World Without War

"Sure, sometimes. It's gotta be done though. Otherwise you couldn't tell what might happen."

"Mark—" Jennette said hesitantly.

"Yes?"

"Mark, would you shoot me if you found me outside your shelter?" She looked coyly up at him.

"Well, sure, unless you had a proper, government-authorized permit to be there." Mark turned astonished eyes on her. "What else could I do?"

"Oh, but you know I wouldn't do anything to harm your place."

"Aw, Jennette," Mark said uncomfortably, "of course you would. Anybody would. If people started acting like that, the whole balance would be upset."

She gently stroked his arm where the fruit juice had dried. Her face crinkled up and she giggled. "Maybe you just don't know me."

"Let's talk about something else," Mark suggested.

"What's the matter? Do I shock you?"

Mark laughed and brushed his lips against her shoulder. "I'm pretty hard to shock. Especially by you."

"See?" she replied archly. "You're just as anti-social as I am."

Mark's face clouded. "It's nothing to brag about, though."

"I'm not bragging." She sighed again, and resumed her fruit. Eying it speculatively, she said, "I guess I'm just bored with life, that's all. Sometimes things seem so silly. Like all the times you have to get a new body. You'd think the manufacturers were giving them away free."

"Yeah. Not like it used to be. Guess business is pretty good."

"Something ought to be done about it."

Mark grinned mischievously. "What do you suggest? Build another factory?"

"Oh, you know you can't do that. Somebody is always blowing it up."

"Well, don't worry. In another hundred years or so, people will start dying off again. These protobodies aren't as serviceable as the manufactured kind."

"Yes, but if they keep producing new people in the Decanting Centers, what good is that going to do?"

"I dunno. Blow up the Decanting Centers, maybe."

"Maybe," Jennette said, glancing impishly at the man beside her, "we ought to just stop wearing these silly old manufactured bodies entirely."

"Yes?" Mark tasted a pomegranate, made a face, and tried another. "Just what do you suggest people wear?"

"They could go around in their protobodies."

"What?" Mark looked swiftly and searchingly at her, alarm on his face.

"Why Mark," she laughed disarmingly. "You're such a righteous beast, aren't you?"

"Great Atoms, Jennette," he said, gazing intently at her golden-flecked eyes, wondering what strange things went on inside that lovely head. "You mean go around all the time as if we were savages? Why that's illegal, immoral, and besides—besides, it's dangerous. Suppose somebody took a shot at you? You've only got one protobody, you know."

"A clever fighter like you shouldn't have too much trouble with that, if you're careful," she said gaily. "And I'm pretty good at that myself."

Mark took a slow deep breath as he decided that she was just teasing him. "I'm surprised at you, Jennette."

She shrugged. "I'm bored, I guess. I'd like to try something new, just for excitement. Personally, sometimes I think the whole social system we have is pretty silly, anyway."

"Atoms," Mark mumbled.

"No need to swear about it," she chided him. "Come on, Mark. Just think about it for a minute. And be consistent."

"Consistency is all right for a free psi," he said. "It sure doesn't do a protobody any good."

Jennette laughed scornfully. "I'll bet you believe all that stuff they feed you in the Decanting Center about ancient history."

"'Course not," Mark said defensively.

"All right then. Why follow all these rules of social conduct if there's no good basis for them?"

"Aw, but there is," he replied seriously. "There was a big war—way back centuries before we were decanted out at Center."

"Hah," said Jennette.

"Sure. And it was a whole lot of people who cooperated with each other in it. There must have been hundreds of them—it was an awfully big war. Hundreds of people, all on one side, all fighting together against the other side."

"I don't believe it."

"It's true, I tell you," Mark insisted religiously. "Hundreds and hundreds of people. Maybe even as many as a thousand, all dressed alike—with clothes, I mean. And they didn't shoot each other—they just killed the people they were fighting—the hundreds of people on the other side."

"Other side of what?"

Mark frowned. "Oh, I guess that is just an expression. But that's what happened, anyway. Before civilization got started, people cooperated like that."

"That's just a whole lot of theory," Jennette insisted. "Nobody's going to make me ever believe people used to act like that. Besides, there just aren't enough people around to have all those mythical wars."

Patiently, Mark continued. "I'm telling you, Jennette, this is more than theory. There are still some records left from those days."

"Prove it."

"All right. That's not hard. Somebody had to build the factories, didn't they? And the Decanting Centers?"

"Robots."

"Who built the first robot factory?"

Jennette considered. Then she shrugged petulantly. "Oh all right. Maybe a few people did cooperate. But not hundreds of them. People just don't act like that."