ces that they had been for so
many thousands of years. All this to keep them busy? All this to keep
something outside that was supposed to be destructive because once it
had been so five thousand years ago or ten or fifty? All this because
that was the way it had been for as long as the hundreds and the
thousands of years that history had been recorded?

He walked on through the silence, dimly aware now of the people moving
about him, of the automobiles rolling past, as though moved by some
invisible force. He passed row upon row of movie theatres that called to
him with invisible vibrations. He turned away.

Where was the little man?

He stopped, moving only his eyes. After a moment, he saw the little man
step out of a shop-front and stand waiting. Twenty-three, a cigarette in
his mouth, walked over and asked for a light. The little man touched a
lighter to the cigarette, at the same time dropping a packet of cards
into Twenty-three's pocket.

Twenty-three moved on. He felt the pounding of his heart. If only his
wife were asleep so he would not have to wait to look at these new
cards.

As he walked, his thoughts cried out against the silence. He glanced
suspiciously from side to side. If only he could hear the sounds of the
city. But except for human voices and music, the city had always been
silent. The human voices spoke only words written by the Superfathers,
and the music came from records that had been composed by them--all this
back when the city had first come into being. Other than these sounds
there could be only the quiet all around. No chugging motors or scraping
footsteps. No crashing engines in the sky, or pounding of steel on
stone. No shrieking of factory whistles or clanging steeple bells or
honking automobile horns. None of this to pluck and pound at nerves, to
suggest that this place was not the most soothing and gentle of all
places to be in. There were no winds to swirl and moan away into the
distance. The chirp of birds had long since been stilled, and so had the
patter of rain and the crash of thunder. There must not be any of these
sounds either to lure the imagination into some distance where danger
and excitement might be waiting.

Now he was walking toward the door of his apartment house. It swung
open. Thirty seconds later he stopped before another door. It too swung
open.

His wife stood in the middle of the room, between two traveling bags. He
moved slowly toward her and stopped ju