The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner Page B

beer and hers from the six-pack. What the hell? Twenty bucks today was a spit in the ocean. Though he would rather have put it toward their policy with Angel City, saving against the time when they could afford a baby. All these scare stories about chemicals. Just an excuse to double the prices at Puritan ...
    Reminded of the plant, though: “Say, baby, how’s your leg?” That smooth patch of skin, as though part of her thigh had been glazed.
    “Oh, they were right first time. It is a fungus. You know we have to wear masks against actino-what’s-its-name. I picked up something of the same kind. But the ointment’s fixing it.”
    Pete repressed a shudder. Catching a fungus! Christ, like something out of a horror movie! It had dragged on for more than a month, and even now he kept finding himself obsessively inspecting his own body. He gulped at his beer.
    “Say, 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 advancd 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