Astounding British Edition, Vol. 9, No. 7 — page 21: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

. -~ NULL-ABC Ralph Prestonby cleared his throat, slipped a master disk into the recording machine beside his desk, and pressed the start button. _ “Dear Parent or Guardian,” he began. “Your daughter, now a third-year student at this school, has reached the age of eligibility for the Domestic Science course entitled, ‘How To Win and Hold a Hus- band.” Statistics show that girls who have completed this valuable course are sooner, longer, and happier married than those who have not enjoyed its advantages. We recommend it most highly. “However, because of the delicate nature of some of the visual material used, your consent is required. You can attach such consent to this disk by run- ning it for at least ten seconds after the sign-off and then switching from ‘Play’ to “Transcribe.’ Kindly include your full name,e as well as your daughter’s, and place your thumbprint on the opposite | side of the disk. Very sincerely yours, Literate First Class Ralph C. Prestonby, Principal.” He put the master disk in an envelope, checked over a list of names and ad- dresses of parents and girl students, and put that in also. He looked over the winter sports schedule, and signed and thumbprinted it. Then he loaded the recorder with his morning’s mail, switched to “Play,” and started it. As he listened, he blew smoke rings across the room and toyed with a dagger, made from a file, which had been thrown down the central light-well at him a few days before. The invention of the pocket recorder, which put a half-hour’s conversation on a half- inch disk, had done more to slow down business and promote inane correspon- dence than anything since the earlier inventions of shorthand, typewriters and pretty stenographers. Finally, he cleared the machine, dumping the whole mess into a basket and carrying it out to his secretary. “Miss Collins, take this infernal rub- bish and have a couple of the girls divide it between them, play it off, and make a digest of it,” he said. “And here. The sports schedule, and this parental-consent thing on the husband-trapping course. Have them taken care of.” 19 “This stuff,” Martha Collins said, poking at the pile of letter disks. “I sup- pose about half of it is threats, abuse and obscenities, and the other half is from long-winded bores with idiotic sug- gestions and ill-natured gripes. I'll use that old tag line, again—‘hoping you appreciate our brevity as much as we enjoyed yours—’ ” “Yes. That'll be all right.” He looked — at his watch. “I’m going to make a per- sonal building-tour, instead of using the TV. The animals are sort of. restless, today. The election; the infantile com- pulsion to take sides. If you need me for — anything urgent, don’t use oral call. Just flash my signal, red-blue-red-blue, on the hall and classroom screens. Oh, Doug!” Yetsko, his length of rubber hose under his arm, ambled out of Prestonby’s pri- vate office, stopping to stub out his cigarette. The action reminded Prestonby that he still had his pipe in his mouth; he knocked it out and pocketed it. To- gether, they went into the hall outside. “Where to, first, captain?” Yetsko wanted to know. “Cloak-and-Dagger Department, on the top floor. Then we'll drop down to the shops, and then up through Domestic Science and Business and General Arts.” “And back here. We hope,” Yetsko finished. They took a service elevator to the top floor, emerging into a stockroom piled with boxes and crates and cases. of sound records and cans of film and stacks of picture cards, and all the other impedi- menta of Illiterate education. Passing through it to the. other end, Prestonby unlocked a door, and they went down a short hall, to where ten or fifteen boys and girls had just gotten off a helical escalator and were queued up at a door at the other end. There were two Literate guards in black leather, and a student- monitor, with his white belt and rubber truncheon, outside the door. Prestonby swore under his breath. He’d hoped they’d miss this, but since they hadn’t, there was nothing for it but to fall in at the tail of the queue. One by one, the boys and girls went up, spoke briefly to the guards and the student- monitor, and were passed through the Eomichooks: co S