The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner Page A

honey, I meant to tell you," Jeannie said suddenly. "I saw you on TV!"
    "What, at the Trainite wat?" He dropped into a chair. "Yes, I noticed the guy with the camera."
    "What were you there for?"
    "Didn't they explain?"
    "I only switched on in time to catch the end of it."
    "Ah-hah. Well, we had this call from LA. Remember the cat who used to run the wat was killed down there before Christmas? Seems he was either crazy or stoned. So they said turn the place over for drugs."
    "I thought Trainites didn't hold with them."
    "Well, it's true we didn't find anything…Weird place, baby! All like fixed up from scrap. Kind of handmade. And the people kind of-I don't know. Odd!"
    "I saw some of them at Puritan," Jeannie said. "They looked pretty ordinary. And their kids are very well behaved."
    Too soon to talk about the best way to raise kids. Some day, though…
    "They may look harmless," Pete said. "But that's because here there aren't enough to cause real trouble. I mean like apart from painting up these dirty skulls and crossbones. Down in LA, though, they block streets, wreck cars, smash up stores!"
    "But Carl says everything they do is meant to wake people up to the danger we're in."
    Oh, the hell with Carl! But Pete kept that to himself, knowing how fond Jeannie was of him: her younger brother, nineteen going on twenty, the bright one of their family of five kids who'd dropped out of college after a year complaining of lousy teaching and was currently also working at the Bamberley plant.
    "Look, any way they want to live is fine by me," he grunted. "But it's my job to stop anybody wrecking or looting or interfering with the way other people want to live."
    "Well, Carl's been to the wat several times and according to him-Oh, let's not argue!" Consulting her recipe. "Well, we have to wait ten minutes now, it says. Let's go into the living room and sit down…"
    Her face clouded. "Know something, honey?"
    "What?"
    "I do wish I had one of those instant cookers. Microwave. Then it wouldn't matter when you came in, dinner could be ready in a moment"
    The phone rang.
    "Go sit down. I'll get it," she said. He grinned at her and obeyed.
    But, even before he'd made himself comfortable, she was calling to him in a near-scream.
    "Pete! Pete! Get your coat and boots!"
    "What? What the hell for?"
    "There's been an avalanche! It's buried all those new places the other side of town!"
    NO BIGGER THAN A MAN'S HAND
    …published today as a United Nations Special Report. The alleged rise of intelligence in so-called backward countries is ascribed by the scientists who conducted the three-year investigation to improved diet and sanitation, while the as-yet unconfirmed decline in advanced nations is attributed to intensified pollution. Asked to comment on the report just prior to leaving for Hollywood, where he is tonight slated to open his annual retrospective, Prexy said, quote, Well, if they're so smart why aren't they clever? End quote. At a press conference in Tegucigalpa the disappearance of Leonard Ross, field agent for Globe Relief, and Dr. Isaiah Williams, the British medico who's also unaccounted for, was officially ascribed today to terrorism.
    Troops are searching the area intensively, but so far have reported no success. Following the shock resignation of the former president of the "Save the Med" Fund, Dottore Giovanni Crespinolo, the Italian government has flatly denied his charge that the vast sums donated by corporations and individuals in forty-eight countries in the hope of saving the doomed landlocked sea have been embezzled. Reports from Rome, however …

MEMENTO LAURAE
    Never in his life had Philip Mason felt so miserable. He paced endlessly around the apartment, snapping at the children, telling Denise to leave him alone for God's sake, when all the time what he really wanted to say was that he loved them desperately and always would.
    Yet the consequences of New Year's Eve…
    When he felt depressed at the last place, things