Chapter V

How long, then, lying there before a key-box hummed again? I didn't know. My time sense had been dulled. Even the pain was dull now; it was something that had always existed.

I looked at the shining ceiling.

The glowlights began to dim and I supposed that since my arrest in the park another day had passed.

Most of all, I wondered. Something had happened to me, something that I could almost feel as a physical change, but I didn't know quite what it was. I knew its results. I knew that I was no longer standard, no longer conformal, no longer well-behaved and moral and an efficient, useful citizen of the State. I hated the State. I hated all States. I hate all efficiency and common sense and hate.

It suddenly came to me that I didn't care whether I was in Southem or Northem, or which of them ruled the world.

I lay there.

And presently a key-box hummed and I didn't even look that way. The stink of my own burning flesh still clung to my nostrils, the dull pain was still with me, but I didn't care. It was too much. When horror becomes too great, it stops being horror. The mind is smart. It doesn't believe; it doesn't register. The curve of sensation flattens out, stops, almost.

When such horror looms, you go on doing whatever you are doing.

I was lying there, so I went on lying there.

"Don't speak," whispered a voice. "Don't ask questions."

Something fumbled at the straps. I turned my head, and two people were in the room. They were thin, and their eyes were overlarge and they were naked and covered with bruises. The fugitives of the park last night!

"What are you doing here?"

Finger to the lips. That was the man. He was taking the straps from my legs. The woman was releasing my arms and shoulders.

"But--"

"Sh!" That was the woman.

In a moment they had me free. I started, confidently, to rise, and the pain streaked through me like a powder rocket. They helped me. I stood there, amazed that I could stand. They helped me go forward. I took several dizzy steps, and after that it wasn't as bad. We moved through the doorway; there was no force screen. The man held the key-box. He pressed it as we moved away, to bring the force screen into place once more.

I said, "Where are we--?"

I was shushed again. We went on through the corridors. Dead oyster white corridors. I walked as through a sea of marshmallow. Time sense was gone again and we were pushing on and on and there was no end in sight and we had already forgotten the beginning.

We took an automatic shaft to another level and walked more corridors.

* * * * *

Once we passed an opening and tunnelcars filled with people roared past. I had a flash glimpse of them. They sat there staring straight ahead, wearing the efficient expressions of good workers. State corpses.

Suddenly we emerged into the dark. It was the dark of night, but after the tunnels it was practically sunrise. The air was clean--no, it was not actually as clean as the conditioned air below. It was more than clean. It was _alive_.

We were on the edge of a great concrete paved area. About a hundred yards ahead, a massive, shining, fat needle rose into the air, and squatted there against the stars. It was a spaceship in its launching cradle. There were low buildings near it, a few floodlights, and people standing around. It took a moment to realize that the men walking up and down and along the groups of people, the men with rifles on their shoulders, were guards.

"Luck, now, that's all we need. A little luck," said the thin man beside me. It was the first time I had heard his voice. It was a low voice; he spoke with emotion. It was not approved standard.

The woman moved beside him and put her hand upon his arm.

I said, "May I talk now?"

He turned to me, smiling. The smile had something of that sadness I had first noticed when he sat a prisoner in the jetcopter. "You want an explanation, don't you? Of course you do. But I'm afraid I can't tell you very much, except that we were sent to get you."

"Sent? By whom? How did you have a key-box? And--"

He laughed. "Wait, one question at a time. I was a force screen technician before--before we were arrested. Cells are the same everywhere. I know how to short the screens out from the inside; it's troublesome, but it can be done. That's how we escaped the first time. Then they discovered we were gone, chased us, and _you_ gave us our second chance. We came here to the rendezvous. There were six here, including our elected leader. When we told the leader what had happened, she arranged for us to return, find you, and help you escape. It wasn't any problem to lift a key-box from the rack where they're usually kept."

* * * * *

I felt as though I had been put upon the end of a huge oscillating spring. I said, "The leader? She?"

"You'll meet her," he said. "After blastoff you'll meet her. Right now our problem is to slip in among those prisoners without being seen."

"Among the _prisoners_?"

"Haven't time to explain more. You'll have to trust us. Unless you want to stay here and have the Deacons hunt you till they find you."

He was right: wherever I was going, I had to go. I couldn't go back now. Ever. I said, "I trust you. Let's go."

Slipping in wasn't really difficult. There were only one or two guards for each group of prisoners, and they were looking for someone to escape, not join their flock. Some of the prisoners were dressed, some naked. Some looked bruised and beaten; some did not. It all depended on whether they had been questioned. They all looked dull-eyed, resigned. They paid remarkably little attention as we moved in among them, and stood there.

* * * * *

The guards began to call out orders presently and the groups shuffled forward, and then single lines moved up the ramp and into the spaceship. The thin man and his woman were still with me. "They don't bother to count," he whispered, "so we won't be noticed."

I wanted to ask him other questions, but we were divided into groups and they weren't in mine.

Minutes later I found myself in the vast hull, sitting on one of the tiers that hold the seats vertical when the ship is tail-based for blastoff. It was very dim here and I couldn't readily make out the faces of the people on the same tier with me.

A loudspeaker came to life; a deep, impersonal voice. "Fasten your webbings carefully!"

I did that and heard the rustling sounds about me as the others did it, too.

"Stand by for blastoff!"

There was a dead pause, then a sudden low throbbing roar and the feeling of life in the floor plates and the bulkheads. I felt the slightest weight of pressure against the seat. The seat began to tilt slightly.

Suddenly a soft voice on my left spoke: "_We're on our way. They can't stop us now, can they?_"

It was the same low, provocative woman's voice that I had heard in my dreams!

I whirled my head. I could see only the shape of flowing hair, no features. "Who are you?"

She laughed. "No wonder you don't recognize me. The natural voice is different than approved standard, isn't it? Listen. Do you remember this?" The head cocked to one side and a crisp, formal voice came out. "Information you desire is in Bank 29."

"Lara!" I said. I pushed toward her, but the webbing held me back.

"Yes. It's I. And we're together now and we'll have a long, long time to find out about each other. It's ten weeks to Mars."

* * * * *

I ran my hand over my forehead. "I don't get it. I don't get any of it. Your voice--I mean your real voice, not the standard one--I dreamed about it, and--"

"I know." I could see her nod. "It wasn't a dream, though. I _was_ talking to you. Each time. That was the way we planned it from the beginning."

"Talking to me? But--but _how_? Through the sleep-learner?"

"No, we'd never have been able to arrange that. It was through your identity tag, which would almost always be in contact with your skin when you slept. It has a microscopic electrical circuit, both between its metal halves and painted on its surface. The same principle as the sleep-learner, tactile induction, and, of course, a highly selective one-channel receiver. All I needed to do was put my transmitter on that same frequency."

I shook my head. "I follow, I guess, but I'm still baffled. Why all this? When did--"

"Wait for me to finish," she said. "We've been organized and underground, just as the Deacons suspect, for some time. One of our members worked on the identity tags and, when renumbering came about, it was a perfect opportunity to plant the receivers. We picked our people carefully. We picked doctors and hydroponic experts and chemists and rocket pilots--and we picked you because of your knowledge of space drive theory. Someday we'll go on to the stars; someday you'll help us do that. Anyway, all these people we have picked--or most of them--are joining us on Mars. There's where mankind will begin again while Northem and Southem sit upon earth and glare at each other across the equator and wait for war."

"But Mars--there's an equator there, too."

She laughed. "Northem and Southem prisoners there mingle all the time. There aren't enough guards to notice it, or stop it if they did notice it. There have even been hundreds of intermarriages."

"Marriages? You mean like the pre-atomics?"

"Exactly. But we'll get to that later. We needed you for our colony, only it wasn't likely that you'd infract all by yourself. You were too standard, too adjusted. We had to give you something to shake you out of it, to make you realize that the security of the State was not security, but slavery. And so one of our members in the renumbering bureau arranged for you to have that four letter word of yours for a name. One thing led to another, then, not always exactly as we'd planned it, but always in the same general direction. Our whole plan nearly failed when the Deacons nabbed you in the park. Fortunately, I'd come along to stow away on this trip, and I sent those others back after you."

"But what if I'd actually managed to get my name changed?"

* * * * *

The ship was swaying now, balanced on its rocket trail. The acceleration was increasing. The seat was swinging back. The roar was becoming louder.

"It was unlikely enough to take a chance on it. We felt at the very least you'd be kept on N/P status and then we could work on you some more until you infracted, and got sent to Marscol as a nonconform. Funny, that seems a terrible fate to most people. Actually, it's the only escape. From what I hear of Mars we'll like it there."

I was recovering a little now and I dared to say, "If you're there, too, I'll like it. I know that."

"Oh, you'll like other things. You'll like everything. And on Mars they'll call you by your present name if you wish, and no one will be at all shocked by it." There was a slight pause and then she said, "In fact, it's a very nice name. I--I wouldn't mind having it myself."

"Is that what the pre-atomics called a proposal?"

She laughed. "I'm not sure. But at least we have ten weeks to talk it over--"

And then the acceleration pressed hard and the gray curtain began to come, and I knew that when it was lifted we would be on our way through space. I thought in that moment of the name that had brought all this about--the unspeakable four letter word that no conformist would ever dare voice, or even think of; the word, the dangerous word inimical to all that the warring, efficient State meant and stood for.

The word, I realized, that eventually would destroy all that.

I dared to say it now. I spelled it out first, and then I pronounced it. Just loud enough for Lara to hear above the growing roar. "L-O-V-E," I said. "Love."

I heard Lara repeat it before the momentary blackout came.