"Thanks. No, dammit. That's just it—if they'd take this going to Hell business and forget about it—sink it, scuttle it. Nobody goes to Hell, he makes his own if that's the way he lives, or he makes his own personal Heaven or Paradise or whatever you call it if that's the way he lives. Most of us are in between someplace, a little scared, mostly indifferent, and too mixed up to see the simple fact that the way of living we've got in this country isn't so bad but what just plain honesty and a little intelligence couldn't run it right side up."
"Sure, sure, I know and you're right, Doug. But take it easy.... Things aren't always as bad as they look."
Blair inhaled on the cigarette, laughed a little and felt better. Sometimes he knew he sounded like a college kid trying to tell his father what was wrong with the world, but that was why he liked Carl. Carl let him talk, knew it was his way of blowing off the pent-up steam.
"You know what, chum?" They were running smoothly along the highway now, the engine a reassuring hum of power, the interior of the sedan warm and relaxing. The rain was letting up a little, but dirty banks of fog had started gathering at the roadside like ghosts of all the work of the day, tenuous, without substance.
"What, Carl?"
"You should've stuck with the M.I.T. degree after all. Hell with your brain you'd've made that try for the Moon a success last month instead of another near-miss."
"Maybe you're right. Those boys know what they're doing though. I'll stick to puttering."
"Puttering the man calls it. 'He hath a lean and hungry look—such men are dangerous....' Myself, I think that gadget you 'putter' with in that cellar of yours is some kind of a gismo to hypnotize all the states-righters into doing something intelligent like dropping dead without being told!"
"With ingenuity such as yours, my friend, I think I could really accomplish something in that cellar of mine at that! That's the trouble. You writers and newsmen have all the good ideas—slide-rules don't think worth a damn! Instead of a wonderful creation such as you suggest, what have I got? A pile of junk that may, if it works in any degree at all, turn out to be a fairly good television set...."