One Was Stubbron Read Free Page A

misery?”
    â€œBut … but where will everyone go?” I said.
    â€œWhy, we return to our proper position as a compound idea. And there we shall have nothing that is miserable or worrying—”
    â€œBut you won’t even exist!”
    â€œCertainly not,” he said with a tired smile. And he nudged with his elbow and tilted his head back while his chair’s arm poured another glass of water down his throat. Languidly then he nodded to me.
    â€œYou don’t need glasses, my dear fellow. You are only witnessing the fruits of our combined disbelief. Several people happened to disbelieve that dome and then the college student probably didn’t believe in his Swishabout, and you, about to be killed by it, refused to believe in it either. So come around to our meeting tonight and hear all about it. It is really quite fascinating.” He yawned in boredom and pushed a pedal which shot my sofa car out to the Eye Level again.
    I stepped on a down bucket. Wouldn’t it be awful, I thought, if this bucket didn’t exist? But it evidently still did and nothing happened until I was being speeded home on the conveyers.
    The Trans-System 5:15 Local roared away from its field to the north and when it had attained the zenith it suddenly vanished. There wasn’t so much as a puff of smoke left in the sky. And about ten seconds later it appeared again fifty or sixty miles up, visible because of its exhaust flames in the dusk.
    When I got home I went to bed behind a locked door. The bed, at least, showed no sign of vanishing. And if things were going to persist in refusing to exist, I vowed I wouldn’t leave that room until my condensochow and my stock of Old Space Ranger gave out.
    I went out three times in three weeks and twice I came back so badly unnerved that again I barricaded myself. For the things which were happening clearly showed that the world had gone completely mad and maybe not only the world but the Universe as well. I recalled a fragment of talk I had heard concerning the disease machine madness, and I was now convinced that the disease had invaded everyone. And that it was even invading me.
    My wife hadn’t spoken to me for so long that one day when she stuck her head in the door and announced that a gentleman was here to see me, I noticed for the first time that all was not well with her. She had a sort of ecstatic fixity about her face that could not even be broken by animosity toward me.
    The gentleman came in. He had a robe of blue flashtex wrapped around him so that he was mostly hypnotic eyes. He said, “My name is George Smiley. I am called the Messiah!”
    I must admit that I was never so close to being frightened in my life. He brought down his arm a little and exposed his face and if I have ever in my life seen anything sardonic it was the grin he wore. He was not handsome nor tall, but there was some kind of presence to him which would have singled him out from a million made up exactly like him.
    â€œWhat do you want with me?” I said.
    â€œI merely wish to speak with you.”
    â€œThen go ahead,” I said.
    â€œA Dr. Flerry, Number 483,936,3297,024AG, has reported to me that you may be the one responsible for the way things are progressing. We have done away with the disbelief of some thousands like you and you are the last one. I understand that you have neither heard nor read of the Great Eclipse.”
    I couldn’t look him in the eyes and so I watched the way his flashtex cape rippled. “All I know is what Dr. Flerry told me.”
    â€œAnd still you were not interested enough to attempt to believe with the rest?”
    â€œWhy should I be interested?” I said.
    â€œBecause this vitally concerns your happiness. Have you no wish to defeat the mechanism and organization which has enslaved mankind? Have you no desire to liberate yourself from the toils of a miserable existence?”
    â€œI can do that with a