THE FEELIES

"Okay, okay, that's Sammy. Next to him is Goldie. Goldie's a newcomer, but I'm sure you all remember her from the early rounds. If her luck holds, I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot more of her."

Goldie came on cute to the camera. She was blonde, petite, and came on cute to everyone, particularly Bobby Priest. Wanda-Jean reflected acidly that she might not be so cute to him once he'd had a go at her.

"Wearing number three, the girl who doesn't let anyone get in her way. That's right, it's Wanda-Jean!"

A roar went up from the crowd. At best it could only be described as jovially hostile. Wanda-Jean sneered at the camera. If they were hell bent on forcing her into this bad girl role, she might as well go along with it.

"And finally, wearing number four, another newcomer starting on the Dreamroad. Let's hear it for Marty."

Since she wasn't so familiar to the crowd, the greeting was only lukewarm. The girl had an angular body and close-cropped dark hair. Wanda-Jean had decided, the first time that she saw her, that Marty was probably a dyke.

Bobby Priest looked serious. "And now we've met the contestants, let's get down to the game."

As on every show, Wanda-Jean and the others had been given the details of the game the previous day. It was a rough one.

"In tonight's game, the contestants won't be playing against one another, they'll be playing against the clock. It's possible that we'll see all four stay on the trail, or it's just as possible that every single contestant will get knocked out!"

He put particular emphasis on the last two words. While he was talking, the players were cued to start walking toward the four clear plastic cylinders, about ten feet high, that were the focal point of the whole studio.

In the front of the cylinders were small, flush-fitting doors of the same material. The ever-present, silver-clad attendants moved in to open them. Each contestant stepped inside a cylinder. The doors were closed behind them. Bobby Priest once again took over the screen.

"The contestants are in position."

The game was a rough one. With the doors sealed, the cylinders started to fill with water. As they slowly filled, the contestants had to solve a problem. They had to rearrange a set of colored squares into a set pattern they had to guess for themselves. It was a race of mind against rising water.

"Then we'll begin."

Wanda-Jean looked at the arrangement of squares. There were at least two hundred of them, set in a square form. The squares were evenly divided into red, blue, yellow, green, black, and white. They interlocked on a tongue and groove system. There were enough empty spaces to allow them to be maneuvered vertically and horizontally, but not removed from the frame.

The floor under Wanda-Jean's bare feet was already covered with a quarter-inch layer of water, and she hadn't even made a move.

To guess at the correct pattern of colors and then move the squares to conform with it seemed an almost impossible task to complete before the water rose up to her chin.

Wanda-Jean put out a tentative hand. Along the top of the frame that enclosed the whole puzzle was a set of colored lights. There were fifteen of them, one for each vertical row of squares. At the start of the game the lights were all dead. When the particular row was arranged in the correct order, the light came on. It was the players' most valuable aid; in fact, it was their only one.

Wanda-Jean started quickly to rearrange the first row. She had made up her mind, at rehearsal, that there was no point in making a blind guess at the overall pattern. The way she had decided to work was to keep switching squares, one line at a time, until the light came on.

The trouble was that it didn't seem to be working. She frantically shifted the squares of plastic, but the water was already up to her ankles and not even the first light had come on.

This was the game that had cost "Wildest Dreams" its only fatality. A player could go on trying to solve the problem until the water finally forced him or her to float to the top of the cylinder and climb out in disgrace and failure. In order to stay on the Dreamroad, all the contestant had to do was get the right answer. One guy, some eight months earlier, had hung on so doggedly, trying to find the solution, that he'd drowned.

The water was almost up to her knees, when, totally unexpectedly, the first light came on. As Wanda-Jean started on the second line she flashed on the fact that the law of averages wasn't doing her any favors.

The only consolation of the game was that it didn't allow Wanda-Jean any time to think. The only thing that distracted her from total concentration on the little plastic squares was the water slowly creeping up her legs.

The water had started to eat away at the crotch of her costume when the second light came on. Wanda-Jean started on the third row, blessing the merciful release that inside the cylinder the noise of the crowd wasn't audible.

Out of the corner of her eye she could see them. By the time the water had eaten away her suit right up to where the tops of her buttocks curved in to meet her spine, the crowd was on its feet, waving and gesticulating. The third light had not come on yet. Wanda-Jean refused to admit that the game had become, in logical terms, hopeless.

Because of the water, she was now naked from the waist down. They had not bothered to heat the water. It was stone cold. It was hard to know whether the chill clutching at her stomach was the knowledge that she was going to lose or simply the chill of the rising water. There was a cameraman down in the floor in front of her with a handheld camera. He was shooting up at her. She couldn't see a monitor, but she could imagine the shot. There was no way she was going to recover from the humiliation of hundreds of millions of people seeing her like this. The water was creeping up to her breasts. She started to panic. She couldn't concentrate on the puzzle. She had to get out. She had to get away from the lights and the cameras and the howling crowd. The water was up to her neck. The last shred of her costume floated away, rapidly dissolving. She would drown before she would crawl naked in front of them. And then the water was coming up over her chin.

"Noooooo!"

She grabbed for a handhold to haul herself out. There was nothing left.

"WE ARE GOING TO BEGIN THE economy-class program. In one month we will a

There had been shocks in the penthouse boardroom all through the meeting-but nothing like this. The heads of department were silent. It was what they always theoretically worked for, but they had never expected it so soon.

Lars Axton, the head of Procurement, was the first one to find his voice. "Is it possible?"

Deutsch nodded. "I believe so."

"The plant involved alone…"

"I have had discussions with the president of Krupp. He thinks that his people can handle the production end."

"But there's been no breakthrough."

"And the system was never expensive in the first place. The prices have always been artifically inflated."

Gorges Gomez was shaking his head. "We'll be inundated."

Deutsch smiled. "I'm not saying that we can do everything straightaway. In the begi

Renfield frowned. "Why should the government…"

"Because the government is well aware that what we are basically offering is a painless alternative to the death by disease or starvation of hundreds of millions of people. The feelies provide a safety valve, a place to warehouse the excess population. The cost of maintaining a human being in a feelie fantasy is only cents per day, far less even than the most minimal welfare. Population control by birth control has failed. We have to face that. What we also have to face is that any species that is unable to regulate its birthrate becomes subject to regulation by death in one form or another. Either by plague or by famine or by killing one another. The system is self-selecting. Those who desire nothing more than to live in a garish fantasy will be allowed to do so."