Part 2

Then Mark spotted two others who had made threatening noises and collected five hundred from each, and from another who expressed doubt that he was really hurt, Mark got a thousand points. There was nothing to it, really. Most people had regular beats, and all Mark had to do was sit at one side in Penelope's wheel-chair and wait for them to come by. He would have collected more if he could have remembered more faces. He saw Conley go by once a day but now he wasn't afraid. He thought Conley looked at him disappointedly.

A couple of weeks later he got his card back from the Machine at Central and looked at it with great satisfaction. He had a hundred and thirteen thousand points to his credit. He met Penelope and they went to her apartment for dinner. Jubilantly Mark got all the fancy food--even some synthetic meat--that he could get on his card, and they prepared for a feast.

"The only thing is," Penelope said as she punched the dishes on the table, "I'm scared. I have a feeling you shouldn't have gone over a hundred thousand."

"Is that why you never cashed my slip for thirty-five thousand?"

She nodded. "That's mostly the reason. My balance is over eighty thousand and I was afraid."

"Afraid of what?"

"I don't know. Just afraid."

"Well," said Mark, "I'm not. I don't see what Central can do to a person for getting points. There's no rule against it."

"It's dangerous," Penelope insisted.

"Nevertheless, I have made a decision. A hundred thousand points--that's nothing." His head was high. "I'm going after a million points!"

Penelope gasped. "Mark, you mustn't do anything like that. You have no use for a million points."

"No," Mark said complacently, "but it's a lot of fun getting them. And it gives me something worth while to do. We'll sit up till three o'clock every morning and play bridge, and I'll stay in bed till noon, and dream up new stunts. I'll pull one a week. Life is going to be worth living."

The announcing light showed at the door. Penelope pressed the admittance button. A tall, thin man came in a moment later. "Mark Renner?" he asked.

Mark jumped. "Conley!" Mark's stomach had a funny feeling in it.

"They told me I would find you here," Conley said.

Penelope had recovered enough to gasp. "What do you want?"

"I'm from Central Audit Bureau."

"That's just lovely," Penelope said, "but it doesn't mean anything to us but a place where we get our cards balanced."

"It should mean something to you," Conley said hollowly. "Central is the government."

Penelope stared at him. "Sit down, please. I thought Central was just a machine."

"It is something more than a machine. There is a small corps of persons who live inside the machine to service it and occasionally adjust it, and those persons really are the government--that is, all the government we have." He sat down stiffly, his back straight. "Now then, Mr. Renner, your card today showed a credit balance of a hundred and thirteen thousand points. Is that correct?"

Mark swallowed. "Yes." He looked at Penelope. She was pale. With difficulty Mark asked, "Is it your job to check up on people, to see if they are entitled to their points?"

"Oh, my, no. Central doesn't care about that. In fact, Central doesn't care how much anybody's debit is. We figure as long as a man is in debt he'll try to pay it off. They always do, at least. No, we never bother with debits, and I don't suppose we ever would."

Mark breathed a sigh of relief.

"But a credit of over a hundred thousand is something else," said Conley. "The machines won't handle six figures without trouble, you see, so there has to be a penalty." He looked very sad. "Now, then, I shall have to--"

"Wait!" cried Penelope. "His credit is a hundred and thirteen thousand--but I have his slip for thirty-five thousand. If I turn it in, that would fix it up for him, wouldn't it."

Mark felt a warm wave of gratitude toward Penelope. She was a million per cent; no question about it.

"Well--yes, I suppose so. We don't like these last-minute adjustments, but I suppose--"

* * * * *

She came waving the slip and thrust it into Conley's face.

"There!" she said triumphantly. "Put that on my account."

Conley looked a little sad. "This is your slip?" he asked Mark.

Mark nodded gratefully.

"Let me have your credit card, Miss Penelope. Now, then, I'll transfer these points--hm." Conley's eyebrows raised. "Do you know what your balance is now, Miss Penelope?"

Penelope's mouth shot open and she popped her hand across it.

"You have now a hundred and twenty-two thousand," Conley said. He got up from his chair. "Well, I'm sorry, folks. That's the way it is."

Mark gulped. "What way?"

"Miss Penelope will have to come with me."

Mark was on his feet. "If she goes, I go," he said dramatically.

Conley looked at him. "If you feel that way about it, there won't be any trouble at all. You did go over, so I can take you in too."

"In where?" Penelope demanded.

"A certain number of persons is required to keep Central going, as I said--actually to be the government. But most of the population today is so apathetic they wouldn't be of any use at all, so years ago some of us who were in Central got an idea. We discovered that whenever any citizen rebels against the monotony of life today, he or she eventually winds up trying to gather a lot of points, because that is the only outlet for energy and ambition. That is the kind of person we need, so when anybody gets over a hundred thousand, the machine warns us. We go after them." Conley picked up his type N hat. "Well, see you in the morning. Punch in your cards at window 1000. We'll do the rest. And by the way--" He was at the door. "We start work at eight o'clock."

Mark brightened. "Did you say _work_?"

"Oh, it's only four hours a day, five days a week. The rest of the time is your own, only of course you can't come Outside. It would upset things if the general public learned about us. Yes, it's a regular job; not hard work, but steady work. Gives you something to aim for; there are promotions, you know, and extra bonuses for those who show promise."

"Work!" Mark said. "Steady work? You mean there'll be something to do all the time?"

"Five days a week," said Conley.

Mark said, "This is so sudden. Why don't you sit down a minute while we let it soak in? We have plenty of enzymes and stuff for a guest, don't we, Miss Penelope? Why not stay for supper, Conley?"

"No, thanks," said Conley. "We have beefsteak and hot biscuits for supper in Central."

Penelope shrieked with joy. "Beef!"

Mark was puzzled. "What's that?"

"It's an old-fashioned food," said Conley. "Rather tasty too."

"Please sit down," Penelope begged, "and tell us more."

Conley looked at his watch. "Believe I will. My feet get a little tired all day from pounding the pavement. But there isn't much more to tell. You'll find out everything tomorrow. And I'm sure you'll like it. We try to give each person work to challenge him."

"What if a person wouldn't want to go to Central?"

"Very few ever object. Once in a while they are afraid and run away, but we just register their number with all the machines, and whenever that number is presented for food or clothes, the machines reject the card." He paused. "A very neat arrangement. Of course, inside of Central the point system as you know it now will be of no value whatever. We use money in Central."

Penelope had a can of synthetic meat in her hands. "Beef!" she said suddenly, and hurled the can into the disintichute. "I'm going to starve all night so I can enjoy eating tomorrow."

"So nobody ever gets away?" asked Mark.

"Very seldom, though there's one fellow playing a game with Central. He must have gotten wind of us, and he keeps careful check on his points. About once every three months he starts going strong. He'll be putting in eight or ten thousand points a day. Then his balance will shoot up over a hundred thousand and I'll go after him, but he's always just signed away a lot of points. Would you believe it, the last time he had given away fifty thousand points to a fellow who claimed a broken back. He said he knew it was a phony, but he had me there and he laughed at me, for he had signed away the points. The slip showed up next day."

Mark looked at Penelope and grinned. "We should have known that nobody in his right mind would give away fifty thousand points."

Conley raised his hand in a salute. "See you tomorrow at Central. If they don't keep you busy, look me up."

Mark watched him leave. Then he looked beamingly at Penelope. "Work! Every day! Eight o'clock! We'll have to get up before breakfast! Isn't it wonderful?"

But Penelope's bird-like eyes were bright. "He said there would be promotions and bonuses for those who show promise," she recalled. "I wish we had known that. We could have made a cleanup and gone into Central with a record that would make their eyes pop out. Anyhow"--she dug her pad of release blanks out of her pocket and began to figure on the back. "Let's see, fifty thousand from the little man who's playing a game with Central, twenty-five from the owner of the sidewalk, two thousand for the raspberry, five hundred each from two who made noises of disrespect, and a thousand from the man who doubted that your back was really broken. You could have collected two thousand from that last one," she said absently, "if you hadn't got cold feet. Anyway, that's seventy-nine thousand points. Now, then, twenty per cent of that is fifteen thousand, eight hundred points."

She wrote rapidly and held out the pad to Mark. "Sign my slip, please."

End of Project Gutenberg's You Too Can Be A Millionaire, by Noel Miller Loomis