Free Tomorrow! by Philip Wylie

looked out. Traffic torrents were flowing freshet-fast again, paced by the red-green lights. All four lanes on the Central Avenue Bridge (the “Market Street Bridge” at its River City end) were crowded, tail lamps crimson on one side, white headlights like advancing fireflies on the other. Between, in uncertain shafts of light, were the roofs and escarpments of ten- and fifteen-story buildings.

    At all this he looked fondly and he looked out across the flat, winking expanses of residential areas, across the night-hooded hulks of the warehouses, up and down the river where he could see the running beads of traffic on many other bridges and out toward the dark, toward the rich reach of the plains. Gradually his whimsical mouth drew tight and two sharp wrinkles appeared, running from his big nose to the resolved lips like anchor lines. He turned from the spectacular view of the double metropolis and walked into the city room.

    Most of the leg men were out on assignments having to do with the air-raid drill. Some were at dinner. Around the horseshoe of the rewrite desk a half-dozen men worked, separated by twice the number of empty chairs. They were in shirt sleeves; some wore green visors. Coley Borden walked toward them, beckoning to others, who looked up from their typewriters. He sat on the end of the horseshoe. “How’s the drill going?”

    The night city editor grinned. “Dandy! About an eighty per cent turnout. That means, over thirty-five thousand volunteers actually participated.”

    “We’re going to crap on it.”

    For a moment, no one spoke. Then the city editor said, ‘Why?”

    “Minerva’s mad.”

    “You can’t do it!” Grieg, a reporter, a man of forty with graying red hair, made the assertion flatly. “The whole town’s proud—except for the usual naysayers. It’s the best CD
    blowout ever staged in the middle west. About the least popular thing you could do would be crap on it.”

    “Civil Defense,” Coley answered, with nothing but intonation to indicate his scorn, “is Communist-inspired.”

    “ What !”

    “So Mrs. Sloan claims.”

    “I always predicted,” Grieg moodily murmured, “they’d come for that moneybag with nets someday. Men in white.”

    Payton, the city editor, said, “Just what do you want, Coley?”

    The managing editor sighed. “I merely want to undo the work of about forty thousand damned good citizens-not to mention a like number of school kids—over the last years.” He considered. “Every day in Green Prairie, people get hurt in car crashes. All people hurt this afternoon will be victims of our crazed Civil Defense policies. Any dogs run over will be run over because of the air-raid rehearsal. Any fires started. All people delayed will be delayed unnecessarily. If anybody died in the hospitals, it will be—because the traffic jam held up some doctor.”

    Grieg whistled. “The works, eh? Jesus! She must be mad!”

    “She didn’t get home for dinner,” Coley answered quietly, “and she had guests.”

    “Has she got a fiddle?” the reporter enquired.

    “Fiddle?” someone echoed.

    “—in case Rome burns?”

    Coley looked out over the big room. “I was thinking that. Now look, you guys. Payton, spread this. No clowning. You could overdo CD criticism in such a way as to make everybody realize it was orders, and that the staff disagreed. I don’t want it! When we obey orders of that kind, we really obey ‘em. Run only stuff that actually seems to indict CD.”

    “A lot of pretty devoted people are going to hate it. Have you considered mutiny?”
    Payton asked.

    Coley said, “Yes.”

    Grieg muttered, “Sometimes, boss, even I get the old lady’s feeling. Why the hell drive yourself nuts getting set for a thing that probably never will happen and a thing you can’t do much about, if it does.”

    “I know. It’s just the alternative that annoys you: do nothing; lie down; quit; take a cockeyed chance. That, in my opinion, is