Read Not This August for Free Online Page B

officers in the back, a captain and a lieutenant. Both young, both sweating in too-heavy wool dress uniforms with choker collars, both festooned with incomprehensible ribbons and decorations.
    The lieutenant said, looking up from a typewritten list, “You’re Mr. William H. Justin, aren’t you?”
    Justin gulped. To hear the flat, midwest American speech coming from this fellow in this uniform was a jolt. It made the whole thing seem like a fancy-dress party. “Yes,” he said. And then, inevitably, “You speak English very well.”
    “Thanks, Mr. Justin. I worked hard at it. I’m Lieutenant Zoloty of the 449th Military Government Unit. Translator. And this is Captain Kirilov of the same command. He’s the head of our agronomy group.”
    Kirilov, bored, jerked a nod at Justin.
    “We’d like to look over your layout as part of a survey we’re running. I see you’re listed as primarily a dairy farmer, so let’s start with your cow barn and milkhouse.”
    “Right this way,” Justin said flatly.
    Captain Kirilov knew his stuff. He scowled at the unwashed milker, felt the bags of the eight Holsteins, kicked disapprovingly at a rotten board. Through it all he directed a stream of Russian at Zoloty, who nodded and took notes. Once the captain got angry. He was burrowing through the corncrib and found rat droppings. He shook them under Justin’s nose and yelled at him. After he disgustedly cast them aside and wiped his hands on a corn shuck, the lieutenant said in a undertone: “He was explaining that rodents are intolerable on a well-run farm, that grain should be raised for the people and not for parasites.”
    “Uh-huh,” Justin said.
    When the captain came across the six piglets, he was delighted. Zoloty said: “The captain is pleased that there are six. He says, ‘At last I see the famous American principle of mass production. Our peasants at home wastefully indulge in roast-pig feasts instead of letting all the young grow to maturity.’ ”
    Finally the captain snapped something definite and final, left the barn, and headed for the jeep.
    Zoloty said: “Captain Kirilov establishes your norm at twenty hundredweight of milk per week. Do you understand what that means?”
    “I know what twenty hundredweight of milk is. I don’t know what a norm is.”
    “It is your quota. If you fall below twenty hundredweight per week consistently, or if your production fails to average out to that, you will be subject to review.”
    Zoloty started to turn away.
    “Lieutenant, what does ‘review’ mean?”
    “Your farming techniques will be studied. If you need a short course to improve your efficiency, you’ll be given an opportunity to take it. We’re organizing them up at Cornell. Or it may turn out that you’re just temperamentally unsuited to farming. In that case we may have to look for a slot where you’ll function more efficiently.”
    “Road gang?” Justin asked quietly.
    Zoloty was embarrassed. “Please don’t be truculent, Mr. Justin. Why should we put an intelligent person like you on a road gang? Now please come along to the jeep. Military Intelligence drafted us for another survey they’re running. It’ll only take a moment.”
    Justin managed to conceal his relief. He could manage twenty hundredweight a week very easily. Just a little more care to the herd’s diet, get that rock-salt brick he’d been letting slide, promise the Shiptons a hog in the fall for some of their hoarded cottonseed cake. It would be a breeze, and Rawson had been unduly alarmed. But farmers had this habit of screaming bloody murder at the least little thing. He hated to admit it, but the red-star boys were being more than fair about it. He had drifted into sloppy farming.
    At the jeep again Zoloty got out some papers and said: “Now, Mr. Justin, this is official. First, do you have any uranium, thorium, or other fissionable material in your possession?”
    Astounded, Justin said: “Of course not!”
    “A simple