“Time to get up,” he informed her. “Don’t you hear the Almighty bellowing in the living room?” “What’s he… — Philip K. Dick

“People like your wife are dangerous.”

“Why?” Hamilton asked.

“They don’t belong to any group. They fool around with everything. As soon as we turn our back—”

“So you destroy them. You turn them over to the lunatic patriots.”

“The lunatic patriots,” McFeyffe said, “we can understand. But not your wife. She signs Party peace petitions and she reads the Chicago Tribune. People like her—they’re more of a menace to Party discipline than any other bunch. The cult of individualism. The idealist with his own law, his own ethics. Refusing to accept authority. It undermines society. It topples the whole structure. Nothing lasting can be built on it. People like your wife just won’t take orders.”

This time, there was no punishment from above. Sighing, Hamilton almost wished there had been; the capricious personality element infuriated him. There was just too little relationship between deed and punishment; the lightning was probably cutting down some totally innocent Cheyennite, on the far side of town.

“Why?” Hamilton lashed out suddenly and loudly. “Why the hell did God answer that prayer? Why not some of the others? Why not Bill Laws’s?”

“God approved of your prayer,” Silky said. “After all, it’s up to Him; He has to decide how He feels about it.”

“That’s terrible.”

Silky shrugged. “Maybe so.”

“How can you live with that? You never know what’s going to happen—there’s no order, no logic.” It infuriated him that she did not object, that it seemed natural to her. “We’re helpless; we have to depend on whim. It keeps us from being people—we’re like animals waiting to be fed. Rewarded or punished.”