"Well, what do you say, man?"
"No, really, I have to be getting along."
"All right, then. It's an order." Someone thrust a shovel at Hardesty. He glanced at the man's sleeve and saw the starred armband of a block captain. Damn these civil servants! You hated their guts but had to obey them. Oh, they were psychopathic enough. Hardesty admitted that to himself. You couldn't get any kind of a decent job with the city unless the Civil Service Board passed on your psychopathy. But they were too smug in an orderly, regimented way. They could quote ordinances to you until you wanted to wring their necks but they were right and if you did, you were as good as dead.
Hardesty took the shovel in his numb cold hands and began to dig mechanically where the pick-ax crew had already done its work. After an hour, he had uncovered nothing worthwhile. A teen-aged Red Cross girl brought him a cup of evil-smelling synthetic coffee, but he drank it to warm his stiff muscles.
All at once, he heard a tapping sound coming from a big bronze pipe which had probably carried water or refuse from one of the offices upstairs.
"Someone's alive in there," a youngster next to Hardesty said. He ran over with a pick-ax and began to hack furiously at the rubble.
The block captain rushed to the spot and said, "Are you crazy or something? There's no air in there. Give them a couple of hours and they'll be dead. Are you forgetting your ordinances, boy?"
"But we can save them!" the youngster said in some confusion.
"We got too many mouths to feed as it is. Anyhow, you want them contesting the booty? If they survive, they're liable to claim it all."
"I—I'm sorry." The youngster stopped hacking away with his pick-ax. He seemed genuinely contrite, but you never knew about that type. He might come back tonight and dig in private. By then, fortunately, it would be too late. But the city hospitals were full of just such people who couldn't adjust to the rigors of war. Hardesty had heard about a proposed bill which would have them all killed painlessly. That was no way to die, without pain, but it served them right. Of course, thought Hardesty bitterly, the city would claim all their booty—which was another matter entirely.