Read Ebook: The pleasure age by Cahill Joed Marchioni M Marco Enrico Illustrator

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Ebook has 225 lines and 7991 words, and 5 pages

ep brown, not hard but continually alert. With his fingers he stroked a wispy, dark mustache. His age, Riley decided, was in the late twenties.

"You heard my telecast?" John Ward demanded. He had a way of clipping his words which made his speech jerky.

Riley nodded.

"How did it strike you?"

Riley hesitated.

"It just made the people angry."

"I know. I know. Committee's looking for me, no doubt. My ideas are shocking to the dear people. Going to tear me limb from limb. But what I'm interested in, now, is what you think."

"I think it was swell," Riley said with enthusiasm. "It's about time somebody started telling--"

"Okay, okay." John Ward interrupted. "So we're agreed."

He turned to look back down the corridor.

"All right, Sue. Come on in."

"My sister," he said. "We heard you working. Decided the museum would be the last place the Committee would look for us. Just wanted to check on you first."

"The Committee wouldn't hurt you," Riley protested. "They might put you in the Institution for a while, but they wouldn't--"

Sue Ward smiled at Riley.

"Hello," he said.

That was all he could say. He just looked. Sue Ward was as strikingly pretty and self-possessed as her brother was quick and wiry. She wasn't a day over twenty. Her eyes were hazel and her hair was long and glossy brown. She was almost as tall as her brother.

"Want to throw in with us?" John Ward demanded.

"Sure," said Riley without taking his eyes from Sue.

Sue laughed.

"Not so fast, Mr. Ashton. You don't even know what we're doing."

"And we don't know what you're doing," the girl said pointedly.

"Gosh, she's pretty!" Riley thought.

"Use your eyes, Sue," John Ward said impatiently. "Look at his work. Look at this!"

From the workbench he picked up a miniature automek. He pressed a button at the base of the toy and the little machine began dipping sand from one bucket and carrying it to another. John Ward set the bucket of sand behind a stack of books on the bench. The automek promptly went behind the books and reappeared with a dipperful of sand.

"Know anyone else that can make an automek?" Ward demanded. "I couldn't. You couldn't. No one in the world could except Riley. You say you don't know what he's doing. He can work. All we can do is talk. We can use a man who knows how to work. The world can use him.

"Here's the program," Ward went on in his jerky fashion. "We're making all the larger cities all over the world. Giving talks. Any place we can get into the telecasting station."

"Is that all?" Riley asked.

"What else can we do?" Ward demanded impatiently.

"I don't know. The talks just make people angry. There should be some way to make people work."

"We're trying," the girl said. "If you can think of anything better we'll try it, too."

They talked through the rest of the morning. Ward had another telecast to make in American City and then they planned to move on to Denver City. Riley promised to go along, though he wasn't certain how he could prove useful in the campaign.

At noon Riley left the museum to go to lunch, promising to bring something back for Ward and Sue.

He found the house in an uproar. Aunt Betty was crying and wringing her hands. Mrs. Ashton was floating around the room with a bewildered look on her face. And Mr. Ashton was frantically punching buttons on the automek control panel.

"What's wrong?" Riley asked.

"Everything," Mr. Ashton snapped. "We can't get anything to eat."

Apparently the automeks which delivered the prepared meals from the neighborhood kitchen had quit functioning. There were five thousand neighborhood kitchens in American City to supply a population which was now in excess of twelve million persons. It appeared that only the automeks of the one kitchen were not working. Riley suggested that they go out after food.

"No indeed," Mrs. Ashton said with rare positiveness. "What would the neighbors think?"

"What difference does it make what the neighbors think?" Riley demanded half-angrily. "Would you rather starve to death than do anything to remedy the situation?"

"We'll just have to move to another neighborhood," Mrs. Ashton decided.

Aunt Betty brightened immediately.

"Let's do that."

Riley laughed shortly.

"They'll probably throw you out, just as the Committee's planning to do with the people from Boston City."

"Oh, we've decided not to throw them out this time," Mr. Ashton interposed. "We've decided it's our duty to share whatever we have."

Riley slammed out of the house. The attitude his parents were taking didn't make sense to him. It was clear that they and Aunt Betty preferred to stay at home and be hungry rather than go to one of the neighborhood kitchens after food.

Independent as Riley was, himself, he couldn't understand how popular opinion could be so strong. But he didn't underestimate its strength.

He went to the neighborhood kitchen. Not only had the automek delivery broken down, but apparently the automek cooks also had stopped. Nothing had been cooked. Riley gathered up three raw steaks, a head of lettuce, and a few other odds and ends. He carried them down to the museum.

"Can you cook?" he asked Sue Ward.

Sue looked doubtful.

"The kitchen broke down," Riley explained. "If we want to eat, we're going to have to cook."

"I can try," said Sue, even more doubtfully. "But I'll need a cooking unit of some kind."

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