"Scotch," the waiter said.
A jukebox in a far corner blasted out from a sea of bubbling,
multicolored light.
_We're all pals togetherrrrrrrr.
The Gang knows no bad weatherrrrrrr.
We're all for us all for us,
And we're rolling do-own life's highway,
On our crowded busssssss!_
Laura whispered huskily in his ear. "Don't worry about any little old
thing. We're one together, man."
* * * * *
God, he was tired. He was so tired he could hardly sit there. He felt
numb, and there was desperation under the numbness. Kane wanted to get
off somewhere by himself so he could rest, sleep, and think. He wanted
to think....
Bits of information drifted haphazardly into Kane's consciousness from
the conversation. He had ordered another double Scotch and was almost
through with it. He was passing out, but held to conscious awareness by
the unceasing banter, laughter and the jukebox--like a marionette held
up with wires.
If he suddenly found himself alone in silence, he knew he would
collapse instantly.
It seemed that this was a group with a certain common Reacto level, and
they all worked in the same place, and lived in the same section of a
big housing project, a place called Sunny Hill.
Phil was their Integrator, and he was also an Official in the Isotopic
Corporation where the Group worked. Phil was an Integrator for the
Isotopic Corporation, a sort of personnel man whose main duty was the
integration of the employees' private lives.
When Kane tried to find out about the work itself, no one seemed
interested enough to respond. The work was relatively unimportant. The
emphasis seemed to be centered almost completely on how people got
along together. If your Reacto cards reported a general reaction that
strayed too far from your Group norm, you were either sent to another
group, or sent to a Staff.
A Staff was a rather vague term for specialists in Integration on a
clinical level.
The job was always referred to as "our job", and the Gang seemed to do
practically everything together.
Someone mentioned that a friend hadn't been competent in group
relations at school and had been Processed. Kane didn't like the words
they were so casually throwing around. In fact Kane didn't like any of
it, and he was liking it less all the time.
Another term that referred to some sort of adjustment process was the
word homogenized. Someone had been "homogenized".
Once Kane tried to find out about his old friends, Professors Legmann,
and Martin over at New York University. Phil avoided the question
for a time, then finally admitted that Martin was still there in the
archeology department, but that Legmann had quit the profession years
ago. "He quit teaching and became a plumber."
"A plumber?" Kane whispered. "Legmann?"
"That's right," Phil grinned.
"We're all plumbing together," Laura lisped.
"But--that's preposterous!" Kane almost yelled. "Legmann--why he was
the finest research chemist--"
"But he wasn't really happy in his profession," Phil said. "As I
recall--he just wasn't well adjusted as a research chemist and teacher."
"Who said he wasn't?"
"Why the Staff."
"What Staff--?"
"Anyway, he's a plumber now somewhere," Phil said. "He's happy now."
Kane felt a coldness on his neck. His stomach seemed to turn completely
over. The devil with this, he thought. His eyeballs felt as though they
were covered with sand, and his lids seemed leaded weights. He pushed
back his chair.
"You'll excuse me," he said. "But I'm really tired out. I'm going to
get some rest--"
"But the night's young for us, man," Laura shrieked.
"We're having more Scotch," Lucille said, watching him carefully.
"Fun time's only starting for us," the young man protested, and the fat
man and Jenny and all of them protested loudly together, laughing all
the while.
Kane was backing away. The hell with them. He turned and ran for the
elevator. Then he remembered that he didn't know what room he was
supposed to be checked into. He didn't have a key either. He--
Two smiling men, were on either side of him. In a mirror he could see
the half smiling, half concerned faces of Phil and Laura, and the
slightly sardonic eyes of Lucille.
"Don't worry, Gang," he heard Phil say. "We're taking a Special room.
We'll be together again soon."
"This way," the two young smiling men said. They wore uniforms and
appeared to be bellhops. "We'll show you to our room."
* * * * *
The two bellhops started to back out of the room. "What's special
about it?" Kane asked. "Only thing I can see about it that could be
considered special is that it's about big enough to be someone's
closet! I reserved a suite. What kind of a run-around is this anyway?"
It was hardly bigger than a large closet. A white room, with only a
single bed in it, and a bureau. Through a narrow, partly open door, he
could see a bathroom, and that was it.
"Well," the bellhop said, smiling. "It's our Single."
"You mean you call it special because it's a single," Kane asked.
The bellhops nodded.
"Why?" Kane insisted. "What's special about a single?"
"We only have one single here," the bellhops said. "We hope you are
comfortable with us, Professor Kane."
"Look here! Why should you only have one single in this entire hotel?
And what's so special about it?"
"This single is seldom demanded by guests," the bellhop said.
"I didn't demand it. I reserved a suite, or at least I understood that
my friend, Phil Nordson, reserved a suite. I certainly didn't demand
this!"
"But--but of course you did. We have to have a single when we're--not
getting along well with ourselves."
Kane started for the door, but the two men backed out and shut it in
his face. He tried the knob. The door was locked. He turned quickly
and scanned the room, but there was no key visible. Then one of the
curtains moved as he walked toward it, and he saw that the narrow
window was barred.
As he swept the curtains aside to look out through the bars, and
grabbed at the bars in a kind of instinctual gesture, a metal panel
slid noiselessly across and shut out a flash of neon light.
He was alone, locked up like a dangerous madman!
* * * * *
By the head of the narrow bed that resembled something antiseptic in a
barracks, Kane saw the black eye of a phone peeking out of a niche in
the wall.
He pulled it out and jabbed at a button. His throat felt tight and he
could feel the pounding of his heart as he leaned against the wall.
"This is Professor Kane, room 2004."
"Yes, we're here."
"And I'm here! In this ridiculous closet. I'm locked in. There must be
some sort of mistake. The window--"
"We'll be all right. We'll be fine in a little while."
"Look here--connect me with the cocktail lounge. I want to speak with
Phil Nordson. Yes, he's there--"
He heard nothing, absolutely nothing, except his own heart. No clock in
the room either. The walls and ceiling had a peculiar grained look.
"Hello, Prof!"
"Phil! Phil, listen, what in the name of God goes on here? I'm locked
in! You said you reserved a suite for me, and this room--"
"We aren't going to worry," Phil said. Kane heard laughter in the
background and the high-pitched choral voices from the jukebox. "We'll
be all right. We figured there would be a little trouble here and
there, at first."
"I don't give a damn about a little trouble there! Phil, I'm talking
about me, here! I'm locked in. And my luggage. Where is it? And--"
Kane's stomach jumped. A kind of terror hit him like a cold breath.
"Phil! My briefcase. Where's my briefcase?"
"We have it somewhere--" Phil was saying. "Just don't let us worry."
Kane heard a clicking sound somewhere and he yelled into the phone but
nothing came back. He released the phone and it was sucked back into
the wall.
He sank down on the bed and fumbled absently at his coat and then at
his necktie. The walls had a blurred quality and he felt on the edge
of passing out. He kept thinking of the briefcase, with years of work
in it, the equations, more than could be preserved entirely in a man's
head.
It was too sickening to think about, the possibility of them losing his
briefcase. Phil didn't seem concerned. No one was concerned with his
briefcase, that was obvious. The only thing they were concerned about
was that he didn't get along with the Gang.
The hell with the Gang, every last one of the Gang. If he never heard
of the Gang or saw the Gang again, he would consider himself extremely
fortunate.
He felt numb, too tired to think about anything. He fumbled at one
shoe, got it off, then worked vaguely at the other one. He would rest,
sleep, sleep for a long time, then he would be able to think. He might
find this all exaggerated, unreal, once he slept, rested, woke up again.
A man certainly had rights. There was some authority he could contact
of course. He was just too upset to think about it anymore.
He had his shirt, his undershirt off. He had his shoes and socks off
and he flexed his feet in ecstasy. He unzipped his fly and as he
started to stand up to take his pants off, he groaned with fright and
fell backward onto the bed.
A chair fused with the bed. Laura was there, sitting on the chair, but
also practically sitting in Kane's lap.
He blinked rapidly and reached out, and his hand moved through the
image of Laura, only Laura seemed solid, three-dimensional, very real
indeed. Too real.
"Get out," he whispered. "What--"
Glass clinked loudly right in the room with him. The jukebox blared.
Kane couldn't move. He sat rigidly, and the table was there, and all
the Gang around it, and Phil there smiling and they were all around
Kane drinking Scotch, double shots of Scotch, no ice.
Lucille looked across the table and shook her lovely head slightly.
There was concern, genuine concern, a kind of sadness, behind the false
smile. The smile, he knew, was for the others. But the concern was for
him.
Phil raised his glass. Nine glasses were in the air.
"Here's to us, happy Gang, Prof," Phil shouted.
"Here's to us! Here's to Sunny Hill!" they shouted.
Kane slowly moistened his lips. The three walls and the ceiling had
come alive. They were actually huge TV screens, and the effect was
startlingly three-dimensional. Only the absence of touch could break
the illusion. But the visual and the audial made up for the absence
of touch. Kane didn't want to touch them anyway. He wanted them to go
away, altogether.
His room was crammed with phantoms from the cocktail lounge. In fact,
his room was fused with the cocktail lounge. It was all there somehow.
"Go to sleepy-bye," Laura whispered and made a very suggestive gesture.
Her cheeks were flushed as she leaned into and through him.
"Take ourselves a good long snooze," Phil grinned. "Don't worry. The
Gang's all here."
Lucille said, hardly smiling at all. "No, don't worry, Professor. We'll
all sleep with you."
He zipped his pants back up and slid back through several phantom
shapes and pressed against the wall.
"Phil," he finally said. "Phil!"
"Aren't you sleepy now?" Phil asked.
"He's sleepy," Laura said. "We're sleeping with you, Professor man."
"Yes, yes I am sleepy. Goodnight now," Kane said. "Goodnight."
He waited. They didn't take the hint. To them it was no hint at all.
He knew they weren't going away. He knew that no matter what he said
or did, they wouldn't go away. That was the thing he understood,
incredible as it was, he knew now that no matter what he said or did,
they wouldn't go away.
They only understood that he was somehow ill. He knew that too. They
were right, so he was wrong. They thought they were doing what was best
for him. That was obvious. It was all over their faces and actions. If
they had any idea how he felt, they still considered his feelings only
symptoms of some kind, and they seemed confident that Kane would soon
be all right.
But his being all right had nothing to do with their going away.
Kane decided not to give way, not to scream or anything absurd like
that. It wouldn't do any good. Calm, be calm and--well maybe just try
pretending they're not there at all.
Then he remembered the bathroom and ran through several chairs, a
table, and three people, and into the bathroom. He slammed the door and
leaned against it and let out a long relieved breath.
He was taking off his shorts when the bathroom walls and the ceiling
came alive.
What had been labeled "Boy's Room" down in the cocktail lounge was
being projected into the bathroom of room 2004.
It wasn't false modesty that prompted Kane's moan. It wasn't any form
of prudishness that moved Kane to clutch his undershorts to his body
and leap into the shower stall.
It was a panicky realization of the absolutely involuntary nature of
the way things were. Strangers, with friendly smiles, everywhere around
him all the time, and he, Larry Kane, had nothing--_absolutely nothing
to say about it_.
The shower stall with the pulled curtain was no refuge either. There
was a superimposed sink in there on the wall with a phantom shape using
an electric razor.
Phil and Ben were leaning through the shower curtain. They weren't
there for anything specific. They were just there, chatting, smiling,
bantering.
Others came in and out of the "Boy's Room" of the cocktail lounge.
Everyone said hello, or directed some sort of friendly comment casually
at Kane as though superimposed washrooms were the quintessence of
social normalcy. And, Kane thought pushing hard at panic, they probably
were.
Phil and Ben were there for no other reason than to keep Kane company.
To help him. He could see that. No matter how tortured he seemed, their
attitude remained that of beneficence. The trouble was all his, and
they gave no indication of seeing his side of anything.
Evidently, to them, being alone was the worst thing that could happen
to anybody. If he wanted to be alone then he was wrong, he was sick, he
was put in a special room. A single. But they wouldn't go away.
He managed to turn on the shower, and he turned his face up to the icy
water and closed his eyes and imagined he was back in blessed isolation
in the study of the observatory on the Moon. But it was a long long way
back to the Moon.
It worked both ways. He could see and hear them. They could hear and
see him too, but he determined to do his best to ignore them. The idea
of social amenities no longer bothered Kane. Being impolite was an
absurdity. Social decency was a mutual thing, and these people weren't
considering his rights at all.
He finished his shower and draped the towel around his waist and went
back out into the closet they had given him. He walked toward the bed,
sidestepping people, chairs, tables still unable to realize fully that
these things weren't really here.
The jukebox got louder. A couple danced through him. Suddenly, Kane
stood shivering, a raw panic taking hold. Control fled before the
rising jukebox clangor, the laughter, the waving and shouting and
hideous unwelcome demons of camaraderie.
He felt himself wildly waving his arms about and shouting at the walls.
"Get out! For God's sake get out and let me sleep!"
Ben was staring at Kane from only a few inches away.
"You," Kane pointed a finger at the three dimensional ghost. "You--fade
out, go away somewhere. No--no, Phil, not you. Get these other people
out. I want to talk to you--Phil--"
"Easy now," Phil said soothingly. "We'll be all right. In a little
while now--"
"I am all right, but I won't be if I can't sleep. Phil--can't all this
just--just be tuned out or something?"
Kane tried to imagine none of the others were there. Just the small
room, himself, and Phil. But the others were all looking at Kane, all
of them looking, all of them smiling. Lucille was looking too, but
somehow he was sure he could see a reflection of his own feelings in
her eyes, hidden, but there.
"We'll be with you all the way," Phil said.
"But how can I sleep with a cocktail lounge full of people all over my
bed? Tell me. I'm listening. Tell me how!"
Phil's smile disappeared completely for a brief second. He whispered,
close to Kane's ear. "Try to do it, Larry. Please--_try_!"
Kane ran to the wall, clicked the light switch. He knew that the lights
in his room went out, but the slightly dimmer lights projected from the
cocktail lounge remained. Somehow, that was even worse. It seemed to
resemble the implacable characters of a persisting nightmare. Subdued,
with the coruscating bubbling play of multicolored light from the
jukebox turning a rainbow over and over the ceiling and the bed, and
the Gang, the Gang all there like ghosts with greenish faces smiling,
sitting, whispering round the bed.
Kane threw himself on the bed and covered his eyes with his arms.
He was going mad with fatigue, and yet he knew he could never sleep,
never rest, under these circumstances. It wasn't just the figures
there, the lights, the laughter and whispering and the chorus breaking
from the jukebox. It was what their being there really meant, the
suggestion of the bigger cause behind what was happening to Kane.
A man who fears to sleep in the dark is not really afraid of the dark.
But of what is hiding in it.
* * * * *
Shadows moved above his closed lids. Glass tinkled with ice cubes.
Under his sweating forearm, his eyes throbbed and his body felt as
though the skin had been scraped all over until it was raw.
Kane propped himself on an elbow, and looked to one side at Phil. Phil
grinned sympathetically. Laura was in the same cushioned chair, but
she seemed to be sitting beside Kane on the bed. Lucille was avoiding
looking at Kane.
"Phil."
"Well, Prof, we thought we were getting our sleep!"
"No," Kane whispered. "I can't sleep. I'm asking you, you Phil, and all
the rest of you, to let me sleep. I'm asking you to help me in that
way, just for a while. I'm imploring you really to just tune yourselves
out for a while and let me sleep."
There was something blank, uncomprehending in the way they smiled at
him. Kane knew then that they could never allow themselves to try to
understand his situation, because then they might question their own.
For example, if they've taken refuge in one another from a terrible
fear of insecurity, anxiety, and aloneness, then Kane could only
represent the threat of reawakened fear.
What was the use?
"We'll turn the lights down low, how would that be, Prof?" Phil asked.
"We'd like that," Laura whispered.
"Don't be afraid, we're with you," Ben said.
"We'll sing you into dreamland," Jenny said.
"Don't be afraid. We're all together and our Gang is with you," someone
else said. It didn't matter who really, Kane thought, because they all
spoke not as individuals but as the Gang.
"Through sunshine and in shadow," Lucille said.
The lights dimmed slowly as Kane curled up on the bed and clenched his
eyes shut. He pulled the sheet up over his face. He pressed his fingers
into his ears. But it wouldn't work. Nothing like that would do any
good. You couldn't shut off indignity such as this. You couldn't block
out such an intrusion of spirit and human dignity by burying your head,
or pressing your ears.
You could try, but not very long, not when you knew it wouldn't do any
good.
He had no idea now what time it was, how long he had been here. He had
tried to spot a wall clock somewhere in the cocktail lounge, but none
was within view. That didn't help either, this timeless feeling. That
only enhanced the similarity it all had to a persisting nightmare.
It was a gnawing murmur all around him. It was like a hollow tooth. The
softened sounds of their voices going on and on was maddening because
they were softened. Softened for him, yet they were still there. He
felt like an irritated baby sleeping while adults talked, pretending to
soften their voices.
His body was slimy with sweat, and his head pounded with a dull ache.
He jumped out of bed and ran straight through Laura to the wall and
jerked the phone from its slot.
He yelled into it.
"This is Professor Larry Kane. Room 2004. I'm checking out. Send
someone up here with a key! I said send someone up here...."
"We understand, Professor Kane."
"Then you'll send someone up immediately with a key!"
"Please don't get upset. The Staff has been busy, but now the Staff
will soon be with you."
The Staff....
"I just want a key, I want to get the hell out of here!"
Kane yelled several times into the phone after the click, but no voice
came back. He had grabbed up the table, the metal table at the head
of the bed, and flung it into the wall before he realized what he was
doing.
The shadows moved toward him. Phil, Laura, Ben, Jenny, Lawrence,
Lucille, all the others, nameless, what did it matter anyway, their
names?
They were smiling, holding out their arms to him. Compassionate,
sympathy, they had it all. All they wanted to do was help him.
He ran through them back toward the bathroom. It was still full of men
from the downstairs john. "What time is it?" Kane yelled at someone
with a paper towel pressed to his eyes.
"'Bout three I'd say, what a night!"
"Three--"
Three o'clock in the morning, but the fact was Kane wasn't sure about
the day. He backed out of the bathroom, slammed the door.
"The Staff is ready, Prof," Phil said.
"We're all with you, aren't we?" Laura giggled.
The closet.
Kane ran into the closet and slammed the door. There was something
immediately cozy in the narrow black confines of the closet. Either
closet walls weren't TV screens, or they had decided to let him sleep
at last. Probably the former. Better convert closets to Television. In
case kiddies misbehave and get locked in the closet, they'll not be
alone in there....
He curled up on the floor in the pitch blackness and almost immediately
began to drift off into sleep. The narrow darkness tightened around him
like a thick comforting blanket on a cold night....
Sometime later--he had no idea how much time had passed--a light
was blinking at his lids. He opened them slowly and stared into a
flickering yellow eye.
A doorhinge creaked. Up there somewhere a voice said pleasantly:
"Professor Kane, your Staff is here."
"Staff?" he whispered, trying to see above the blinking light.
"We're here."
* * * * *
The TV walls were dead now, but that was hardly consoling. The overhead
light was glaring with an intense whiteness. The three members of the
Staff were busy, and Kane was being Tested.
Kane had emerged from the closet determined to remain as rational as
possible, to control his emotions, and find out what he could about his
human rights as an individual.
That was easy to find out and only required a few questions honestly
and frankly answered.
As a minority, Kane had no rights whatsoever.
He had one big right, the right to think as the majority did. But that
didn't count for much yet because Kane was ill, maladjusted and had
anti-group feeling.
The Staff was going to test him, find out what was wrong with Kane. And
this of course implied that when they found out what was wrong, the
difficulty would be taken care of.
The Staff was kind, considerate, almost excessively polite considering
the circumstances. They were young efficient men with crewcuts,
briefcases, and wearing tight conservative dark suits. Only slight
differences in build distinguished them one from another, but this
superficial outward difference only seemed to emphasize the Staff's
basic unity, its Group Spirit, its Staff Consciousness.
Every public institution, every business establishment, every school,
club, hotel, factory, office building--in short, everywhere that people
congregated in official Groups, there was a regular Staff on duty
twenty-four hours a day.
They were Integrators. Glorified personnel men.
Electrodes were clamped on Kane's head and wrists. Something was
strapped around his chest. Wires ran into a miniature Reacto. A stylus
began to make jagged lines on a strip of moving tape.
"We're getting a complete personality checkup," the Staff said.
It was indeed complete. It was as complete as a personality checkup
could be short of an actual dissection.
Kane looked at countless ink-blots. He was shown a great many pictures
and whether he answered verbally or not was of no concern of the Staff.
Whatever his reactions were, they were all analyzed by the machines.
Words weren't necessary. The Staff had a shortcut to personality
checkups. From the mind right into the machine.
The Staff only interpreted the results, or maybe they didn't even do
that. It was more likely that machines did that too.
Kane protested for a while, but he was too tired to protest very long.
He asked them a great many questions, and they answered them willingly
enough--up to a point. They were interested in his questions too. He
was an interesting symptom, but actually he knew that they already had
him pretty well tabbed.
They answered his questions the way big-hearted adults answered
inquisitive children.
"We must," the Staff said, "determine why you don't fit in."
Kane talked about his work, his theories, his years of devotion to what
he had always considered to be a contribution to society. They hardly
seemed interested. What good was all that--astronomy and such--when a
man was not happy with others?
"What about this aversion to people?" the Staff said, in a kindly way.
"This--well--clinically, this de-grouping syndrome. This antagonism to
the group spirit."
"You mean my reaction to Phil and his friends?"
"Your friends. Your Group," The Staff said.
"But I don't dislike those people," Kane insisted. "Certainly, I have
no aversion to them! Hell, I don't even _know_ them."
"But they're people," the Staff said. "Part of the family of man."
"I know that. But I was tired and wanted to sleep!"
"You'll find the true group Spirit," the Staff said. "Let us ask
you this, Professor Kane. If you really had no aversion to people
generally, why would you object to them being with you? Why should the
presence of people disturb your sleep? Wouldn't a healthy person enjoy
sleeping with others merely because they were there? Doesn't one sleep
best among friends, knowing he isn't alone, knowing even his sleep is
shared--"
There was a great deal more, but it all boiled down to the same thing.
Kane was wrong.
And he didn't have the right to be wrong.
* * * * *
They, or rather it, the Staff, seemed to concentrate on the whole
question of why Kane had ever volunteered for a job demanding extreme
isolation in the first place. The point was that apparently Kane had
been anti-social, a Group Spirit deviant from the beginning.
Kane tried to explain it, calmly at first, then more emotionally.
Either way, he knew that whatever he said was only additional grist to
their syndrome recording mill. Being alone in order to do certain kinds
of work demanding isolation seemed to be beside the point.
The point was that being on the Moon deprived a man of Groups. It was
a kind of psychological suicide. Now that he was back home they would
straighten him out. The question of returning to the Moon was ignored.
To them, this was an absurdity. What did Kane want?
Kane was in no position to know what he really wanted--yet. They were
going to help him decide what he really wanted. But they already knew
that. It only remained for Kane to agree with them.
The majority was always right.
He explained his values to them. They listened. He told them that
as far as he was concerned the social setup was now deadly, a
kind of self-garrisoned mental concentration camp in which free
thought was impossible. A stagnate, in fact a regressive state of
affairs. Proficiency in skills would go, science would die. A herd
state. Individuality lost. Depersonalized. Tyranny of the Majority.
Integration mania. Collective thinking. Mass media. Lilliput against
Leviathan....
But Kane wasn't happy, that was the important thing wasn't it?
Could a knowledge of how rapidly the Universe was expanding contribute
to the happiness of a human being living on Madison Avenue in Manhattan?
Obviously the answer to that was no.
Kane was going to be happy. He wouldn't concern himself with the stars
any more. He wouldn't practice a self-imposed barren isolation of
himself any more. Kane was going to be happy. He was going to be one of
the Group.
Time went by. He was given sedatives. He slept at last. He awoke and
was tested and went to sleep again, many times. He was fed too, given
injections with needles of energy and vitamins and proteins and glucose
and carbohydrates, because he refused to eat any other way.
Vaguely he remembered episodes of babbling under the influence of
hypnotic drugs.
He kept remembering the briefcase. In a dream the Group had it,
throwing it around among them like a basketball. The clasp broke. The
papers, thousands of papers spilled out and drifted away over New York
and Kane was running through a maze looking up at them and then he was
lost.
Now he knew what had happened to the other Moon ships, and to the rest
of the Captain's crew, where they had gone to and never come back from.
Space was lonely and dark. Space was empty. Space was frightening.
They had gone back to the closeness and warmth and security of their
Group.
How many were there left such as the Captain, and Kane--Kane for a
while yet perhaps? How many were there?
Could he escape?
At some unrelated point on the Testing chart, the Staff closed up their
briefcases, politely said good-bye, and left.
The data would be run through more machines.
Kane would be happy.
All he had to do was wait.
* * * * *
Kane awoke with a galvanic start and stared at the prison of his room.
The walls began coming alive. Phil, Laura, Lucille, Herby, Clarence,
Jenny, Ben, the happy happy Group, always there, always waiting, always
reliable, sharing everything, pleasure and pain.
"How we feeling now, Prof," Phil yelled. He was stark naked.
"You look so cuddly," Laura giggled, and for an instant there, Kane
could almost feel her snuggling in beside him.
Kane lay there in a dim superimposed puzzle of furniture, moving forms,
corners of rooms jutting out of the wrong walls, bodies walking through
beds and one another, and then a naked figure curving into the air,
falling toward him in a graceful arc, down, getting larger and larger,
plunging right for Kane's face.
Kane rolled frantically. And then somewhere under him he heard a splash
and there was the vague ripple of unreal water as Phil swam away across
his cool blue pool.
There--that was Laura, only in a boudoir, standing before a mirror
wearing only a pair of very brief panties, and nothing else. Her
reflection in the mirror smiled at Kane as she brushed her hair.
"Morning, Prof honey. How we feeling this morning?"
It was morning. Some morning on some day during some year.
There was Lucille on this morning lying in a sunchair, her black hair
shining in the sunlight somewhere. Probably in the Group house at Sunny
Hill. In a while now, Kane knew, the Group would all go away together
to their office, and they would do their work, concentrating on getting
along together until they could return to Sunny Hill together.
Lucille was reading a newspaper, and she glanced up at Kane. There was
a pale line around her mouth and she pulled her eyes quickly away as
though she didn't want to look at him. She wasn't like the others. She
was different. Of course. It had to be a matter of degree. Nothing was
black and white. There had to be differences of opinion, some degree of
individuality--somehow. Somewhere. Perhaps Lucille--
"Good morning, good morning to all of us!" Kane shouted suddenly.
"Did we have a good rest, Prof?"
Phil was yelling from his pool. He seemed greatly pleased with Kane's
enthusiastic social response. Not that Kane was really trying to fool
anybody. He was pretty sure the Staff wouldn't be fooled. Somewhere
the machines were scanning the data. Soon, the Staff would have a full
analysis of Kane, what was wrong, and what would make it right. What he
should have done, and what he should be.
Jenny and Ben were making love on a couch. Kane tried to keep on
watching them as though he suffered no embarrassment, but it was
impossible.
"I've a full schedule planned for today," Phil yelled up. "Soon we'll
all be going to the Office. You'll be going with us soon too, Prof!"
He would belong to the happy Group. Sharing everything. But maybe it
wouldn't be this happy Group. Maybe the machines would decide that he
belonged in some other Group. Whatever Group it was it would be happy.
That was a fact.
_Could he escape? Could he, perhaps, get back to the La Guardia Pits,
and the Captain of the Moonship?_
The windows still barred, paneled in metal. The door locked. If he
managed to get out of this Single, say, and out of the Midtown Hotel,
and into the street, then what?