, with my wife, see. And the few guys down there around the field at La Guardia I have to rub up against--why, sir, they treat me as if I had some kind of contagious disease!

"But they need this ore I'm bringing back here now, so they leave me alone."

"Who leaves you alone?"

"Whoever didn't leave the rest of my crew alone. Whoever sang 'em the old siren song, that's who. Once a spaceman, always a spaceman, sir. And not a one of those men pulled out because he wanted to do it! That's what I'm saying. And I'm telling you to watch out. I'm blasting off for the Moon again on the 25th. I hope you're aboard."

Kane shrugged as the Captain bowed out, making disgruntled noises in his throat. He was getting along in years, Kane reasoned, and was probably just expressing that fact, externalizing some way or another. Still, what he had said was odd--

The truth was, Kane had been inexcusably out of contact with the world.

The pills dulled his senses and he began to fall asleep on the pneumatic couch. He thought of the years of work on his theories concerning the unified fields in the formulation of spatial matter. He thought of Helen, the good years together before her sudden death, sharing love and work, how complete and full and good it had been. During all those sixteen years he couldn't recall a moment of real boredom.

He hadn't missed life on Earth. When a man has one full love and his work, he's isolated no matter where he is, even in the middle of New York City.

He had ten notebooks full of notes in his briefcase. It would open their eyes, a really basic new theory that would defy the pessimistic theory of entropy, and its assurance of an inevitable death of all things.

Finding another wife to replace Helen wouldn't be easy of course. A new relationship would be different, but it should be as good. It might require some difficulties which he had anticipated and was prepared for. He was only forty-six. He had a long time to look. He was in excellent physical condition and was not unattractive, though of course that wasn't the real issue either way.

He wanted love, a companion, someone who could truly share in his work. Who would love that observatory in Albetagnius crater as a home for the rest of her life.

He woke up, and prepared to leave the ship. He carried his briefcase with his notes in it. The rest of his luggage would follow later. According to Phil Nordson, there was a suite reserved for him at the Midtown Hotel at 50th and Madison Avenue.

He climbed down the ladder to the exit. The door was open and a heavy fog drifted past the opening, but a small dark car with two drivers waited outside.

As Kane stepped down the gangplank, one of the figures, a woman in a light blue uniform, jumped out and opened the door for him.

Interest and excitement rose in Kane as the car moved through the mist toward the terminal where he was to meet Phil. It would probably do him good, get away from his work, different surroundings, just rest up a little. Even live it up a little perhaps. There would be parties, and he wanted to see a little of the country. Maybe visit some of Helen's relatives in the Middle West, and he certainly wanted to have some long bull sessions with Professors Martinson and Legmann over at the University.

Then there was the question of meeting the right kind of woman. That was something only the fates could decide, Kane thought. He was no romantic, but that sort of thing wasn't something you could figure out in advance, plot out like an equation. It wasn't anything you could handle with personality charts, though they had been trying that when he'd left. The personality you could measure with gadgets was such a small part of it really....

But Phil would arrange for the social activities. As he recalled his old schoolmate, he remembered that Phil was a very social kind of fellow. Phil had thought it was absurd, Kane's volunteering for that job in Albetagnius. Phil hadn't even gone on to post-graduate work in electronics, his chosen field. Phil had gone right out to accept a position with Isotopics Unlimited, somewhere in New Jersey.

They had corresponded for a while; and the cablegram from Phil had expressed Phil's delight at Kane's decision to return to Earth.

The car stopped before the well-lighted entrance to terminal building No. 214 and the woman hopped out, opened the door for Kane. He went inside the building, feeling the abnormally heavy pull of gravity. He had grown accustomed to the gravity on the Moon, and though his body was already starting to adapt itself, it would take time, and he was beginning to feel the drag.

Phil was there waiting. He hadn't mentioned anyone else being there, and Kane certainly didn't expect anyone else. He didn't know anyone really, no one other than Phil except Martin and Legmann. But there was Phil, and a number of people around him, and they were all rushing toward Kane, smiling, shouting, waving their arms. Phil looked much the same, tall and flashily dressed, thin and good looking as always, but with hair slightly greying.

The others, men, women, various ages and sizes, waving scarfs and circling eagerly around Kane, broke out in a happy chorus of mixed voices:

_Greetings! Welcome, Old Friend Kane! Welcome home to Earth again._

Kane felt a brief compulsion to retreat, but that was absurd.

"Good to see you, Prof!" Phil shouted.

"Hello, Phil." Someone grabbed his briefcase. Kane tried to get it back but it was gone among the frothing arms and milling bodies.

"We'll take care of it, Kane boy," Phil said. His arm was over Kane's shoulders. Several women were hanging onto Kane's arms. Healthy, tanned, lovely women.

"Sure glad to see you, Prof. Aren't we?"

A chorus enthusiastically shrieked, "Yes!"

Kane felt some embarrassment. He was being crowded out an exit toward a line of cabs. Several shiny ten-foot saucers with railings around them whirred past and disappeared in the fog. All of them had two or more people on them, and from the sound, there were quite a number of them up in the fog somewhere.

"We've all got a saucer now," Phil said. "Only we have to take cabs over to Lucie's house. This way we can all ride together. We can all get into two cabs, can't we, gang?"

"Yes!"

"Lucie?" Kane asked as they crowded around the two cabs. Who were these people? Friends of Phil's of course.

"We're Lucie," the woman said softly. Kane caught a glimpse of a mature face and a lovely figure. The face was odd, Kane thought, the maturity seeming to be disguised by an insincere smile. What a peculiar way of introducing oneself....

"We're having a little party at the house," Lucille said. "Aren't we?"

"Yes!"

"We've got lots of fun planned for us, Kane boy," Phil said.

Kane remembered a look of sardonic mockery in Lucille's eyes as her face disappeared and was replaced by several others.

Somehow, Kane couldn't figure out how, five of them were jammed into the back seat of one of the cabs and then they were moving away through the fog.

Someone who said "We're Laura," with a tight tanned body was wriggling on Kane's lap and her arm was around Kane's neck. She had bright teeth and she breathed scentedly into Kane's face.

"Nothing to worry about, Kane boy," he heard Phil say in a muffled joy. "We're the gang."

"'It's always fair weather, the Sunhill Gang is always together,'" Laura was crooning. The red-faced fat man next to Kane laughed and then Kane saw that the red-faced man whose name seemed to be Ben and the woman on his lap whom he called Jenny, were kissing one another. There was something embarrassingly intimate about the way they did it. It was suddenly much more than a mere spontaneous show of affection.

Kane looked away. Beyond a certain point, he felt that love-making was something that should be reserved for privacy.

That sort of thing might be expected to change, of course. Customs changed, and as Kane recalled, one could say the trend had been somewhat in that direction.

There were two drivers up front. That was a change too. Every cab had had two drivers, a man and a woman.

It was all a bit overdone, Kane thought. Still, they were friends of Phil's. A friend of yours is a friend of mine.

But it affected Kane adversely. He felt uneasy. He didn't really know them at all. In fact, he scarcely even knew Phil.

"We're so glad with you," the girl on Kane's lap said. She crushed her lips over his mouth and pressed her body against him. Kane couldn't say that was affecting him adversely. In fact, if there weren't all these other people around--

"We're nice together," Laura breathed against his lips.

Everyone was so damn glad to see him. All they needed were banners, little pins. Official Welcoming Party to Greet the Arrival of Professor Larry Kane.

Kane managed to look out the window as they crossed the Tri-Borough Bridge at 125th Street and started up the East River Drive.

"Things haven't changed much," Kane said. "Not nearly so much traffic though."

"The saucers," Phil said. "Most of the traffic's up in the air."

"We're looking at things," Laura said.

"Great old town," Ben said and laughed, on and on. Jenny laughed too, then said. "It looks just the same almost as when we left."

They're all speaking for me. Kane thought. Funny, a damned funny custom. It was a reflection of something else. What did it really mean? His feeling of unease seemed exaggerated. But then their efforts to make him welcome seemed pretty exaggerated too....

"Everybody happy?" the fat man yelled.

"Yes!"

"We're happy aren't we, honey," Laura said.

"Sure," Kane said.

Why not?

Kane noticed the amazing dearth of traffic on Madison Avenue.

No traffic cops either. That had changed too. One thing you had always been sure of seeing and that was a cop in New York.

When Kane asked about it, the smiles almost fled from every face, and the moment of silence seemed like a form of shock. Kane realized then that there hadn't been even a second of silence before then.

"It's hard to realize we've been away so long," Phil finally said.

"I'm really tired," Kane said to Phil as they went on past the Midtown Hotel toward Lucille's apartment. "I was intending to go directly to the hotel and rest up a while--"

"We'll relax at Lucie's," Jenny said. "We got music, we got music, we got music, who could ask for anything more?"

"But--" Kane started to protest at least mildly, but the rest of the sentence was blotted out by a long kiss from Laura.

* * * * *

They had all crowded into an elevator, and then rushed into Lucille's apartment on a high level of The Sunny Hill building near Washington Square. The apartment consisted of one huge room with a circular couch in the middle upon which everyone immediately sat.

Laura sat beside Kane who was getting more tired every minute. There was just enough room for the gang to squeeze up tight to one another in a circle around a table supporting some kind of machine with wires that were immediately run from it and attached to everyone's wrist, and to a narrow metal headband with which everyone's head was crowned.

Kane was listening to music. It was like being dropped unexpectedly into the middle of a large symphony orchestra. The sound seemed to pulse and vibrate gigantically all around him. It was more than merely listening. He was in it. He felt himself a part of it, swimming in it, and almost fighting to keep from being carried away by what seemed to be perfectly recorded music that was now being delivered by some final form of hi-fi.

The music itself was familiar enough. Instrumentalized opera arias orchestrated on a fantastic scale. The quantity was so great that sensitivity as to quality was dulled. Kane, shocked by thunderous sweeps of sheer volume gave way before the sound. It wasn't sleep. He could hardly say he rested, but he was in a semi-stupor. When he glanced at his watch sometime later, two hours and some minutes had passed.

The wires were being removed from wrists, headbands from heads. Kane's head ached slightly. Everyone was reaching as cards fell out of the machine in the middle.

Laura handed one to Kane. It was covered with symbols in the form of some kind of graph, but he couldn't decipher it.

There was a great deal of chatter, musical jargon, colloquial in both space and time, most of it eluding comprehension. Kane stood there holding his card as everyone milled around one another.

Phil said, "Let's see how we liked it, Prof?"

That seemed to have been the general idea--how much everyone liked the music. And each one looked at his card, and they were all comparing cards and exclaiming over them.

Phil was looking at Kane's card, comparing it with his own and with some other cards.

"Well, not bad," Phil was saying, "Is it, gang?"

"Not bad at all!" they chorused.

"What isn't bad?" Kane asked.

"Our taste, man," Laura said. "You'll fit so good."

The odd one, Lucille, raised an eyebrow, with some mockery in it still, at Kane.

"You'll sure belong, Professor. Don't worry," Lucille said. She held up her card. "We liked it."

"Of course it'll take a little time," Phil said as he threw his arm over Kane's shoulder. "A few sessions and you'll match up just right."

"I really don't believe I understand," Kane said vaguely.

"You will," Lucille said as she moved away from him. "You sure will, Professor." She was tall, and with long lithe legs. She was a handsome woman, Kane thought.

As Phil explained casually on the way toward the Midtown Hotel, they had just had a music session. Everything was done in sessions, in groups that is. Everyone had his group, and his group did everything together.

Anyway, they had had a music session. The machine in the middle was a Reacto. The cards were Reacto Cards. It was really a kind of taste tester, and the point was that the Reacto tested everyone's reaction to the music.

The cards enabled everyone to check their reactions, check them against the reactions of all the others. It involved conformity ratings, and tendencies to stray from the group norm.

The important thing about the taste rate cards was that they enabled you to find out just how much group spirit you had. The closer your card resembled that of all the others in your group, the more GS you had.

"My GS rating's gone up," Laura kept burbling all the way to the Midtown Hotel. "It's gone up!"

The same process applied to reading, movies, television, eating, anything involving the elements of reacting. The important thing was not how you yourself felt, but how you felt in relation to the feelings of the group. The problem seemed to be that of reducing deviation tendencies to a minimum.

On the way to the Midtown Hotel, Jenny asked Phil how he liked the new best-seller, _Love Is Forever_, and Phil took a small card out of his wallet and they all compared Reacto Cards in order to determine relative reactions to _Love Is Forever_.

Good God! _You had to look at a card to find out how you liked something!_ It was frightening as hell.

Kane wondered how wide-spread, how universal, it really was, this incredible conformity, this collective thinking.

This appalling sacrifice of individuality.

Kane was too tired to give much thought to it right then. He was anxious to get to the Hotel, and he was beginning to fantasize a bed, cool sheets, his body stretching and sinking down into blissful slumber.

But as appalling as the situation seemed at the time, Kane soon found that he had only circled on the fringes of it. This was only the beginning.

* * * * *

"Here we are, here were are, gang!" someone shouted as they piled out of the cabs and Kane was being hustled toward the suddenly formidable glint of a revolving door.

So here we are, Kane thought. It was nice being here all right. He was glad, very glad. But it sounded as though someone might swoon over the fact.

There was some difficulty with the revolving door. No one seemed able to move first, and there were spontaneous group lunges ending in jamming chaos in which someone hurt their arm. Kane thought it was the fat man, Ben.

"We're hurt!" Jenny screamed.

"Oh--it's not bad," Ben said, laughing all the time he was groaning. "Just bruised a little, gang. We're just bruised a little."

Kane grabbed his advantage and ventured alone through the revolving doors into the lobby. A pair of desk clerks nodded across the lobby. A group was emerging from behind drapes and beyond them Kane saw an ornate, subtly lighted, cocktail lounge.

Kane was heading for the elevator when the gang overtook him.

Laura had hold of one of his arms, and Phil the other.

"We're having cocktails," Laura said.

Phil repeated it, and Ben and Jenny joined in. The young man, Clarence, was singing as he herded the others toward the drapes of the cocktail lounge, and they were all whisking Kane away before he could voice any protest.

"What'll the gang have?" the waiter asked, smiling. Only he wasn't really smiling at any of them, Kane thought. He had picked out a center point of focus and was smiling at that so as not to appear to be smiling at any one, but at everyone.

"Martinis!" several voices said.

The waiter nodded, whirled away.

"Ah, waiter," Kane said. "I'll have a double shot of Scotch. No ice."

The waiter seemed shocked, unable to come to grips with Kane's seemingly simple order. "But--but I thought you said Martini."

The gang was still smiling, but faintly. The waiter was backing away.

"No," Kane insisted. "He said Martinis, and she said Martinis, and so did several others. But I didn't say Martinis. I said Scotch, no ice."

"But Martinis--"

Ben forced a pained laugh. "But we ordered Martinis."

"Martinis," Laura said.

"The ayes always have it," Kane heard Lucille whisper near him.

Phil said, with a kind of shaky joviality. "Martinis--"

"Gin makes me ill," Kane said. "For me, it has to be Scotch."

Phil whispered. "Scotch."

"Scotch," the waiter said.

A jukebox in a far corner blasted out from a sea of bubbling, multicolored light.

_We're all pals togetherrrrrrrr. The Gang knows no bad weatherrrrrrr. We're all for us all for us, And we're rolling do-own life's highway, On our crowded busssssss!_

Laura whispered huskily in his ear. "Don't worry about any little old thing. We're one together, man."

* * * * *

God, he was tired. He was so tired he could hardly sit there. He felt numb, and there was desperation under the numbness. Kane wanted to get off somewhere by himself so he could rest, sleep, and think. He wanted to think....

Bits of information drifted haphazardly into Kane's consciousness from the conversation. He had ordered another double Scotch and was almost through with it. He was passing out, but held to conscious awareness by the unceasing banter, laughter and the jukebox--like a marionette held up with wires.

If he suddenly found himself alone in silence, he knew he would collapse instantly.

It seemed that this was a group with a certain common Reacto level, and they all worked in the same place, and lived in the same section of a big housing project, a place called Sunny Hill.

Phil was their Integrator, and he was also an Official in the Isotopic Corporation where the Group worked. Phil was an Integrator for the Isotopic Corporation, a sort of personnel man whose main duty was the integration of the employees' private lives.

When Kane tried to find out about the work itself, no one seemed interested enough to respond. The work was relatively unimportant. The emphasis seemed to be centered almost completely on how people got along together. If your Reacto cards reported a general reaction that strayed too far from your Group norm, you were either sent to another group, or sent to a Staff.

A Staff was a rather vague term for specialists in Integration on a clinical level.

The job was always referred to as "our job", and the Gang seemed to do practically everything together.

Someone mentioned that a friend hadn't been competent in group relations at school and had been Processed. Kane didn't like the words they were so casually throwing around. In fact Kane didn't like any of it, and he was liking it less all the time.

Another term that referred to some sort of adjustment process was the word homogenized. Someone had been "homogenized".

Once Kane tried to find out about his old friends, Professors Legmann, and Martin over at New York University. Phil avoided the question for a time, then finally admitted that Martin was still there in the archeology department, but that Legmann had quit the profession years ago. "He quit teaching and became a plumber."

"A plumber?" Kane whispered. "Legmann?"

"That's right," Phil grinned.

"We're all plumbing together," Laura lisped.

"But--that's preposterous!" Kane almost yelled. "Legmann--why he was the finest research chemist--"

"But he wasn't really happy in his profession," Phil said. "As I recall--he just wasn't well adjusted as a research chemist and teacher."

"Who said he wasn't?"

"Why the Staff."

"What Staff--?"

"Anyway, he's a plumber now somewhere," Phil said. "He's happy now."

Kane felt a coldness on his neck. His stomach seemed to turn completely over. The devil with this, he thought. His eyeballs felt as though they were covered with sand, and his lids seemed leaded weights. He pushed back his chair.

"You'll excuse me," he said. "But I'm really tired out. I'm going to get some rest--"

"But the night's young for us, man," Laura shrieked.

"We're having more Scotch," Lucille said, watching him carefully.

"Fun time's only starting for us," the young man protested, and the fat man and Jenny and all of them protested loudly together, laughing all the while.