Facial Justice Read Online Free

sunbeam. Screens were put up to keep out the daylight, and all the cave dwellers lived by artificial light, except the guards, who were furnished with strong spectacles. When it became known, as it did almost simultaneously in all the underground countries, that the surface of the earth was now fit for human habitation, their Governments were faced by a problem more serious than any that had occurred during all the years of their subterranean existence. In each case mass observers reported that the people were divided roughly into two halves--those who wanted to go up and those who preferred to remain below. The second group was largely composed of the younger members of the community, who had been nourished on tales of the horrors of the Third World War and had been conditioned to a life of absolute routine Their whole beings, like their gastric juices, worked by the clock; any interference with their timetable had the effect of a grain of grit on a motor engine; they jammed and seized and let out horrid screams. The Governments, not unnaturally, took the side of the stay-at-homes; the younger generation was in all essentials their creation, their hold on it was complete, and their power depended on identifying them, selves with its interests. Emigration from the caves was for bidden by law under penalty of death. It need hardly be said that by this time scientists had devised ways of making people physically and mentally comfortable of which we, in these unenlightened days, know nothing. These inventions were rigorously applied and for a time there was no more talk, at least no more open talk, of going aloft. But in spite of everything, the longing for it, in many breasts, was not appeased, and in each country arose a leader round whom resistance gathered. These followed each other in quick succession to the grave but others took their places, and do what the authorities would they could not stop a constant leakage through the cave mouths and other bolt holes which sleepless ingenuity either made or discovered. Yet such was the force of organization that in many countries the revolts were stamped out altogether. But in a handful it lingered on and I needn't say that one of these was the English community, some two million souls living beneath the Weald of Kent. The leader who ultimately succeeded in getting the Israelites out of Egypt adopted a new policy and one which baffled the Government. He did not appear; he was a Voice. And such a strange voice, very clear, but over long words it stumbled, though generally it managed to get them out some how. The listeners-in (and everyone was a listener-in: tbe radio and television had largely usurped the place of conversation, and talking, though still taught, was an accomplishment many people dropped when they left school) were puzzled and so was the Government. A price, of course, was laid on the Voice's head, and the capture and immediate liquidation of its owner hourly expected; but hours turned into days and days into weeks and still it went on, preaching the doctrine of the Upper Air, in spite of all attempts to jam it. Needless to say, in caverns so extensive there were many corridors and passages that had escaped the vigilance of the Government Survey: patrols were constantly sent out to explore them, but always without success, until one day, in the middle of the day (though the term had not much meaning, for the divisions of time were purely arbitrary and had no bearing on the position of the sun) the culprit was discovered. He was standing in the Government Square, the place where proclamations were made, in full view, with his microphone, which looked so like a toy that everyone believed it was a mouth organ until he began to talk through it. Then the loudspeakers on all sides blared forth, completely drowning the sound of the speaker's own voice. It was the moment when people were eating their eleven-o'clock pastilles, which were colored violet and had an E engraved in