Original Science Fiction Stories – July 1956
(1956)*
Ralph Spencer
illustrated hy LUTON
It was the Tee Vee hour in Titipu; it came every Sunday afternoon. Cowhides were hung over all the otherwise-open doors of the Quonset huts that made up the city of Shington. Each family crouched on stumps and piles of grass along the walls, and in silence watched the dark square box with its single glass window.
There was an ancient legend that at one time pictures had formed on these glasses; great leaders had spoken to their people from the mysterious depths behind them. No pictures had appeared within the memory of any man now living, or of his father, or his grandfather; back of that, memory could not be expected to go.
After a while the crying of frustrated children in the darkness became almost unbearable, but they were sternly hushed. In some corners old men and women slept surreptitiously, each one, when awakening, prodding the others awake. In other corners lovers tittered and giggled and girls said half-heartedly, "Oh, behave!"
But no one protested the Tee Vee period. It was the law. Furthermore, it was only decent; the Tee Vee service had to last during at least the sixth part of the afternoon.
-
"They grow more restless in each generation," whispered the Oldest Inhabitant, slipping his sheepskin off his shoulders and under him to soften the stump on which he was seated in the largest hut. It was the Preservidential Chair, and there was such a special stump for him wherever he went—for he was Preservident of the Knightedstates of Merica. Always the Oldest inhabitant was Preservident, being obviously the best preserved of all men.
"They're tired," hissed the Preservident's son, the Secretary of Defense.
"Our Bishop told me only yesterday," rejoined the old man in a toothless murmur, "that the wise ancients thought nothing of watching Tee Vee not only all Sunday afternoon, but seven or eight hours of every night."
"Maybe they had pictures in those days," grunted the Secretary of Defense.
"Our Bishop thinks the pictures resulted from proper reverence," reproved the elder, a trifle louder in the excitement of the friendly argument. "And I, myself, often rise during the night to revere the Tee Vee some additional time. I expect that some night the little window will glow with the scenes of the past, and I will see our founding fathers, the D'Oyley Cartes, climb out of the sacred caves of Airraidshelter in Providence, which means Heaven, and march to these Quonset huts, bringing not only our National Anthem with them, but the name of our country. The legends say the Tee Vee was here ready for them. They had only to clear away the bones of the ancients, whose zeal was so great that they had conducted the Tee Vee service until they died."
The Oldest Inhabitant paused as there came the sound of singing from Capitol Hill outside. He stretched and rose. "The Anthem," he said.
With vast sighs of relief the people in the darkness of the Quonset hats pulled the cowhides from the doors and came out.
Capitol Hill was a knoll in-the center of Shington. It was surmounted by a Quonset hut with half another superimposed on it to form what was called "The Dome." Nobody knew what its significance might be, but it had always been so—that the Capitol had a dome—as long as anybody, or his father, or his grandfather ... and so on.
The Bishop of Titipu stood at the foot of the knoll, facing the square in front of it. He was an imposing figure, despite his scholarly stoop and scanty white hair. He attained part of his dignity by wearing an academic gown over his sheepskins. There were only a few of these vestments in Shington; they had been secured generations before from the great kitchen midden called "Brown," on the other side of Narragansett Bay, a day's journey eastward.
Behind the Bishop was the choir, wearing cowhide gowns modeled after his gown. They were lustily singing the National Anthem:
For where'er our country's banner may be planted,
All other local banners are defied!
Our warriors in serried ranks assembled,
Never quail—or they conceal it if they do—
And I shouldn't be surprised if nations trembled
Before the mighty troops of Titipu!
The song ended, the Bishop spoke a few well-chosen words on the Connecticut Valley heresy: "People of those parts, members of the Valley tribes, now call themselves variously 'Quakers' and 'Puritans': old words the meaning of which was forgotten as long ago as the atomic wars. But they give these words a new meaning by their interpretation of an Apocryphal tradition preserved among them.
"This tradition—or legend, I might say—sets forth the unorthodox thesis that our ancient capital was not here, in the Shington we have always known and which at one time was obviously a principal metropolis of Titipu, under its archaic name of Rhode Island. The heresy of the Valley tribes maintains that the capital of the Knightedstates was far to the south of the great Long Island Sound, where"
(He permitted himself one of his rare bits of humor) "no one has ever heard of an island. Therefore, say these Valley tribesmen, they owe no allegiance to our Shington, nor to the Knightedstates Congress which sits here, and which has always ruled the Union of which Titipu has ever been the main support— and is now, I am sorry to say, almost the only support."
The Bishop looked around and saw the crowd was interested. Too interested; it was time to demolish the heresy: "This is all very nonsensical, but dangerous to the faith, and as is always the case with strange doctrines, treasonable as well. Consider: their legend refers in one case to their imaginary southern Shington as 'Washington', which they argue means that it was Shington—and our city, therefore, was not.
"Completely refuting this argument, we have in our archives a tattered chart issued under the seal of one 'Esso', clearly a most learned personage, probably a dignitary of the Church in the old days; and on it our Shington is specifically located in 'Rhode Island' and there is called"— he paused and his voice rose triumphantly — " 'Washington'! Our city is really the one that was Shington, and no doubt about it!"
The Bishop warmed to his discourse, disregarding a mutter behind him: "Old Bish never knows when to stop when he gets off on an academic dissertation. I'm hungry"
"The very legend by which the heretics abide mentions that Washington was the capital of the 'United States', which latter term they assume was the same as Knightedstates. Thus they display their ignorance; for in the old speech, the word or particle 'Un' nullified what followed it—so their boasted tradition contains internal evidence that it was not talking about the Knightedstates at all!"
The crowd pattered a little applause, though few persons present knew enough to get the point, and there was a milling; and shuffling with individuals drifting away toward home.
The Bishop, well versed in the psychology of great multitudes, even up to several hundred strong, observed the restlessness, wiped the smile from his face and hurried to finish: "The agents of the Valley heresy, I am reliably informed by high officials of Security, are working amongst us, in a front organization called a peace party!"
"No peace with the Valley tribes of sheep stealers!" shouted some one from the choir.
A mingling of applause and booing came from the residents of Shington assembled in the square.
"Congress is ready to take a vote!" shouted a man in sheepskins, appearing for a moment in the door of the Capitol above them.
"Never mind the Anthem again," ordered the Bishop, running up the knoll. "That's a Senate page, and this I got to see; our Merican way of life is at stake."
The Bishop was hindered by the robe, which he paused to take off and hang over his arm; so he and the Defense Secretary and the Secretary's father reached the domed Quonset hut at the same time, and others interested in civic affairs crowded in behind them.
They nearly filled the gallery, which was a space separated from the Senate floor by a rail fence.
"Link", the "Hereditary Rail-splitter", sat on the fence strewing the floor inside with grass roots. Grass roots sentiment, as was known of old, aided the congressmen in their deliberations.
The whole congress met in the Senate chamber these days. Once there had been another chamber; but a hurricane demolished what had withstood even the ancient atom bombs, and as it was felt .that dividing congress into two houses delayed legislation,-they met together now.
The Senate floor had bundles of hay strewn around to furnish seats for the twenty senators and congressmen facing the Speaker who took the stump at the end of the hut.
Many of the legislators had bloodied heads, lumps showing under their tangled hair, and some carried their arms in slings. One senator had at his side a pair of rough crutches made from the forked limbs of trees.
"They must have been engaged in debate recently," said the Secretary of Defense.
The Preservident looked them over with appraising eyes. "The older members who inherited their positions have withstood the trials of public office best," he announced with satisfaction. "Most of the bruises are on those we sentenced to terms in Congress for drunken and disorderly conduct."
"Politics is a game of skill," the Bishop commented sagely.
They were interrupted by the Speaker, calling to order.
"An appropriations bill is on the floor for its third reading," the Speaker intoned. "It is to grant a continuance of the salary of one sheep a week to the Pentagon staff, for the specific purpose of ensuring that work on the secret weapon of Titipu is continued to a successful conclusion. The Chairman of the Appropriations Committee is recognized."
The man alongside the crutches gathered them up, used them as a staff to assist him to rise, and stood leaning on them.
"Our fair land is in peril," he began in a rolling voice. "Leading a party of tax assessors into the Connecticut Valley yesterday, we collected some fifty ewes with lambs, only to have them treasonably wrested from us in an ambush which consisted of nearly a hundred clubs against our twelve. I recognized among the sheep several stolen from me by a raid the Valley tribes carried out a week ago. Every year they encroach further. I see no hope to establish once more the authority of these Knightedstates but by concentrating all our energies on preparedness, and in preparedness, our expected secret weapon ranks first and foremost. We must at least draw an unmistakable line past which they shall not advance."
"Bunk!" yelled a mighty man with a bandaged head, leaping to his feet without waiting to be recognized.
"Does the Senator yield to this question?" asked the Speaker tactfully.
"He does!" shouted the interrupter, casually hurling a rock at the Speaker which caught him in the abdomen and bowled him over backward off the stump.
The stalwart man continued: "We don't need a new weapon if we just stop trying to collect taxes."
"Without taxes we can not maintain our government," screamed the Appropriations Chairman.
"This government is bunk," said the man with the bandaged head. "We don't need it. if we only do like the tribes —just have a chief and some sachems. And no sheep every week to the Pentagon staff— that's only one man, anyway, the Secretary of Defense."
"Heresy! That's the subversion of the western heresy!" cried the Bishop from the gallery.
The Speaker had resumed his stance on the stump, still holding one hand over his stomach. "Both sides having stated their case, and the debate having therefore ended, are you ready to vote?" he groaned.
Everybody on the Senate floor leaped up, there was a flying shower of bundles of hay being tossed to the sides of the room.
Those senators and congressmen who wore academic gowns took them off and folded them neatly on the bundles. Each of the lawmakers selected a club from the row that stood against the walls of the hut, and the two parties faced each other across the room. They were equal in strength.
"Cast your ballots!" ordered the Speaker and scrambled back out of the way.
With whoops of enthusiasm the government party and the peace party charged each other, and the melee began—so thick with flailing clubs and the air so blue with dust and profanity that it was difficult to distinguish the individual Solons.
"Order, order, order," chanted the Speaker in tune with the thwacking of clubs and howling of the congressmen.
The Speaker's chant trailed off to silence as the dust settled and all the congress was seen sitting or lying on the floor, nursing bruises, except the Appropriations Chairman and the spokesman of the peace party. The Chairman seemed to have completely recovered his strength; and though forced back to the side of the hut, he guarded himself well with his club in his right hand, and repeatedly tripped his opponent with the crutches, which he held in his left hand.
"What a master of parliamentary law the Chairman is," said the Oldest Inhabitant with appreciation.
However, the leader of the peace party braced his feet far apart and with a series of heavy two-handed blows demolished the crutches and began to beat down the Chairman's guard.
"Our Merican way of life is in danger!" shouted the Oldest Inhabitant. "As Preservident, I shall veto!"
He leaped over the rail fence with that agility which demonstrated his right to his high office, picked up a bludgeon from the floor, and broke it over the head of the peace advocate—w h o went down and stayed there.
The Defense Secretary, the Bishop, and the Oldest Inhabitant were eating a stew of mutton cut from the first dressed sheep delivered on the new appropriation. The rest of the sheep was still in the Pork Barrel, which, as an object of veneration and awe—the very symbol of good government—sat at the head of the table cloth spread on the floor of the Pentagon. The Pentagon was also a Quonset hut, but surrounded by a five-sided stone wall. The meal had been cooked over the forge which occupied the center of the hut.
"We nearly didn't get this sheep," observed the Preservident. "That vote was mighty close. I never veto without remembering that my grandfather lost his life that way. He stepped in while there was still a member of the opposition able to get up from the floor behind him. That was in the days before national unity was firmly established and there was still friction between the descendants of the D'Oyle Cartes and the offspring of the party of ancient senators and congressmen they found hiding here during the great destruction."
"A great man for ancient history your grandfather was," the Bishop said. "I remember he told me many legends of the great destruction and the secret weapons used on each side."
"Yes," agreed the Oldest Inhabitant, pronging a fresh bit of mutton on a pointed stick and holding it over the forge fire to roast. "He wasn't of a mechanical turn of mind, poor fellow, or we might have had our secret weapon without all this trouble. He knew his books—in his day he had several, all gone now. But he emphasized that the secret weapons of the ancients, called variously 'atom bombs', 'hydrogen bombs', and 'cobalt bombs' were able to penetrate any defense—and therefore, apparently, could pierce any sheepskin pad, even one that successfully cushioned the wearer against ordinary cudgels. He also thought the ancients' weapons destroyed all their huts except this group here. Our capital," he added, as a dutiful afterthought. "So our side must have won, we still have Shington."
"I recollect he thought the great kitchen middens at Providence and Pawtucket were the remnants of old dwellings," said the Bishop.
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