Chapter I: Front Matter

I, the Unspeakable

By WALT SHELDON

Illustrated by LOUIS MARCHETTI

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction April 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

"What's in a name?" might be very dangerous
to ask in certain societies, in which sticks
and stones are also a big problem!

I fought to be awake. I was dreaming, but I think I must have blushed. I must have blushed in my sleep.

"_Do it!_" she said. "_Please do it! For me!_"

It was the voice that always came, low, intense, seductive, the sound of your hand on silk ... and to a citizen of Northem, a conformist, it was shocking. I was a conformist then; I was still one that morning.

I awoke. The glowlight was on, slowly increasing. I was in my living machine in Center Four, where I belonged, and all the familiar things were about me, reality was back, but I was breathing very hard.

I lay on the pneumo a while before getting up. I looked at the chroner: 0703 hours, Day 17, Month IX, New Century Three. My morning nuro-tablets had already popped from the tube, and the timer had begun to boil an egg. The egg was there because the realfood allotment had been increased last month. The balance of trade with Southem had just swung a decimal or two our way.

I rose finally, stepped to the mirror, switched it to positive and looked at myself. New wrinkles--or maybe just a deepening of the old ones. It was beginning to show; the past two years were leaving traces.

I hadn't worried about my appearance when I'd been with the Office of Weapons. There, I'd been able to keep pretty much to myself, doing research on magnetic mechanics as applied to space drive. But other jobs, where you had to be among people, might be different. I needed every possible thing in my favor.

Yes, I still hoped for a job, even after two years. I still meant to keep on plugging, making the rounds.

I'd go out again today.

The timer clicked and my egg was ready. I swallowed the tablets and then took the egg to the table to savor it and make it last.

As I leaned forward to sit, the metal tag dangled from my neck, catching the glowlight. My identity tag.

Everything came back in a rush--

My name. The dream and _her_ voice. And her suggestion.

_Would I dare? Would I start out this very morning and take the risk, the terrible risk?_

* * * * *

You remember renumbering. Two years ago. You remember how it was then; how everybody looked forward to his new designation, and how everybody made jokes about the way the letters came out, and how all the records were for a while fouled up beyond recognition.

The telecomics kidded renumbering. One went a little too far and they psycho-scanned him and then sent him to Marscol as a dangerous nonconform.

If you were disappointed with your new designation, you didn't complain. You didn't want a sudden visit from the Deacons during the night.

There had to be renumbering. We all understood that. With the population of Northem already past two billion, the old designations were too clumsy. Renumbering was efficient. It contributed to the good of Northem. It helped advance the warless struggle with Southem.

The equator is the boundary. I understand that once there was a political difference and that the two superstates sprawled longitudinally, not latitudinally, over the globe. Now they are pretty much the same. There is the truce, and they are both geared for war. They are both efficient states, as tightly controlled as an experiment with enzymes, as microsurgery, as the temper of a diplomat.

We were renumbered, then, in Northem. You know the system: everybody now has six digits and an additional prefix or suffix of four letters. Stateleader, for instance, has the designation AAAA-111/111. Now, to address somebody by calling off four letters is a little clumsy. We try to pronounce them when they are pronounceable. That is, no one says to Stateleader, "Good morning, A-A-A-A." They say, "Good morning, Aaaa."

Reading the last quote, I notice a curious effect. It says what I feel. Of course I didn't feel that way on that particular morning. I was still conformal; the last thing in my mind was that I would infract and be psycho-scanned.

Four letters then, and in many cases a pronounceable four letter word.

A four letter word.

Yes, you suspect already. You know what a four letter word can be.

Mine was.

It was unspeakable.

The slight weight on my forehead reminded me that I still wore my sleep-learner. I'd been studying administrative cybernetics, hoping to qualify in that field, although it was a poor substitute for a space drive expert. I removed the band and stepped across the room and turned off the oscillator. I went back to my egg and my bitter memories.

I will never forget the first day I received my new four letter combination and reported it to my chief, as required. I was unthinkably embarrassed. He didn't say anything. He just swallowed and choked and became crimson when he saw it. He didn't dare pass it to his secretarial engineer; he went to the administrative circuits and registered it himself.

I can't blame him for easing me out. He was trying to run an efficient organization, after all, and no doubt I upset its efficiency. My work was important--magnetic mechanics was the only way to handle quanta reaction, or the so-called non-energy drive, and was therefore the answer to feasible space travel beyond our present limit of Mars--and there were frequent inspection tours by Big Wheels and Very Important Persons.

Whenever anyone, especially a woman, asked my name, the embarrassment would become a crackling electric field all about us. The best tactic was just not to answer.

* * * * *

The chief called me in one day. He looked haggard.

"Er--old man," he said, not quite able to bring himself to utter my name, "I'm going to have to switch you to another department. How would you like to work on nutrition kits? Very interesting work."

"Nutrition kits? _Me?_ On nutrition kits?"

"Well, I--er--know it sounds unusual, but it justifies. I just had the cybs work it over in the light of present regulations, and it justifies."

Everything had to justify, of course. Every act in the monthly report had to be covered by regulations and cross-regulations. Of course there were so many regulations that if you just took the time to work it out, you could justify damn near anything. I knew what the chief was up to. Just to remove me from my post would have taken a year of applications and hearings and innumerable visits to the capital in Center One. But if I should infract--deliberately infract--it would enable the chief to let me go. The equivalent of resigning.

"I'll infract," I said. "Rather than go on nutrition kits, I'll infract."

He looked vastly relieved. "Uh--fine," he said. "I rather hoped you would."

It took a week or so. Then I was on Non-Productive status and issued an N/P book for my necessities. Very few luxury coupons in the N/P book. I didn't really mind at first. My new living machine was smaller, but basically comfortable, and since I was still a loyal member of the state and a verified conformist, I wouldn't starve.

But I didn't know what I was in for.

I went from bureau to bureau, office to office, department to department--any place where they might use a space drive expert. A pattern began to emerge; the same story everywhere. When I mentioned my specialty they would look delighted. When I handed them my tag and they saw my name, they would go into immediate polite confusion. As soon as they recovered they would say they'd call me if anything turned up....

* * * * *

A few weeks of this and I became a bit dazed.

And then there was the problem of everyday existence. You might say it's lucky to be an N/P for a while. I've heard people say that. Basic needs provided, worlds of leisure time; on the surface it sounds attractive.

But let me give you an example. Say it is monthly realfood day. You go to the store, your mouth already watering in anticipation. You take your place in line and wait for your package. The distributor takes your coupon book and is all ready to reach for your package--and then he sees the fatal letters N/P. Non-Producer. A drone, a drain upon the State. You can see his stare curdle. He scowls at the book again.

"Not sure this is in order. Better go to the end of the line. We'll check it later."

You know what happens before the end of the line reaches the counter. No more packages.

Well, I couldn't get myself off N/P status until I got a post, and with my name I _couldn't_ get a post.

Nor could I change my name. You know what happens when you try to change something already on the records. The very idea of wanting change implies criticism of the State. Unthinkable behavior.

That was why this curious dream voice shocked me so. The thing that it suggested was quite as embarrassing as its non-standard, emotional, provocative tone.

Bear with me; I'm getting to the voice--to _her_--in a moment.

I want to tell you first about the loneliness, the terrible loneliness. I could hardly join group games at any of the rec centers. I could join no special interest clubs or even State Loyalty chapters. Although I dabbled with theoretical research in my own quarters, I could scarcely submit any findings for publication--not with my name attached. A pseudonym would have been non-regulation and illegal.

But there was the worst thing of all. I could not mate.

* * * * *

Funny, I hadn't thought about mating until it became impossible. I remember the first time, out of sheer idleness, I wandered into a Eugenic Center. I filled out my form very carefully and submitted it for analysis and assignment. The clerk saw my name, and did the usual double-take. He coughed and swallowed and fidgeted.

He said, "Of course you understand that we must submit your application to the woman authorized to spend time in the mating booths with you, and that she has the right to refuse."

"Yes, I understand that."

"M'm," he said, and dismissed me with a nod.

I waited for a call in the next few weeks, still hoping, but I knew no woman would consent to meet a man with my name, let alone enter a mating booth with him.

The urge to reproduce myself became unbearable. I concocted all sorts of wild schemes.

I might infract socially and be classified a nonconform and sent to Marscol. I'd heard rumors that in that desolate land, on that desolate planet, both mingling and mating were rather disgustingly unrestricted. Casual mating would be terribly dangerous, of course, with all the wild irradiated genes from the atomic decade still around, but I felt I'd be willing to risk that. Well, almost....

About then I began to have these dreams. As I've told you, in the dream there was only this woman's seductive voice. The first time I heard it I awoke in a warm sweat and swore something had gone wrong with the sleep-learner. You never hear the actual words with this machine, of course; you simply absorb the concepts unconsciously. Still, it seemed an explanation. I checked thoroughly. Nothing wrong.

The next night I heard the woman's voice again.

"_Try it_," she said. "_Do it. Start tomorrow to get your name changed. There will be a way. There must be a way. The rules are so mixed up that a clever man can do almost anything. Do it, please--for me._"

* * * * *

She was not only trying to get me to commit nonconformity, but making heretical remarks besides. I awoke that time and half-expected a Deacon to pop out of the tube and turn his electric club upon me.

And I heard the voice nearly every night.

It hammered away.

"_What if you do fail? Almost anything would be better than the miserable existence you're leading now!_"

One morning I even caught myself wondering just how I'd go about this idea of hers. Wondering what the first step might be.

She seemed to read my thoughts. That night she said, "_Consult the cybs in the Govpub office. If you look hard enough and long enough, you'll find a way._"

Now, on this morning of the seventeenth day in the ninth month, I ate my boiled egg slowly and actually toyed with the idea. I thought of being on productive status again. I had almost lost my fanatical craving to be useful to the State, but I did want to be busy--desperately. I didn't want to be despised any more. I didn't want to be lonely. I wanted to reproduce myself.

I made my decision suddenly. Waves of emotion carried me along. I got up, crossed the room to the directory, and pushbuttoned to find the location of the nearest Govpub office.

I didn't know what would happen and almost didn't care.