by Ross Rocklynne
Ross Rocklynne has been writing science fiction since the mid-1930’s, and his early stories bore such titles as “Trans-Plutonian Trap” “Slaves of the Ninth Moon,” and “The Reflection That Lived” Times change and so does science fiction; today we prefer stories that rely less on melodrama. Yet Rocklynne remains a familiar name on science-fiction contents pages; he has a lively, original mind, and his ideas continue to be stimulating. Maybe it’s because, as he shows in this delightful story, he still retains all his enthusiasm for the future.
* * * *
THE RANDY-TANDY man’s coming, Kerbisher yells to himself, exuberant. This Free Term is for the birds. Who’s scared of the Randy-Tandy man?
Skipping, hollering, and happy—this is Kerbisher, big oaf in an oafish world. He’s worked his three hours today, and that’s it; he’s anything but tired, so he has the rest of the day to be relaxed, joyous, and TV’d.
“Honey, I’m home,” he yells, kicking off his shoes, heavy with the dirt of wrecked buildings, and peeling off his work shirt, which he drops into a slot along with other countless shirts belonging to other oafs in an overpopulated world. “I’m home,” he repeats, “and I’m going to stay home, and revel in love, liberty, and understanding. Come Monday, the Randy-Tandy man!”
The wife comes in from the kitchen, little, smiling as always, and polishing a spoon and a knife with a piece of marvel cloth. “Then Monday’s the day, if you say so,” she says, smiling, “but you could be wrong, it just might be today. Whichever, a little hate isn’t going to kill you, honey, you got to remember that, so why be scared of the Randy-Tandy man?”
Kerbisher grabs her, kissing her nicely. “Mmm-mmmm,” he says, “this happy stuff poops me out, did you know that? I got a book somewhere.”
Kerbisher, a man of many moods, changing, and changeable. His delightful wife has returned to the kitchen, where she is baking a potato or two and a half-steak made of crushed almonds. He is stretched out, enjoying his life and reading his book. This Kerbisher—literary, erudite; or at least as literary and erudite as it is necessary to be in the day of the Great Generation that’s going to make everybody great. So . . . just look at the ray-gun tanning the scaly hide off that Ganymedan!
Ring-a-ling! That’s the muted telephone. “Mr. Kerbisher? This is the R&D and T&D representative in your community. A new day is dawning. Hearken well.”
“I’m hearkening,” yells Kerbisher, while he thinks, with a surprised shiver, Emily is right: the Randy-Tandy man comes today, Saturday, not Monday. How come she made that good guess about the Randy-Tandy man?
“Big ears, Mr. Kerbisher,” says the Randy-Tandy man, pleasant and cool as always. Oh, those polite Randy-Tandy men have it all figured out: come someday, what a world we’re going to have.
“Big ears,” repeats the Randy-Tandy man in his silky soft, apologetic, but firm voice. “You understand what is being said, Mr. Kerbisher?”
“Do I understand?” yells Kerbisher, so enthusiastically his wife Emily runs in from the kitchen with a wondering smile on her face. “You’re telling me it’s the end of the Free Term, Mr. Randy-Tandy man,” he cries, hugging his picture book. “Now we’ve got to hate!”
“Exactly, Mr. Kerbisher. Hate people with big ears. You’ve got it straight, now?”
“I do, I do. Hate people with—” Kerbisher’s voice fails. He is watching Emily standing in the doorway of the kitchen. Little wife has big ears! Moreover, her hair is caught up around her head with clips so that her ears stand out more than usual. One could hardly miss the fact that her ears are big. Kerbisher’s great jaw trembles.
“—Big,” he says, faltering.
“Don’t say it out loud,” shushes the Randy-Tandy man. “As you know, everybody will hate something different. Your specific prejudice is big ears. You understand, sir?”
“Yes,” says Kerbisher, almost weeping.
“Very good.”
“How long will the Revile and Despise Term last?”
“Three days, sir. Then the Taper Off and Deny Period, to last as long as your discretion seems to dictate. You understand, sir?”
“I do,” sobs Kerbisher.
The hate begins. Kerbisher puts the phone down slowly. How many times since high school began has he fumbled the phone into the slot after getting his instructions from the Randy-Tandy man? Maybe a few hundred times, but never slowly like this. Oh, already big Kerbisher is suffering.
“Who was it?” asks his wife Emily, coming up behind him and rapidly dusting a jug. “The Randy-Tandy man, I dare say. A little early, maybe? On Saturday after all?”
“Yes, that’s right,” says Kerbisher, looking away. He is feeling it again, the feeling he must feel if man and his works are to survive. The hate made to order, like always. Oh, Emily, Emily, his black thoughts run, our time has come. Now we must part. Our intertwined lives—well, it’s just as if he’s TV’ing.
Sweet Emily, dusting rapidly, comes up behind him like a cyclone. He shakes her off and cries thickly, “I’m going out, Emily, I can’t stay here.” Putting on a clean shirt, flailing out his arms.
“Dinner?” she says. “You aren’t going to be here for dinner? Two potatoes and a healthy half-steak? Walter—”
He swears, whirling on her. “Haven’t I told you, no half-steak? Haven’t I? Haven’t I?”
“Well, not in just so many words. Not just exactly that way. You said-”
“How many times have I told you? How many times? No half-steak!”
The little woman, she stands there, looking, her hair lifted back from big ears, and she just stands there, not even smiling, and that’s when Kerbisher oafishly goes. He’s out the door like a shot, breathing hard and running, and remembering it all over again like when he was a smart kid twenty years ago.
Smart, yes, but the Randy-Tandy man was smarter. The Randy-Tandy man came to the school then, and he talked to all the kids in the auditorium.
“All you short boys,” he says, that time twenty years ago, “you’re going to hate the tall boys, right?”
The short boys, back then, they just sit there; they don’t say anything. The Randy-Tandy man says, “Come, come, don’t you know how to hate? Haven’t you always had a tiny, sneaking hate for all those tall boys? Of course you have. But now you must hate a little harder, on purpose. Those are the rules we’re going to follow from now on. Do not be difficult.
“Very well, let’s hear it from the tall boys. You’ll find it easy enough to hate those inferior short boys, won’t you?”
The tall boys, they laugh and jog each other in the ribs. “Listen to that R&D man,” they yell. “We don’t hate the little squirts. Not much. Do we have to?”
“It’s the new rules,” says the Randy-Tandy man firmly.
The tall boys giggle and yell, “Might as well be them shorties, Mr. R&D man, if we got to hate somebody!”
The Randy-Tandy man nods approvingly. “And the shorties are going to hate you back just as hard.
“I’ll give you,” he goes on, “three days for the Revile and Despise Period, all you boys, not the girls—they can hate each other next week. I want you to work at the hate for three days. Those are the rules. Then Taper Off and Deny for two days or so, and after that we’ll have an easy Free Term until the next hate.”
Well, all that three days the shorties and the tall boys mix it up with each other, with the girls looking on and giggling. At first, they walk circles around one another. They look at one another out of the corners of their eyes, their heads bent angle-wise, the shorties looking up and the tall guys looking down.
“Hey there, shorties,” comes a giggle from a tall guy. “Okay, big shit, just watch it,” says a shortie. And he means it. Randy-Tandy man says he has to mean it.
The shorties and the tall guys do circles around each other. Then the fights begin. The principal and the teachers and the school custodians are in there breaking up the fights. Then they begin again. And it isn’t only the fighting, it’s the Reviling and the Despising, the insults, and the swearing.
Then the three days of the Revile and Despise end. It is hard, it is mighty hard, to cut off the hate. But sure enough, on the third day the tall guys and the shorties somehow begin Tapering Off. Oh, a little fight or punishing word now and then, but they all end up laughing about it, and shaking hands, and hugging each other, and swinging off to class with arms around one another’s shoulders, and the first thing you know—yes, Kerbisher among them!—they’re Denying! “I didn’t mean it, shortie, you got a punch just like you were tall.” “I didn’t mean your brains was skinny, too, tall boy.” So they’re into the Free Term!
The Free Terms are a relief, of course—for a while, anyway. You don’t have to go around hating anybody unless you want to. But in the middle of the Free Term, usually, the tension begins to grow. You feel the Randy-Tandy man is about to come again, and you’re excited about it, and hating it and liking it at the same time, and you’re finally glad when the suspense is over.
“Now, boys and girls,” the Randy-Tandy man might say, his eyes darting from here to there around the auditorium, “we’re going to try a little blond-brunette thing this week. Any of you blond boys or girls like to stand up and spout a little brunette hate for a starter? Then we’ll have an R&D of, say, two days, followed by the usual T&D, and then the usual Free Term.”
Well, that’s the way it is, all through grade school and junior high. The Randy-Tandy man tells you what to hate about people, and you don’t ask why, because the Randy-Tandy man knows what he’s doing. You hate people and get hated back. Then you Taper Off and Deny, and end up so relieved you love everybody through the Free Term.
Oh, those Free Terms! Honestly, you could jump the school wall. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got freckles or pigeon-toes or crow’s-feet, crooked teeth or pretty teeth or teeth with braces on them; if you’re bowlegged or you lisp; if you’re modest, shy, or pushy, fat or thin, poor or rich, black or white, Mex or Chink, or any one of a million things! You don’t have to worry about getting picked on during the Free Term.
Come the end of the Free Term, though, watch out! Because there’s the shivery old Randy-Tandy man standing on the stage looking you over.
“Well, boys and girls,” he might say, “what’ll it be this time? How about a good solid hate from all you smart intellectuals who dig good grammar? Sort of despise the kids who can’t parse a sentence, right?”
Or “All you girls with good manners, how’d you like to take it out on those rough boys who don’t know the score when it comes to treating you sweet young things just right? Get in there, girls. Really hate. For about three days. That’ll show ‘em! Of course, they won’t find it too hard to hate you right back.”
A grand, shivery, exciting time of life that never lets up—this Kerbisher remembers.
Everybody’s got something wrong with him, and everybody likes to do a little hating now and then, so any time you want to hate something about somebody, you just wait for the Randy-Tandy man to bring it out. He’ll be along with the proper hate in due course, and he doesn’t care if you use him.
For instance, there’s Kerbisher’s bad grades one semester. He has to blame them on somebody; after all, it can’t be Kerbisher’s fault. So he picks on this blue-eyed, giggling girl sitting behind him all semester. He blows up, using junior high swearwords you wouldn’t put in a book. After all, how can he study when she’s giggling? Anyway, this is the week he’s supposed to hate giggling girls, preferably pretty ones with blue eyes. And you can’t expect her just to sit there—not, anyway, when this is the week she has a prejudice against big-nosed boys like Kerbisher. Whop! She hits him across the nose with her psychology book. Well, you can imagine what happens during the T&D! Quite the reverse, which makes everything seem worthwhile in a funny way.
Then junior high is over, and Kerbisher is floating high in a summer haze which he hopes will not end. The Randy-Tandy man is the source of Kerbisher’s worry. What’s the Randy-Tandy man thinking about? Will he follow Kerbisher into high school? What kind of badness is he planning? Ring-a-ling! That’s the way it comes about, the Randy-Tandy man calling up high school kids and plaguing them again—right in their own homes!
“Hello there, Mr. Kerbisher. A new day dawns. Got a four-day Revile and Despise coming up, son, calculated for you especially, under our Advanced Plan. Anybody who reads books. Got that, son?”
“Got it!” yells the young oaf Kerbisher, making out like he’s happy that summer-long Free Term is over. “But I read myself. A lot. Comics.”
“Books, son, not comics. Anybody that studies, or tries to advance himself through study. Hate them eggheads, boy!”
Kerbisher is alone with his hates, under the Advanced Plan. He’s not allowed to tell anybody what he might be hating. Therefore, he never knows for sure what somebody might be hating about him. How can Kerbisher, or anybody, live like this? Everybody does. Everybody, so far as Kerbisher knows, is in the same fix he’s in, so he pads through the jungle of hate and bigotry, and with his cat eyes and sense of smell he learns to sense what is going on in the little hating minds around him.
For instance, this oaf Kerbisher knows for a fact that he’s been hated and sneered at and Reviled and Despised because 1) he’s dumb, 2) he’s smart, 3) he goes with girls, 4) he doesn’t go with girls, and finally, in his senior year, 5) he’s in love, and 6) going to get married.
Love? Marriage? How in the world does Kerbisher manage marriage in the middle of all this hate that the Randy-Tandy man is bringing to the world? It’s a miracle, folks, so step right up and view the events which lead to the fairly happy married life of little Emily Draper and Walter Kerbisher. Kerbisher’s already gone through a girl-hating R&D, years ago, and Emily, so small and low-breasted she seems lost in Kerbisher’s shadow, is a delight, and she doesn’t do anything but keep house, not even read. It so happens that in all the eight months they go together, meeting first at the Methodist Church, they only have one R&D, and that’s her hating him.
Oh, but she gives it to him good! For two days she is so vilely upset by Kerbisher that he gives her cramps.
“You give me cramps!” the sweet girl, gone crazy because of the Randy-Tandy man, screams at him. “You walk so heavy you make my cake fall, and dirty up the floor besides! If you want to marry me, you got to walk light!”
Kerbisher, falling terribly in love with little Emily Draper, is beside himself. Certainly he wants to marry her, and you can bet he stops walking heavy right then, or at least until the R&D ends, and they get into the T&D. After that, things sail. Married two years, folks, and the real miracle is, after this, never once does Emily seem to get into an R&D. Imagine that. Emily is the perfect wife, treats her husband to outstanding meals, smiles a lot, loves him nicely, and tries to help him when the Randy-Tandy man puts him in a state. But no Reviling and Despising from Emily, from then on.
Here’s Kerbisher, fretting, angry, hating, cursing, Reviling and Despising, big oaf in an oafish world, and his wife Emily never gets into an R&D. Why, just about all she does is smile.
“Oh,” answers Emily to this, while she polishes a fork and a knife with a piece of marvel cloth, “I dare say ever’body gets into an R&D now and then, with or without the Randy-Tandy man. I’ve been in some turrible frets, Walter, turrible!
“As for the smiling, maybe we’ll all be smiling one of these days, Walter—if not outside, then inside.” She smiles while polishing two glass bowls and a plate.
The Smiling People, Emily among them, hang on the edge of your mind, just out of sight—smiling and happy and never getting upset! It’s enough to worry Kerbisher half to death. Everybody has to go through these hate spasms, don’t they? And then they have to go through times of love and happiness after that, don’t they? Isn’t that the way things are? So it must be imaginary, this feeling that smiling, happy people are all around you.
Is it imaginary, though, seeing his wife Emily smiling, with her hair clipped up on her head so that her big ears stand out? It’s almost as if she knew the hateful Randy-Tandy man was going to instruct Kerbisher to hate big ears.
It’s no wonder that oaf Kerbisher runs. He’s gone, down the street, a wild man, his comic book dropped on the floor at her feet, and there he goes.
Down the street he goes, howling and flailing his arms, and virtually everybody he sees seems to have big ears. He’s fleeing past Bill Stotter’s place, and Bill Stotter waves from his porch, smiling up a storm of good will, and nodding his head so his big ears seem to dip a little.
Kerbisher is in such a state with the vileness of hate the Randy-Tandy man brought him that he shakes his fist at Bill Stotter and shouts obscenities. Bill Stotter only smiles, and waves big ears. This makes matters worse for poor Kerbisher. Bill Stotter is one of the Smiling People! Why does he always smile?
Kerbisher rushes down the street.
Why does it have to be like this?
He returns home, where he sits, trembling. He does not want to see his wife Emily, and she does not try to see him. He sneaks into the kitchen at night. Once he sneaks in during the day, to get the remains of his nighttime sandwich, and there is Emily, polishing a red apple which she is making plans to eat.
Kerbisher is beside himself. He shakes his fists, shouting, “Now I know it isn’t the ears at all, it’s the way your hair is up!”
“My hair is up,” she says. “Oh. Well.”
“But it isn’t that at all!”
“Well, I dare say it has to be something,” says she, working on the red apple.
“It’s the smile!” cries Kerbisher.
“I do smile at times, Walter. You may have hit on something there.”
“And it’s because you never get into an R&D,” he cries, his face puffing up redly at the despicable thought. “I’m beginning to understand what this is all about, woman!”
“I dare say it’s about time,” she observes, propping herself on a tall chair, and studying herself in the polished red apple.
Kerbisher waves both fists. “It isn’t fair,” he cries. “We’ve got our rules in this world. It’s the only road to the Great Generation. We must learn to hate, hate, hate, and then Taper Off with love, love, love.
“But you don’t go by the rules!” he yells at the eating Emily. “You don’t pay any attention to the Randy-Tandy man. He calls, you say phooey. Tell me you don’t do it that way, just tell me.”
“Well,” she says, having some trouble talking around a mouthful of apple.
Kerbisher throws up his hands. He is red and perspiring. How can he say such things? Oh, Emily, Emily, he whimpers inside himself as if he’s TV’ing again. He blunders toward his room, and never comes out again until the Revile and Despise period is over. He wakes in the morning and the Tapering Off and Denying period has begun. He finds Emily in the kitchen working over dishes.
“Uch-hmm,” Kerbisher coughs.
“Yes, dear.”
“You do smile a lot, and you do seem to have big ears, although not as big as one would suppose,” he tells her.
“I would be the last to deny it,” says Emily, swiping with a dishcloth at a shining tumbler.
“But smiling isn’t a bad thing, and you can hear nicely with big ears.”
“I’m glad you’ve made the discovery,” smiles Emily.
“Uch-hmm,” coughs oaf Kerbisher, fleeing the scene. But he begins to leave his room, and on the second day of the Tapering Off, he returns to work. As he works, wrecking buildings, this Kerbisher, this big oaf, begins to smile. “Yahoo!” he is yelling inside, riding the bucking bronco of himself across the range under western skies. He’s back to loving again.
Yahoo! He’s into the house, tossing off his shirt, grabbing at Emily, and whirling her like a flag of joy. “Randy-Tandy man,” he says grimly, and cries out some junior high school swearwords which he happens to remember.
Now Kerbisher finds that he is anxious to talk to the Randy-Tandy man. Where’s the Randy-Tandy man? The Free Term goes on and on. Kerbisher frets, pacing the floor, and forgetting his comic book. What do you do to get hold of a Randy-Tandy man?
Kerbisher’s sweet wife Emily muses, “But why? Why would you want to get hold of a Randy-Tandy man, of all people?”
“Because I’m going to tell him what’s what,” Kerbisher declares. “He drove me crazy this last time. I’m through with hating. Nothing but loving after this, Emily doll.”
So it is that less than two hours later the Randy-Tandy man calls.
At the sound of all that smoothness of voice, Kerbisher almost crumbles. His resolve begins to fade. He has to grit his teeth to say what he has to say.
“I’m Mr. Kerbisher,” he shoots back without too much delay. “Mr. Randy-Tandy man, you can stop right there. Don’t say any more. It’s all over. After this, the only prejudice I’ve got in this life is against the Randy-Tandy man.”
“Indeed?” says the Randy-Tandy man. “Against the R&D and T&D man, of all people?”
“You heard me,” says Kerbisher.
“But you don’t seem excited. You don’t seem angry. You don’t seem to have built a proper foundation of hate.”
“Because I’m in a long Free Term,” says Kerbisher, with a strong sound in his voice. “This Free Term is going to last all my life. I’m not singing any more of your little hate songs. I’m not dancing any more of your bigot trots. I am a Free Man,” he finishes, TV’ing it a little.
The Randy-Tandy man is silent.
“Well,” he says, and his voice is all smiles.
Smiles!
Kerbisher almost drops through the floor. The Randy-Tandy man says warmly, “My personal congratulations, Mr. Kerbisher! We have been waiting for this moment. Your name will be entered in our Exempt Files. What this means is that you are officially exempt for life from the necessities of bigotry, prejudice, and/ or hate. Good day, sir, and my congratulations again. It’s been a rough battle for all of us. And all we had to do was to learn we didn’t have to put up with it, right? And, oh yes, Mr. Kerbisher?”
“Huh?” says Kerbisher.
“I would like to inform you that one of our representatives will call on you this evening.”
Kerbisher hangs up, and sees Emily smiling. “Emily,” he says sternly, and that’s when they have it out, but without any R&D, mind you.
In the evening, Bill Stotter, the Kerbishers’ smiling neighbor from down the street, pays Kerbisher a visit, just as the Randy-Tandy man said he would. Well, you can just imagine being face-to-face with a Randy-Tandy man, who sticks out his hand, smiling, and shakes Kerbisher’s hand, and says, “Mr. Kerbisher, I am the R&D and T&D representative you have an appointment with this evening. I am here to ask you a favor, to ensure the dawning of a new day throughout our world.”
Oh, the Randy-Tandy man still visits the schools, still makes his calls. There is no other way; people have to learn they don’t have to do it. Anyway, the next time the Randy-Tandy man calls somebody, he should listen carefully, because it just might be the voice of that big oaf Kerbisher!