Wasted on the Young By John Brunner The doorbell sounded. Hal Page had been attending to two final tasks: first, checking around the apartment and making sure everything was ready for this, which was going to be one hell of a party; second, trying to decide where to put the notice. He would have liked to destroy it, but when he came to the mouth of the disposall and opened it - letting the faintest, faintest whiff of the stink from the far-away incinerators mingle with the heady perfumes loading the air in the room - he found he had changed his mind. He needed the solid feel of it in his hand, the crinkly rustle of it in his ears, to drive him to the completion of his ultimate purpose. At a party like this, no hiding place was likely to remain secret, especially in view of his reckless reputation; the guests would make it a point of honour to seek out and, if possible, ruin his most costly possessions, to make him break new records when he cleared up the mess and replaced the spoiled items. But he dared not have anyone even guess at the motive for throwing such a party on this randomly chosen day. If anyone realized word would spread like the rumour of plague, and he would spend tonight alone, staring at nothing, and feeling the cold hand of terror on his heart. ‘Oh, God damn!’ he said aloud, snatching the notice into a place of concealment in the front of his loose silk shirt. Automatically he consulted his watch, though he knew the bell had sounded twenty minutes at least ahead of party time. It was the most expensive watch in the world; it had cost him four full years, and sat on the back of his left index-finger measuring the decay rate of a tiny grain of radium. The bell sounded a second time. He reached his decision. What the hell point was there in keeping the notice? Every word of it was ingrained in his mind, and could be summed into the single terrible warning: tomorrow! But if he had no intention of being here, of being alive tomorrow, why hesitate to have the paper destroyed? He thrust the document into the disposall as he had originally intended. The gesture brought him a sense of calm, of boats being burnt. He went smoothly and coolly to open the door. ‘You’re early, but come in anyway - no reason to delay the...’ * * * * He got that far before he realized that the man facing him -a little older than himself, say thirty-five, slim, saturnine, bright eyed - was wearing the black of an adult. And then, with a twisting grimace of disgust, he made to close the door, wishing it were possible to slam it with a crash. ‘Wait,’ the man in black said softly. ‘Remember me, Hal?’ Page hesitated. He made a valiant effort to see the face above the drab black garb as that of an individual instead of merely as the mask of an adult, and relays of memory closed. He said, ‘Why - at a party of ... What was the girl’s name?’ ‘Karen Sottine - but that doesn’t matter. Mine does. I’m Thomas Dobson.’ The man in black paused, his eyes sharp as scalpels. ‘Are you going to make me stand here where anyone passing down the corridor might see me? Are you going to have them start to wonder why an adult comes calling on Hal Page, the professional youth? You see, I know about the notice you’ve had, and the reason for this spectacular party tonight.’ ‘You’re not going to be here?’ Page forced out violently. ‘I said “open house”, but hell’s name I didn’t mean—’ ‘No, of course not.’ Dobson managed to put into the short disclaimer an infinite quantity of contempt, and Page wanted to writhe but lacked the time before the other continued. ‘Your guests won’t be less than half an hour late - you know that as well as I do. Even for a glimpse of the legendary Hal Page, who gambled and got away with it, who’s dragging so many others after him by his example.’ Page recovered his self-possession and made a mocking half bow. ‘So you’ve come for a sight of me, have you? To see what you’ve missed? Well, come in then. Have what you want, at my expense!’ He waved Dobson past him with a grandiose gesture, indicating the array of delicacies with which the room was stocked; antiques and objets d’art had been thrust aside hastily to make room for them. ‘Champagne - genuine champagne from France? Caviar? Larks’ tongues? Take your pick, it’s all charged to me.’ ‘Thank you,’ Dobson said, and selected a sliver of hard toast with which to dip into a bowl of red caviar. ‘You know,’ he added musingly when he had swallowed the first mouthful, ‘it’s a shame you’re not equipped to value this for what it is - that you should see it only as a gigantic prop for your ego.’ * * * * ‘You’re not equipped to enjoy anything,’ Page snapped. ‘God, even the first time I met you - what? Five years ago! - you weren’t equipped to get fun out of life! You sat there like -a brooding ghost and poured out secondhand philosophical claptrap that nobody wanted to listen to—’ ‘You listened.’ Dobson dipped a second portion of the caviar and the toast crunched noisily between his teeth. ‘Only because I didn’t believe you could be real,’ Page grunted. ‘There you sat - there was this girl alongside you, the one with pretty red hair and a mouth that - well, skip that. But I got her afterwards.’ ‘I know. She told me.’ Dobson swallowed the last of his toast and dropped into a soft chair. A fugitive smile crossed his face. ‘You mean she looked at you twice?’ A vague stab of non-comprehension troubled Page momentarily. ‘We got married,’ Dobson said. ‘A course of action which probably wouldn’t interest you very much.’ ‘Damned right,’ Page said shortly. ‘She had a hell of a body, but her mind was all cluttered with the same kind of nonsense you were spouting that evening ... And yet, you know, I guess I should be grateful to you in a way. Up to that time I’d run with the herd; I’d taken for granted all the pious nothings which I’d had spooned into my ears in school. I looked at you, and I thought hell, if they’re going to take me and grind me into the same mould as you, I’m going to get my kicks first. And - why yes! It was right on the following day that I went out and got myself something which cost a whole year for the first time. And I felt great. And I went right on from there.’ ‘Tell me something.’ Dobson cocked his saturnine head and regarded Page with apparently sincere interest. ‘Didn’t you feel anything when you ran your debt up over a century?’ ‘Sure!’ Page gave a harsh laugh. ‘I felt I was getting out from under.’ ‘Nothing else?’ ‘I know what you mean. You’re trying to say: wasn’t I scared that they’d come along and cut the ground from under my feet? Hell, no. You take yourselves too seriously, you adults. A minimum of thirty years free, that’s what they tell you. Granted, I had a bad moment the day I woke up and found I was a week past thirty - I’d sort of lost count during a weekend party. But it kept on, and kept on, and here I am. Thirty-two years, one month and four days.’ ‘Stop,’ said Dobson quietly, and reached for another dip of red caviar. Page reddened. He said, ‘So what’s going to be done about it? My debt’s up to three hundred years now, and there isn’t a damned thing you can do! It’s spent - or it will be by dawn tomorrow!’ ‘And what do you have to show for it?’ ‘I have to show what anyone will tell you. I have proof of more guts than you. I have proof I wasn’t scared of the consequences. I didn’t turn around and make myself into an adult ahead of due date, so that when they called for me I’d go fawning and saying, “Look, here I’m already acting like one of you - please be kind to me!”‘ A sudden thought broke his train of words like a derailment. He shot out an accusing finger. ‘Hey! How do you know about the-the...?’ The question trailed off into silence coloured with more than a little alarm. ‘No, I haven’t come to get you, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ Dobson said equably. ‘I am in fact required to call on you and make sure you understand the responsibilities which go with all of the privileges you’ve enjoyed.’ ‘Sure, I understand them fine,’ Page said, and motioned towards the door. ‘Now suppose you get on your way, and leave me to have my last fling.’ ‘Sorry.’ The voice sounded genuinely regretful, but Page alertly sought a trace of sarcasm in the dark-browed face. ‘I have to do the job, and if I don’t get to complete it before your guests arrive I just have to try and do it later. So the choice is fairly simple: sit and listen now, or sit and listen later because there won’t be anyone else here to keep you company - the word will have got around. And you know how superstitious everyone in your group is about someone who’s been given notice. As though they suddenly carried the taint of a deadly disease.’ He’d been comparing it mentally to plague, earlier; that gibe got through Page’s annoyance. He dropped into a chair facing Dobson and sighed. ‘I’d rather take you and push your smug face down the disposall, but - oh, spit it out and make it short!’ Dobson folded his hands calmly on his lap. He said, ‘I doubt if you’ve caught up on classics of literature during this expensive whirlwind of a life, but maybe if you’d done so you’d have developed a greater insight into your situation, particularly if you’d read a couple of works by the dramatist Shaw. Early and mid-twentieth century. Mean anything to you?’ ‘Point. Come to the point. I’ve had my notice - you know that - and I don’t want to be bored tonight of all nights!’ * * * * ‘Ye-es, you have rather a marked capacity for boredom, don’t you? Seems somehow unfair ... Well, to be precise what I had in mind was a beautiful capsule summary of the contemporary economic setup which is probably apocryphal, but who can be sure? Reputedly, Shaw said in his old age that youth was wonderful; what a pity it had to be wasted on the young! For in his view - as expounded at some length in Back to Methuselah - only the wisdom which age entrains can fit an individual to make optimum use of the energies of youth.’ Dobson’s eyes went once around the room, seeming to take in, sum up and dismiss everything for which Page had staked three centuries of existence. Page shivered and ordered him violently to hurry up with his little chat. The other briskened. ‘All right. Well, even enclosed as you are in your psychologically incestuous circle of good-time chums, it must have been borne in on you that there has been progress since the old days? That we have colonized two other planets in this system, that we are reaching out to explore the planets of other stars?’ ‘I caught something about it on three-vee,’ Page said in a heavily ironical tone. ‘Yes. Moreover, we enjoy a universally high standard of living, in which we apply as the only truly dependable economic yardstick the investment of individual effort.’ ‘I’ve spent three centuries worth,’ Page grunted. ‘Have you any news that isn’t stale?’ ‘Patience!’ Dobson raised a slender hand. ‘I’m required to do this, as I told you. Even if your interruptions compel me to spend all night at it.’ ‘I heard! I just don’t see the point of the lecture on current affairs. Are you softening me up to tell me that I’m to be sent out to Mars or somewhere, to sweat on one of those damned construction projects?’ ‘You caught that on three-vee too, presumably,’ Dobson suggested with acid politeness. ‘No, you are not to be sent to Mars. The work there is almost at the point where human effort can be supplanted by machinery, and only skilled options are likely to remain open there in future. Do I get the chance to make my point, or do you so much like the sound of your own voice you’d rather hear only it between now and tomorrow morning?’ Page made a disgusted gesture and leaned back in the chair. ‘Thank you. In your last year of school, when you should by rights have been old enough to make a fairly enlightened decision, you were instructed in the forms of modern society. You were told, for instance, of the expenditure against credit which would be made available to you at least until age thirty, and that the credit was charged like all expenditure nowadays against a standard base-scale of individual work. Only the time counts; there’s no question, for instance, of someone who’s not capable of highly skilled work being made to return more years of unskilled labour to balance the accounts. We’re very rich as a race, we human beings - we don’t have to be petty in such things,’ he paused. ‘You were told the reasoning behind this system. You were told - and like most adolescents, you certainly didn’t believe - that an endless round of pleasure and self-indulgence ultimately would grow boring, and that by the time you got your notice, to repay to society the credit you had drawn, you’d wish to make some more constructive use of your life. You were told also that there was nothing fixed or inevitable about this repayment; there’s a certain inalienable minimum available to everyone, so that by living frugally a person may continue to be his own absolute master as long as he wishes -this course is usually chosen by those with a strong rebellious and creative bent, who would rather sit on the edge of a desert and paint sunsets than take up an adult’s post in the world. I don’t wish to criticize such people, by the way; in my view, that marks them out as among the most mature and self-reliant specimens of the race.’ Unused to sitting and listening, Page had begun to fidget. Now he burst out again, angrily this time. ‘I was certainly told all this, but I wasn’t convinced, and I still am not convinced. I’m getting a hell of a lot of kicks out of life, and the idea of being arbitrarily grabbed by the neck and—’ ‘Not arbitrarily,’ Dobson cut in, with the first hint of strong feeling Page had yet seen from him. ‘You were told; you didn’t listen.’ ‘Told what? That - how did you put it? That “an endless round of self-indulgence” would end up by boring me? Hell, the only times I’ve been really bored have been like now, when some stuffy-brained adult started preaching at me!’ He jumped up and went to fetch himself a shot of brandy. ‘The fact remains,’ he went on over his shoulder, ‘I’m not fooled as easily as most people. You know they go around almost in awe of me? Like I’d done something special! All I did was see through this guff about what my debt to society consists of! I told you frankly, I had some bad moments when I realized I’d hit age thirty with a debt already topping two centuries. Then I caught on. If you jumped on me right then and there, the first possible moment, the very day I got past the promised limit, you’d mark yourselves for scared. People would have said, “It’s a fraud! They jumped on Hal Page because he took what he wanted from life and didn’t give a damn about the time he’d used up. Hell, if we’re all going the same way, let’s take what we can while we can!” Isn’t that the size of it?’ He rounded on Dobson with a challenging glare. * * * * ‘You’re visualizing the whole of your generation spending their credit by the century, the same as you,’ Dobson murmured. ‘Do you seriously think that would matter? I said we’re a rich race. You have no conception how rich we are! If every single one of the guests you’ve ever had to all your wild parties - if every guest at every party you’ve ever been to - if everyone of your entire generation decided to spend as freely and lavishly as you, all it would take to absorb this would be to reprice their expenditure down to the productive effort we can reasonably accommodate during their later lives. We’re embarrassingly rich, Hal! These days, we seldom even have to send a notice to people. With the thirtieth birthday come and gone, people tend to get restless - they lose interest in their round of pleasure - they turn up one day and ask to be assigned for some real work. I did that myself.’ ‘But I’m not like you,’ Page rasped. Somehow the contempt he had intended to load into his voice rang false on utterance. ‘The point I’m making still stands,’ Dobson countered equably. ‘Our difficulty is in utilizing the resources which make themselves available to us. Nine people out of ten who reach the age of thirty nowadays have already lost heart for mere passing amusements. They’ve taken a course of study, or set themselves a small research project, or made plans for a family - done something adult, in short. And we have to cope with this tremendous flow of creative energy, channel it, make the most of it ... That’s why we’re going out to the stars. It’ll be a hell of a long time before we actually reduce starflight to a routine operation, like a trip to the moon, but we’re going to need that escape route simply for the sake of not wasting the potential modern human society boils off like - like surplus heat from an engine!’ ‘Finished?’ Page growled. He drained his glass of brandy and poured another shot. ‘Not quite. We can’t let things slide; this is what I’m trying to put across to you. We can’t raise the age of full credit to thirty-five, for example, simply to reduce the pressure on us to absorb the would-be adults.’ ‘I’d have no objection!’ Page blurted, thinking of the terrible warning notice he had thrust into the disposall: your full free credit period terminates tomorrow ... ‘But already people are finding it hard to last out thirty years fooling around,’ Dobson raised one eyebrow. ‘Did you not just hear me say so?’ ‘I’ve heard it all! I’m sick of it all! There’s nothing more you can tell me - how about using the door?’ Page tossed down the second brandy as though he hated it. ‘Yes,’ Dobson sighed, and made to rise. ‘It’s all been said to you, over and over. You just don’t seem able to draw the conclusions ... “None so deaf as those who will not—” Ah, never mind.’ Page watched him move towards the door. The hostility died in his eyes as the final question burned upwards towards full consciousness. Without intending, he found himself starting to voice it. ‘Dobson! Do you know what’s ...?’ And there it faltered, partly because he was ashamed to admit to this black-garbed intruder that the prospect made him afraid, partly because he was afraid. The saturnine man paused and looked back. ‘Do I know what they’ll make you do? As a matter of fact, yes. But I’m not empowered to tell you.’ ‘Make me? I thought there was supposed to be a range of free choice!’ Page forced some of his normal bluster back into the words. ‘You poor fool,’ Dobson said. ‘How many choices do you imagine remain open to someone who’s spent more than three hundred years’ worth of credit?’ And he was gone. * * * * But it was a great party. There were just two bad moments -the first, when meditechs had to be called after a fight developed between two men over some chit of a girl Page had had last year and didn’t think worth the trouble; the second, when he found himself screaming at the crowd to drink more, eat more, dance more frantically, and realized that their eyes were on him, their faces halfway frightened at the dreadful intensity of his manner. He checked himself deliberately and covered his moment of self-betrayal by seizing the nearest girl around the waist to smother her face in kisses. He must not -dared not - let it be suspected that he was under sentence of death. Tonight, up to the very last minute, he must be with people, he must have the noise and laughter and the crash and smash of priceless articles, a soft hot sweat-pearled body under his, a silk pillow for his head ringing with Dobson’s calm, terrifying voice echoing in memory. With the third girl, around three in the morning, he failed to make it, and knew that the time was come. Abruptly he pushed her aside and got off the bed. He went into the bathroom and shut the door behind him. Luckily there was no one in here just now, though earlier three or four people had been showering down together and writing obscene verse on the tiled walls with a bar of lavender-coloured soap. He steadied himself with one hand and gazed at his reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror. ‘Last time,’ he whispered. ‘But they’ll remember me.’ The one who cheated them. The only ambition he had ever conceived. It wasn’t unique to himself. But others whom he’d heard of, who tried the same, who found the prospect of being snatched away from this ceaseless selfish delight intolerable, had botched the job. There were whispers; there were shuddering rumours in answer to casual questions. ‘Where’s so-and-so lately? Haven’t seen him around.’ Oh, he got his notice. ‘And -?’ Tried to get out from under. Cut his throat. ‘And -?’ They healed him. ‘I guess Dobson would accept that,’ Page told his reflection, seeing the grim lines form around his soft mouth. ‘I guess he’d say they were warned and had to take the consequences. But being told in advance doesn’t justify it. I don’t give a damn for paying back what I’ve had in credit. No one asked me when they set up this filthy system, and I opt out!’ His voice had peaked to a loudness that scared him; he didn’t want to be overheard. When he went, he wanted the party to continue. Maybe it would go on till the news came back: Hal Page made it! Hal Page got out from under! One final twinge of irresolution overcame him; then he recalled the expression on Dobson’s face as he went out, and thought about the implications of his parting promise. No: better the silent dark of death. And he - he wasn’t going to botch the job. * * * * The aircar had cost him one and a half years’ credit. It was going to be well worth it, he thought dreamily as he gulped down the five capsules of hypnotic - three hours’ credit - and set the controls to carry him out to sea. There was just about enough fuel for fifty miles; by then, he’d be at thirty thousand feet. And hitting water from such a height ought to be pretty much like smashing into a stone wall. If they even got back enough to use for prosthetics they’d be lucky, but that was the most they could hope to have back from ... Hal Page’s famous record-breaking debt... of more than... three hundred... Blackness. And horror. Light in darkness. Awareness. A shocking, horrifying lack of bodily presence. Vision, indestructible without lids to lower over the traitor eyes. He tried to scream, and found he had no voice; he tried to rise and run, and found he had no legs. He was in a large, light room, pale walled, without a window, and facing him on a steel chair was the grim black form of Dobson, somehow elongated from front to back, as though he was deeper than he should be. A voice said, ‘On now,’ and a whitish presence moved at the edge of vision, crazily out of proportion: a woman in a sterile coverall. ‘I think you have the knees too far apart,’ Dobson said. ‘He’s probably getting exaggerated-stereo vision.’ Something monstrous loomed in Page’s field of vision, and the perspectives of the environment shrank to something nearer normal. ‘I’m sorry for you, Hal,’ Dobson said softly. ‘And by the way, don’t try to talk. We haven’t cut in the vocal circuits yet.’ The consciousness of Hal Page withdrew, turned into something smaller than a mouse, began to run frantically around and around in the confines of his brain ... which, he knew and could not face knowing, was all that was left to him. ‘You may go insane,’ Dobson said, his voice reduced to a thin whispering. ‘But I guess in some senses you’ve always been insane. Borderline psychopathic, incapable of drawing a rational conclusion from what you were told, incapable of empathizing to the point of taking someone else’s word. I guess we have to be grateful that people like you still turn up occasionally - it’s our greatest strength as a race that we can build on our own weaknesses...’ he paused. * * * * ‘There was almost nothing left of you, Hal, but you should have known from what I told you when I called at your apartment that you were a rarity, too rare to waste. We’re compelled to be strictly honest; there are unpleasant tasks to undertake, and we never hide the fact. You elected yourself for one of them, in full possession of all the information which would have enabled you to back out if you’d cared to. But you didn’t. You went right ahead. You spent credits founded on other people’s efforts until the free choices open to you as repayment dwindled to a single possibility. ‘So here I am with the task of telling you, after you made the mistake of thinking you could welsh on your debt,’ Dobson sighed heavily. ‘We have to go to the stars, Hal. Creeping outward. As I told you, it’s forced on us because we have so much energy to absorb, so much frantic creativity, so much skill and impatience. One day we’ll go at the speed of light, freely and easily, but before that epoch arrives there must be scouts, explorers, pathfinders ... You, Hal. You’re going to Rigel, as the commander, and the crew, of a slow, slow rocketship, and the round trip is going to last just about three hundred years.’