lor was a boogy
word contrived to frighten growing children.

As a consequence, he was very surprised when the house next door was
raided. Through the window of his confinement cubicle, he actually saw
the five gray-haired men who were rounded up by the Morals Squad. The
Squad--heavily armed, six-foot Amazons--tried to question their
captives. They used injections of a truth serum. Two of the old men
died at once. The others went berserk, frothing at the mouth and
screaming animal profanity until the Squad captain ordered them shot.

George overheard one of the women say, "It's always like this. They
take something so our serum can't be effective."

Later that afternoon George found a scrap of paper in his mother's
garden. It had blown out of the bonfire which the Morals Squad made of
the papers they took out of the house next door. The burned page had
apparently been part of an informational bulletin, compiled by the
bachelors for distribution among themselves.

"... data compiled from old publications," the fragment began, "and
interpreted by our most reliable authorities." At that point a part of
the page was burned away. "... and perhaps less than ninety years ago
men and women lived in equality. The evidence on that point is
entirely conclusive. The present matriarchy evolved by accident, not
design. Ninety years ago entertainment and advertising were
exclusively directed at satisfying a woman's whim. No product was sold
without some sort of tie-in with women. Fiction, drama, television,
motion pictures--all glorified a romantic thing called love. In that
same period business was in the process of taking over government from
statesmen and politicians. Women, of course, were the stockholders who
owned big business, although the directors and managers at that time
were still men--operating under the illusion that they were the
executives who represented ownership. In effect, however, women owned
the country and women governed it; suddenly the matriarchy existed.
There is no evidence that it was imposed; there is no suggestion of
civil strife or...." More words burned away. "However, the women were
not unwilling to consolidate their gains. Consequently the popular
cliches, the pretty romances, and the catchwords of advertising became
a substitute for reality. As for the compound...."

There the fragment ended. Much of it George did not understand. But it
gave him a great deal of courage simply to know the bachelo