I, the Unspeakable
By WALT SHELDON
Illustrated by LOUIS MARCHETTI
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction April 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"What's in a name?" might be very dangerous
to ask in certain societies, in which sticks
and stones are also a big problem!
I fought to be awake. I was dreaming, but I think I must have blushed.I must have blushed in my sleep.
"Do it!" she said. "Please do it! For me!"
It was the voice that always came, low, intense, seductive, the soundof your hand on silk ... and to a citizen of Northem, a conformist, itwas shocking. I was a conformist then; I was still one that morning.
I awoke. The glowlight was on, slowly increasing. I was in my livingmachine in Center Four, where I belonged, and all the familiar thingswere about me, reality was back, but I was breathing very hard.
I lay on the pneumo a while before getting up. I looked at thechroner: 0703 hours, Day 17, Month IX, New Century Three. My morningnuro-tablets had already popped from the tube, and the timer had begunto boil an egg. The egg was there because the realfood allotment hadbeen increased last month. The balance of trade with Southem had justswung a decimal or two our way.
I rose finally, stepped to the mirror, switched it to positive andlooked at myself. New wrinkles—or maybe just a deepening of the oldones. It was beginning to show; the past two years were leaving traces.
I hadn't worried about my appearance when I'd been with the Office ofWeapons. There, I'd been able to keep pretty much to myself, doingresearch on magnetic mechanics as applied to space drive. But otherjobs, where you had to be among people, might be different. I neededevery possible thing in my favor.
Yes, I still hoped for a job, even after two years. I still meant tokeep on plugging, making the rounds.
I'd go out again today.
The timer clicked and my egg was ready. I swallowed the tablets andthen took the egg to the table to savor it and make it last.
As I leaned forward to sit, the metal tag dangled from my neck,catching the glowlight. My identity tag.
Everything came back in a rush—
My name. The dream and her voice. And her suggestion.
Would I dare? Would I start out this very morning and take the risk,the terrible risk?
You remember renumbering. Two years ago. You remember how it was then;how everybody looked forward to his new designation, and how everybodymade jokes about the way the letters came out, and how all the recordswere for a while fouled up beyond recognition.
The telecomics kidded renumbering. One went a little too far andthey psycho-scanned him and then sent him to Marscol as a dangerousnonconform.
If you were disappointed with your new designation, you didn'tcomplain. You didn't want a sudden visit from the Deacons during thenight.
There had to be renumbering. We all understood that. With thepopulation of Northem already past two billion, the old designationswere too clumsy. Renumbering was efficient. It contributed to the goodof Northem. It helped advance the warless struggle with Southem.
The equator is the boundary. I understand