Chapter V: Part 5

Quietly a cast of characters appeared. The play was presented in pantomime, its drama heightened by music and dance. Every move and pose had its traditional meaning. The all-female cast was also a tradition. Only the nudity of the performers was different, and that one fact subtly altered the effect of the play.

Through it all--the early scenes of man's frustrations and drudging labor, the spectacular fireworks and sound effects of the great war which climaxed the third act, the final scenes which depicted man's building of a new world underground and the gradual emergence of his dream of freedom from something unattainable to an immediate goal--Hendley's attention kept going back to the line of showgirls ringing the stage, specifically searching for the one who had seemed so familiar. He thought he saw her but in the dimmed spotlight could not be sure. Only in the triumphant dance number climaxing the play did these showgirls participate, functioning as a dancing chorus in the background. In the confusion of movement Hendley could not find the one he sought.

Applause greeted the end of the play. It was loud and warm, but Hendley had the feeling the audience's enthusiasm was as much for what it knew was coming as for the performance it had just seen. A steady buzz of excited comment continued long after the freedom players had exited, leaving only the original chorus of showgirls on the stage.

"What now?" Hendley asked.

"You'll see," Nik said with a grin. And he added, shoving a glass toward Hendley, "Here's that refill."

The murmur from the audience grew louder. A computer band, simulating the sounds of old-fashioned man-played instruments, raised a triumphant peal. Abruptly a single spotlight speared the center of the stage. A section of the floor slowly folded back, and into the spotlight rose a naked woman, aggressively feminine, her legs spread wide, her magnificent bosom high, her head thrown back to let long hair stream down over her shoulders. The light turned swiftly to blue, and the spontaneous audience applause turned into a roar.

Above the noise Nik cried, "Remarkable woman! I won her once! Tremendous!"

Startled, Hendley stared at him. "You _won_ her?"

Nik waited until the crowd's uproar had begun to subside. "In the drawing," he said then. "That's what those little white tags they wear are for. There's a filter over the tags, by the way--that's what screens out the colored rays. You have that ticket you got when we came into the theater? Well, there'll be a drawing. Winning tickets are matched to the girls. All of them. Red ones go first, then the green, the blue last." He grinned reminiscently. "That's really the part of the show that's special. Oh, the dancing and the rest are all right, and the thought-screen is interesting--that'll be starting up soon--but wait till the drawing!"

Hendley felt sick. His stomach stirred uneasily. He swallowed hard. A sad, enigmatic statement kept running through his head: "That's what I'm supposed to be." Beautiful, he thought. Selected because she was beautiful. Trained to please with her beauty. Trained, too, to simulate passion.

No, it was impossible! What he feared couldn't be true! He had drunk too much, and his mind was as unsettled as his body. The resemblance was superficial, deceptive, a trick of lighting.

But the sick fear could not be reasoned away.

A group dance number began. The woman painted in blue light was taller than the others, more blatantly sexual, dominant. Now she raised one arm, holding up a slender metal rod. Her wrist flicked. A string of white light danced across the stage like the lash of a whip. Where it snapped off a red dancer cringed, cowering, pantomiming fear. Or was she acting? Was the whiplash real?

Using her sting of light the blue woman drove the dancers robed in red and green light through their routine. Each girl stayed within her narrow frame of light--or rather, the cones of color nimbly followed the girls as if attached to them. Hendley tried to single out the girl tagged number 11. He kept losing her, searching, finding her again, afraid of what he would see, helpless to turn away.

For a brief instant she passed through the field of the materializer and was reproduced in the cylinder no more than twenty feet away. She turned her head, seeming to glance over her shoulder directly at Hendley. The slight gesture brought a stab of pain to his chest. She had tilted her head exactly that way toward him when he found her outside the Agricultural Research Center. No two women would have that precise balance of grace and reserve, that particular angle of the head in turning. He knew that dip of waist, that soft swell of breast, that slender column of neck--that hidden sadness.

ABC-331 looked into his eyes without seeing him, whirled and spun away.

Nik was talking. His voice seemed muffled, coming through a filter of numbness. "I suppose you're wondering why these women are brought here. You see, they found out long ago that there aren't enough women in the camps--there never are. Fewer make it here than men. The Organization knows why, I don't. Most of those who are here are Contracted. That doesn't always mean very much, but it adds to the shortage. Obviously Freemen couldn't be denied the singular pleasures women can give. So there's a fresh batch brought in every month to stock the PIB's, and there are the showgirls. They come once a week. There's something about showgirls, about having a woman a thousand other men have stared at and wanted...."

He paused. The pattern of the dance had changed. Under the lash of the blue woman's mysterious whip the green and red figures separated into matched pairs. The green, with their male face-masks, were bolder, more aggressive, threatening in attitude. The dancing red figures expressed in their movements a coquettish withdrawal, timidity, that peculiarly feminine blend of provocation and elusiveness.

And now the first flickering of light and motion showed on the giant thought-screen over the stage. The images became clearer, a sinuous mingling of red and green light, shaping to the forms of human bodies, writhing and twisting.

"Amazing thing, really," Nik said. "The thought-screen, I mean. I suppose the rest of it is pretty much what shows have always been, even in pre-Organization time. The female figure, dance, music, pantomime--they've always been basic ingredients of entertainment. The materializers aren't that special either. Just a more complex kind of viewscreen, bringing the stage closer to you. But the thought-screen, that's something else!"

"What does it do?" The meaning of the images on the giant screen was not yet clear. Hendley spoke painfully, almost against his will.

Nik seemed surprised. "You have peekies on the outside, don't you?"

"Yes. They let you create your own thought-pictures. But that's private. One, at most two people."

"Much the same concept, though. This is just vastly more sophisticated--and more effective. It doesn't mirror what's actually happening on the stage. It reflects the audience's reaction to it. I don't pretend to know how it's done, but the screen--or the computer complex directing it--records the impulses of all our thought waves, selects and synthesizes them. What comes out, though it's often a montage, is not one viewer's reaction, but the total reaction. Ah! You see? Those two dancers on the left--see them down on the stage? Now look at the screen!"

Hendley saw. The tempo of the dance had quickened, the pantomime of the dancers had become more daring. But the stage performance remained essentially suggestive. The version of it which appeared on the thought-screen was a blunt and strangely hideous extension of that suggestion into the realm of the obscene.

Hendley tore his gaze away from the screen.

"Unbelievable, huh?" Nik murmured. "I've sometimes wondered if it might all be a hoax." When Hendley glanced at him sharply the young Freeman shrugged. With an urbane smile he said, "Why not? Whatever it is, it's a remarkable machine. But it could simply be showing what a very clever computer _says_ the audience reaction would be. That would be much the same as showing the actual thoughts, wouldn't it? Who could tell the difference?"

Hendley closed his eyes. Any pleasure he might have found in the spectacle had long since vanished. But he could not shut his ears to the sensual rhythms of the music or erase the lurid images which danced in the darkness behind his eyelids. In the end he had to open his eyes--to seek out the willowy girl stained with crimson light, to torture himself with a glimpse of lips parted in a smile, a fleeting motion of long slim legs nimbly scissoring, a bobbing nest of short soft curls, now dyed from gold to red. He knew now why Ann had been evasive, and why she had run away. He had many answers now. What he did not know--and what continued to torment him--was whether or not everything that had happened between them, every sigh, every caress, had been no more than the dance on the stage--a pantomime of passion.

In the middle of a chord the music crashed to a stop. The dancers were motionless, frozen in various attitudes of pursuit and withdrawal, like figures on an urn. The audience, after an initial stir of talk and restless movement, became hushed, waiting. Slowly the woman in blue looked over her entourage. Her light-whip rose, whirled above her head, and struck across the stage. A kneeling figure, stung by the lash, obediently stood and walked to the center of the stage. She was the first girl who had appeared--her white tag bore the number 1. Around her the lights dimmed until there was only a single spotlight, fixing her in its bright red gaze. In the cylindrical materializer her beauty was imprisoned with startling realism. Her eyes and her lips smiled. Her head bent in sweet resignation.

Many times larger than life, the girl's image appeared on the giant screen directly over the stage. Above her head on the screen a number suddenly blazed in red light: Z11-3460. It blinked off, then on again. A woman's soft, caressing voice purred the number over the speaker system. From somewhere on the main floor came an excited shout. There were a few cheers, a sprinkling of laughter. But through most of the audience there rippled a sigh, as of held breath slowly released.

The lights went out briefly. When the spotlights stabbed on again, the girl in the center of the stage was gone. The dance took up as if it had never been interrupted. Hendley sank back onto his seat, unaware until then that he had half-risen. He felt limp, exhausted. And he could hear--he could feel--a change in the audience. It was quieter, abnormally still, betraying tense expectancy in the remark unmade, the weight unshifted, the glass untouched.

Hendley shook his head as if to break the spell. Deliberately he raised his own glass and drank. He knew he shouldn't. The dizziness had begun to return. He was passing the point of control. Watching the gyrations of the dance, the erotic version of it appearing in monstrous detail on the thought-screen, made his eyes ache, his head whirl. Knowing that Ann was a part of it brought a sting of anguish....

Crash! The music died, the movement on stage was arrested once more. Lights dimmed and a second girl took her place at stage center, a tall girl whose shapely contours were carved in provocative red shadows. Another ticket number stabbed its crimson message onto the screen above the stage. Another delighted yelp was heard, another general sigh.

Hendley's eyes sought the familiar outline of Ann's figure. Suddenly, as the dance resumed, she appeared in the materializer nearby, pausing with her arms extended in a graceful pose suggesting the beginning of flight. A green figure bent close to her, his hands reaching out....

Hendley turned to Nik. "Where do they go?" he demanded.

"You mean the winners?" Nik raised an eyebrow. "They're not allowed to take the girls into the camp, of course. There are some private rooms behind a wall off the garden--maybe you've noticed them. The girls are brought there through underground tunnels. To get in, you have to have a winning ticket. Why? Are you feeling lucky?"

"I have to talk to that one girl--number eleven."

"Plenty of time to talk," Nik grinned. "They stay all night. Well, you might be a winner at that. It's a long shot, but somebody has to win. Eleven, did you say? I haven't been paying her enough attention. Which--oh, yes! Hmmm. Kind of thin for my taste, but--"

"I don't want to be lucky," Hendley said harshly. "How do I get to that girl?"

Nik did not move and his expression did not seem to alter visibly. Yet his indolent manner dropped away in some mysterious fashion, as if a trick mirror which had been reflecting one image had subtly shifted to present another angle of vision from which the reflected image was quite different, although the features remained exactly the same.

"That would take some doing," the Freeman said.

"Could it be done?"

Nik pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Maybe."

"You've been here as long as anyone--or almost. If it could be brought off, you could do it."

"And what do I get out of it?"

Hendley took a deep breath. What could you offer a man who had everything, who had known complete freedom all his life? "If there was any way I could...." He fumbled desperately for a magic word, an unexpected gift. He had nothing to offer. Lamely he said, more to himself than to the watching Freeman, "I know her."

Suddenly Nik smiled. He was himself again, worldly wise, cynical, amused. "Why not?" he said. "If you hit the right man, you can buy anything with white chips. Maybe I could bring it off. So you'd get the girl and I'd get a few laughs. Why not?"

Hendley felt an overwhelming gratitude. "Thanks," he said. "I don't know how to--"

"Forget it. Anyway, all I said was we could try to bring it off. You can't fix the drawing, that's not the way to do it. We have to get lucky and hope the winner is a gambler." He rose quickly. "I'll have to dig up some chips, enough to look better than a naked showgirl. Haven't much time. You wait here until they're drawing number nine or ten. Then go downstairs. You'll find a back exit from the lobby behind the escalators. Wait for me in the garden near the gate in the high wall. You got that?"

"I've got it. Is there anything else I can do? After all, this is my idea--"

"Just try to keep from falling on your face," Nik said with a grin. "That girl might not be able to catch you. The rest just leave to me. I haven't found anything that interested me so much in a handful of moons."

With a sardonic wave of his hand he turned away. Hendley watched him thread his way along the aisle toward the nearest exit. Silence caught his attention. He swung back toward the stage. Another girl stood alone in the center spotlight, her head bent submissively. They all used the same pose, Hendley thought bitterly. They had all been taught well.

How easy it must have been for Ann to play her role!

He continued to stare down at the stage as the lottery went on. His eyes felt dry and grainy from staring. This, too, was a part of freedom, he thought. What did it prove? The worker classes served the free, assured them their pleasures. Had it always been the same, through all the misty centuries of pre-Organization time? Was this a better way simply because more people could hope to follow it? Was better merely a matter of numbers?

Or was it possible that pleasure was not pure--that a freedom synonymous with pleasure was not all?

* * * * *

The garden was dimly lighted. Unused to live trees and bushes, especially at night, Hendley had to steel himself against the impression that things moved in the deep shadows. Or was this an effect of all his drinking rather than the strangeness? He shook his head.

The gate in the high wall was guarded by a computer. The winning numbers flashed to the audience in the auditorium would simultaneously be fed to this computer outside, Hendley guessed. The computer would then automatically adjust to open the gate when the properly numbered tickets were presented. Hendley had been in the garden when the previous winner, holding a ticket for girl number 10, passed through the gate. Since then nothing had happened. The garden leading up to the wall was deserted. No sounds filtered into the garden from the auditorium.

The door behind him opened suddenly. A knife of light slashed across the lawn, rendering a shadowed clump of bushes innocent. A figure broke the slash of light. The door closed.

"Pulled it off," Nik said, his teeth gleaming in a grin. "I hope she's worth it. You'll find a row of separate units after you get beyond the gate. They're all numbered. She'll be in number eleven, of course. Same as her tag. Here's your ticket."

"How--how did you manage it?"

Nik shrugged. "No trouble. The winner had his Contracted with him in the theater, and she wasn't very happy about his good luck. They'll both be happier in the casino."

Hendley took the ticket. He had no words adequate to convey his thanks. "Forget it," Nik said. "Maybe I'll get a chance to see you before you leave tomorrow. If not...." He gave an offhand salute. "Freedom is all," he said. White teeth flashed.

He let himself back into the lobby of the Rec Hall, and Hendley was alone. For a moment he stared at the closed door, a little bewildered by the young Freeman's strange generosity. The memory of his earlier vague suspicions made him flush. He turned abruptly and strode across the garden.

The gate opened noiselessly to the signal of its electronic brain when the winning ticket was fed into a slot. Hendley faced a long row of small concrete units, each with a single door. There were no windows, but there were open air curtains between the horizontal wall line of each unit and its curving roof shell. The air curtain would keep out heat and cold, but it failed to smother all sounds. Walking along the path Hendley heard giggling laughter and small, muted, unidentifiable rustlings and murmurs. A small panel of light beside each door illuminated a number. He walked quickly in the shadow of the high wall until he came to the unit marked 11.

The room was a simple rectangle with a built-in bed, seat bench, and clothes rack. Its interior was dim, catching only the light from the night sky and the stars, visible through the arches of the air curtains at front and rear. There was a connecting door in the right wall. Hendley heard water running. He waited, his heart beating rapidly.

When the girl emerged from the washroom its light panel was behind her, throwing the slender contours of her body into sharp relief. The light began to fade automatically, controlled by the opening of the door. In a moment it disappeared. Hendley neither moved nor spoke. Had she recognized him? Or were her eyes still adjusting to the main room's dim light? He felt an absurd relief that her nude body bore no stain of red.

She took a sudden step forward, one hand reaching out. Halting, she seemed to shiver. "Oh, no!" she whispered. "No!"

Hendley's voice was harsh. "Yes, it's me."

"But how--?" She was bewildered. "What are you doing here? You're a 3-Dayman. You couldn't be here!"

Hendley laughed without humor. "No, I'm not a Freeman. I'm a visitor. Therapy. It was supposed to be good for my morale. I'm learning all about freedom." He stared at her deliberately. "You're one of the special pleasures I didn't know about."

She turned away, trying to cover herself with her hands and arms. The gesture was pathetic and appealing. His instinctive compassion angered him. "Why are you so modest now?" he demanded. "You didn't mind parading on that stage!"

"That was different. That's--part of my work."

"Work!"

She whirled. "Yes! What did you think it was? Fun? Maybe it's fun for you--for the people out there watching. I don't know about them. I don't even see them! It's just an assignment for me. It's what I have to do."

"You know about the men who come to these rooms--you see them!"

"Yes," she said, her voice dull and flat. "I know about them. Not just men. Some of the winners are women. And some of them are worse than the men."

He stepped forward quickly. Seizing her by a bare shoulder, he swung her around. His hand withdrew as if burned by the warm flesh. "Why do you do it?" he cried, "In the name of the Organization, why?"

Her reply was caustic. "In the name of the Organization. Why else would I do it?"

"What does that mean?"

"Did you have any choice about being an architect? No, of course not!" Her voice gained strength as she saw the shot strike home. "You were chosen. That's what you were suited for. It was all decided for you, wasn't it? The tests when you were in school, isolation of your aptitudes, more tests, special training--_they_ made you an architect. Did you have anything at all to say about it? Did you ever wish you were something else?"

"That's different!"

"What's different about it? It's all right for them to make you an architect, but it's not all right for them to make me what I am. Is that it? You have your aptitudes. I have these!" She threw her arms back. The movement thrust her high, full breasts forward. She went on defiantly. "I have long legs and I'm athletic and I can dance. And I have a pretty face. I was picked out when I was ten years old. Every day since then I've done the right exercises and eaten the right foods and had the right skin creams massaged into me. Every day! Some of the girls are lucky. They stop growing too soon, or they get dumpy or their skin ages too quickly, or they just don't turn out to be as pretty as they seemed in the beginning. They're transferred out of our section. I wasn't." Her eyes met Hendley's directly. "I'm still a 5-Daygirl. Do you know what we do on four of those days? We work at making ourselves beautiful. That's all. That's what we're for. The fifth day we go out--on assignment."

Her eyes and her voice were challenging, but her words demanded understanding, even pity. Hendley wanted to give them to her, but his own pain pushed and shoved him into a bitter accusation. "What were you doing that day we were together in the sun--practicing? I thought that meant as much to you as it did to me! I thought we'd found something together. I should have known when I found you'd lied to me--when you ran away--that it was all a pretense with you. But I couldn't have guessed that it was just--exercise!"

"Oh, Hendley, Hendley!" Her eyes would no longer focus on his. Their lashes were dark, heavy, and wet. "How could I expect you to understand? Don't you know that day was different? To have someone want me--me, not just a body that other men have gaped at, not just a beautiful ornament, not a prize in a lottery! I never expected to have that. It was wonderful. I'll never forget it--no matter what you think or feel now. But I knew it couldn't go on. We're watched all the time. It was just luck that I was able to sneak away and meet you that one day in the museum. Even then I was late getting back, and I had to make up a story. I got only two days' debit. But we would have been caught if we'd done it again. You'd have been punished, and I was afraid you'd wish you'd never seen me. I didn't want that. I wanted you to remember the way it was that afternoon--"

Her voice broke. She pushed swiftly past Hendley, stumbling blindly toward the bed. Her knees struck the edge of the plastifoam layer and she fell forward face down onto the bed. Her body shook, and her fingers dug into the covering. Her sobs were muffled.

Slowly Hendley's anger drained out of him. He felt dry, exhausted, like eyes empty of their tears. Ann's slim figure seemed smaller lying crumpled on the bed. Her nakedness made her seem merely vulnerable, exposed to abuse and pain and shame. He could not shake out of his mind the image of her on the stage--and especially the projection of the audience's reaction on the huge thought-screen--but she was not to blame. He should have known that, just as he should have known that the honesty of her surrender on the warm sand of the surface outside the museum could not have been simulated.

The rest didn't matter, he thought. She hadn't chosen a way of life for herself. Only that afternoon had she chosen freely.

Crossing the room, he stood over the bed looking down at her. The Organization! he thought savagely. The efficient world of machines, coldly manipulating lives, juggling people as if they were no more than the numbers in which the machines dealt.

He looked down at ABC-331. How much more than a set of numbers she was! He sat beside her. His hand touched a smooth white shoulder. This time he did not withdraw the touch, turning it into a caress. "I'm sorry," he said gently. "Can you forget what I said just now? It was the surprise--the shock of seeing you on that stage. All that's over. Can we go back?"

For a while she didn't move, but she ceased to cry. Her body no longer trembled.

"You're beautiful," he said. "I know you don't like to hear that, but you are. I've never seen anyone like you. You're not just beautiful the way a statue is beautiful. It's a different quality--something soft and warm inside you that shows through, that gives the other things"--he smiled--"a special beauty. It makes them _mean_ something." With a gentle pressure of his hand he rolled her onto her back. Her eyes, dark with lingering tears, stared up at him, huge in her pale face. In the dim light he could not see their color, but he remembered fans of brown laced with green flecks. "You're lovely in the way a computer measures loveliness, too. I can see why you were singled out to do--what you have to do. But being beautiful isn't just having a certain shape or size or texture...." His fingers brushed the swell of her breast and moved down to trace the deep cut of her waist. Roughly, because suddenly he wanted her, he said, "Your beauty is alive. It's real. That's like the difference between a piece of plastic with wires woven through it, and another that looks similar but has a live current that makes it into a glowing light."

"Oh, Hendley," she whispered. Her hands reached up to pull him down beside her. "I never wanted to be beautiful before! If only I didn't have to--"

"Shhh!" He laid a finger across her lips. "Don't say it. We'll find a way out for you--for us. We're going to be together."

"But you're here--you're free!"

"No. Only for tonight." Quickly he sketched the events that had brought him to the camp after his day of rebellion. At the end he added, "So you see, you're partly responsible for my being here. We have to stick together."

"It's too dangerous!"

"Maybe it's dangerous. Nothing could be _too_ dangerous."

Impulsively she hugged him. "Careful," he warned her with a nervous laugh, "Women have been attacked for less."

"Really?" She stretched herself luxuriously. "You're frightening me...."

With an effort he moved a few inches away from her. He spoke firmly. "We have too much to talk about first. Tomorrow I'll be going back. We have to decide what we're going to do."

"What can we do?" Her tone was wistful, but without real hope. "Once you asked me what I thought about the Merger. I guess it meant something to you. It doesn't to me. Whether there's one big Organization, or two or twelve, doesn't make any difference. Nothing changes."

Hendley sensed the conviction behind her words, but he wouldn't accept their hopelessness. Stubbornly he insisted, "We have to do something. Where can we meet? At your room? Mine?"

"No."

"The Historical Museum then. That will do for now. Maybe we can find a better place later. If you're not sure when you can get away, I'll go there every day I can--we'll have to be more careful now, I'll have to report for work when scheduled--and I'll wait for you. Come when you can. Four o'clock? Is that a good time?"

"It's no use, Hendley."

"Four o'clock?"

She could not fight him. "All right," she said. "But I don't know what day--"

"Whenever you can," he said. "We'll work it out. And meanwhile I'll do some thinking. There has to be a way to have your status changed or--or something."

She did not answer, but one of her hands found his and squeezed. "It doesn't really matter," she said softly. "Not now."

"Freedom isn't everything," he said, half to himself. "I've found that out. When I had the chance to come here to the Freeman Camp, I thought I'd find an answer that made the whole Organization worth while. Now I'm not so sure."

ABC-331 smiled. It was a woman's smile at the man she loves--tender, amused, indulgent. "Did you really believe that freedom was all?"

"It's what everyone works for, what everyone wants."

"Not everyone. Do you think the really top men want to come here? This is for the rest of the world--for the workers, people like you and me. This is to keep everyone happy, to make them think they have something to work for." Ann spoke simply, directly, her vision unclouded, her tone matter-of-fact. "The top men, the ones you never see or hear about, don't come to Freeman Camps. They have all the freedom they want outside. This isn't what they dream about."

"What _do_ they want?"

She shrugged. "Power, I suppose. Other things. But not this."

"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.