The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Clean and Wholesome Land, by Ralph Sholto

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Title: The Clean and Wholesome Land

Author: Ralph Sholto

Release Date: November 5, 2009 [EBook #30405]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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_Utopia had been reached. All the problems of mankind had been
solved. It was the perfect State. If you doubted it, you died._

The Clean and Wholesome Land

By Ralph Sholto

While Professor Cargill lectured from the rostrum, Neal Pardeau prowled
the dark auditorium. This, he knew, was the place to find them. Here was
where they whispered and plotted and schemed--feeling safe in this pure,
hard core of patriotism.

Safe because Cargill was the Director of Education in the New State,
just as Pardeau was the Director of Public Security. Safe because
Cargill's lectures were given before a commanded audience, with
attendance strictly mandatory.

The insistence was not really necessary of course. The people would have
come to hear Cargill regardless. His was a compelling, magnetic
personality. Even now his great voice was booming out:

"--and upon this anniversary of the New State, we can look out with
great pride upon a clean and wholesome land. With strong emotion, we can
look upon the physical manifestation of our glorious principles--that
only through self-effacement--through fanatic love for the state--can
the individual come to complete physical and mental fruition. Upon this
anniversary we see our enemies, both within and without, broken, and
completely subjugated--"

This was the place they whispered and schemed and plotted. Pardeau
prowled the aisles, his eyes piercing the darkness--spotting them,
cataloguing them. And thus he came upon Emil Hillerman, his Deputy of
Vital Intelligence sitting dutifully in the end seat of a middle aisle.
Hillerman's thick lips hung lax, his eyes squinted laboriously as he
sought to follow the thread of Cargill's lecture.

Pardeau tapped Hillerman on the shoulder. The lat