Read Ebook: Age of anxiety by Silverberg Robert

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Ebook has 140 lines and 7121 words, and 3 pages

But how?

It seemed so. This dirty, hypertense, overcrowded place seemed boundlessly undesirable. The choice was obvious.

But still....

He shook his head. After a moment of complete unthought, he let go of the side of the building and took a few hesitant steps forward. He was really frightened now. Suddenly, he wanted to be home, wanted to know again the smooth placidity of an unworried day.

He started to walk faster, then to run. After half a block, he stopped, suddenly.

He didn't know. He felt trapped, hemmed in, overwhelmed by despair.

"You're all alone, aren't you?" said a sudden voice from behind him. "It's not wise, on your first day off the drug."

Larry turned. The man behind him was tall and narrow-shouldered, with the pinched, baggy face of a grownup and a wide, sly smile. "Yes, I'm all alone," he said.

"I thought so. I can tell a Changer when I see one, even without the armband."

Larry glanced down at his arm quickly and saw that the identifying armband was gone. Somehow, somewhere, he must have ripped it off. He looked at the stranger, and in a hoarse voice asked, "What do you want?"

"A companion for a drink," the stranger said affably. "Care to join me?"

"No--I--all right," Larry said with a firmness that surprised himself. "Let's go have a drink."

The alcohol stung his mouth, and the flavoring in the drink tasted rancid, but he put the whole thing down and looked across the table at the stranger.

"I don't much like that drink," he said.

"Not surprising." The other grinned. "It's one of our favorites."

"City people, I mean. Ulcer people. We gobble the stuff up. Not surprising you don't like it."

Larry touched his forefingers lightly together. "I don't think I'd ever like it, no matter how long I tried to get used to it."

Larry shook his head. "Or the rest of the City, for that matter." He sighed. "I don't think I'm the City type. I think I'm going to give the whole thing up and go back home. The City isn't for me."

"Have another drink," the stranger said. "Go on--I'll pay. It'll take your mind off your problems."

"There's a capsule that'll do it a lot more efficiently," Larry said. "I don't need bad-tasting drinks to ease my mind."

"You're definitely cashing in your chips, then?"

"What?"

"I mean, you're definitely choosing Koletsky for life, eh?"

Larry paused a while, letting the images of the City filter through his mind again. Finally he nodded. "I think so. I really do."

"Two full days more--and you've made up your mind?" The stranger shook his head. "That'll never do, son. You'll have to think more deeply."

"How deep do I have to think?"

"Tell me what anxiety is," the stranger countered.

Taken aback by the sudden and seemingly irrelevant question, Larry blinked. "Anxiety? Why--worry, isn't it? Fear? Ulcers and headaches?"

The stranger shook his head slowly and dialed another drink. "Anxiety is the feeling that things are too good, that you're riding for a fall," he said carefully. "It's a sense of things about to get worse."

Larry remembered the bubble-vendor and nodded. "But they have to be pretty good to start with, don't they?"

"Right. You've got to have something pretty good--and be worried that you're going to lose it. Then you fight to keep it. Challenge--response. That's anxiety. Fear's something different. Then you creep into the corner and shake. Or you hang onto the side of a wall."

"I think I'll take another drink," Larry said thoughtfully.

"You get what I mean? Anxiety pushes and prods you, but it doesn't make you shrivel. You've got to be strong to stand up under it. That's how our world works."

"So?"

"You haven't experienced any real anxiety yet, boy. Just fear--and you're reacting out of fear. You can't judge your response to something if you're really responding to something else."

Larry frowned and gulped his drink. It tasted a little better, this time, though only imperceptibly so. "You mean I'm deciding too quickly, then? That I ought to look around the City a little longer?"

"Yes and no," the stranger said. "You're deciding much too quickly--yes. But looking around the City won't do. No; go back home."

"Home?"

"Home. Go back to your Playground. Look there. Then decide."

Larry nodded slowly. "Sure," he said. "Sure--that's it." He felt the tension drain out of him. "I think I'll have one more drink before I go."

The Playground was crowded on the second day of Larry's three-day period. Small children played happily near the shimmering wading pond, older ones gathered for games in the playing-field farther on, and, far in the distance, a group of permanent unworriers sat complacently in the sun, neither thinking nor moving. Humming robonurses threaded here and there through the Playground, seeing to it that no one got into any trouble. They were necessary, of course--because the unworried children would have no fear of leaping from a tree head-first or walking into the path of a speeding baseball.

Larry stood at the edge of the Playground, leaning against the confining fence, watching. His friends were there--the boys he had played with only two days before, still happily occupied with their games and their bubble-toys. Walking carefully, in order not to be seen, he skirted the side of the playing area and headed for the green fields where the Permanents were.

There were about a hundred of them, of all ages. Larry recognized a former playmate of his--a boy of about nineteen, now--and there were older men, too, some well along in middle age. They sat quietly, unmoving, most of them, smiling pleasantly.

Larry entered the field and walked to the nearest bench.

"Mind if I join you?"

The man on the bench grinned. "Not at all. Sit right down, friend."

Larry sat. "You're a Permanent, aren't you?" he asked suddenly.

A shadow seemed to cross the man's face. "Yes," he said slowly. "Yes, I'm a Permanent. Who are you?"

"I'm Changing," Larry said.

"Oh."

The Permanent studied him idly for a moment or two, then leaned back and closed his eyes. "It's nice here," he said. "The sun's warm."

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