He smiled at Stephen. His dentures were good. They were stainless steel, but in this day and time that was to be expected. Most of his generation, in embryo during the last Blow-down, had been born without teeth of their own.
"Sorry to inconvenience you, Citizen," he said, "but the police were right on my brush that time. Please turn right at the next air corridor and head out to sea."
And when Stephen, entranced, showed no inclination to obey, he prodded him with the weapon. Prodded him in a most sensitive part of his anatomy. "I have already killed once today," he said, "and it is not yet eleven o'clock."
"I see," Stephen said stiffly, and changed course.
He might simply have exceeded the speed limit in the slow traffic stream and gotten them arrested, but he sensed that this would not do. A half-memory, playing around in his cranium, cried out for recognition. Somewhere he had seen this deadly young man before, and with him there was associated a more than vague unpleasantness.
Soon the blue Pacific was under them. They were streaming southwest by south at an altitude of eighty miles. Stephen was not terrified at being kidnapped, for he had never heard of such a thing, but there was one thing that did worry him. "I shall be late for work," he said.
"Work," the young man said, "is a bore."
Stephen was shocked. Work had always been the sacred principle of his life; a rare and elevating sweetness to be cultivated and savored whenever it might be offered. He, himself, had long been allotted alternate Thursday afternoons as biological technician at Mnemonic Manufactures, Plant No. 103, by the Works Administration, and he had not missed a day for many years. This happened to be one of his Thursdays, and if he did not arrive soon he would be late for the four-hour shift. Certainly no one else could be expected to relinquish a part of his shift to accommodate a laggard.
"Work is for prats," the young man said again. "It encourages steatopygia. My last work date was nine years ago, and I am glad that I never went back."
Stephen now felt a surge of fear at last. Such unregenerates as this man were said to exist, but he had never met one before. They were the shadowy Unemployed, who, barred from government dispensation, must live by their wits alone. Whimsical nihilists, they, who were apt to requisition human life, as well as property, at a breath's notice.