"How do you know all this?" Hendley felt the ground shifting under him
once more. She couldn't be right. To suggest that the Organization was
corrupt at the top went far beyond his own questionings. It made the
entire society a fraud. It made all work futile, purposeless.
She was silent, studying him. "Do you know about architects on a higher
level? What happens to them?"
Hendley frowned. "They get better assignments, more important ones.
They work on the bigger projects. They get to do the more creative
work. A 4-Dayman is a draftsman, for instance. A 2-Dayman designs."
"It's the same with us," Ann said simply. "We know about the girls
above us. The ones who are assigned to the Freeman Camps are like
me. Mostly 5-Daygirls, some 4's, a few 3's. Almost none higher." She
paused. "Where do you think the best girls go? Who do you think gets
them?"
Hendley was sitting up now. His head was spinning. He didn't want to
hear any more.
"The really beautiful girls," Ann said, "the ones who are much more
attractive than I am, are pulled out of the group. They don't get the
routine assignments. They're saved. When they're ready, they go on
special order. Usually we don't see much of them after that. But we
know where they go. We don't talk much about it, but we know." She
pulled Hendley toward her again. Her voice was earnest. "You mustn't
worry about these things, Hendley. There's nothing anyone can do. It's
just the way things are." Her hands were urgent, pleading as her voice
pleaded. "We've talked enough. There isn't much time left tonight. Love
me, Hendley!"
He clasped her with a kind of desperation. The warmth of her body, the
resilient softness of the bed, the close dark intimacy of the small
room--these were real, a speck of sanity careening through a universe
of chaos, without sun or stars, without order or meaning.
The texture of Ann's skin suddenly felt rough under his hand, prickling
with cold. "You're cold," he murmured. He started to smile. "Or is
it--?"
He paused. A draft touched his body like cool fingers. But the air
curtains shut out cold. And the door ...
He twisted away from Ann, rolling toward the edge of the bed. He was
too late. Heavy hands caught his legs. An arm encircled his neck
tightly. As he struggled to break free someone fumbled at the left
sleeve of his coverall, rolling it up. The technique was practiced,
deft, quick. He felt the prick of the needle, but there was little pain.
"Release him!" a voice spoke. There was amusement in the voice, a
controlled, urbane mockery.
"You!" Hendley stumbled to his feet. There were three men in the room.
Two were strangers to him, including the one slipping a hypodermic
needle into a small case. Recognition of the third man stung him to
incredulous anger. "How did you get here?"
Nik laughed. "I haven't lived in this camp all my life without learning
a few of the ropes."
"Is this your idea of pleasure-pure? Get out!"
But Nik made no move. "Sorry, old boy. I wish it didn't have to be you.
But you'll get to like it here." He glanced past Hendley at Ann on the
bed, whose frightened eyes were on Hendley. "Too bad I had to come at
the wrong moment. I thought I'd given you time for a few jolts. Seemed
like the fair thing to do. But this gentleman"--he nodded toward one
of the men standing behind him--"really was the winner. I promised him
we wouldn't tie up his prize all night."
"But you said--you bought him off!"
"Now, now, mustn't get excited. It'll only make the drug work more
quickly. I did have to stretch the truth a bit, but you'll understand
why."
Hendley's rage exploded. He lunged toward the Freeman. His legs were
heavy and thick, refusing to obey the command of his mind. He dragged
them clumsily. Nik's face seemed no closer than before. Hendley struck
at the thin face with its sardonic smile. His fist found only air. With
a violence born of desperation he hurled himself forward. The young
Freeman dodged. Hendley's clawing fingers scraped tantalizingly along
Nik's sleeve just before he pulled out of reach. The momentum of the
clumsy charge cost Hendley his balance. He fell heavily to his hands
and knees.
"You're just making it worse," Nik said. "Don't fight it. There's
nothing you can do now."
Hendley tried to get up but his limbs refused to obey. "You tried to
drug me before," he said thickly. "At that art exhibit. The drink the
girl took."
"Yes. She complicated things for me. It would have been so easy
there--I had it all set up. This unpleasantness wouldn't have been
necessary. Oh, don't worry about that girl, by the way. She'll be fine
in a day or so. So will you. The drug is quite harmless. You'll wake
up sometime tomorrow, and you'll soon be as fit as ever." Nik's foot
reached out to nudge Hendley's side, pushing him over onto his back.
He was unable to resist. His arms had lost their strength. Helpless,
he stared at Nik's face as it loomed over him. The Freeman said, "Just
think of it this way. You'll be free! You'll have what you've always
wanted. And I'll have what I want. I've waited years for this--waited
for just the right one to come along. I've had it planned for a long
time, every step. I knew you were the one the first moment I saw you in
the park with that red emblem on your sleeve."
"What--what are you saying?"
"We're changing places, old boy. I'll be you, and you'll be NIK-700.
That's all there is to it."
"Can't," Hendley mumbled. "Identity discs. You'll never get away with
it."
"Ah, but I've worked that all out. We're only numbers, you know. We're
not faces--or people. What makes you you, and me me? That little disc
on your wrist and this one on mine. That's all. Otherwise, we're much
the same size, and close to the same age. That's all that's necessary."
"People will notice--friends."
Nik laughed. "Do you really think anyone will make a fuss? In any
event, I'll ask for a transfer of work assignment as soon as I'm out to
eliminate any problems or unnecessary questions. They'll give me one,
won't they?"
Hendley did not answer. He knew the transfer would be granted. It was a
common enough request, and Nik would come up with plausible reasons for
it.
"You have a woman outside, don't you? I'll have to think about that. I
can claim we're incompatible--I won't even have to see her. Or do you
think I should? Maybe she'd like me...."
Suddenly Ann tore free of the man's grasp holding her on the bed. She
leaped at Nik. Her fingers raked at his face. "You can't do it!" she
cried. "Leave him alone!"
"Stop her!" Nik raged. "Get her off me!"
Hands dragged ABC-331 away from Nik and threw her down on the bed once
more. Her cries were abruptly muffled. Hendley struggled to rise but
Nik's foot pinned him to the floor. The Freeman grinned at him.
"This gentleman here, who used his needle so efficiently on you, is
a doctor. His tools are in that little bag. I've already had my own
identity disc altered. The bracelet folds open. Doesn't show, but I can
slip it on or off anytime. As for yours--well, a small operation, I'm
told. Might have to break the bones in your hand to get the disc off.
But the hand will be set properly, and in no time it'll be as good as
new. I promise you that. I'm spending all my white chips to make sure
you get a good job. The least I can do. And I won't need chips on the
outside, will I? Sorry I can't leave you well-fixed here, but you'll
manage. And you're welcome to my room and anything you find there.
You'll find it quite comfortable. We'll be taking you there in a few
minutes now...."
The voice faded away. After a moment it came back, but Hendley could
not understand the words any more. The room was fuzzy. He heard a
distant cry. Have they started on me? he wondered. Is that scream mine,
so thin and--no! It was Ann!
He tried to fight his way out of the thickening web which enveloped
his senses. He had to get to her! His hand struck something. The
fingers found the edge of the bed. He dragged his head up. Bodies were
grappling in the murk before his eyes. Ann was screaming. "No! You
can't do it! You can't be him!"
"But, my dear, it's necessary, I assure you." Nik's voice came through
again with sudden clarity. "Doctor, can you quiet her down? Not too
much. Don't want to spoil the winner's pleasure completely, do we?
After he was so helpful..."
Hendley attempted to crawl onto the bed. He didn't make it.
Something--someone--pushed him back. He flopped onto the floor. Ann was
no longer screaming. The vapor which seemed to fill the room became
more dense. Through it Nik's face appeared, white and bloated.
"Still conscious?" Nik asked. "You have a lot of resistance, I must
admit. But it won't be long now. Believe me, there's no need to worry.
Just relax."
"Why?" Hendley wanted to shout the question, but he wasn't even sure
that he had spoken aloud. His throat was tight, his vocal cords
paralyzed. Why, why, why?
"Why? Is that what you're asking?" Nik's distorted features twisted
into an even more grotesque shape. "Because I want out! I'm sick of
this prison, sick of freedom, sick of the boring pleasure-pures!"
"You're mad!" The words dribbled through Hendley's loose lips.
"What's that? Mad? Of course I'm mad! Who wouldn't be after a lifetime
in this place? You'll find out. Or maybe you won't. Maybe you'll be one
of those who likes it. Stupid fools! You don't know what you have on
the outside. To have work! Something to do! Someplace to go! Something
with a purpose, a meaning--"
No, Hendley wanted to tell him. You don't understand. There is no
meaning. It's all a hoax.
Nik was laughing. His face floated away. His voice came to Hendley from
a great distance. "I won't be seeing you again, old boy. Sorry, you're
not making any sense when you try to talk. Can you hear me all right?
Just want to say, have fun! It's all yours--the stars and the sun
and the pleasures of freedom! If you ever get out, look me up at the
Architectural Center. Just ask for TRH-247..."
His laughter thinned out like a piece of string. Hendley wanted
to reach for it, to get his hands around the thin white throat of
laughter. He could not move. He was alone under a vaulting black sky,
without stars, without light of any kind. He was drifting through
space. Ann! He called her soundlessly in the cavern of his mind. I'll
find you. Wait for me!
But his last conscious thought was the realization that she could not
hear him. She would never know what he had said.
9
As he had done each evening--he had missed only one night,
awakening after dark on the day NIK-700 left the Freeman Camp in
his place--Hendley sat at a table in the central park, a half-empty
glass before him, and watched the sunset. There were clouds above the
horizon, and against this billowing canvas the sun painted a dazzling
richness of colors--fiery red, gold, lavender, vivid streamers of
yellow. Hendley shifted restlessly in his chair. So quiet! he thought
impatiently. There had been nothing of interest going on through most
of the day.
Unmoved by the spectacle on the horizon, he let his gaze wander across
the tops of the distant line of trees, indifferently over a green
expanse of lawn, to come to rest at a swimming pool near the foot of
the slope. A girl was standing by the pool, wearing only the thin white
strips affected for bathing. Hendley's eyes lingered on the ripe curves
of her body. He wondered if she could be the same girl he had met on
his first day in the camp almost a week before, the one who had led him
off among the bushes. That chapter had been unfinished. Her Contracted
had interrupted them. Hendley thought that he really ought to look her
up some day....
His good hand reached absently for the inevitable glass with the
inevitable whiskey. His left hand rested on the table, still held
in its rigid plastic braces, still wrapped with a cumbersome white
bandage. There was little pain now, unless he grew careless and brushed
the hand too hard against a table edge or door frame. And the doctor
had assured him that the bones were set properly, that they were slowly
knitting together and would eventually be almost normal. No deformity
would result.
Hendley could think of the event now without having the bile of anger
rise to his throat, and without beginning to tremble. That first
night, pushing aside the lingering shreds of the drug's effects as he
struggled to consciousness, he had begun to rave wildly. He'd banged
his hand in his furious thrashings, and had almost fainted with the
pain. The doctor--he'd worked in the medical center of City No. 7
before coming to the Freeman Camp, Hendley learned later, and enjoyed
keeping up his medical activities just for amusement--had given him an
opiate to put him to sleep. The next afternoon Hendley had been more
rational. He had been allowed to sit outside in the park and watch the
sun go down, his awe in the vision tempered by the raw bitterness that
remained in his mind and heart.
Ann had gone. Hendley had been unable to learn anything about her,
but the doctor had assured him that she would have departed with the
troupe of showgirls on the morning after the show. At noon on that same
day, Nik, wearing Hendley's identity disc adapted to his wrist with a
concealed expansion mechanism, had left on the copter for the city,
clothed in the uniform with the visitor's sleeve emblem.
"There's no point in exciting yourself now," the doctor had told
Hendley cheerfully. "It's done, and you might as well accept it."
"He'll be back!" Hendley had retorted. "He's insane to think he can
get away with impersonating me. Why ever did he do it? I still can't
understand!"
"There's some don't take to freedom," the doctor said. "But he knew
what he was doing. Insane he might be, but he's very levelheaded about
it." The chunky man chuckled at the paradox. "He planned this all out
for a long time."
The doctor, whose name was JMS-908, but whom Hendley always thought of
simply as the doctor, was an amiable, very hirsute man a head shorter
than Hendley, with thick hairy arms and stubby hands covered with mats
of black hair across the backs, even along the fingers. They were hands
whose sure delicacy of touch always seemed incongruous. After the first
day Hendley was unable to hold any enmity toward him. The affair had
not been of the doctor's doing.
"I like to keep in practice," the doctor said more than once. "If you
don't, you lose your touch. Man's not a machine that can be started up
any time you feel like it by just pushing a button...."
The operation on Hendley's wrist, for which Nik had paid him handsomely
in white chips, had been a welcome diversion for the little man. The
postoperative services he offered Hendley were free. "I just like to
see my patients come along," he said. "Don't have many of them any
more."
He was a compulsive gambler. On the day Hendley lay drugged, the doctor
lost all the white chips Nik had paid him.
When he began to feel better, Hendley expressed curiosity about the
expansion device on Nik's identity disc, which now circled Hendley's
left wrist above the bandage. "Simple enough," the doctor explained.
"See? A little tug and lift at the same time and it opens up. If you
merely tugged, or just lifted, it wouldn't work. Very neat."
Hendley was impressed. The tampering with the disc was completely
invisible except on very close inspection. "He'll be caught anyway,"
he said with certainty. "They'll know at the Architectural Center that
he's not me. And at the rec halls. Somebody's bound to notice!"
"That may be," the doctor said agreeably. "Still, people are out of the
habit of questioning things any more. And when I try to remember my
patients, when I think back on them, it's strange, but I don't remember
their faces. I remember only some of their numbers...."
For the next few days Hendley kept waiting for NIK-700 to be returned
to the camp. The Organization would conclude that he needed morale
therapy, of course, for wanting to escape from freedom. Hendley
would undoubtedly be penalized for being a party to the switch, no
matter what story he told. Strangely enough, the prospect of losing
his borrowed freedom did not disturb Hendley. He had only one good
explanation for this: Ann was outside.
No word came. Incredulity turned into uncertainty, then apprehension.
Surely someone would have reported Nik as an impostor by now. RED-498
would have made inquiries about her Assigned. (But she wouldn't really
care, Hendley realized uncomfortably. If Nik had been shrewd enough to
act quickly to break the contract, RED-498 would have been temporarily
disturbed, but only until the Marital Computer assigned another partner
to her. Nik might have brought it off without ever seeing her.) At last
the suspicion that no one would be concerned about the change, as long
as Nik was obedient to the Organization's scheduled routine of work and
play, grew into conviction.
Hendley was free.
Now, nearing the end of a week in the role of a Freeman, he watched
the last color on the western horizon fade into a thin red streak. His
eyes no longer really saw the marvel. A bird winging overhead, swooping
in a wide bank toward the trees near the camp's perimeter, did not
make him turn his head. Ennui weighed on him. He was able to get about
the camp at will, he could engage in any play that struck his fancy,
as long as it didn't require two good hands. There was fine food and
drink available whenever he desired them. He had sampled only a small
fraction of the camp's varied entertainments. There had been a series
of parties each night, there would be others already starting for the
new period of darkness ahead. And--he was restless, uneasy with his
leisure. The day had seemed interminably long. The night would be even
longer--until it ended, as each night did, when, alone in his inherited
room, he woke shivering, bathed in sweat, hearing the echo of Ann's
anguished screams.
Hendley's hand shook as he pushed a refill button for his drink. The
whiskey was necessary. It dulled physical and mental pain. It helped to
pass the unnumbered hours.
There was a rustling in a clump of bushes nearby. Peering, Hendley was
able to make out two figures lying on the ground. He guessed the couple
had been there for a while. He simply hadn't paid them any attention.
The shadows being not yet deep enough for him to take the precaution
of moving to more open, safer areas, he remained where he was. Idly he
watched the spirited wrestling going on behind the partial concealment
of leafy foliage. It broke up in laughter. There was low, hurried
conversation, too low to be understood at the distance. The couple
scrambled up from the ground. Hendley started to look away.
A gleam of white caught his eye. He flicked a glance back toward the
spot where the couple had been lying. Yes! Something was there. A rapid
hammering filled his chest. But the man would remember, he would come
back, or the girl would turn for a last fond glimpse of the place where
their lovemaking had begun and she would see the flat white circles
pale against the grass.
Hendley restrained the urge to jump up and hurry behind the bushes. The
movement might draw the couple's attention. They were still in sight,
half-embracing as they walked away. In a short while they would drop
behind the rise. That would be time enough to act. Not before.
Hendley's heartbeat skipped. At the top of the shallow rise of land the
man and woman had paused. They looked back toward Hendley and the clump
of bushes not far from his table. The man was pointing as he spoke.
He'd remembered. Hendley groaned aloud.
Seconds later the couple turned away and began to sink beyond the line
of the rise. Elation swept over Hendley. His bandaged, rigid left hand
thumped nervously against his thigh. His gaze remained fixed on the
receding figures until there were only two heads bobbing against the
sky above the rise. Then even these were gone, dropping out of sight
like two golf balls vanishing into their cups.
Stumbling in his haste, Hendley did not even circle around the bushes.
He plunged directly through the tangle of branches to the clearing
behind them. He dropped to his knees. His fingers scurried eagerly over
the grass, scooping up the small quantity of white casino chips which
had fallen from the departed Freeman's pockets.
* * * * *
The casino's stimulating effect was really quite remarkable, Hendley
reflected during a brief pause as the robot-dealer cleared the table
of losing bets and pushed the winners' chips toward them. It was as
if Hendley's whole system had been toned up. Blood which had flowed
sluggishly now tingled in his veins. His mind was alert, ranging
ahead to dissect possible plays on the table like a quick, keen
instrument. The steady whir of wheels, the clink of chips, the murmur
of low-pitched talk through the casino as bets were called and players
reacted audibly to the click of a ball into place, the buzz signaling
winning patterns on the outer row of betting machines--all blended
into a controlled current of suppressed excitement that was highly
contagious.
Hendley kept his chips arranged in neat, equal stacks. His luck had
been good. The original handful of chips had grown to a tall stack,
then two, three. The fingers of his right hand tapped anxiously on the
edge of the table. As if in answer, the hard fist of the frozen-faced
robot struck the warning board. All bets down. Quickly Hendley slid
a small pile of chips onto the black square bearing the number five.
On a hunch he hedged the bet with smaller groups of chips on the four
and six squares. The robot-dealer pressed a button. A bar of light
whirled through its circular spin, holding the eyes of the players
hypnotically, giving the illusion, like light on water, of bobbing up
and down. It slowed, hopped, stuck. Black five! Hendley had made his
side bets, and the five paid two to one. His stack of chips had grown
to four!
Grinning, Hendley raked in his winnings. "I can't lose!" he exclaimed
to no one in particular, unmindful of the malevolent glare he received
from the player at his side who had been losing heavily. Hendley's
thoughts darted around the board, measuring possibilities, calculating
risks. His eyes gleamed. Though the room was comfortably cooled, he was
perspiring faintly....
An hour later Hendley suffered his first major setback. By then he
counted nine full stacks of chips before him, and even a reckless bet
resulting in the loss of one full stack did not disturb him. Luck rode
on his shoulder. She might look the other way for a moment, but she
wouldn't leave him. Boldly he pushed out another full stack, bent on
recouping his loss. There was a confident smile on his face as the
light-wheel went into its hypnotic dance. "Nine," he whispered eagerly.
"Big red nine!" The bar of light revolved slowly, skittered over a
section of numbers, hesitated exactly over a red nine--and jumped three
more spaces. Even Hendley's cover bets had been passed over.
Chagrined, he checked his winnings. Still seven stacks. He could pull
out now while he was way ahead. But he'd been close to having ten
stacks, and it wouldn't take much to regain that position. He would
have to be a little more conservative, however. He couldn't afford
to risk full stacks every time. Just a few more spins to see if luck
really was deserting him. He couldn't believe that it was. Besides, he
didn't want to quit now....
The run was on. With a swiftness that left him no time to pause, no
time to reflect, that generated a kind of unrealizing madness in which
he fed chips automatically to the hungry wheel as if he had no choice,
Hendley lost everything. Stunned, he watched the impersonal fingers of
the plastic rake extending from the indifferent arm of the robot-dealer
scoop his last few chips across the green table.
In desperation Hendley turned to the player on his right, grasping his
arm. "Let me borrow a few chips!" he urged. "I'm due now! Overdue! I'll
pay them back--I'll pay you double!"
Stonily the Freeman shrugged off Hendley's grasp and pushed in front of
him. "Go to the desert," he said curtly. "I've heard that tale before."
"Just a couple of chips," Hendley begged.
The player did not bother to answer. Hendley felt anger boil through
him. His jaw muscles knotted tightly. His lips pulled back over
clenched teeth. Only his deep conditioning against violence kept him
from spinning the surly player around and smashing his fist against the
contemptuous mouth. A thin, weak current of warning trickled through
the haze of anger. There were too many people watching. The Freeman
had done nothing to him. He was angry because he had lost. To create a
scene might get him into trouble, perhaps jeopardize his chance to play
in the casino when he did obtain more chips.
Hendley stalked away from the table, pushing quickly and rudely across
the crowded floor of the casino. He didn't want to watch the action. He
had to be able to play, to feel the keen whisper of excitement as the
light-wheel danced, to ride with it, his whole being attached to the
streaking bar of light, coaxing it, urging it, soothed and excited by
it as if he were its lover. Unless he could be part of that, he could
not bear to see the fever of hope and fear in other faces.
Outside the main Rec Hall the air was cool, actually chilly against
his sweat-dampened body and his flushed face. He shivered. Oddly,
even after the first involuntary spasm had passed, he continued to
feel a faint quivering in his arms and thighs. With it came a tug of
discomfiture, the first pull of a nagging guilt. Defensively he brushed
it aside. The casino was only one of the Freeman Camp's many pleasures.
As long as he was here, he might as well enjoy them all. That's what
freedom was.
He stopped abruptly. Less than ten steps away, broad-leafed foliage
at the edge of the grounds surrounding the Rec Hall stirred in the
night breeze. The area was dark, ominously dark. Hendley turned away
and strode quickly toward the bright ring of light thrown by the
floodlights in the garden. Six days of freedom had taught him better
than to stray alone into shadowed places. At night the pleasure-packs
roamed freely in the parks and side streets, sometimes even striking
boldly and quickly in well-lighted, crowded streets. The motive often
seemed to include robbery, but the packs appeared to take an equal
pleasure in beating their victims, even those who carried nothing
valuable. If he hadn't been disturbed, preoccupied, Hendley would
never have wandered into the remote, empty corner of the thickly
planted grounds. The realization that he'd done so left him uneasy, his
imagination conjuring up visions of sudden brutality. He tried to shake
them off.
Ahead of him a drunken Freeman was having trouble boarding the
slow-moving walk that ran downhill. Twice he fell off. On the third try
he managed to stay on the strip. Hendley rode down behind him, idly
watching his precarious leanings. The drunk was singing to himself
in a quavering but enthusiastic voice. Hendley thought: With the
announcement you're making of your condition, old man, you'd do well to
mingle with crowds. Don't wander off by yourself.
He did not pursue the thought further. Yet, at the bottom of the hill,
when the drunken Freeman headed across the central park for the noisy
entertainment section, Hendley followed suit. Near the edge of the park
the drunk stumbled off the walk. Hendley prepared to disembark behind
him. Without conscious purpose he slowed his own natural pace as he
followed the man into the crowded main street, lagging well behind. At
one point the drunk swiveled his head. Hendley jerked his gaze away,
pretending to peer at the sky. The night was particularly dark. There
was no moon, and clouds hid the stars. What are you doing? he asked
himself. Stalking him?
He felt a cold pressure at the base of his skull. When he glanced
again at the drunken Freeman it was with harder eyes and a sharpened
interest. The man was moving on again, ignoring Hendley. Good.
The drunk paused before an entertainment arcade, apparently debating
with himself. After a moment he walked on, weaving unsteadily. He
hesitated only briefly before a restaurant. At the third stop,
a newsview theater, he went inside. The theater was less than
half-filled. Hendley was able to take a seat a few rows behind the
Freeman's now-familiar nodding head with its thinning strands of gray
hair.
A large, circular viewscreen formed most of the wall surface of the
theater, surrounding the viewer. Hendley paid little heed to the
turbulent crowd scenes on the screen. The news was all about the
Organization outside, which explained the nearly empty theater. Few in
the camp followed the events of the working world with any interest,
Hendley had already caught the prevailing attitude. The camp seemed
completely isolated. Even the word "Merger!" repeated several times in
a newscaster's rich drone did not distract Hendley's attention from
the man he had followed. Finally, just when Hendley had begun to fear
that the drunk had fallen asleep, his stoop-shouldered figure rose in
silhouette against the viewscreen. He was leaving!
The Freeman stopped at a nearby bar for a superfluous drink. Hendley
walked on by without even a sidelong glance. He had to be careful
now, do nothing to arouse suspicion. Outside a peekie-house he mixed
with a small crowd, as if considering the blatant suggestions on the
announcement board: YOUR INNERMOST THOUGHTS REVEALED! one said, and
another leered: FREE YOUR HIDDEN DESIRES! And what are your hidden
desires? Hendley asked himself. Care to look at them? Angrily he
brushed the questions aside. The constraints of the outside world had
no place here. Pleasure was all!
The drunk left the bar. Coldly determined now, Hendley waited until
the man was a hundred feet ahead of him, half-screened by late night
traffic, before he set off in pursuit. Sooner or later his prey would
become careless, wander into the park or off into a quiet side street.
The only worry was that he might have a room in one of the buildings
immediately bordering the main street. Then there would be no chance to
catch him alone.
The drunken Freeman took another brief ride on a moving walk. When he
alighted he stumbled to his knees. He was an older man with thinning
hair, but he was stocky and well muscled, Hendley noticed, even though
drink had slowed his reflexes. He scrambled up readily. Hendley let
the distance between them narrow, in spite of the fact that the crowd
was thinning out away from the main entertainment complex. He didn't
want to lose the man now, and he was convinced that the Freeman was too
drunk to notice him. Dusting himself off, the stocky man looked around
in a bemused way as if he were lost. Then, purposefully, he headed for
a side street leading into the residential section.
Hendley ran to the intersection. The drunk was trudging slowly up the
inclined road between rows of two-storied dwelling units. The street
was partially lighted, patches of darkness deepening between the
occasional light panels. There were no other pedestrians. Hendley
kept close to the wall of the apartment building on his left, taking
advantage of every concealing shadow. Quickly he began to close the
gap between him and his victim. He was no longer disturbed by thinking
of the man ahead as a victim. He thought only of the need for silence,
speed, caution. There were only fifty feet separating the two men
now. The drunk had not turned. He was muttering to himself, his voice
clearly audible in the quiet street. Hendley's foot scraped the
pavement and he flattened himself into a doorway opening. The drunk
did not look back. Hendley eased away from the doorway, berating his
clumsiness. He could take no more chances. He would have to cover the
last steps in a rush....
The drunk staggered close to the wall of the building across the way
and suddenly vanished as if a trapdoor had opened. For an instant
Hendley stared in bewilderment, his heart pounding. Then he saw the
black gash of an opening between buildings, the entrance to a narrow
walk. He raced forward. No time for caution now. The dark passageway
was the perfect spot to attack. Chances were he wouldn't get another.
The drunk must be close to his room....
Blundering recklessly around the corner into the tunnel-like blackness
of the passage, which was no more than an armspread wide, Hendley was
saved only by a last-second instinctive hesitation. A blow grazed his
cheek, striking his shoulder with glancing impact. The force was enough
to slam him into a cement wall.
The Freeman he had followed faced him squarely, grinning with drunken
malice. "Caught you!" he said gleefully. "Thought I didn't know you was
after me, huh?"
He struck again before Hendley could recover. Hendley's chest seemed
to explode. Reeling, he thought fleetingly that no fist could hit with
such weight or force. The drunk must have found a rock or club. If he
landed another blow, the fight would be over. Hendley crouched and
dodged, sick with the knowledge of his foolish blunder.
"Think you're so smart!" the drunken voice rasped in the darkness. "I
carry this just for smart ones like you!"
But the man's drunken aim was erratic. Something heavy and metallic
clanged against the cement wall of the passage. The solid, heavy sound
quickened fear in Hendley for the first time. The blow had been close
enough to fan the air against his neck. In desperation he came out of
his crouch in a sudden, furious rush. One of his fists landed with
a meaty thump. The drunk's breath wheezed. He swung wildly, missing
Hendley's head by a foot. For a moment he was off-balance, staggering
as his momentum carried him forward. Hendley saw the squat, black
shadow stumbling past him. He lashed out at the exposed head and neck.
The drunk went down with a soft gasp. He did not move.
Legs trembling, Hendley stood over the fallen man, drawing breath in
great gulps. His chest ached and his shoulder felt strangely numb. His
first impulse was to run. Instead he dropped to his knees. When the
Freeman had hit the ground, there had been a faint, familiar clink.
Hendley slapped at the man's pockets squeamishly, choking back a
threatening sickness. He had to roll the inert figure over onto his
back to reach the breast pocket. The same clinking sound answered his
tentative probing. Feverishly now his fingers dug into the pocket and
closed around a small nest of chips. He drew them out. Their white
gleam was visible in the darkness of the passageway.
A hasty search of the drunken man's remaining pockets turned up no
other casino chips. Hendley stumbled to his feet. The man was alive,
he assured himself defensively. He hadn't been seriously hurt. He'd
collapsed as much from drunkenness as from Hendley's blows. And the
white chips were fair payment for Hendley's own bruised chest and
shoulder. A small length of heavy metal pipe lay on the pavement near
the fallen man's hand, mute evidence of how close Hendley had come to
having his skull crushed.
He peered nervously along the side street from which he'd entered
the passageway. The street was empty. No curious spectators had been
attracted by the fight. But now, conscious of the white chips he
carried, Hendley felt apprehensive. No telling what he might run into
on a dimly lighted side road. The bright channel of the main street was
a full hundred yards away. He started toward it. Before he'd taken a
half-dozen steps he was running, panic riding his heels.
Not until he was safely in the brightness of the main thoroughfare did
Hendley slow his headlong pace. Even then he quickly boarded the moving
walk that would carry him to the more crowded pleasure center. It took
a long while for the labored heaving of his chest and the furious
hammering of his heart to subside. By the time he had calmed enough to
think rationally about what he had done, he was in sight of the main
Rec Hall on the hill. Its rounding yellow shoulders pushing against the
night sky were like a woman's invitation, promising warmth, closeness,
pleasure. He stared up at it, hearing in his mind the seductive whisper
of the casino's action. The weight of the small cluster of chips lay
heavy against his thigh. For this he had done violence. For this,
like some pre-Organization animal, he had stalked another man in the
darkness....
Revulsion seized him like a giant fist. Half-falling, he stumbled
off the moving walk. The grip of anguished self-contempt tightened
painfully, crushing every defensive protest, destroying the barriers
he'd erected so easily to contain an image of himself he could not
face--the picture of a greedy pleasure-seeker scrabbling on the ground,
pawing through the pockets of a helpless drunk. His eyes squeezed shut,
as if their closing curtains could form a merciful new shield against
the harsh vision of what his freedom had come to mean. He opened them
to stare bitterly at the great wheel of sky which had meant so much to
him in the beginning.
A last, dry-eyed, cold, and empty, he turned back along the route he'd
taken in fear and panic. There was a different urgency in him now,
prompted by the feeling that he had somehow forged an unbreakable
link between his life and the fate of the drunken Freeman. As if
he were--responsible. The concept was quite new to him, foreign to
anything he had known in the automated world of the Organization, but
he could not deny it.
Weary, aching, disturbed by the strangeness of his emotions, Hendley
searched for the quiet street where he had followed the Freeman. He
rode past it once, retraced his steps, and at length found an inclined
road which seemed familiar. The narrow, dark passage appeared where he
remembered it. Cautiously he stepped through the opening.
The way was empty.
Frantically Hendley searched the area. Had he found the wrong
street--the wrong passage? The dwelling units were so completely
identical that it would be easy to mistake them, but he was sure that
he'd identified the street correctly. There must be some mark of his
presence in the passageway, some trace of the fight. His right hand
probed the wall. There--could that gash have been made by the Freeman's
metal weapon? The man had fallen here--yes!
Relief washed away Hendley's consternation. A single white chip had
fallen into a drift of dust at the edge of the wall. Such a find, even
though it lay half-buried, would not have remained through a half hour
of daylight. The fresh imprint of a hand had been made in the dust.
And at Hendley's eye level as he knelt, a raw gouge was visible in one
wall, recently made by a sharp, heavy blow. This was the right place.
It was doubtful that anyone finding the drunken Freeman there would
have bothered to carry him away. The length of metal pipe was gone. The
drunken man must have recovered enough to leave under his own power.
Hendley emerged from the darkness of the passageway. The street was
still quiet and empty. A thinning trickle of traffic rode the moving
walk at the bottom of the long incline. Beyond, bright concentrations
of light identified the pleasure centers. And in the farther distance,
a deeper black against the sky, the camp's fringe of trees was visible.
How moved he had been by his first glimpse of those trees as he came
through the gate in the wall!
Now he wanted only one thing: to be outside that wall.
Slowly he dug the cluster of chips from his pocket. He stared at them
wonderingly. In a sudden spasm of disgust he drew back his arm and
hurled the white chips far down the street, where they bounced and
skittered and rolled, making a thin clatter in the silence. As Hendley
started down the inclined street, one of the chips, still rolling on
its edge, crossed his path, wheeled, lost momentum and tipped over.
Deliberately he ground it under his heel.
10
The early morning mist which blanketed the park was already burning
off when Hendley made his way toward the concrete beige shells of the
administration buildings at the east end of the Freeman Camp. Detouring
across a stretch of lawn, he quickly found his shoes soaked through
from the heavy dew. The wet grass was a vivid green. Leaves and bushes
glistened in the hazy sunshine. Singing birds made a cheerful din high
among the trees.
He would miss these things. But the atmosphere of the camp was so
corrupting that its beauty was soon forgotten or ignored, blurred out
of focus by the astigmatism of the free....
What Hendley felt as he neared the beige buildings was not regret but
a kind of relief. Perhaps if ABC-331 had been with him, if they could
have shared the sunlight and the carefree hours of leisure, life as a
Freeman might have been different. And again it might not. Was this
kind of freedom, as Ann had seemed to suggest, a monstrous deception?
He was not sure what he believed. All he knew for certain was that he
had to get out of the camp.
And he had to find her.
He felt no misgivings as he reached the administration building through
which he had passed on the day of his arrival. There would be questions
about his failure to report Nik's assumption of his identity. The
prospect of stiff debits against his tax debt no longer had the power
to frighten. Even the possibility of more severe penalties, whatever
they might be, did not matter.
There was a reassuring familiarity in the whir and drone of office
machinery inside the beige building. One of the uniformed personnel
behind a counter looked up brightly. He had an air of eagerness
accentuated by prominently bulging blue eyes that reminded Hendley of
a frog's. "_Good_ morning, sir!" the clerk piped. "What can we do for
you? Not that there's much we _can_ do for the free, eh?"
Hendley decided there was no point in avoiding the issue. "I'm not a
Freeman," he said bluntly.
A startled look crossed the face of the clerk, whose pop-eyes blinked.
The surprise gave way to amusement. "Ha! Ha!" He was pleased to share
Hendley's joke. "That's _quite_ good, sir."
"It's not a joke. I'm here by mistake. I mean, I don't belong here. I'm
only a visitor."
"Oh!" The clerk managed a nervous smile. "For a moment I thought--but
you're not wearing a visitor's _uniform_!" he exclaimed. "I don't
understand."
"My name is TRH-247," Hendley explained patiently. "You'll find me in
your records. They'll show me leaving a week ago--but I didn't leave.
Someone else left in my place--a Freeman."
The clerk was bewildered, his protruding eyes growing larger than ever.
"I--I think you'd better talk to the Office Manager," he said quickly.
"If you'll wait just a moment...." Breathless, he almost ran for the
glass door of an adjoining office. In a few seconds he reappeared,
flushed with excitement, pointing Hendley out to a beige-uniformed
official. Hendley was relieved to recognize the brisk, efficient man
who had given him his final briefing when he entered the camp.
"Now then," the Office Manager said with a genial smile which failed to
cover an acute inspection. "What is this about a confusion in status?
I'm afraid my assistant was a bit, ah, excited."
"It's simple enough," Hendley said. "I'm a visitor. I shouldn't be
here. A week ago I--"
"I think we'd better be concerned only with the, er, the present," the
official said with a touch of impatience. "I see you're not wearing a
visitor's uniform. Can you explain that?"
"Another man switched uniforms with me," Hendley said. "And more than
just uniforms!"
The Manager frowned. "I see. It's irregular, of course, but no great
harm done, I suppose. You were scheduled to leave today? What is your
number?"
"TRH-247," Hendley said. "And I was scheduled to leave a week ago!"
The assistant, still hovering nearby, gasped. His superior eyed Hendley
coldly, turned to the shocked clerk, and snapped, "Check that!" To
Hendley he said, his manner now less carefully polite, "I think you'd
better explain."
"I've been trying to," Hendley said evenly. "I was a visitor. A week
ago I was attacked by a Freeman. He took my uniform and switched
identity discs with me. He left camp in my place. That's all there is
to it. I know I should have reported this sooner, but--"
"Here it is, sir!" the clerk said, rushing up with a section of tape
from a computer. "But he left!"
The Manager glanced at the tape. When he looked up at Hendley his
expression was disapproving, his eyes cold. "Now then," he said, "I
think you'd better tell us your real name. If you'll let me see your
identity disc--"
"I just told you my name!" Hendley said angrily. "TRH-247!"
"TRH-247 was a visitor to the camp. I gather you knew that. He left as
scheduled at noon six days ago."
"This is ridiculous!" Hendley cried. "You're not listening to me! The
man who left was an impostor! Look at this hand--they broke the bones
to get my identity disc off! I'm wearing his. NIK-700 is his name. He's
the Freeman! I'm only a 3-Dayman sent here for therapy."
The clerk did not need his superior's curt nod. He was already hurrying
off to question a computer.
"This, ah, ruse has been tried before," the Manager said to Hendley,
his voice deceptively soft.
"I suppose it has. I'm just surprised you didn't catch him when he
left," Hendley said. "After all, you were the one who processed me in
yourself. You must remember. You suggested that I take in the show at
the main Rec Hall."
"I tell that to everyone who enters the camp," the official said. "And
I don't remember you. I was not referring to any illegal departure
from the camp as a ruse--I meant your obvious attempt to claim another
identity. Our records, I can assure you, do not show mistakes. The
machines cannot make errors. You must be aware of that. The visitor,
TRH-247, left on schedule--that much we can be sure of. As to your
identity, sir--"
The assistant reappeared. This time the Manager barely glanced at the
section of tape from the computer. He waved the pop-eyed clerk away.
When he faced Hendley his manner was distant, his voice clipped. "I
trust you will not try this again, NIK-700," he said. "Freemen are not
permitted to re-enter the Organization. You are familiar with the rule."
"You're a fool!" Hendley burst out. He waved his broken hand in front
of the official's face. "Doesn't this hand mean anything to you?
Haven't you heard a word I've said?"
"Bandages are easy to make," the official said remotely. "Even broken
bones are simple enough to manage, I suppose, if you're, ah, desperate
enough. I'll recommend that you receive morale therapy, of course. We
are quite familiar with the, er, aberration which occasionally makes a
Freeman lose his, ah, perspective and wish to leave the camp. But I can
assure you it's quite impossible."
"But I'm not a Freeman!" Hendley raged, gripped by a kind of terror.
"I'm afraid I will have to ask you to leave the Administration area,"
the Office Manager said coldly. "Except for necessary business, it is
out of bounds for Freemen."
Hendley stared at him in stunned disbelief. It was incredible that
the man would not remember him--even more inconceivable that he would
attach no plausibility whatever to Hendley's story. Numbers were all
that mattered--the set of symbols setting forth a man's identity,
establishing his status, certifying his existence, a combination filed
away in an electronic brain which could, on demand, reveal who and what
a man was.
"You've got to listen to me," Hendley said with an effort for control.
"I'm Thomas Robert Hendley. TRH-247. I'm not a Freeman. There's been a
switch--"
"I'm sorry, sir," the beige-clad official said in brisk tones that
contained no sorrow, only a curt dismissal. "Our computers do not make
mistakes."
Hendley backed away. The unknown, unnameable terror shook him. It was
the demoralizing fear which might have been felt by some very clever,
almost human machine which had been taught every emotion a man could
feel except this one, and which, confronted with the unknown, began to
clash and grind to a halt, stripping its intricate gears, shattering
its neatly made cogs and bolts, flying into a thousand pieces, until
it was no longer an almost human machine, but merely a collection of
unidentifiable pieces of something that did not exist any more.
Terrorized by a glimpse of non-existence, Hendley burst from the
administration building and ran across the cool, wet, and slippery
grass toward the beckoning shadows of a grove of trees.
* * * * *
Hendley crouched at the edge of the woods where a low growth of bushes
crowding against tree trunks was dense enough to hide even a white
uniform. All day he had loitered in the woods, at first in dumb panic,
later in despair, and at last with a growing determination. He had
spent the afternoon measuring the depth of the grove, verifying the
fact that it followed the exterior wall of the camp along its entire
length, following each footpath to see where it led--and watching
the wall. He had learned several facts he had not known before. The
wall was patrolled by robots. Its surface was somehow sensitized, the
slightest touch setting off an unheard alarm which in less than a
minute brought mobile robots trundling along the wide, flat top of the
wall. The interior surface of the wall, unlike the outside, was well
maintained. There were no cracks, no soft crumbling places to provide
holds for hand or foot. A group of men might have made a human pyramid,
from which the topmost man could have reached the top of the wall.
But before this feat could have been accomplished, a robot would have
appeared with silent efficiency. Hendley did not know what action the
robot-guards would take, but it was certain that they would have been
trained to act firmly and decisively. Resistance would be futile.
On two occasions, once during the early afternoon, again near dusk, he
had deliberately scraped the wall with a broken-off branch. Each time
he had scurried back to the cover of the woods to watch the robots.
Each time he had barely reached the first line of trees before the
guards appeared. They made no attempt to leave the wall and gave no
sign of having seen him.
Watching their impersonal inspection bitterly, he thought about the
wall. It did more than keep out unauthorized persons and screen from
the curious the activities in the camp. Walls worked two ways. While
Freemen blissfully pursued their endless pleasure, the wall made their
camp a prison.
Waiting for total darkness, Hendley let his reflections range beyond
the wall to the bleak prospect of the endless desert. Would he find
food and water in that wasteland? Would he lose himself in its vastness
without ever finding his way to the nearest city? Angrily he brushed
aside his doubts. Frightening as the desert might be, it could be no
more terrible than a meaningless freedom.
In the last light Hendley made his preparations, stripping leaves and
thin useless branches from the long slender trunk of a fallen sapling
he had found earlier in the day. He doubted that this rude pole-ladder
would reach all the way to the top of the wall, but it would bring him
close enough. He would have to clamber up in frantic seconds. And if he
failed, there might be no second chance.
At last he was ready. The darkness was deep. He crept to the edge of
the woods, dragging his improvised ladder. For several minutes he
crouched motionless, searching the wall. Something had disturbed his
eye. Not movement, but a sense of something foreign in the darkness, a
shape....
He went cold. Directly opposite his position, immobile on top of
the wall, sat a robot-guard. Against the night sky its gray shape
was almost invisible. How long had it been there? It must have come
while he was busy cleaning off the tree trunk. But surely its station
opposite him was a coincidence.
Stealthily Hendley retreated into the woods, taking great pains to pull
his pole-ladder silently through the undergrowth. Not until he had
covered an estimated fifty yards to the left of his original position
did he angle again toward the edge of the woods facing the wall. This
was still too close, but it would give him a check against the tactics
of the robot wall patrol. He had to know how many of them were on
guard, and how they functioned.
Reaching the cleared strip, he peered toward the wall. A robot--silent,
impassive, tirelessly observant--sat exactly across the way.
Hendley plunged back among the trees. Running blindly, indifferent to
the branches which stung and scratched his face and arms, he covered
another thirty yards, this time without his makeshift ladder. He
slowed his pace, stole forward another ten paces, then approached the
clearing. The robot-guard was ahead of him. Its silent posture on top
of the wall seemed to mock the labored heaving of Hendley's chest, the
clamorous protest in his mind.
He sank to his knees. "They can't be everywhere," he whispered aloud.
But he knew in his heart that, wherever he approached the wall,
the guard would be waiting. Whatever move he made would have been
anticipated. The pattern of his actions during the day in testing the
wall had been recorded. A computer would have analyzed the sequence.
The robots would have been briefed accordingly.
There was no escape.
* * * * *
The warning voice seemed to be coming over a loudspeaker, magnified and
distorted. The voice was some distance away when Hendley, lying on the
damp ground in the woods, first heard it. As it approached, its droning
message was repeated at regular intervals. "Clear the woods!" the voice
urged with metallic emphasis. "This is a warning. All persons not
engaged in the hunt must vacate the woods. Repeat: Clear the woods...."
Slowly the urgency of the warning penetrated Hendley's despair. Several
times he had heard of the hunt, but he'd never learned exactly what
it was. Obviously there was danger of some kind involved. He supposed
that a prey--he'd heard the word "target" used once--was let loose
in the woods. What kind of target? An animal of some sort? Was the
danger real, or was it all simply a game with a formidable imitation of
reality?
Hendley rose and made his way out of the woods. As he emerged into
the open lawn of the park contained by the belt of trees, a group
of Freemen--as many women, it seemed in the darkness, as men--were
crowding toward the dark labyrinth he had left. "Hey! What were you
doing in there?" one of the men called. And another said, with laughter
that had an almost hysterical edge, "Lucky you got out when you did!
The hunt's starting any minute!"
Hendley stopped to stare at the group. He was tempted to join them in
their hunt. Curiosity pulled at him. They seemed an eager, exhilarated
group. In the excitement of the chase he might even be able to forget
the day's events. He might lose himself.
In anguish he turned away. He was already lost. No artificial pleasure
could alter that shattering truth. Nothing could change it.
He walked without aim or purpose. Careless of the menace lurking in
deeply shadowed places, he was protected by his very indifference--or
perhaps by the distant activity of the hunt. No yelling band of
attackers burst upon him. He wandered through the camp, pausing here
and there at a bar to gulp down whiskey he neither tasted nor felt. His
whole body grew numb, and his thoughts became mercifully fuzzy, with
only a small projection of reality poking up through the haze to bring
him pain.
At last he came reeling along the street leading to the dwelling unit
he had inherited from Nik. Hazily he thought: it is mine now. It is
really mine. And mine is his, as if I had never occupied it. With
painful perception he realized that the room in which he had lived for
so many years in the outer ring of the Architectural Center bore no
mark of his personality, no stamp that made it his. Everything in it
belonged to the Organization. Everything had been issued--not to a man,
but to a number. To a faceless tool which had been taught a limited
pattern of activity.
A tall figure loomed in Hendley's way. He stopped, trying to focus his
gaze. A strange face, youthful in outline but lined and reddened as if
the skin did not react well to the sun's direct rays, smiled at him. "I
say there," the man cried cheerfully. "Out having your jolts, eh?"
Hendley tried to stumble past him, made vaguely uneasy by the
stranger's hearty manner and forced good humor. But the tall Freeman
caught his arm. "What's your hurry?" he asked, his tone cajoling
rather than resentful. "The night's young!"
"I've had enough," Hendley mumbled.
The grip tightened on his arm. The man's fingers were not still.
Hendley became aware of a gentle kneading of his bicep. "I can teach
you some real pleasure-pure," the tall man suggested, suddenly coy. "A
new experience! I'll bet you haven't--"
"No, I haven't!" Angrily Hendley jerked away from the overfriendly
grasp.
"But you don't know what you've missed!" The young-old face was eager.
The "s" sound hissed through his teeth in coquettish invitation.
"You'll never know unless you try. I can show you!"
Hendley struck furiously at the simpering smile. Something of the long
day's frustration went into the brutal blow. The Freeman staggered
back. Through bleeding lips came an outraged protest. "Beast! You have
no sensitivity, no imagination! I should have known it!"
Hendley spun away. He wanted only to reach the privacy of his room,
to find the oblivion of drugged sleep. But before he had traveled a
hundred feet his legs gave way and he crumpled to the pavement. He lay
where he had fallen, head whirling, the ground revolving slowly. He
had a sense of flying, and then of the surface on which he was borne
beginning to tip at an angle until he felt sure that he would slide off
into empty space.
"You poor thing! Let me help you." Gentle, insistent hands plucked
at Hendley's sleeve. Yielding helplessly to the pressure, he rolled
over onto his back. A woman's face rocked slowly across the sky of his
vision, like a pendulum with painted features. Pale face, capped with
wavy hair defined by a row of bangs across a wide forehead. A red mouth
smiled. The lips moved. "Dear boy! You need to rest. Do you live near
here?"
Hendley nodded. The woman's tone was sympathetic, soothing. Her fingers
were not demanding. He tried to sit up, and with the woman's help
he managed it. Soon he was standing, leaning against her. She was
quite short, her head no higher than his shoulder, her body a neat,
well-rounded package, compact and strong. A full breast pressed warmly
against his arm, but the woman seemed to be oblivious of the contact.
"I'll help you," she said. "Is it this way?"
Hendley mumbled directions. He felt better now that he was back on his
feet and moving. When he reached his room he was prepared to thank the
plump-bosomed stranger, but she gave him no chance to speak. "I'm not
going to leave you alone until you're safe in bed!" she admonished him
firmly, as if talking to a child.
He made no protest. Though he wanted only to be left alone, he was
grateful for her help. He wasn't sure that he could have made it to his
room on his own.
The woman led him to his bed. "What a pleasant room!" she murmured.
"Just lie down now. No, don't fight me, relax."
Deftly, efficiently, it seemed impersonally, she stripped him of his
uniform. Hendley was too absorbed in the problem of remaining in place
to feel more than mild surprise at her attentions. Then, without his
realizing how it had happened, the woman was beside him on the bed, her
uniform gone, her warm body an unexpected abundance of sweetly scented,
swelling hills and dipping valleys.
"He tried to pick you up, didn't he?" she whispered huskily. "I saw
him."
"What? Oh." Hendley realized obscurely that she was referring to the
tall blond Freeman with the red face.
"You didn't like him, did you?"
"No. Listen, I didn't mean for you to...." His feeble protest trailed
off. There was no resistance left in him.
"He's always following me," the woman said resentfully. "Trying to take
men away from me. But you like me better, don't you?"
"You--you know him?"
"Oh, yes. We're Contracted." The woman's hands stroked Hendley's weary
body. They floated together on the slowly drifting bed. Hendley had a
sense of unreality, of existing in the distorted world of a dream. The
woman's voice purred in his ear, her breath warm. "I'm glad you like me
better. Wait'll I tell him. Won't he be jealous!" She chuckled. "What's
your name?"
Hendley groped for an answer. He couldn't think. His flesh was
betraying him, betraying his weariness, denying his hopeless despair.
"You do have a name, don't you?" the woman asked with a low giggle.
"You must have a name."
"Yes, it's...." At last the answer came to him. With a cry that might
have been a gasp of pain, he said, "NIK-700!"
11
"Are you going to the show tonight?" the doctor asked cheerfully.
"I don't know."
For two weeks Hendley had waited anxiously for the show to return. The
first time Ann had not appeared with the troupe. The following week she
had been there. He had recognized her the moment she appeared in the
red spotlight. That night had been worse than the other. He could only
watch at a distance. There was no way to communicate with her. When the
audience reaction began to clarify itself on the giant thought-screen,
Hendley could not watch it. Then the lottery began....
"I think we can leave the bandages off now," the doctor said. One by
one he flexed the fingers of Hendley's left hand. "How does that feel?"
"It hurts."
"But not too bad, eh? You'll find it stiff for a while, and you'll have
to be a little careful of it, but it's coming along fine. You're lucky.
You mend quickly."
Only the body mended, Hendley thought. The other, the deeper wound, did
not heal. "Tell me something, Doctor," he said abruptly. "What's wrong
with me?"
"Eh? I just told you. You're coming along much better than we had any
right to expect."
"I don't mean the hand. I mean--why am I different? Why do I feel
things that others don't seem to feel? Not just here in the camp--I
know there are some who don't adjust to freedom--but outside, too. Why
didn't I fit in? Why did I feel that something was wrong?"
The doctor sat gingerly on the edge of the bed in Hendley's room, as if
the question made him move with caution. "What makes you think you're
different?"
"I _know_ I am! Nik was different, too, but not in the same way."
"Freedom sickness," the doctor said absently.
"But you can't call mine freedom sickness," Hendley argued. "I haven't
been here long enough. And I didn't belong in the outside Organization
either. I don't belong anywhere! To me the whole system seems wrong,
but why am I the only one who feels that way?"
"You're not the only one."
"Maybe not, but there aren't very many like me. I told you how that
Morale Investigator reacted. I was a prize specimen to him. I was
something new! That's why I was sent here."
The doctor sighed. "This is a little out of my field," he said
thoughtfully. "But I think I can make an educated guess about your
trouble."
"Then guess, for Organization's sake!"
"I suspect that your genes failed to respond to the pre-birth treatment
in the Genetic Center."
"What does that mean?"
"Well, you know that the chemistry of the human cell is organized in
a very specific pattern. Research proved long ago that artificial
mutations could be produced in the genetic material of the cell. What
is not so widely known is that the series of tests in the clinics of
the Genetic Center, which every expectant mother undergoes in the
second month of pregnancy, are actually a course of treatment."
"What kind of treatment? And what does this have to do with me? Are you
saying that my genes are mixed up?"
"In a way. But not exactly."
"You're not making sense!"
"Be patient." The doctor began to pace the room. His habitual good
humor had given way to an absorbed frown. He stopped suddenly before
Hendley. "Why do you suppose that Organization society has remained
so stable for so many years? Because the system works best for the
most people? That doesn't explain it. Human hereditary factors, left
to themselves, are too complex. But once it was proved that the
basic molecular pattern which determines the direction life will
take--determines form, shape, inherited characteristics, temperament,
in short makes _you_ what you are--could be altered, the way was clear.
Through early treatment unwanted characteristics, psychological as
well as physical, could be eliminated. That's why there is virtually
no physical deformity or mental illness within the Organization. A
tremendous achievement, my friend, but the treatment goes beyond such
genetic errors. It is also designed to eliminate unstable personality
traits. That's why the Organization has so few anarchists, so few
rebels, so few questioning enough to perceive that they might be
unhappy or their lives useless." The doctor paused, then added, "The
treatment is not infallible, of course."
Hendley stared at him. "It failed with me? I'm one of the--the
imperfect ones?"
"I wouldn't use that word. I'd use the term--normal. For some reason
or other your genetic material remained unaffected by the treatment.
You're a natural man."
For several minutes there was silence in the room while Hendley
pondered the doctor's words. At last he said, "It's too late now, isn't
it?"
"Yes. I understand late treatment has been tried--even experiments with
adults--but without success."
Hendley rose and went to the window. It was late afternoon and the
sun was low above the horizon. He regarded its fiery beauty with
bitterness. "What about you?" he asked the doctor. "You know all this,
but you're happy."