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Title: The sentinel stars

Author: Louis Charbonneau

Release Date: June 12, 2023 [eBook #70962]

Language: English

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading
         Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from
         images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SENTINEL STARS ***





                          THE SENTINEL STARS

                       A NOVEL OF THE FUTURE BY
                           LOUIS CHARBONNEAU

      [Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any
  evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

                             With love to
                            Helen and Bruce




                                TRH-247


That meant he was the two-hundred-and-forty-seventh citizen with the
name Thomas Robert Hendley. His name, of course, was never used. The
Organization found numbers more efficient than names.

Only, TRH-247 wasn't any other citizen. He was himself, different from
anyone else, and he had to do something about it.

So he quit work; smuggled himself into the forbidden pleasures of a
Freeman Camp; found boredom and nonidentity there, too; committed
the ultimate rebellion, using a false number; and got the ultimate
punishment--banishment.

He took the girl with him, for her crime was equal to his. The only
problem he had to face now was--survival!

A PROPHETIC NOVEL OF AN EASILY FORECAST FUTURE WHEN A CITIZEN HAD TO
FIT THE MACHINE--OR PERISH....

       *       *       *       *       *

THE SENTINEL STARS
_A Bantam Book / published November 1963_

_Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 63-19052_
_© Copyright, 1963, by Louis Charbonneau._
_Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada._

_Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc. Its trade-mark,
consisting of the words "Bantam Books" and the portrayal of a
bantam, is registered in the United States Patent Office and in other
countries. Marca Registrada. Patented in the United States of America.
Bantam Books, Inc., 271 Madison Ave., New York 16, N. Y._

       *       *       *       *       *




                                   1


The morning after. In the underground streets and the wide arcades
lined with shops, curling colored streamers rustle under the feet of
night workers hurrying home to their rooms. Automatic street cleaners
snuffle at plastic cups and empty bottles strewn outside of vending
bars and recreation halls--snuffle like some curious animal, suck,
devour and move on, their fat wheels whispering on the pavement.
Marquees overhead still wink with last night's slogans:

                       ONE FOR ALL--ALL FOR ONE!
                          WORLD HAILS MERGER!

The Merger is complete. East is West, and black is white. Now the talk
can cease. Now the viewscreens, the discussion forums, the recreation
hours, the coffee debates, the public opinion polls, the conversations
of lovers can turn to other things.

The Organization is One. Freedom is all.

       *       *       *       *       *

Rebellion can be a bomb or a cry of pain, a shout of defiance or a
mute, sullen face.

Or a man lying in bed, motionless.

The building in which TRH-247 lay was a circle of apartments bounding
the Architectural Center, where he worked, like the ring around
Saturn. Its outer façade was windowless, a curving face of concrete
thirty stories high. The windowed inner circle looked across a broad
courtyard toward the concentration of offices in the Center. Moving
walks joined the residential ring to its activity core like spokes in a
wheel. Because of the blind outer wall, common to all buildings in the
Organization, the sun was visible to those living and working in the
Center for only a brief period at midday.

The sunrise belonged to the Free.

Yet, through the unease of his hangover, TRH-247 was aware of the
coming of day. Without opening his eyes he had been conscious of the
gradual dilution of the room's darkness into gray, of the pink glow
creeping from the corners of the room to spread up the walls, and at
last of the splendid aurora of brightness climbing the east wall. Had
he been asleep, he would have been gently conditioned to wakefulness by
the artificial dawn.

Feeling the weight of light and warmth harsh upon his lids, he waited
for the bird call which came every morning at precisely six o'clock. In
spite of the fact that he was anticipating it, the tuneful whistle made
him start. His eyes flew open. He felt a slow draining away of tension.

The psychology of it was wrong, he thought. Anything as naturally
unpleasant as an alarm to wake you should be simply and directly
jarring. The bird song, monotonously cheerful every morning, was
actually a depressant.

He wondered if a real bird singing would have the same effect.

The question was idle, and he wasn't sure why it had occurred to him.
But a great many such speculations, equally idle, had been disturbing
him lately. All, he supposed, because of the Merger.

The Merger. His mind rejected the word like an assembly machine
spitting out a defective part. In a deliberate effort to detour that
line of thought he nudged the button which turned on the viewscreen
set into the south wall. It brought into focus a picture of a parklike
setting in the early morning, a green glade drenched in sunlight. The
camera's eye moved close to a cluster of flowers and focused sharply
on a single red rose glistening with dew. Beyond the trembling rose,
blurred but distinguishable, two naked figures appeared, running. A
man and a woman. His hands caught her from behind and the pair tumbled
together onto the wet grass. A shrill peal of woman's laughter rang.
The background music soared to a joyous crescendo, and the camera
turned discreetly away to embrace the sky, vaulting in a breathless
leap from horizon to horizon.

The final chord of music crashed. The picture faded out abruptly. An
announcer appeared, smiling cheerfully. "Good morning, you late and
early viewers! You have just seen 'Tender Shoots,' a Freedom Play
written by...."

TRH-247 clicked off the sound. He turned impatiently from the screen
to stare at the blankness of the ceiling. Always the same fadeout, he
thought. The same idyllic setting, the same sensuous appeal, the same
bronzed hero and heroine finding joy unconfined and forever after in a
Freeman Camp. Why not? It was society's dream. It had always been his
own. What was wrong with it now? Or with him?

He shook his head angrily, as if the gesture would help him shrug off
his restlessness. "Thomas Robert Hendley," he said aloud, "you should
get up."

The habit was recent--not talking to himself, a practice so old he
found it perfectly natural, but the indulgence of thinking of himself
in the old-fashioned names instead of his official designation. For
some reason he found it strangely pleasing to think of himself as
Thomas Robert Hendley. It didn't matter that there had been, in the
history of the Organization, two hundred and forty-six other Thomas
Robert Hendleys. None of them had his particular set of brown eyes, his
hard-to-comb black hair, his six feet of angular frame, his aches, his
memories, his four inches of childhood scar on his right forearm, his
restless dreams, his hopes, his mind.

They weren't _him_.

Frowning, Hendley continued to stare at the ceiling. He knew that he
barely had time to bathe, wipe off his beard, dress, eat, and still
get to work on time, even though his office was less than five minutes
away and he was not due until seven. He moved slowly in the mornings.
He couldn't gulp down his breakfast, and he liked to linger over his
coffee and his first cigarette. Still he did not move.

Unwanted, a trickle of memories sifted into his mind. Fragments of the
previous day's celebration. People shouting, drinking, dancing. The
whole city a bobbing, swirling sea of color, noise, confusion. Joy,
joy--and one unsmiling mouth, one pair of sober eyes, one arm unraised
in salute. His.

Well, he had taken care of the sober eyes. He had got drunk with the
rest of them. And he had still felt alone, apart.

All along he had felt out of it--through all the weeks of endless
news coverage on the home and public viewscreens, the interminable
debates at work, the hotly argued discussion forums. No one had
talked of anything else. And there had been a strange intensity in
the endless great debate, which often erupted into angry words and
shaking fists and red faces, as if everyone sensed a significance in
this last Merger, a special importance that was neither voiced nor even
consciously realized.

Once it had been voiced: Hendley remembered one discussion forum for
his group a week before. He had been sitting between RED-498, his
Assigned, the woman he was soon to contract with, and a short, fat man
in the yellow coverall of a 2-Dayman. The round man had constantly
been rising to demand the floor, grabbing his seat mike and shouting
so loudly that his words over the loudspeaker were distorted and often
incomprehensible. His round, full face had a squinty look, the triangle
of eyes and nose being squeezed close together like a cluster of dots
in the center of a circle. Even his eyebrows added to the effect--blond
tufts of hair thick next to the bridge of his nose but disappearing as
they fanned out. Below this concentration, a small red mouth pursed
angrily.

"They just don't remember," he complained to Hendley. "They don't
remember!"

He jumped up as another speaker finished. "Now listen!" he cried.
"Think a minute. Just think! What is it that has made this Organization
great? It's growth, that's what it is. Being big enough to do more
things for more people, and do them better! What did we have before?
I'll tell you what we had! A lot of little organizations, all
squabbling among themselves, and the worker caught in the middle. There
weren't any Freeman Camps then. There wasn't any chance for a man to
get his tax debt paid off, not a chance in the world. Now we all have
that chance, every one of us. _That's_ what's important!"

The fat man sat down, breathing hard as if he had been running. He
nodded with emphatic triumph at Hendley and RED-498. "This Merger is
the greatest thing that could happen," he declared. "You'll see if it
isn't!"

Others spoke. A tall, broad-shouldered man in the respected beige
coverall of a 1-Dayman, adorned with the stitched emblem of an athlete,
rose to deliver a speech which was quickly diverted from the Merger
to the virtues of competitive sports as one of the Organization's
finest forms of recreation. A plaintive voice wondered if maybe the
Organization wasn't just getting so big that it oughtn't to get bigger.
A woman with the calm, crisp voice of an intellectual pointed out that
the Eastern and Western Organizations had for many years been moving
steadily toward the Merger--had actually been merged in innumerable
ways, not the least of which was the Executive Exchange Program, of
which she could speak personally as one who had been proud to work for
a year in the Eastern society. And there was one voice from the back of
the hall, from someone who remained seated so that Hendley could not
see him, whose words made Hendley stiffen and listen attentively.

"What we're trying to do," the unknown man said, "is to pretend that
history never was. We're saying it doesn't mean anything to be born a
Westerner. Maybe it's right that we should forget that our ancestors
fought against the East, and a lot of them died to make sure we
wouldn't all be swallowed up. But that doesn't mean we should let
ourselves get swallowed up now...."

The fat man beside Hendley had growled with anger. Even RED-498 had
been indignant, her ordinarily placid face flushed. "That's silly!" she
had cried. "Tell him, TR! Tell him!"

But Hendley had remained silent. The unseen speaker's words had touched
a sensitive nerve. We shouldn't let ourselves get swallowed up. By
what? What difference did it make to the bottom of the mountain when
the banks of snow shifted on a peak perpetually shrouded by clouds? In
its immediate effects that's all the Merger really meant--a reshuffling
of men at the top. Down at the bottom you wouldn't feel it. You would
go on eating the same food, catching the same copter or sidewalk,
pushing the same buttons, paying off the same tax debt. Nothing would
change.

Hendley had left that meeting deeply disturbed. When RED-498 somewhat
surprisingly took the initiative in suggesting that they visit a nearby
Public Intercourse Booth for the weekly hour allowed to Assigned, he
had pleaded fatigue. Back in his room alone, unaccountably tired, he
had drifted into and out of the fringes of uneasy sleep. He could
recall thinking that they were taking away the last symbol of personal
identity. Everything was to be reduced to One, like those ancient
religions in which man strove to lose himself completely in his God
and be One with Him. But the new god was one vast, all-encompassing,
impersonal Organization.

At last sleep had come. And with it, from some deep recess of his mind,
emerged a scene from the old world before the Organization, a world
preserved on flickering films in the Historical Museum, a world where
men once walked freely on the shores of a great sea. In the mysterious
logic of the dream, it seemed quite natural for TRH-247 to be there,
walking on a wide sandy beach, white under a brilliant sun by a blue
sea. In the distance there was another distinct beach, and beyond that
another--individual crescents of sand succeeding one another. But
there were no people. He was alone. He ran in the wet sand close to
the water, feeling its coolness and firmness. He ran so fast that his
feet hardly seemed to touch, and his heart pounded with exhilaration.
Coming to the end of the curving beach, he stopped. And as he stood
there watching, the sand moved, lapping outward like the waves of the
sea, reaching toward the next beach. And that golden crescent in turn
expanded. Hendley felt a nameless terror. He turned and raced back
along the shoreline. But at the opposite end the beaches were already
meeting, hungry fingers of sand interlacing like lovers' hands. Staring
into the distance, Hendley saw that everywhere the sands were flowing
into each other, pushing back inland, filling every crevice, covering
every footprint, burying every stone, until at last he could see no
marking, no line of difference, no beginning or end. And he knew that
all of the beaches of the world had merged into one. His heart filled
his chest with a painful drumming. Looking wildly all around him, he
saw with terrifying clarity that the area where he stood was no longer
like a beach at all. There was no beach, nothing anywhere but a great
empty desert bordering the sea....

       *       *       *       *       *

It was past 6:40 in the morning. TRH-247 lay in bed staring at the
ceiling. If he got up now, he thought, if he did without a shower,
without breakfast or coffee, he could still be at his drafting board on
time.

And something would have ended.

How did you rebel? How did you protest against a system that knew you
only as a number? How could you defy a vast network of computers that
knew what you were going to do before you did it--knew, and saw your
defiance merely as an equation to be speedily solved. How did you
change directions on a one-way street?

In his own work, architecture, when perfection left a residue of
discontent you introduced a flaw. You broke one of the rules. And
maybe what you ended up with would be better than the perfect thing,
in its flaw as flawless as an artist's distortion of the world to his
own image of it. Hendley had done it himself, taking pure harmony and
proportion of form and trying to make it individual. He had....

"No," he muttered aloud. "You only pushed a button."

For if one line could be altered, the master computer in the basement
of the Architectural Center had already worked out the six hundred and
sixty-eight ways in which that single change could be made without
weakening the resulting structure. The Organization encouraged that
kind of individuality. It wasn't originality at all.

Yet the principle was valid. You had to break one of the rules. You had
to get out of step.

And there was a way. Work was the foundation of the Organization--the
work day, the work hour, the work minute. This was the basic commodity,
the medium of exchange, the measure of social status. Work to pay
off your tax debt. Work to climb the rungs on the ladder that led to
freedom.

Simply lying there, without lifting a hand, he could create a flaw.




                                   2


About ten o'clock that morning TRH-247 stood on an underground
pedestrian ramp watching the crowds flow past him--shoppers, tourists,
workers, going and coming, stepping with the ease of long habit from
the slow to the fast strips of the moving sidewalks. All the faces were
different, Hendley thought. He was less than a five-minute rise from
the Architectural Center, but it was quite probable that he had never
once seen any of these faces before. These people might live in the
same building, eat from the same venders, visit the same Rec halls,
even work at the Center. But under the carefully staggered schedules
in the structure of the Organization's work pattern, schedules which
enabled 32,000,000 people in this particular City No. 9 to live in a
circumscribed area without trampling one another underfoot, the chances
were good that none of these people had ever crossed Hendley's path
before. Simply because he had never been in this spot at this hour on
this day of the week.

Hendley was a 3-Dayman. His identifying coverall was blue. He worked on
Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays except during his assigned vacation
month, when he customarily used his travel pass to visit one of the
tourist recreation centers in another of the major cities. It was
unthinkable that his vacation time would find him this close to home,
and it was equally unlikely that he would be there on any of his four
free days of the week, for even these days were quite taken up with
the designated periods of recreation, education, physical therapy and
discussion. In fact, Hendley was experiencing the rare sense of freedom
which came from having nothing to do.

This was what it must be like in the Freeman Camps, he reflected--seven
days a week to enjoy the luxury of complete choice, of having each day
stretch before you like a blank sheet of paper onto which you could
dictate absolutely anything you wanted.

Exhilarated by the freshness of the moment, he stared in fascination at
the passing faces. It was like trying to study the waves of the sea.
They dissolved even as you glanced at them and were instantly replaced
by others. He began to feel a little dizzy from the effort of isolating
the moving figures. You could only know a wave, he thought, know its
form and strength and motion, by riding it.

He stepped onto the slow strip of the sidewalk.

Instantly the faces which had been streaming past him were arrested.
He studied the man standing closest to him. He had Eastern blood, to
judge by the Oriental caste of his features, the thick shock of black
hair, the full upper eyelids. Hendley suspected that he caught the
reflection of perma-lenses coating the dark eyes. The stranger wore a
green coverall over a small, wiry body. A commissary worker, Hendley
guessed, on an eleven to seven day schedule, going to work. Or a finish
carpenter, skilled in manipulating the buttons which caused graceful
designs to be carved in plastic and metal, on his way home from a two
until ten morning shift. Middle-aged, with an unusual Eastern name that
would have a low number after the initials. Devoted to his Assigned,
the father of a brood of black-haired children, perhaps a boy to
inherit his craft.

This latter fancy evaporated. The stranger wore green. A finish
carpenter would be further advanced than a 4-Dayman, would be closer to
paying off his tax debt.

That was one of the troubles with the color designation of the
universal coverall, Hendley thought. It instantly established status.
It explained the way the Easterner's black eyes kept flicking forward
with an expression of mingled respect and envy toward the beige
coverall of a man several steps ahead--a tall, confident-looking man
with carefully combed gray hair that matched the gray sleeve emblem
identifying him as being in Administration.

Beige. A 1-Dayman. One step away from Freeman status. Son of a
successful father, undoubtedly also an Organization official, who had
passed on only a small tax debt to his fortunate son. Within a few
years his debt to the Organization would be paid off. He would be free
to enjoy the lifetime privileges of a Freeman Camp.

Hendley felt a twinge of--was it merely envy?

A flash of red caught his eye, speeding past him on the rapid sidewalk
strip. On impulse he stepped to the side of the slow lane and made the
short jump to the faster strip, using the standard technique of a few
quick running steps before leaping. The blur of red he had glimpsed was
a good distance ahead of him by the time he had completed the maneuver.
But the red figure was standing motionless on the speeding walk. By
threading his way forward through the crowd, Hendley was able to narrow
the gap.

He stopped when he was ten feet behind the girl.

His first fleeting impression was confirmed. The red coverall shaped
itself to her body under the gentle pressure of the air currents
as she rode. Hendley couldn't help contrasting the figure of his
Assigned--tending already toward plumpness, sturdy of calf and thigh,
heavy of neck--with the slender grace of the girl in red. Her hips
were round, but they flowed inward to a narrow waist. Below, her legs
were long and straight; above, her back was a supple curve, her neck a
beautifully feminine column of white. Her hair was gold, cropped close
to the nape of her neck.

Hendley moved two steps closer. He wanted to see her face. Would it
match the sensitivity of her body? Would it be fine of feature, vivid
and alive? Or would her body's promise be blunted by coarseness in her
face?

It seemed more important than it should have been. It was as if
the girl was part of this morning's freshness, its sense of escape
from--something. He didn't want her eyes to be vacant or stupid or
self-satisfied. He wanted her mouth to be neither prim nor slack,
neither sullen nor fixed in an empty smile.

Another step brought him to her side. For a moment he didn't turn his
head. He stared forward, the rushing air cool against his eyes, his
neck growing stiff with the effort of remaining still. Then he looked
at her.

Her eyes were a warm brown with flecks of green. They were full on
him, as if she too had been staring. They were neither appraising nor
aloof--but they weren't empty. They seemed to be waiting, as he had
been waiting. He felt his heart begin to labor. You are searching too,
he thought. You are hoping for something different.

In the long moment while their eyes held, it seemed to him that the
soft, wide curve of her lips began to bend upward at one corner in a
tentative smile. He wanted to speak but hesitated.

Then she was gone. Frantically he looked back over his shoulder. He was
in time to see her nimbly adjusting her forward movement to the pace of
the slow lane. Before Hendley had time to move she was stepping onto an
off-ramp, already well behind him.

Damn! He jumped recklessly from the fast strip. He had been so absorbed
that her quick action had caught him by surprise. In his haste he
failed to take the few running steps that would have countered the
sudden braking when his feet hit the skidproof surface of the slow
lane. His shoes caught and he plunged headlong.

He skidded face down on the sidewalk. Someone was laughing. A hand
gripped him under the armpit to haul him to his feet. A black-browed
face grinned into his.

"When did you learn to ride the walks?" the man jibed. "You'll never
live to be a Freeman that way!"

Hendley grunted in shamefaced appreciation for the help. He felt
embarrassed and angry with himself. The laughter did not annoy him.
You had to expect that if you took a spill. Knowing how to gauge the
sidewalks was as basic as walking. You couldn't expect sympathy when
you forgot. What angered him most of all was the possibility that the
girl in red had seen him fall.

He alighted at the next off-ramp. On the preceding incline almost a
hundred yards away, a steady stream of people flowed out to the street
and spilled into the torrent of pedestrians there. It was impossible to
pick out the girl. Her bright coverall was now a disguise rather than
a beacon. Red, the designation of the 5-Dayman, was the most common
color. It suddenly seemed as if the whole street was splotched with red.

He hurried back, astonished at the sharpness of his disappointment.
There had been something about the girl--something more than the beauty
of her face or the curving suppleness of her body--that had made him
want to know her. Or had he imagined a reflection in her eyes of his
own discontent, his own yearning?

The street was lined with the Organization's bewildering variety
of shops, service outlets, offices, vending cafes, entertainment
centers. Crowded arcades tunneled under one of the great cylindrical
work centers. Nearby a series of escalators trundled down to the tube
station on the next level. Hendley heard the rumble of a departing
train.

She could have gone anywhere. Even if she had entered one of the nearby
shops or office buildings, even if he had known which one, he would
have had little chance of finding her. He could recall no emblem on her
coverall that would suggest where she worked or what she did.

He stopped at the foot of the ramp where the girl had disappeared. It
was hopeless. An accidental collision of two specks in an interminable
dust storm of people, almost instantly blown apart. What were the odds
against another....

She was standing in the arched entry of a building, staring at him. As
he pushed his way toward her she started to turn, averting her gaze,
taking one step as if about to leave. The motion was arrested, and she
seemed to be suspended there, poised on the verge of flight. She didn't
move until he spoke.

"I was afraid I'd lost you."

"Were you?"

"Why did you try to get away?"

"I don't know what you mean. I work here."

Hendley glanced at the sign over the doors: AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH
CENTER. Above them, above the barren crust of the earth, another
eyeless concrete cylinder thrust upward toward the sky like a raised
fist.

"You're working today?" he asked.

She was studying him now. "Yes."

It was strange, he thought, how much was already understood between
them, how much had no need to be said.

"When can we meet?"

"I--that wouldn't be wise."

"When?" he demanded. "This afternoon? Tonight?"

"No, no." She licked her lips nervously. "I'm late. I have to go.
Please--we're not of the same status. There's no use--we'd be seen."

His hand went out quickly to grip her arm, and she flinched sharply.
His fingers held her, tight on the soft flesh under the coarse red
fabric. "Don't you want to see me again?"

She glanced anxiously toward the doors of the building, as if afraid
that an Inspector might be watching them. "That doesn't have anything
to do with it. It--it's impossible." Then she seemed to wilt, her
weight sagging against his supporting hand. "Yes," she said helplessly,
"I do want to see you."

"What time? When are you free?"

She hesitated. "Four o'clock this afternoon. But--"

He had already been casting about for a place. "The Historical Museum,"
he said quickly. "Main floor. As soon as you can make it after four. Do
you know where that is?"

She nodded. There was wonder in her face, crowding out the tension of
worry. "What's your name?" she asked.

Automatically he started to give his official identity. "TRH--" He
broke off. "Hendley," he said abruptly. "Call me Hendley."

His hand slid down her arm to examine the identity disc on her
bracelet. Her number was ABC-331. He smiled, for the combination of
letters was rare. "What does the 'A' stand for?"

Startled, she stared at him for a moment before answering. "Ann," she
murmured. "But nobody ever--"

"I know. That's why I want to call you Ann."

Their eyes held for several seconds. He could feel the pulse beating
in her wrist. Her red lips were parted in an expression of surprise.
Suddenly she pulled her hand free.

"I have to go," she said. Whirling, she ran toward the doors of the
Research Center.

"Four o'clock," he called after her.

But she didn't look back.

       *       *       *       *       *

For several minutes after the girl had disappeared, TRH-247 lingered
near the entry to the building, reluctant to leave. Excitement made his
skin prickle and tighten sensitively. Ann, he thought. Her voice was
soft, light, musical, her wrist so slim his fingers had overlapped when
he'd held it. Shadows enlarged her eyes, and fear, too. She was afraid,
but she would meet him. She wanted to.

Across the way from the Research Center there was a sidewalk vender
with a cluster of tables. He charged a cup of coffee, showing his
identity disc to the machine to be photographed, and sat at one of the
small tables.

Why had he been attracted to her so quickly? Why this keen
anticipation? Was it just because she was pretty? He didn't think so.
And it was not the simple need of sex. Organization knows, RED-498 was
willing enough, and the once-a-week hour they were allotted in one of
the PIB's had always seemed satisfactory.

But only that, he corrected himself. A habit, a routine like the
discussion forums and the sports and the therapy hours. Satisfactory,
but never exciting.

Perhaps it was the fact that he had found the girl in red himself.
RED-498 had been selected for him almost a year before by the Marital
Contract Computer. His complete dossier had been fed into the computer.
The process of choosing an appropriate partner for the contract
from all the women available in City No. 9 of the proper age, size,
intelligence, and personality traits, weighing also such factors of
compatibility as the size of the tax debt carried by the woman and the
man, had taken the computer exactly thirty-two seconds.

It surprised Hendley a little to realize that he felt no guilt, no
sense of betrayal of RED-498. The reason was simple. There was no
emotional involvement between them--only a comfortable arrangement. She
was passive by nature, casually accepting their impending contract.
The computer had selected them for each other, and it would never have
occurred to her to question or approve its judgment. With a feeling
of chagrin, Hendley realized that, were he to disappear, his Assigned
would experience no more than a brief period of concern, which would
end as soon as the computer selected a more dependable partner for her.

There ought to be more between a man and a woman, he thought--something
more than the body's casual hunger, more than good will, more than the
careful balance of factors weighed by a computer.

And maybe he had found it.

He finished his coffee. He had been sitting at the table by the vender
for no more than ten minutes. When he glanced across the way at the
Research Center, idly wondering what ABC-331 did there, he saw her. She
was standing at the fringe of the entryway, peering up and down the
street with an air unmistakably furtive. Hendley jumped to his feet and
started toward her. She had not seen him. Before he could fight his way
through the mass of pedestrians between them, the girl slipped into the
crowd, walking rapidly.

Hendley reached the entry where she had stood a moment before. She was
nowhere in sight.

       *       *       *       *       *

For an hour Hendley wandered the area where the girl in red had
vanished. A dozen times he thought that he glimpsed her face in a crowd
inside a shop or across a street or on one of the overhead walks. Each
time he was mistaken.

He tried to tell himself that her actions didn't mean that she had
lied. Perhaps she'd been sent on an errand. For all he knew her job
with the Research Center might be as a messenger, who would enter
and leave the building a dozen times during the day. But he couldn't
shake the impression that she had been looking for _him_ when she
emerged--looking anxiously, afraid that he might still be there.

His pleasure in the day's defiant freedom was gone. It seemed pointless
to wander the streets. The time that had stretched before him like a
blank sheet of paper now seemed merely empty, the sense of freedom a
futile gesture. What had he hoped to gain? Surely he had known from the
beginning of the day that, sooner or later, he would have to return to
his room, to the only life he knew, to the inevitable reckoning that
waited for him.

A flashing marquee caught his eye. SEE THE INTERIOR OF A FREEMAN CAMP!
the sign shrilled. REVEALING! EXCITING! AUTHENTIC!

Hendley hesitated. It was a come-on, he knew. Very little that was
revealing or exciting would be shown. But the possibility teased his
mind. Even a brief glimpse was better than nothing. And he was tired of
walking.

He presented his identity disc to the ticket machine. The show was
expensive, costing 30D, or thirty minutes debit against his work time,
but he felt reckless. He recognized the symptom as dangerous. Sometimes
workers went completely berserk under the same impulse, going off on
wild sprees that could run up many years debit, nullifying an equal
period of work and prudent self-denial. Hendley had known one man in
his own department at the Architectural Center who had fallen back
from 3-Day to 4-Day status as the cost of a free-spending one-month
vacation. Recognizing the danger, Hendley deliberately shrugged it off.

He had arrived at a bad time. A newsreel was being shown, devoted
almost entirely to coverage of the great Merger. After the news he
had to sit through a poorly produced, badly written and ineptly acted
Freedom Play, no better than those he could see without cost on his own
room viewscreen. But at last the feature attraction began. Hendley sat
erect in his seat, watching intently.

The pictures were authentic enough. They had been taken through the
telescopic lens of a long-range camera. The first views showed only a
long, unbroken wall about fifteen feet high, above which trees could
be seen. Real trees, Hendley thought. Then, from a higher vantage, the
camera peeked over the wall.

The section of the pictures showing the interior of the Freeman
Camp had been greatly enlarged at the cost of sharpness of detail.
Nevertheless Hendley was able to define beyond the high wall a cleared
area perhaps a hundred feet across, ending at a grove of trees and
thickly growing bushes, broken here and there by foot paths. For
several minutes little more could be seen. Hendley's heartbeat slowed
to normal. He began to feel an edge of disappointment. He'd seen
this much before. Everyone knew about the closely guarded wall and
the security clearing beyond it, a protection against anyone trying
to sneak into the camp unlawfully. At the very least he had expected
something new....

His throat went dry. A cluster of white-clad figures materialized from
the green mass of the woods, moving into the cleared area. One of the
figures ran ahead of the others, who set off in pursuit. These were
Freemen, evidently playing some kind of a game. A ripple of excitement
ran through the theater. The pursuing men in white caught up with the
leading figure, and they all converged in a writhing, tumbling mass,
arms and legs flying. The spectacle was so violent it resembled a
battle. One of the men broke free--the same one? Hendley wondered.
Perhaps he was "it" in the game. His white coverall was torn, flapping
as he ran. One of the other men dove after him, catching him by the
ankles and tripping him up. The pursuers closed in....

The screen blurred, out of focus. An audible groan filled the theater.
Hendley's heart was thumping. When the picture cleared, one of the
Freemen was lying casually on the grass alone, apparently staring up at
the sky. It was the one with the torn coverall. The others were racing
off into the distance. They disappeared under the cover of the trees.

That was all. For a little while after the Freemen vanished, the camera
continued to probe the line of trees hopefully. Hendley kept wishing it
would return to the man lying in the clearing, but it did not.

Another sequence began in the film, but it merely showed some of the
camp facilities. No Freemen were visible. Hendley's thoughts kept going
back to the men he had seen. What carefree game had they been playing?
What must it be like to engage in such openly abandoned sport? To lie
endlessly on cool grass, watching the sun? To follow any impulse at
will, with no thought of the cost?

Perhaps all the years of work and waiting were worth while, if in the
end you could be truly free, your tax debt paid off and limitless
recreation yours to enjoy. Was he willing to throw that away--to
exchange it for a brief affair with a girl he didn't know, whose
brown-green eyes probably held only what he wanted to read into them?

The remainder of the picture was short and unrevealing. When the screen
went dark Hendley felt a sudden surge of anger. They teased you with
freedom, he thought, just as the theater's marquee promised untold
delights and offered instead a spoonful of stolen pleasure. And in the
meanwhile they housed you in a blind room in a blind building, kept you
busy pushing buttons in work that made you no more than a mechanical
extension of a much more clever machine, and regimented your days and
hours so that you wouldn't have time to think that there might be
more to life than this--more even than the dream of ultimate ease and
endless games.

No, he thought. It was more than the lure of hope in a girl's eyes that
attracted him. To seek her out, to meet her again, was simply to give
specific direction to the day's gesture of defiance. What he hoped to
accomplish by it, he didn't know. Where it would all end didn't matter.
It was something he had to do.

But she might not come.

He checked the time. It was after three o'clock. With a sense of
urgency he rose and left the theater.




                                   3


There was something unusual about the Historical Museum, oddly
unsettling, and it was awhile before Hendley realized what it was.
The place was almost empty. Here and there a few individuals or
small groups of people shuffled slowly before the exhibits. A guide
was pompously discoursing before a model of one of the old, exposed
cities wiped out more than a hundred years before in the short war
that scoured and blackened half the earth. His voice seemed loud only
because the museum itself was so strangely silent in contrast with the
hubbub and confusion outside in the streets.

Hendley had made a quick survey of the main floor of the museum, his
eyes alert for the red coverall ABC-331 had worn. She was not there.
It was well past four. He stared blankly at an exhibit of old weapons,
trying to dull his mind against his bitter disillusionment.

The weapons were from another world beyond understanding--a world of
great weapons of destruction, and of small, frightening individual
weapons, from knives to clubs to firearms. That had been a time of
personal achievement and personal crime. Now the only real crime was
against the Organization and its rules--rules which demanded obedience
to the Organization, its directives and its officers; forbade sexual
relations between partners not Assigned or otherwise designated by
the Organization; made unlawful the theft of Organization property
for personal use, or the taking of the life of any person indebted
to the Organization. Few would break these or the many refinements
of the Organization's rules of order (including, Hendley thought,
reporting for scheduled work days). Crime carried within itself its
own punishment: it cut one off from ultimate freedom and the joys of
pure recreation. Detection in an all-seeing, all-controlling, almost
completely automated Organization was too certain, the penalty too
great.

Hendley smiled wryly. He had joined a select group in his act of
rebellion. And if the girl named Ann had come, he had been prepared
to....

"Hello."

Hendley spun around. He gaped in astonishment into the warm,
green-flecked eyes of ABC-331, and then at the blue coverall she wore,
matching his own.

"I didn't think you'd come," she said.

"And I didn't think you would."

Suddenly they were smiling at each other. Hendley turned abruptly
toward the weapons exhibit, staring without seeing. The girl moved
close to his side. His mind was full of questions, but he didn't ask
them. There would be time for that later. "Stay close to me," he
murmured, not looking at her. "Just follow what I do."

Without consciously working it out, he found that he had already
planned where they would go. The knowledge had been at the back of
his mind when he first suggested the Historical Museum as a meeting
place. He had been involved with the building's design in his work
at the Architectural Center. He knew its floor plan above and below
ground--its provisions for utilities, its security precautions, its
entrances and exits.

Casually he began to walk among the exhibits, pausing to study some
of them, then moving on, the girl following silently. They reached
a stairway leading to a lower floor. Hendley nodded at ABC-331.
Downstairs there were other exhibits, but he quickly located a corridor
leading to some storage rooms and, beyond these, to another stairway.

Moments later they were moving quietly through the low-ceilinged room
which housed the building's heating and air-conditioning plant. A steel
door led to a narrow passage, which opened onto an underground tunnel
carrying a maze of pipes.

"There's a service exit," he said. "It leads outside."

"Outside?" Her eyes showed alarm.

Hendley nodded. The safest place was in the sun.

He found the winding metal staircase he was looking for. He led the way
up the stairs. Another steel door at the top was secured, but it opened
from the inside. Hendley swung the door open. Sunlight blazed down on
them. The girl gasped. Her hand came up to shield her eyes. Hendley
quickly climbed through the opening and pulled her up after him. He
stripped the belt from his coverall and used it as a wedge to keep the
steel door from closing completely behind them. Then he stood in the
naked sunlight and looked down at her.

"They'll never look for us here," he said.

The girl did not reply, but her slim, small hand slipped into his and
squeezed gently. She was squinting against the harsh glare. The sun
was a white, hot eye rolling in the sky. Its light reflected in a
massive blaze of white from the unbroken curve of concrete towering for
some thirty stories above them. In the distance other great concrete
cylinders glared in the sunlight. A flat table of bare, baked earth,
pale and shimmering, stretched between the featureless buildings
like the floor of an enormous oven. Far above, sealed, windowless
helicopters droned over the city in a steady stream, their blades
beating like wings.

She was trembling.

"It's quite safe," Hendley said. "They've been letting people come out
for years now, even here. And the Freeman Camps are all exposed like
this."

"I know," she said. "It isn't that."

Her smile was apologetic. Her face was still squinting, eyes almost
closed, lips drawn back in a bow, and the expression was youthfully
innocent and appealing. A strange complex of emotions--compassion,
tenderness, delight--engulfed him. Where her mouth was bowed, as if she
were about to fling an arrow of words against the white target in the
sky, he kissed her. Her lips were soft and dry. A tremor communicated
itself from her spine to his hand.

Suddenly she tore her lips away and fell against him, her face turned
down, pressing against his chest. "Oh, Hendley!" she cried. "How I've
wanted you to do that!"

He held her tightly, a little dazed by the passion behind her words,
so unlike the unemotional, almost indifferent acceptance of his
Assigned....

He broke off the thought. He didn't want reality, past or future, to
intrude on them. It was as if, emerging from the tunnel into the open
sunlight, they had removed themselves from the real world, shutting it
behind them with an act as simple as closing a door. The Organization
existed behind the thick concrete walls, in the network of underground
streets and moving walks--but only there. Not outside. Not in the sun.

Except for the Freemen, he thought unexpectedly.

He put one hand to the girl's hair, feeling its softness bristle at the
nape of her neck where it was cut short, then turn soft as water when
his fingers passed through the longer curls.

His hand stopped. "Your head is hot," he said. "We'd better get out of
the sun."

"I'm all right."

"No. Neither of us is used to this much sun. It'll be shady on the
other side."

He led her by the hand, keeping within arm's reach of the curving
wall. Here and there they passed steel doors set flush with the smooth
concrete, and once a slab of steel in the ground about ten feet from
the wall, similar to the one from which they had emerged. He thanked
the luck which had made him remember these exits and how to find them.

They reached shade, sharp and definite as black ink on white paper,
painting the shape of the building long and flat across the bleak
landscape. Coolness struck his face and hands as crisply as a slap. He
drew the girl close to the building. Together they sank to the ground.

"Are you sure no one will find us?"

He put his arm around her shoulders. "No one will be looking."

She stared past him at the wasteland extending in every direction
between the tall buildings and beyond. "It's so--so empty," she said
nervously. "I've never been out before."

"Not many workers have."

"It frightens me."

"Don't look at it."

She looked up at him, and something in her eyes seemed to melt. She
quivered spasmodically as he folded her into his arms. Her eyes were
wide as his face loomed near, but when he brought his lips to hers, the
fringed lids closed over her eyes like shades drawn against the light.
And suddenly her hands were strong and hard on his back, urgent and
demanding....

       *       *       *       *       *

The sun, invisible to them now behind the building, touched the
horizon. The bleached earth turned brown, and its surface, apparently
flat before, shaped itself into small, shadowed rises and ridges. The
air was cooler.

"I saw you leave the Research Center this morning," Hendley said.
"Where were you going?"

For an instant something like dismay was naked in her eyes. "You must
have seen somebody else," she said quickly.

"Do you think I'd mistake anyone else for you?"

Her face was pink, and now she didn't meet his eyes. "Oh, I--I don't
really work there." The words spilled out in a rush. "I was--afraid
of you--and I didn't know what to think. So I said I worked there. I
really work up the street--I'm a clerk in a dress shop." She looked up
at him beseechingly. "I shouldn't have lied."

He was so relieved that he found it easy to forgive her. "You didn't
have to be afraid."

"I know that now."

Smiling, he caressed the round curve of her shoulder. The fabric of her
coverall, which was still open at the front, was smooth to his touch.
Her red garment had been rougher, cheaper....

"Why did you wear blue?" he asked suddenly.

"Because you do. Then if we were seen together, we wouldn't be noticed
especially. It's illegal for a 3-Dayman to go out with a girl in red.
You know that."

"It's illegal to wear the wrong color, too. Where did you get it--this
coverall?"

"From a--a friend."

"She's bigger than you are--here. I like your waist."

"She's not bigger here."

"No." He smiled. "I like that too." He regarded her objectively.
"You're very beautiful."

"Don't say that."

"Why not? It's true."

"It's what I'm supposed to be." Her mouth had a sad, reflective curve.

"What does that mean?"

"Just tell me--do you like me?"

"Very much. Don't you know, Ann?"

"Tell me that."

He told her. And the sun went down completely beyond the unseen
horizon, leaving behind a gray world. The concrete cylinders loomed
larger in the dusk, more forbidding. A wind whined across the
unprotected land.

"It's been wonderful out here," she said. "I'll never forget it. At
first it scared me, but--not now."

"You'll come out again."

She smiled, staring off into the distance. "Yes, of course."

He felt her shiver. "You're getting cold. We'll have to go in."

"I'm not really cold." She gazed at him seriously. "I'm glad we were
both free this afternoon."

He weighed his answer, wondering how she would react. "I wasn't," he
said. "Today was a work day for me. I didn't report."

She frowned, staring at him without comprehension.

"It's true," he said. "This wasn't a free day. But I'm glad I didn't
work. I'd never have met you."

She was instantly concerned. "You'll be penalized!"

"I suppose so." He smiled at her shocked expression. "What do you think
would happen if we were caught together out here? Or if you were found
wearing blue?"

"That's different! They'd have to catch us--but they'll _know_ you
didn't work!" The full implications of his action had reached her, and
her eyes were round with dismay--and wonder. "Why? What made you do it?"

"I can't really explain it. Maybe it has something to do with--" For a
moment he was withdrawn, searching his own mind. Then he asked, "What
do you think about the Merger?"

"I don't think about it much," she said slowly.

"It doesn't mean anything to you?"

She shook her head. "Why should it?"

"It's what started me off. But that was just the"--he thought of the
firearms in the Historical Museum exhibit--"the trigger. I was trying
to be ... _me_."

She regarded him apprehensively. "What will they do to you?"

He shrugged. "I suppose there's a whole team of computers and
technicians somewhere in the Organization that handles these things. I
don't imagine I'm the first one."

"Don't do anything like that again," she said urgently. "Promise me you
won't."

He said it to please her, not knowing what he meant to do. The world
beneath the surface and inside the cylinders was still unreal. "I
promise," he said.

Darkness was closing in when they once again circled the wall, looking
for the steel door he had wedged open. When they came to it he felt the
first real tug of fear. The door seemed tight. He knelt quickly. The
heavy weight of the steel had crushed the fabric belt flat--but there
was still a narrow opening. The inside latch had not caught.

Hiding his relief, he rose and once more took Ann into his arms. "Don't
give back that blue outfit," he said.

"No," she whispered. "No, Hendley."

He kissed her. When he opened the door and took her hand to help her
step down, she said, "We should go separately."

Surprised, he pondered the suggestion a moment. "I don't think we were
noticed. And the museum is open all night. We can just go back--"

"It would be safer," she insisted. "I--I'll meet you in front of the
museum in five minutes. I can find my way out."

He caught the appeal in her voice. And she might be right after all. If
they were to use this meeting place again, it was just being sensible
to come and go separately.

"All right," he said. "You go first."

Her hand gave his a convulsive squeeze. She dropped down into the
tunnel, her steps ringing faintly on the metal staircase. He waited
until the sounds had faded off. The sky was a deep blue now, and a
single bright star was visible above the horizon. What must it be like
to see the whole span of the sky lit up with stars? Now that he knew
the way, he could come out and see. There was nothing to prevent him.
There had never been anything but the habit of obedience.

When five minutes had passed he stepped onto the stairway, pulling the
steel door shut behind him and locking it. He had taken only a couple
of steps down the winding stairs when he heard a distinct, flat sound.
He went rigid. Motionless, his muscles taut, he waited, listening
intently. The narrow aisle along the floor of the tunnel was dimly
lighted. High on the stairway he was almost lost in shadows. The sound
had been that of a door closing gently under its own power--or slowly
eased shut. No more than the click of a latch, magnified along the
tunnel. Now there was only silence.

He didn't want to be caught here. No explanation would be accepted
without an investigation--and there would be signs on the surface
revealing that two people had been out together, a man and a woman.

Slowly, setting each foot cautiously onto the metal steps, he began
to descend. When he was low enough he leaned down and away from the
staircase to peer along the tunnel. The service tunnel fed into a
larger passage. There was a door at this opening, and another between
the passage and the air conditioning-heating room. The door at the end
of the tunnel was open.

Perhaps Ann had left the farther door slightly ajar, and a slight
current of air had caused it to click shut. Still....

Hendley reached the bottom of the stairs. Keeping close to the maze
of pipes along one side, he edged forward. A shadow moved across the
face of the tunnel. Hendley squeezed close to the pipes. One of them
carried hot water, and he had to suppress a gasp as his hand touched
the hot metal.

After a long moment he moved his head out a few inches--just far
enough to catch a glimpse of the opening at the end of the tunnel. A
shoulder came into view, bearing the emblem of a security guard on a
green sleeve. Hendley eased back against the pipes, setting his teeth
against the heat from the one pipe that seared a bar of pain across
his back. If the guard took one or two steps into the tunnel--or even
leaned through the door to get a better angle of view--Hendley would be
visible to him.

Hendley breathed very slowly and silently. His legs were beginning to
quiver from the strain. Either the guard didn't suspect his presence,
or he was unwilling to enter the tunnel alone, making himself a
vulnerable target. What had drawn the man there? Had Ann been seen
leaving? Surely not--the guard's investigation would be more thorough.
Had he heard a suspicious noise then, the noise Hendley had made
closing and locking the outside door? Or was this simply a routine
inspection?

The tunnel darkened suddenly. The steel door clanked shut, sealing the
tunnel off from the adjoining passage. In the dim light remaining from
the tunnel's own illumination panel, Hendley stepped away from the
pipes into the center of the aisle. He let out a deep breath.

He was safe enough for the moment. But obviously he couldn't risk
leaving the building the way he had entered. The guard might be going
on his rounds--or the closing of the door might be a ruse. Frowning,
Hendley tried to sort out in his memory the various functions of this
utility tunnel. If he remembered correctly, it led to a large water
pump station, and there were branches along the way feeding into
smaller underground facilities. It should be no trick to find another
way out.

He could hear the water pump when he was still a good distance away
from the station. It would probably be routinely guarded. He chose at
random one of the branching tunnels. A few minutes later he stepped
into the heating room of what he guessed was an arcade. The heating and
air-conditioning unit was of a size and type designed to serve a series
of small shops and offices.

No one saw him when he emerged from the room into a walkway behind a
row of shops. He strode casually along the walk and stepped out into a
crowded street.

Orienting himself, Hendley found that he was only a quarter of a mile
from the museum. He began hurrying through the noisy evening crowd.
Theater and sports arena marquees were winking. Throngs filled the
busy arcades, the sidewalk venders, the discussion halls, the public
gyms. A news announcer's voice blared from a street corner viewscreen.
Still talking about the Merger.

Hendley saw the steps of the museum ahead. He didn't know exactly how
long his roundabout escape had taken. He had given Ann a five-minute
start. Add about fifteen minutes to that, he guessed. She would be
anxious now, worrying.

A few people were entering the museum. A guard stood by the entry,
watching the crowd on the street below with apparently casual interest.
A young woman emerged from the museum. She wore a yellow coverall and
her hair was dark.

Baffled, Hendley walked slowly past the museum steps. ABC-331 was not
there.

       *       *       *       *       *

The guard at the Historical Museum's entry was watching him now.
Hendley merged with the flow of pedestrians, allowing himself to be
carried along. He had been wandering back and forth in front of the
building for twenty minutes. Long enough to draw attention to himself.
Longer than necessary to know that Ann was gone.

He couldn't understand her actions. The chilling fear kept recurring
that somehow she had been detected leaving the tunnel. But reason
argued that in that event the museum guards would have made a careful
search for her male companion.

Then why had she vanished? Looking back, trying to recall everything
that had happened between them, every word that had been spoken,
Hendley recognized evasiveness in some of her replies, duplicity in
some of her actions. She had been trying to avoid him when she left the
Research Center early that day. Moreover, she had suggested that they
leave separately. She had planned to disappear.

Yet she had come to meet him--she had given herself to him joyously.

Tired and discouraged, Hendley stopped at a sidewalk vending unit.
He hadn't eaten since breakfast. He selected a hot meal, pressed the
appropriate buttons, and presented his identity disc. A red panel of
light flashed on.

Startled, Hendley stared at the machine. He tried again. Once more his
charge was rejected.

Someone was watching him curiously. Hendley quickly left the vender.
Safely in the crowded street again, he found that he was trembling. Now
it begins, he thought.

He tried to enter a theater. The ticket machine rejected his identity
disc. He went down the escalator to a subway station. There was a line
of people before the gate. By the time Hendley reached it, a number of
other people had lined up behind him. His hand shook as he held his
identity disc out to the ticket machine. Again a red light flashed.

The people behind him grew restless. "Come on, hurry up!" a man
said. "What's the trouble?" another asked. "Look!" a woman cried.
"Something's wrong! That red light is on!"

Hendley slipped out of the line, his face hot and his heart bumping
wildly against his ribs. He heard a shout behind him as he reached the
escalators. He plunged up the moving steps.

Back on the street, he was afraid to enter another crowded place to use
his disc again. He waited until he found a small, old-fashioned coffee
machine tucked away in a quiet corner of an arcade. No one was watching
him.

The antique vending machine whirred, vibrated, and began to buzz
loudly. Hendley ran.

As long as he kept to the crowded streets, he was safe from
detection--providing he didn't attempt to use his identity disc. That
way they could track him. But if his disc was useless, he couldn't eat,
he couldn't enter a recreation hall, he couldn't take the subway, or
sleep in a rented room. He couldn't find rest or refuge in a theater.
He could only keep moving.

In the middle of this well-fed city, he could be starved. Free to move
about at will, he was trapped.

The day of rebellion had come full circle. He could wait it out until
the need of food or sleep dragged him down. He could make them find
him. If Ann had been with him, if the machines had rejected her too, he
might have kept going as long as possible.

Alone, he knew that he didn't want to. He had known all along this
would happen. He wouldn't give them the satisfaction of making him run
until he was exhausted, until he was forced to crawl to them, hungry
and frightened.

Hendley went up the nearest ramp to the moving sidewalks, grateful that
these at least were a free service. He would not have relished walking
all the way back to the Architectural Center.

When he reached the Center he stood outside the entry for several
minutes. It was almost midnight, but you couldn't determine that
from street level. At surface level, from the courtyard between the
office core and the sleeping unit, you would be able to see the night
sky overhead. Elsewhere the day was all one. Activity was the same
at any hour, involving different work shifts, different people, but
essentially the same.

Hendley felt an inner chill as he entered the residential wing and made
his way up to his room. No one stopped him. His room had no lock on the
door. The room was undisturbed, silent, empty.

On the small plastic desk to the left of the entrance was a slip of
white paper. The note, which had been delivered through the mail chute
opening in the wall just above the desk, directed him to report to the
infirmary. It was stamped with the time of delivery: _9:35 A.M._

In sudden anger Hendley tore the note into shreds and threw the white
strips of paper into the waste chute. As they disappeared, fluttering
madly in the suction, he had the odd impression that they were like the
tiny figures of the Freemen he had seen in the film, vanishing into the
trees.

There was a knock on the door.

The tall, silver-haired man in the beige coverall had a genial face,
dominated by sympathetic gray eyes. He was big-boned and heavy, but he
carried himself easily. His voice had an impressive rumble.

"Good evening, TRH-247," he said. "You've had quite a day, haven't you?"

The emblem on his sleeve, brown with a white background, showed a
design of staff-and-serpent. Lettered in brown stitching were the words
MORALE INVESTIGATOR.

"You will come with me," the Investigator said. With a faintly
indulgent smile he added, "I trust you are not going to give us any
trouble?"

Hendley shook his head. He had stopped running. As he stepped from his
room into the bright corridor, he felt an odd tug of regret for the
close security he was leaving. The room was too small, blind-walled,
impersonal, uninviting. But it was a place familiar and known. It held
no surprises.




                                   4


Naked, TRH-247 sat on a cool white plastic bench and repressed a
shiver. The room was not cold, but gooseflesh stood out on his arms.
Though he was now alone in one of a series of examination rooms to
which he had been taken, he felt ill at ease in his nakedness--an
effect no doubt carefully calculated, he reflected, to increase the
insecurity anyone must feel in the Morale Investigation Center.

Everything in the Center was designed to create the impression that
here nothing was--nothing could be--concealed. The walls, the ceilings,
the floors, the spare furnishings, the instruments--all were a
gleaming, immaculate white plastic, bathed in clear white light. Even
the attendants and nurses, as well as the gray-haired Investigators,
donned white robes over their uniforms when they entered the Center.

Hendley had not seen the first Investigator since they parted
at the beginning of his processing. But in the course of his
tests--psychological, intelligence and reaction tests, a humiliatingly
thorough physical examination, along with other tests unfamiliar
to him--he had met two other men identified as Investigators. Each
might have been cast from a single mold. In the small interrogation
rooms they seemed to grow, looming larger to the eye like figures on
a viewscreen expanding as the camera moved in for a closeup. They
were all big men, all distinguished, all gray-haired, all easy of
manner--big, handsome, confident men, like idealized father-images.

Suddenly, sitting on the cold white bench, hugging his body with his
arms against the unreasonable chill that shook him, Hendley remembered
an incident long forgotten, a fragment from that strangely blank period
of pre-work--he thought of it that way; not as childhood, but as
pre-work. It had been a negative time, like a period of non-existence
in preparation for existence. If it had seemed then a time of freedom,
that illusion prevailed only because the concept of freedom was not
understood. In fact those days had been strictly regimented, filled
with classes, recreation hours, group games, prescribed activities from
waking to sleeping.

But on one occasion, at least, there had been a kind of escape into
life. Hendley hadn't been alone in the daring escapade, although he
could not recall the numbers of the other two boys, or even their
faces. One had been fat and very blond, with an intense dislike of
exercise not of his own choosing. The other had been a small, slender,
lively, black-haired boy whose memorable characteristic in Hendley's
mind was a flashing smile and a high-pitched, squealing laugh.

The idea had been the blond boy's in the beginning, Hendley was sure,
but there had been no sense of being led. For all three boys the
action had been spontaneous, unpremeditated, without malice or special
meaning. One moment they were walking toward their classroom along an
underground street--it was morning, but there was no awareness of time
then, in a pre-work day beneath the surface--and the next moment they
were opposite a pedestrian ramp leading to the sidewalk strips and the
fat blond boy was yelling, "Let's go for a ride!" And in the instant
they were racing exuberantly up the ramp, dodging among the uniformed
men and women, excitedly jumping onto the moving walk, pausing only
when they were safely together on the walk to stare at each other
in flushed, panting triumph. A glitter of challenge had danced in
the fat boy's eyes--Why could he remember that exact expression,
Hendley wondered, but not the face which shaped it?--and he had made a
reckless, clumsy leap to the fast strip. Hendley and the slender boy
had hurtled after him, the latter's shrill peal of laughter trailing
behind them. In that moment when he was airborne between the strips,
his heart bumping with fear, Hendley experienced a surge of happy
exhilaration such as he'd never felt before. Suddenly the thoughtless
flight acquired a sharp spirit of adventure. Soon it was he who
took the lead, challenging his companions to new and more intricate
maneuvers on the walks, bolder excursions into the bustling center of
the city.

They stayed out all day, wandering through the crowded, noisy arcades,
exploring the colorful stores, filing in wonder through the great stone
plaza in the middle of the business district past the giant statues and
sculptured stone trees and strange marble animals. When the sightseeing
began to pall, they boarded the walks again, riding them to remote
parts of the city. It was only at the end of the day when, tired and
hungry, they tried to retrace their way and found themselves lost,
that the realization came to them slowly that they had done something
unheard of, something very wrong, for which they were sure to be
punished.

They had strayed far from the sidewalk strips, and in their search for
the walks they came upon a clearing which ended in a high, blank wall.
Curiosity gaining the better of their increasing nervousness about the
day's adventure, they followed the line of the wall, speculating about
it.

"I know what it is," the fat boy said confidently.

"I'll bet you don't!" the smallest of the trio said.

"What is it?" Hendley demanded.

"He doesn't know," the slender boy jeered.

"I do too! It's where people go when they're old!"

"No, it isn't," the slim one said quite seriously. "That isn't where
they go. They die."

"I didn't say dead people!" the fat boy retorted. "It's where you go
when you don't have to work any more, when you're free!"

And then Hendley remembered. His father had talked about the Freeman
Camps, during those early years which Hendley remembered only as a
brief and pleasant interlude before he was taken from his parents and
enrolled in the Organization's training schools.

The three boys walked in silence alongside the high wall for a while.
The fat boy said, "I bet we could get over if we really wanted to."

"How?" Hendley wanted to know.

"We could climb it."

"No, we couldn't. What would you get hold of?"

"We could use a rope."

They reached a break in the wall, which turned out to be a high,
metal-barred gate coated with an opaque plastic between the bars so
that you could not see through it. There was no one around.

"Look!" the slim, black-haired boy said, pointing.

Near the bottom of the gate there was a tear in the plastic film
between two of the metal bars. Even when the film was pushed aside, the
opening was only a few inches wide--but it was an opening. (How strange
it was now to recall the easy accessibility of the camp to three
curious boys! But in those days the surface was not yet considered safe
for human life, and even the camps had to be underground, located on
the outskirts of the great cities.)

"I bet I could get through there," the slim boy said.

"What would you want to do that for?" the fat, blond boy scoffed,
covering his chagrin, for it was evident that he could never squeeze
through the opening.

"Well, you wanted to climb over."

"No one's supposed to go in there," the fat boy insisted.

The declaration was like a dare, and the black-haired boy reacted to it
instantly. "I'm going to!" he asserted with his quick, flashing smile.
"I bet you're scared," he said to Hendley.

"No, I'm not!"

"I'll go first," the other boy said. And with a darting glance along
the wall in both directions to make sure no one was watching them, he
crouched before the narrow opening and began to worm his way through.
The damaged section of plastic film tore easily, but the bars were so
close together that the boy winced as he struggled to wriggle between
them.

"You'd better not!" the fat boy warned apprehensively.

But the small, slim body gave another twist and suddenly the boy was
gone, disappearing through the opening into the mysterious place beyond
the wall.

"Come on!" they heard him call excitedly. "Hurry up! Wait'll you see
it!"

Hendley tried to follow him. Halfway through the opening he could
go no farther, no matter how much he shoved and twisted. His chest
was skinned and bruised by the effort, and he had trouble breathing.
"I--I'm stuck!" he cried.

Beyond the wall the slender, black-haired boy's shrill laughter rang
briefly. It broke off. There was a moment's silence. Hendley and the
fat boy listened. Anxiously they began to shout. There was no answer
from within the camp. And then it seemed to Hendley that he heard a
muffled, whimpering cry.

At that instant a huge, heavy hand fell on the fat boy's shoulder. The
two boys by the wall had been so intently absorbed that they had failed
to see or hear anyone approaching. Hendley stared up in fright at a
broad, towering figure in a beige uniform with a small emblem on one
shoulder. A big hand seized him by the arm and effortlessly pulled him
free of the bars....

       *       *       *       *       *

They were taken to a white building, where they were separately
questioned. Hendley had vowed to himself that he would say nothing
about the day's events, but he found himself at first frightened and
then awed by the huge, gray-haired man who talked to him. The man spoke
gently, reassuringly, and after a while Hendley was blurting out the
whole story, trembling and stammering, moved at last to tears by the
mystery of his small friend's fate.

The following day he and the fat, blond boy were taken back to their
school. Oddly enough, Hendley could not now remember what their
punishment had been. A week deprived of recreation hours, he supposed.
It couldn't have been very bad or he would remember.

Stranger still, the black-haired boy who had vanished behind the wall
did not return to school. Hendley never saw or heard of him again.

       *       *       *       *       *

A door opened into the white room where Hendley sat on the cold bench.
A nurse entered. She glanced at him with clinical objectivity. In one
hand she carried a small vial and a hypodermic needle.

"What's that?" Hendley asked sharply.

"Protective inoculation," the woman said with brisk indifference. "Hold
out your arm."

Conditioned from childhood to frequent inoculations, Hendley raised his
arm. The nurse was as efficient as her manner. He hardly felt the prick
of the needle.

"Now you will follow me," she said, after deftly removing and
discarding the detachable needle.

The room to which she led him turned out to be a large office, facing
the typical open courtyard around which all of the central building
towers were constructed. Drapes were drawn back over a broad window.
Pale moonlight filtered through the courtyard from the invisible sky
above. A large white desk dominated the room. Behind it sat the Morale
Investigator who had come to Hendley's room.

The door closed and Hendley was alone with the Investigator, who
gestured toward a comfortably upholstered, backless couch to the left
of the desk. "Sit down," the big man said. And then, solicitously, "Are
you cold? I can raise the heat level."

"No," Hendley said stiffly. "I'm not cold."

It was only after he had sat on the couch that he realized how low it
was. In contrast, the wide, high desk and the large swivel chair behind
it seemed higher than normal. Hendley found himself looking up at the
Investigator. The inferior position, he reflected. He remembered from
his architectural studies that in some of the offices in Administration
buildings the floors were actually angled, so that an official at his
desk would always be on a somewhat higher level than any caller.

"Would you like to tell me about it now?" the Investigator asked. His
tone was mild, personal, inviting confidence. Hendley studied him
more closely. The impression of size still predominated, but with it
there was a clear effect of controlled, well-muscled, even graceful
movements. The man's features were large but well balanced. His
complexion was ruddy. There was about him an aura of well-disciplined
strength. Here was a man you could trust--a man you could lean on.

"There's nothing to tell," Hendley said, stalling, wishing again that
he had his uniform on, unable to shake the feeling that, with his body
exposed to the most casual scrutiny, the workings of his mind must also
be visible.

The older man smiled. "Perhaps you don't realize how much we know."

Hendley thought suddenly of ABC-331--of Ann. Did they know about her?
Had she found someone waiting when she returned to her room? Or had she
been caught even earlier?

The Investigator swiveled in his chair to face Hendley directly,
looking down at him, his expression tolerant and benign. "As of the
moment you failed to report to the infirmary in response to the notice
delivered at--let me see--9:35 this morning, your number was fed to the
master board for automatic recording and analysis." The Investigator
smiled. "Would you care to know exactly what time you had coffee in the
vending cafe across from the Agricultural Research Center? Or just when
you entered that newsview theater this afternoon?"

Hendley parried the smile with one of his own. He knew that the
information was supposed to impress and frighten him. But he thought:
They can only track the identity disc when I used it, or tried to use
it. That wouldn't tell them about the meeting with Ann. Aloud he said,
"I guess you know the whole story then. There isn't much point to all
this."

"We are less interested in what you did than why," the Investigator
said. "Though of course knowing precisely what your activities
were helps us to understand their pattern." He leaned forward
confidentially. "There is a gap--between the time you left the theater
and the time you tried to have dinner. You might as well tell me about
it, because I'll find out as soon as all the reports are in."

Relief flooded through Hendley. They didn't know about Ann! How
foolish to try to take him in with so transparent a warning--as if the
computers needed time to correlate reports!

"You must have found her very attractive," the Investigator said
suddenly.

Hendley was caught unprepared. In his relief he had begun to relax
into overconfidence. Now, stunned, he felt the blood draining from
his face--a sure betrayal of his emotions. "Her?" he questioned
automatically. "I--I don't understand." But his thoughts darted this
way and that in his skull like trapped particles. The guard at the
museum, he thought. But there had been no careful search for Hendley
there. She _must_ have escaped. How did the Investigator know about
her? Was it a trick? Was he only guessing? Had Hendley then given
himself away, letting his reaction to a simple ruse betray him?

"You needn't bother to pretend," the Investigator said. His expression
remained kindly, sympathetic, warmly understanding. In spite of his
predicament Hendley felt drawn to the man. But that was the idea,
he caught himself. Gain the confidence of the adult as you did of
the child. Make him feel helpless in the face of superior knowledge,
superior skills, superior forces. Helpless--but with nothing to fear.

"It's generally a woman," the Investigator went on. "You shouldn't
feel that you're the only one who's been tempted. There are certain
women"--he spread his hands in a gesture that said: We are both men of
understanding. We know about these things. There is nothing to conceal
from each other--"usually 5-Daywomen who have lost sight of the true
goal, who think only of today's physical pleasure. Often we can help
them--when we find them. Such women are generally young and quite
attractive, even beautiful. Beauty in a way is their undoing. They are
unable to see beyond it." He coughed apologetically. "Just as men are
sometimes unable to see beyond it. It's easy for them to make a man
forget _his_ goal."

But Hendley was no longer listening. Beautiful, he thought,
remembering how ABC-331 had seemed to protest when he tried to tell her
how beautiful she was. What had she said? "It's what I'm supposed to
be." Almost bitterly, her soft lips twisting wryly. What had she meant?
Was she one of those women the Investigator referred to? No! That, too,
was a trick to make him talk.

"There was nothing like that," he said firmly. "There was no woman. I'm
already Assigned."

"And you're perfectly happy with your Assigned?" the older man shot at
him quickly.

"Of course."

The Investigator frowned. Disappointment and disapproval were clearly
reflected in his gaze. "I'm trying to help you, TRH-247," he said
slowly. "But you must cooperate. What you have done is a grave
infraction of the rules of order of the Organization. You must know
that. I had hoped you'd be frank with me, as I have been with you.
Together we might find some way of lessening the penalty. But--"

"Would the penalty be less if there had been a woman? Is that what you
mean?"

There was a slight stiffening of the Investigator's handsome features,
hardly visible to the eye, yet subtly altering his friendly aspect into
something sterner, colder. "You choose not to talk?"

"All I said was that there was no woman."

"You must have had a reason. Are you asking me to believe that you
acted purely on a whim? You failed to report for work, TRH-247! You
threw away an entire day's work credit against your tax debt and risked
far more in penalties! No sane man would do that without a reason. And
I have checked your examination reports thoroughly. You're in excellent
health, mentally and physically. There is no evidence of emotional
instability. This is the only defection in your record for the past ten
years. Otherwise I would not even be trying to help you!"

He was too angry, Hendley thought with surprise. Was he so unused to
defiance? Was it always easy for them? And suddenly Hendley knew what
he was going to say. In a flash of insight he saw behind the shallow
façade of fatherly wisdom before him. Here was only another man trapped
by the system, another button-pusher who knew only the answers fed to
him by his computer, a man too eager to be sure and safe, too anxious
to have everything come out right and gain new tax credits for him. He
had only to be told something he could understand--something that would
fall into a familiar pattern.

"I had a reason," Hendley said.

"What, then?"

"The Merger."

Startled, the Investigator gaped at him, his composure abruptly
shattered. "The Merger?"

"Yes. Maybe it was foolish, but I didn't report for work today as
a protest." Hendley paused, reminded of one of the exhibits in the
Historical Museum. "It was like a--a strike. That's something workers
used to do long ago when they wanted to protest."

"Yes, yes, I know--go on!" the Investigator broke in eagerly.

"You wanted to know where I was this afternoon. I was in the Historical
Museum. I like to go there. I like to know how things used to be. I was
against the Merger all along. It--it's like we're all being swallowed
up in something that's too big even to know we exist. In the old days
being a man meant something important in itself. Our ancestors--they
weren't just parts of a machine!"

"Ah!" The Investigator almost beamed. His eyes held a gleam of
pleasure. "An ideological protest!"

"I guess you could call it that," Hendley said slowly, wondering at the
reaction his words had produced. "Surely I'm not the only one who's
ever felt this way."

"Yes, yes, you're quite right," the gray-haired man said with some
enthusiasm. "But an active protest! That is rare in this entire
section. Why, I've had only one similar case in three years as a senior
Investigator!"

Hendley nodded soberly, concealing a satisfaction which held a trace of
malice. Tricks could work both ways. And yet what he had said was not
really dishonest. He had merely selected that part of the truth which
he wanted to reveal. Strangely enough, less than twenty hours earlier,
as he had lain in bed while his vaguely formed protest crystallized
into a decision, the feeling and the ideas he had just expressed had
seemed all-important. Now it was more vital to protect a woman who had
lied to him and disappeared--whom he might never be able to find again,
even if she wanted to be found.

"This puts an entirely different complexion on your case," the
Investigator said, his enthusiasm no longer restrained. "Entirely
different! Tell me, when did these symptoms first begin? Obviously they
didn't appear overnight. When did you first feel this intense dislike
of the idea of the Merger?"

"I don't know," Hendley said honestly. Should he mention the childhood
escapade? Had that been significant even at so early an age? Evidently
the morale computer didn't think so, for at some stage the fact had
been eliminated from his record. Presumably it had appeared to be a
meaningless youthful prank.

He thought of his dream of standing on a beach and seeing all of the
other beaches within sight blend into one vast, featureless desert. On
impulse he recounted the dream, deliberately going into great detail.
As an added embellishment at the end he said, "I've had the same dream
several times."

"Splendid!" the Investigator exclaimed, as if Hendley had passed some
kind of a test. "But surely, as a student of history, TRH-247, you must
realize that the Merger was inevitable, that it is the culmination of
centuries of social progress under the Organization?"

"Inevitable doesn't mean good," Hendley said. "_If_ it was inevitable."

"An excellent point," the Investigator said warmly. "But in this
instance irrelevant, of course. Aren't you willing to admit that
freedom is good? That it has always been, in different guises, man's
real dream? That an Organization which makes this possible for all men
is the true fulfillment of that ageless dream?"

The Investigator's eyes glinted with a zealot's fever. He was so close
to Freeman status, Hendley thought, so close to the goal. How could he
believe anything which might stain or vitiate that prospect?

"Consider the record of history," the gray-haired man said, his broad
hand emphatically slapping the smooth white top of his desk. "The
development of the Eastern and Western Organizations was a natural
evolution. The very fact that in the end each arrived at the same
concept of society's structure and purpose is proof enough! Why should
the two forms of Organization remain separate when the unalterable
pressure of man's own desires had made them finally the same in
everything but name? Why shouldn't they merge into one great and final
Organization, one supreme affirmation of man's right to freedom!"

Hendley was silent. The truth was that he had no clearly formulated
answers. Even in his own mind he was divided. The lure of freedom could
not be shaken off. And he could not argue with the fact that, along
their separate routes over the years, East and West had arrived at
the same social and economic structure, the same ordered relationship
between the individual and the mass of society, the same ultimate
goal of freedom. War between the two had ended not because weapons
and opportunities ceased to exist, but because, during the century of
recovery after the great atomic war which had left both societies weak
and vast areas of the earth barren and uninhabitable, differences had
gradually eroded until they ceased to be a source of conflict.

"How much do you really know of our history?" the Investigator
demanded. "How much do you know, for instance, about the tax debt and
how it all began?"

"Not very much," Hendley admitted. "The general facts--"

"But you must go beyond the general facts, TRH-247!" the Investigator
declaimed. "Consider the brilliance of that single concept--the very
foundation of the Organization as we know it today!"

With animation the gray-haired man launched into a discourse on the
stroke of genius which had launched man on his upward journey toward
Freeman status. Once, it was true, there had been a time when men
worked for themselves, were conscious of their individuality, and were
paid in some form of money according to their capacity to earn. That
money was used by all men to buy the services and necessities of life
now provided entirely by the Organization--and to pay for recreation
and leisure, the twin aspects of freedom. But few could afford more
than a limited glimpse of these pleasures. Many never achieved them at
all. Men fought one another for them, and the weak were crushed by the
strong.

Somewhere along the line a point was reached when the money received
for work was not enough to pay taxes to the government, which was the
clumsy, early form of the Organization, and still buy the necessities
of food, clothing, and lodging, to say nothing of leisure and
recreation. The limited inhabitable land was one problem. Exploding
population and ever-increasing automation complicated the situation. At
that time an anonymous government worker originated the revolutionary
concept of the tax debt. Every worker was allowed to carry over part
of his taxes as a debt to the government, thus keeping more spendable
money for himself and his needs. This preliminary measure proved
inadequate. There were too many workers, labor was inefficiently
used, and the spiraling cost of even that early form of Organization
could not be held down. A point of balance was passed. It became
impossible for the tax debt to be paid in the old way. It was only
natural that in the end the worker should be employed directly by the
Organization--that he should finally work not for money, but for credit
against his debt.

The Corporate Tax Debt followed closely upon the origin of the personal
debt--with the same result. Within the span of a few generations the
Western Organization arrived at the crude, rough form of an economic
and social structure already realized in the East. The Organization
owned, controlled, supplied, managed everything. Concurrently with
that first century of the Organization's growth to maturity--and in
large part because of its development--automated efficiency came into
its own. Computers came more and more to dominate life. Under their
guidance, wasteful and unrewarding ventures were gradually eliminated
from man's work and his dreams--like the costly and unsuccessful
attempts to invade outer space. Man's world narrowed--but man
flourished.

Then came the war--a residue, the Investigator asserted, from the
hostilities of the pre-Organization world. Only the wisdom of the
computers enabled civilization to survive, for, a score of years before
the first bomb fell, the computers on the Peace Planning Boards of both
East and West had directed the movement of the cities underground.

The second century was one of recovery from the war, of continuing
progress toward a more streamlined, automated and efficient society,
and of the slow but steady return toward the surface of the earth.
But if those years presented unusual obstacles--new ways of producing
foods had constantly to be found, new methods of decontaminating air
and water, new systems of construction and transport, new ways to
accommodate a population which entered another phase of explosion
in spite of the limitations of underground life--if there were
difficulties, there were also advantages.

"At last the opportunities were present," the Investigator cried with
unflagging vigor, "for a truly controlled progress. Even the strictures
of space underground became an aid rather than a deterrent. Controls
were easier to put into effect, easier to enforce. And we had the
tools, TRH-247--the computers to guide our way. No longer were we
stumbling blindly, planned progress was possible!"

"But _is_ it progress?" Hendley interjected defensively, for the first
time breaking into the Investigator's narrative. "Haven't we lost a lot
of things? That's what I feel. It seems to me those early societies had
something we don't have. They were always moving outward, discovering
new horizons, exploring--even if they blundered, they tried. We're not
trying. Our world isn't expanding, it's shrinking. It has less--less
meaning."

The Investigator's smile was patronizing. "You say they were always
questing--of course they were. Blindly, inefficiently, between their
wars. But who benefited, TRH-247? All men? No. A few favored ones.
And what were they really searching for on their new horizons?"
He thundered the question. "What those favored few had! What is
now possible for all of us! Man's real goal, TRH-247, always known
but never really understood--freedom! Freedom from the burdens of
indebtedness and the necessity to work! Freedom for total leisure
and recreation! The freedom which the system of the tax debt and the
structure of the Organization has brought within the reach of all
men--Freeman status!"

Breathless, the Investigator paused. Hendley felt an urge to protest
further, but he was not sure of his ground. He wanted to say that
efficiency should not be the only yardstick of achievement. He felt
that there might be more to human endeavor than the pursuit of
pleasure. He would have deplored the shriveling of a commodity which
had no place in the Organization's impersonal, automated world--man's
curiosity. But he was confused and uncertain. His growing confusion, in
fact, seemed greater than could be accounted for by the Investigator's
argument. Hendley had to make an effort to focus his gaze on the older
man's face.

The Investigator resumed in a calmer tone. "I realize it's hard to
assimilate all of this at once," he said, "and to see it in all its
beauty and truth. Emotional reactions often resist reason. But you will
be convinced, TRH-247. The first step has been made. Because you've
told me the reasons behind your confusion, I think I can now help you.
You believe the Organization doesn't know and understand you. You're
wrong. The Organization exists for the individual--it has no other
purpose. It is _your_ Organization, TRH-247! It doesn't seek to punish
or hold you back, only to help you reach your goal. The Merger is no
more than another giant step in that direction. If you could understand
that, you'd realize how foolish you've been."

Hendley stared at him. Where was all this leading? He didn't see what
the historical discussion--or indeed the whole interrogation--had
solved other than the Investigator's own immediate problem. _He_ at
least had found the answer he wanted--a pattern into which Hendley's
rebellion would neatly fit--for which there would be a specific,
predictable number of solutions already worked out by the morale
computer. Did the Investigators gain special tax debt credits for
solving a difficult case? Probably not. In the Architectural Center
there were debits for failure but no extra credits for success.
Success was simply expected. But when you were a 1-Dayman like the
Investigator, the avoidance of any debits would become enormously
important.

How simply the system worked! But it had made the Investigator too
anxious to discover an unusual case for his record. And too eager to
find an orthodox interpretation.

"I'm going to make a recommendation in your case, TRH-247," the big
man said gravely. "You understand, it is only a recommendation, but I
believe it will be accepted. Because of the far-reaching implications
of the Merger, and its manifest importance for all mankind, the
Organization is prepared to deal very generously with emotional
disturbances which have occurred as a result."

"I see," Hendley said, not understanding at all. Why was he finding it
so difficult to concentrate?

"Now," the Investigator said, with the air of a parent about to produce
an unexpected tidbit. "That newsview you went to see this afternoon--it
was about a Freeman Camp, wasn't it?"

"Well--yes," Hendley said, puzzled by the abrupt change of subject.

"You've always wished that you could see inside a Freeman Camp, haven't
you? Don't be embarrassed. It's a natural wish."

"I guess everyone would like to."

"It's quite impossible for that universal wish to be granted,
of course. Privacy is one of freedom's obvious privileges," the
Investigator said. "And the unrest that would result among those still
far removed from Freeman status, if they were to see all they were
denied, would be detrimental to general morale. That's a risk I'm
taking in your case, TRH-247," he added. "But I think it's justified."

Hendley wondered what the man was leading up to. The smug air of
benevolence was compounded by an evident relish for the secret about to
be revealed. Or was it a secret? Hendley's heart began to beat rapidly
as a glimmer of understanding came. The possibility so overwhelmed him
that he felt faintly dizzy.

"In cases like yours," the Investigator said, "where there is clear
indication of perplexity created by sincere doubts and understandable
confusion, there is a precedent for the recommendation I'm going to
make." He paused with deliberate drama. "You probably didn't know this,
but there are circumstances in which visitors are allowed in Freeman
Camps."

"No," Hendley said, his heart hammering now, "I didn't know."

Was this what he wanted? Had the incident with ABC-331, the adventure
under the sun, been merely a substitute--a prelude?

"There will be a penalty, of course, for your failure to report for
work. That cannot be erased. But I think I can promise you it won't
be too severe. And I think you'll feel that the price is well worth
paying."

"A--a Freeman Camp?" Hendley stammered.

The Investigator rose. His towering figure seemed to fill the room with
an overpowering presence of Authority. _This_ was the personification
of the Organization--huge, benevolent, kindly, all-knowing,
all-powerful. "You will be one of the few fortunate ones, TRH-247,"
the gray-haired man said triumphantly. "You will see what freedom
really means. You will know the goal for which you work--to which we
all aspire. You will see it with your own eyes--what even I have never
seen! You will visit a Freeman Camp!"

The room began to swim around Hendley, and the immense figure blurred
into a great gray mass bending over him. He grasped for the top of the
desk but his fingers slipped on the smooth surface and he knew that
he was falling, and as he fell the gates in a great wall opened for
him and he toppled through. He felt a wild surge of exhilaration, but
then he was spinning through a dazzling whiteness that was like the
naked sun, and at the end of the white tunnel a brisk, tight-lipped,
white-robed nurse moved toward him with a giant needle. A sense of
outrage engulfed him. He cried out: "I've been drugged!"

Then he was shooting toward a tiny pinpoint of darkness at the end of
the white tunnel. He threaded the black hole neatly with his body and
emerged into total darkness....

       *       *       *       *       *

"You will answer my questions as directly as possible," the
Investigator said. "Do you understand me?"

"Yes."

"Now then--tell me what you think of the Merger."

He groped for words. It was terribly important to answer the questioner
truthfully. The need to talk was irresistible. His mind was like a dam
whose floodgates were slowly opening. A torrent of words surged toward
the widening gap, spilling through one by one, then with gathering
force and relentless pressure, gushing out, a cascade of words so
wonderful to speak, so compelling....

The eruption of words slowed and at last was still.

"You had never seen this woman before then?" the Investigator asked.
Such a calm voice, so marvelously soothing!

"No."

"Yet you were willing to risk everything to take her outside?"

"It was beautiful out there. I--I found something. It was
like--freedom."

"Ah!" The quiet voice breathed satisfaction.

"We gave ourselves so completely. I never felt so complete, so--so
free!"

"You want freedom very much, don't you?"

"Yes. I--I think so."

"This woman--you kept calling her Ann. What is her real name? Do you
remember it?"

A struggle was taking place deep in the recesses of Hendley's being. He
wanted to speak, to answer, but something was straining to contain the
words. Her name--her number....

"What was her real name?"

"It was"--the word burst out--"Ann!"

"Ann?" The Investigator frowned. "That's all she told you?"

"Yes." The struggle was renewed. Inwardly Hendley writhed. He wanted
to speak truthfully, to murmur the complete name: ABC-331. It beat
against his skull, waiting only for the question to be repeated. If
the Investigator would only ask once more he could speak and end this
terrible pressure.

"Hmmm. Clever of her," the Investigator said. "It will be difficult to
trace her without the complete name. But of course she knew that. Some
of them are very cunning."

He fell silent. Hendley waited, yearning for the question to be asked
again, but it never came. The feeling of compelling eagerness to speak
began to wane, as if the deprivation of that one need to answer had
weakened the entire structure of desire. The compulsion began to break
up, to weaken, to dissolve into less forceful fragments of need....

       *       *       *       *       *

"Hypno-serum," Hendley said bitterly.

"Naturally," the Investigator said, flashing his tolerant smile.

"Why did you go through with the rest of it?" Hendley demanded. "Why
bother with direct questioning when you were going to get all the
answers anyway?"

"It was necessary to know what you would tell us voluntarily," the
gray-haired man said. "And then to corroborate or disprove your
statements by comparing them to your answers under hypno-questioning."

Hendley's stony expression concealed a sense of wonder. He had heard of
cases in which individuals were able partially or completely to resist
the truth drug for limited periods. He marveled at the struggle of
will he had endured, and at the lucky chance which had enabled him to
give Ann's archaic first name instead of the complete number. But his
feeling of relief was diluted by a lingering disappointment.

"Was it necessary to make that promise of a visit to a Freeman Camp
under the circumstances?" he said a little caustically. "What did you
gain by that device?"

"Device?" The Investigator showed surprise. "But that is still
my recommendation." He beamed at Hendley's astonishment. "The
hypno-questioning confirmed the genuine sincerity of your ideological
protest and verified my diagnosis completely. Oh, there is the woman,
of course, but she is merely symptomatic. These women prey on confusion
and uncertainty, on the need for a love-object--or, as you so aptly
suggested, TRH-247, a freedom-object. Your rebellion, as you call it,
is motivated by a true desire for freedom. It merely needs focus and
understanding to be directed toward intelligent channels. Your case
will go to the morale computer for review in the morning, but I think I
can assure you...."

The rest of his words were lost in the roaring which filled Hendley's
ears. He sat abruptly on the slab couch across from the Investigator's
desk, his legs trembling. The extreme reaction, coming immediately
after his bout with the truth serum, left him feeling weak and giddy,
his thoughts churning confusedly, his emotions a stew of incredulity,
relief, and elation.

It was some moments before he thought again of Ann. His elation dimmed.
Now there would be more delay--he didn't know how long--before he could
begin to search for her.

Or was the Investigator right? Was she no more than an objectivization
of a deeper hunger? Would he, after knowing the reality of freedom,
still feel the same way about her--still want her, regardless of the
cost?

From his low couch TRH-247 stared up at the graying father-image
in the high swivel chair, who returned his gaze with sympathetic
understanding, and he felt a helpless doubt....




                                   5


"I envy you," the Morale Investigator said.

The copter landing station was a huge circle cut into the earth to
a depth of two levels, but open to the sky. The field was suitable
only for copters, but, in accordance with the truce made a century
before between East and West, these harmless planes were the only air
vehicles in existence. After the holocaust of atomic war, there had
been no resistance to the banning of dangerous aircraft. In weather
so inclement that the copters were grounded, massive plastic panels
closed over the entire station, sealing it tightly at surface level.
But on this day, midmorning of Hendley's second day in the custody
of the Morale Investigating Department, the sun shone brightly and
was reflected with glaring brilliance from the smooth surface of the
landing field.

The field's perimeter was completely enclosed. Hendley stood in a
boarding area with the Investigator looking out at the field through
thick plastic windows. The circle of the open roof line cupped a patch
of blue sky. Once in the copter he would see nothing until he arrived
at the Freeman Camp. The pilotless, instrument-guided planes had no
windows.

"This is your ship now," the Investigator said.

One of the copters glided close to the boarding area where Hendley
waited. It hovered a few feet above the ground, supported on columns of
air. As an enclosed boarding ramp swung out to meet the ship, a panel
in its side slid open to receive the ramp.

"You have your visitor's card?" the Investigator asked.

Hendley nodded, but he fished automatically in his pocket for perhaps
the twentieth time to check the card. It bore an impression of his own
identity disc. Its authorization was for twenty-four hours from time of
arrival at Freeman Camp No. 17. Idly Hendley wondered how many camps
there were, and how many Freemen enjoyed the pleasures of each.

"I may not see you again," the Investigator was saying. "Other
assignments are waiting for me, but you can be sure I'll check on your
progress reports. Enjoy your freedom, TRH-247. Experience it! For one
day you will know pure pleasure!"

"Pleasure Is Pure," Hendley murmured, echoing one of the familiar
Freeman slogans. "Freedom Is All."

"Open your heart to it," the Investigator urged him warmly. "I know
you'll come back a dedicated man."

Before the big man's enthusiasm Hendley felt a confusion of emotions.
The Investigator so obviously believed in what he was doing. It seemed
to Hendley that he should at this moment voice some grateful phrase,
give some evidence of excitement felt and eagerness shared. But the
words were blocked by the ambivalence of his reaction, as if his
instinct warned him that the freedom he was shortly to discover was
itself some kind of trap, like an exotic plant whose beauty concealed a
deadly poison.

"I guess it's time," he said. "They're signaling for passengers to
board." And then, hesitantly, "It's all happened so quickly--"

"There's no need to say it." The Investigator smiled. His huge hand
swallowed Hendley's shoulder and gave a reassuring squeeze. "Your
rehabilitation will be all the satisfaction I need."

The phrases rolled easily from his lips. Too easily, Hendley thought
uncomfortably, as if the words composed a slogan learned, memorized,
converted into an act of faith by repetition. Even the reassuring hand
was a practiced gesture. Category: Friendship. Purpose: To Instill
Confidence. Method: Place Hand On Shoulder....

The door to the boarding ramp stood open. A metallic voice spoke over
an intercom. "Last call for Flight Three-four-seven. Boarding now.
Repeat. Last call for...."

"Good luck!" the Investigator said.

Then Hendley was stumbling down the ramp, turning once to wave
awkwardly.

       *       *       *       *       *

There was no sensation of motion beyond a vibration so faint that
it could almost be put down to imagination. Yet the knowledge that
the copter was in flight gave Hendley, sitting in the blind-walled
passenger cabin, a strange feeling of being helplessly adrift. Deprived
of the sight of land below, he had no way of knowing whether the ship
rose or fell, moved forward or backward, and no point of reference
by which to judge its speed. He might have been in a runaway rocket,
plunging out of control through space, like those legendary vehicles of
an earlier world a century dead.

After a while he recognized the sensation of being watched. Eyes probed
like feelers at the back of his neck. When he glanced around, the
nearest passenger, a man seated across the center aisle and one row
behind, quickly averted his gaze. Only then did Hendley realize that he
was sitting apart from the other passengers, who were tightly grouped
to the front and rear, as if they had consciously avoided the seats
close to him. A woman several rows ahead masked her interest guiltily,
pretending to stare over Hendley's head--fascinated by the empty
baggage rack.

Puzzled, Hendley frowned. He felt self-conscious enough in this strange
uniform....

Understanding came. Of course! The other passengers wore blue, yellow,
in two instances beige. His was the only white coverall. The curiosity,
the averted and envious eyes, the careful avoidance of adjoining seats
were suddenly explained. Freemen were never seen in the city--as far
as Hendley knew they never left the Freeman Camps. The fact had never
before struck him as unusual. Chances were that none of his fellow
passengers had ever seen a white uniform before except on a viewscreen.
And it was extremely doubtful that any of them would recognize the
meaning of the red sleeve emblem--the only mark, Hendley had been told,
distinguishing his coverall from that of a permanent Freeman.

He settled back in his seat, half-amused, aware of a peculiar sense of
pleasure, of--what was it?--superiority. If only they knew he was to be
free for only twenty-four hours! But they would undoubtedly envy him
still. How many had the chance to know what freedom was really like?...

He gave himself up to the feeling of being adrift, carried helplessly
along. For the first time since his rebellion began he had time to
think. On that first day too much had happened too fast. Even at
the Morale Center he'd had no time for the luxury of collecting
his thoughts. It had been close to morning when the Investigator's
astonishing pronouncement ended his questioning. Hendley had had no
rest for twenty-four hours. Exhausted, he had slept through most of
the day. Shortly after waking he learned that the morale computer had
approved his visit to the Freeman Camp. When he expressed a desire to
return to his room to prepare for the trip, the Investigator demurred
politely. "That won't be necessary," he said.

"But I'll need a fresh uniform, at least--"

"Not at all. Whatever you need will be supplied. And in any event,
you'll wear white...."

The Investigator had explained. No one was allowed to visit a Freeman
Camp in other than the prescribed white coverall. Any other color
would attract too much attention, even hostility. The precious
right of freedom was an exclusive privilege. Moreover, to move
freely--the Investigator chose the word with obvious care--to know
what it was like to live as a Freeman, it was essential that Hendley
should pass unnoticed. The red sleeve emblem would identify him to
official personnel as a visitor, but to most Freemen it would have
no significance. Hendley would go into the camp empty-handed as any
permanent Freeman would. Even his watch would be left behind. There
were no clocks in the land of the free.

"Those of us who work are shackled to the clock," the Investigator
said. "The day, the hour, the minute measure our distance from freedom.
To be free is to be liberated from the need to recognize time...."

So Hendley had been unable to leave the Morale Center. The manner of
refusal was so gentle, so persuasive, so reasonable that not until he
was alone that night did he think of his custody in the Center as a
form of imprisonment. Even then, with his morning departure imminent,
he was unable to relax or to analyze what was happening to him and what
it meant.

Now, sitting by himself in the cabin of the copter, he tried to sort
out his reflections. They refused to be channeled. Bits and pieces of
the previous two days skittered into and out of his consciousness.
From the disordered montage one face kept emerging: Ann's. He tried to
capture it, to hold it before his mind's eye. It danced from light to
shadow, changed, slipped elusively away from him. What was wrong? The
brief hours with her under the open sky had made him feel more vividly
alive than all the experience of his lifetime. Her disappearance could
not change that. Her inexplicable behavior couldn't change it. He
would find her again--he _had_ to find her. But now he was unable even
to recapture her image. It faded as he reached for it. The spirit of
their adventure--its warm intimacy, its sense of escape, its essential
_newness_--was already dimming. Why? Hendley couldn't accept the
Investigator's view of her. _He_ hadn't held Ann in his arms. _He_
hadn't felt her tremble. _He_ hadn't seen the mingled joy and pain in
her eyes.

Pain, Hendley thought. Why pain?

"Mind if I sit here?"

The strange voice dissolved Hendley's confused reverie. He glanced at
a beige uniform clothing a stout figure. His gaze rose to include a
fleshy smile and small, bright, eager eyes.

"No, of course not," he said.

"I didn't know--never met a Freeman before. Not in uniform, I mean."
The seat next to Hendley groaned and shifted to accommodate the balloon
of flesh. "Mind you, I've known some who've become free. I'm a 1-Dayman
myself, as you can see," he went on. "I'm not so far from freedom.
Plenty of those in my line--I'm in Distribution, recreation equipment
is my specialty--have paid off the tax debt and gone over."

Hendley merely nodded, awash in the high tide of words.

"You're young," the fat man said accusingly. "That's what gets me. You
must have had it easy from the start."

"I wouldn't say that."

"You can't kid me. Nobody gets over the hump that quick unless he's got
a head start on the rest of us. Family, I'll bet. That's usually the
answer."

Hendley was tempted to reveal his real status, in spite of the
Investigator's instructions about concealing his visiting privilege.
But the fat man's belligerence checked the urge to explain and defend
himself. Let the man think what he wanted.

"Now I'm one who'd really appreciate freedom," the fat man declared.
"I've had to _work_ my way up. Started as a 4-Dayman. Yeah, it's true.
That surprises you, don't it? You wanta know how I've done it? _Work_,
that's how! No time off, no vacations, no extracurricular recreation.
Sure I distribute game equipment, but I don't get to use much of it,
except in prescribed recreation hours. Look at me! You think I eat a
lot, I bet. Everyone thinks so. Well, half rations is all I eat--to
save the credits! It's glands, that's why I'm heavy like this. You
think it's been easy?" he demanded angrily. "Well, it ain't! It's been
all work for me--I didn't have it handed to me on a tray!"

The swiftly generated violence of the attack left Hendley speechless
with surprise. Then the irony of the situation struck him so forcibly
that he started to laugh.

"What's so funny?" The fat man's face turned faintly purple with rage.
Above the bulging cheeks veins crawled across his temples like swollen
worms. "Sure, you can laugh! You never had to work for yours!"

"You don't understand!" Hendley protested. "I'm not laughing at you.
It's just...." He shook his head helplessly.

"I'll bet they're all like that!" another voice cut in. It belonged
to the woman near the front of the cabin. She had risen to confront
Hendley, her long face pinched tight with hostility. "Making fun of the
rest of us!"

A third passenger intruded. "Fair's fair," he said. He was a 3-Dayman,
like Hendley himself, attired in the familiar blue coverall. "It isn't
his fault he's young. Somebody had to work to pay off his tax debt.
That's the system, and it works the same for all of us."

"_He_ didn't do the work!" the fat man retorted. "Look at him! Gloating
over us. I'm sixty-two years old--I've worked all my life. Never let
myself have anything I didn't need. And it'll be two, maybe three years
before I make it. How much time will I have left?" His red face thrust
close to Hendley's. "But why should you care? You've forgotten what it
is to work!"

"They have all those women!" the pinched-faced woman up front cried
shrilly. "I've seen them on the viewer. That's all they ever think
about!"

Hendley's laughter had long since evaporated. He could only gape in
amazement at the swollen anger of the fat man, the shrill resentment of
the woman. He wondered how widespread was this envy of the free. Had he
been so absorbed in his own unrest that he hadn't looked around him?
And what soothing platitudes would the computers in the Morale Center
recommend to patch this crack in the Organization's perfect structure?

Had he felt this same resentment himself? The question pulled Hendley
erect in his seat. Was his rebellion rooted in a common envy? The
possibility made him uneasy with himself. It offered an explanation for
the way in which the idyllic moments with ABC-331, which had seemed so
intensely important, should so quickly have receded in his memory.
He had been offered a chance to glimpse the true freedom, the goal of
all. Did everything fade into unimportance before that dream? Had his
protest, disguised as the yearning for individuality, been no more than
a subtler face of envy?

"Don't have much to say for yourself, do you?" the fat distributor in
the beige uniform muttered.

Hendley turned to meet the bitter little eyes with a level gaze. In
sudden anger he forgot the Investigator's insistence on silence. "I
started as a 2-Dayman myself," he said flatly. "I'm not even a--"

The copter dipped abruptly. Hendley broke off. A faint pull in his
stomach told him the ship was descending. That brief tug released a
tingle of excitement through his body.

A stewardess appeared from the lounge, wearing a tight-fitting green
uniform and a vacuous smile. She advanced straight to Hendley's seat.
"You will go forward now, sir," she said, her tone a little too eager,
too flatteringly awed. "The private debarking platform is through that
door."

Hendley rose. Glancing down once more at the fat passenger who had been
so angered by the white uniform, he thought: It's just as well you
don't know the truth. Envy grew vigorously enough without nourishment,
as a weed forced its way through the smallest crack in solid pavement.

He turned abruptly and made his way along the aisle to the narrow door
at the front of the cabin.

       *       *       *       *       *

Just before the outer panel swung open Hendley donned the sunglasses he
had been issued. Even this protection did not keep his eyes from aching
as the full glare of sunlight struck them. He stepped from the copter
onto a concrete apron. The exit panel instantly closed behind him, and
a moment later the copter rose swiftly and quietly, blasting Hendley
with a column of hot air.

He shut his eyes against the sun's glare and felt its weight for a
long moment after the copter's funnel of air had spun away. When he
opened his eyes again, squinting, he surveyed a desolate, empty world.
A broad expanse of concrete--cracked, broken, uneven, erratically
patched--stretched to the fringe of a brown desert, which rose
in smooth shallow steps to a ring of brown mountains hazy in the
distance. In all that wilderness there was neither sight nor sound
of life--nothing but the deteriorating white concrete of the landing
strip, the brown earth, the aching sunlight.

Panic closed on him. He whirled. The sight of the familiar massive wall
of a Freeman Camp brought sharp relief. The landing was outside the
wall, of course, to prevent any unauthorized glimpse of what lay beyond
that barrier. But one thing about the wall was puzzling. Like the
concrete landing field, it was visibly crumbling and neglected.

The broad sweep of the wall was broken by a single gate. A lone
attendant in a beige uniform sat in a small glass-walled cubicle beside
the narrow gate. He glanced up without interest as Hendley approached.

"I'm a visitor," Hendley said. "This is my card."

The attendant gave the card a cursory inspection, consulted a list and
nodded perfunctorily. As he made a notation on the list, Hendley was
moved to break the heavy silence.

"Your landing strip isn't in very good shape, is it?" he commented
lightly.

"People don't complain," the attendant said laconically. "It's what's
inside that counts." Without looking up he gestured toward the windowed
slot indicating the presence of a computer set into the wall next to
the gate. "Check in," he said. "Then report to Administration."

Hendley lifted his wrist to present his identity disc to the machine.
It responded with a low hum, followed by a click. The gate swung open.
Hendley walked through.

Before him was an expanse of green lawn, extending in a smooth,
unbroken carpet a hundred feet wide to a grove of trees, shadowy and
inviting in the sunlight.

The gate clicked shut behind him.




                                   6


A sign, black letters on a white board, pointed the way to
ADMINISTRATION, along a narrow footpath which plunged into the
belt of trees. As Hendley entered the shadowed grove he felt a renewal
of excitement. The leaves above whispered musically in the wind, an
unfamiliar rushing sound which was strangely pleasant. An intricate
lacework of light and shadow played over the leaves and branches and
trunks of trees. As he broke out of the woods onto another stretch of
green lawn, a bird darted from a high branch above his head, swooped in
a spectacular arc, incredibly light and swift and beautiful, and dove
out of sight into another leafy cavern.

It was the first live bird Hendley had ever seen. He stared up in
wonder at the foliage where the bird had disappeared, wishing that it
would dart out again. At last he turned away. His breath caught.

The entire Freeman Camp seemed to be spread out before him. The natural
screen of trees formed a line repeating the great circle of the
outside wall. Within that frame of woods was a rolling green carpet
dotted here and there with colorful play areas, pools of water winking
in the sunlight, outdoor cafes and bars. Beyond this parklike setting
were the residential areas--row upon row of identical two-storied
buildings, each lavishly windowed--every room, Hendley marveled, must
be open to the light! In a narrower circle beyond these residential
buildings were structures of varied shapes and sizes and colors, shops
and stores and theaters and game centers of every kind. Crowning the
top of a hill almost in the center of the camp, overlooking another
immense park lush with trees and flowers and more game areas, was a
huge yellow building, a cement mushroom turned light and graceful by
inset arches of glass.

The camp was a world all bright and glittering, golden in the sunlight,
endlessly varied and enchanting.

Hendley stood rooted, his senses alive to all the strange new sounds
and smells, for a long time. Then with quickening anticipation he
hurried along the path toward a concentration of squat, windowless
buildings immediately before him. He gained admittance through a
right-angled corridor which cut off any view of the outside. Here he
found himself in familiar surroundings, the sealed-in, air-conditioned
world of the worker in the Organization. The check-in procedure was a
model of the Organization's pattern of streamlined, impersonal, highly
automated efficiency. Hendley was briskly ushered through a receiving
line, identified, briefed on the geography of the camp, given a key to
his assigned room, a map, and a schedule of the day's "entertainments."
No one expressed surprise or special interest in his visiting status.

At the end of the line an official told him, "You will report here an
hour before your departure time, which is at twelve noon tomorrow."

Hendley smiled at an unexpected thought. "How will I know what time it
is?"

The official's eyebrows rose. "The sun is directly overhead at noon."

"I see," said Hendley, feeling properly squelched.

"You are free to go anywhere in the camp you wish," the beige-clad
official said crisply. "And you may use any of the facilities of the
camp for recreation, food, drink or, ah, whatever you choose." His
manner unbent as he lowered his voice confidentially. "The PIB's are
painted red. And if I may make a suggestion, sir, you shouldn't miss
the entertainment at the main Rec Hall. An excellent casino, and
I've heard that the show tonight on the stage is, ah, shall we say,
unusual?" He smiled with a lewd relish, so unexpected that it was
shocking. "You can't miss the Rec Hall. It's the big yellow building on
the hill."

Hendley started to mumble his thanks, but, after his brief lapse, the
official was once again impersonally efficient. "Official personnel
are not allowed out of the administration and service buildings--which
are, of course, windowless. Service facilities are underground. The
camp belongs to the free. You are one of them--until noon tomorrow."
He smiled mechanically, then added, making the phrase more a pointed
suggestion than a casual dismissal, "Have fun!"

A door opened at the end of another angled corridor, and Hendley walked
out into the bright, green land of the free.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was perhaps two hours later--he was already conscious of missing his
watch, unable to shake a lifetime dependence upon measured time--when
Hendley paused to rest under the shade of an umbrella at a vending
cafe set in the central park. He ate a light meal and relaxed with
a tall whiskey and soda, enjoying the luxury of eating and drinking
expensively without having paid. He could not remember when he had last
had a whiskey in the middle of the day--and this tasted like grain
whiskey, not the chemical variety. Possibly it was the rarity of the
event--or the fresh air and the stimulation of the camp's bewildering
activity--which made the drink so satisfying.

Camp was an inexact word, he thought. The Freeman Camp was, in fact,
a huge, complex city, served by what must be an equally complex
underground service network, and gaining its atmosphere from being
oriented entirely toward pleasure--in a dazzling variety of sports
centers, swimming pools, gambling casinos, social clubs, theaters,
PIB's, museums, lavish restaurants, and bars as well as the more casual
outdoor cafes. Rapid conveyor sidewalks whisked the pleasure-seeker
from one part of the camp to another, although most of the time Hendley
had walked, anxious to see everything. His feet and legs ached from the
unaccustomed exercise.

Crowds thronged the streets, the walks, the parks, but there were,
unlike the underground cities, uncrowded areas: quiet havens in the
parks away from the activity centers, deserted footpaths through the
woods encircling the camp, and out-of-the-way nooks where you could
savor the delicious sensation of being alone in the open.

Hendley had briefly visited the room assigned to him for the night,
on the second floor of one of the countless rectangular buildings. In
spite of the airy spaciousness and inviting comfort of the room, he
had not lingered there. There was too much to see, and too little time
to enjoy it.

The vending cafe where he had paused was one of the few uncrowded
ones he had come upon. There were a dozen outdoor tables, each with
its brightly colored umbrella. Only one other table was occupied.
The man sitting there had glanced Hendley's way without apparent
interest, though his eyes were hidden behind the dark glasses worn by
the majority of the camp's residents. He was a slender, lithe young
man, about Hendley's own height and build, with skin darkened by long
exposure to the sun. Hendley envied the youthful stranger his casual,
indolent air. Quite obviously he was used to all this; he could take it
for granted.

Fifty yards away a game of some sort was in progress in an outdoor
pool. Shouts and sudden cries and bubbling laughter drifted across the
green lawn. On impulse Hendley downed the last of his drink, rose and
walked slowly toward the pool.

The scene might have been in a Freedom Play on the viewscreen in
Hendley's old room. Men and women in white uniforms sat around tables
on a broad patio surrounding the pool, or relaxed in lounge chairs,
caressing drinks while they talked or idly watched the action in the
pool. Sunlight sparkled on the blue water, which was churned into foam
where the swimmers tangled in a spirited struggle for a round ball. The
swimmers had doffed their uniforms and wore only thin strips of white
plastic mesh. One man had lost his flimsy cover in the course of the
game, but neither he nor the spectators appeared to pay any attention
to the loss.

The game was unfamiliar to Hendley. There were goals set up at each end
of the pool, and the object of the skirmishing seemed to be to carry
the ball to one of these goals and push it through a round hoop. The
players were divided into two teams.

Hendley looked around for a vacant lounge chair. A girl sitting at the
far side of the pool, her legs over the edge, caught his eye. She was
clad in the wisps of white mesh around her breasts and hips, exposing
a large expanse of smooth, deeply tanned skin. Her slender brown legs
dangled in the water. Looking up, laughing, she saw Hendley watching
her. The laughter faded. Her eyes, large and dimly visible behind
tinted glasses, seemed to hold his, their expression unreadable. When
a sudden explosion of action in the water drew her attention, Hendley
took the opportunity to walk around the pool. He paused a few feet away
from the girl, staring down in admiration at her sleek, brown-skinned
body.

She glanced up with a slight smile made sensual by full red lips. "Why
aren't you in the game?" she asked.

"I don't know how to play." He squatted beside her, watching the agile
leap of a swimmer out of the water to spear a loose ball. "Is it easy
to learn?"

"Anybody can do it," she said with a careless shrug, "as long as you
can swim."

"I swim a little."

"You're new, aren't you?"

"How could you tell?"

Slowly she removed her tinted glasses. Large brown eyes regarded him
candidly. "You're so white," she said.

Hendley flushed. It was true, though he hadn't thought too much about
it before. His recent arrival in the camp would be obvious to everyone.
He felt a strong wish to belong, to be one with these brown, happy,
uninhibited people, to merge with them. And just as suddenly the harsh
reminder came: he wouldn't have time. He had less than a day.

The girl was no longer watching him. Hendley rose from his crouch,
but he didn't move away. She was about Ann's age, he thought. But Ann
would never be so brown-skinned. He frowned, guiltily conscious of a
comparison unfavorable to Ann, wondering why he had thought "never."

The swimmers converged at that moment near one of the goals. In the
tangle of brown bodies and boiling water it was impossible to follow
the action closely, but there was a sudden scream of pain, choked off
as a mouth filled with water. A whistle shrilled. The players drew
apart, surfacing, treading water, drifting to the sides of the pool.
One body stayed down, motionless near the bottom, appearing to undulate
gently with the rippling of the water. The other swimmers made no move
toward him, but even as alarm tugged at Hendley he saw two stiff-legged
figures trotting briskly toward the pool from a beige-colored building
in the background. With a start Hendley realized they were humanoids,
robots so flawlessly imitative of man that, across the width of the
pool, only a certain rigidity of movement betrayed their origin.
Without hesitation they dove into the pool.

"Why don't the others do anything?" Hendley exclaimed. "That man'll
drown!"

"They're not supposed to," the tanned girl said. "Rules of the game.
Besides, it's the robots' job. They're better at it."

"But I don't--" Hendley broke off. The robot rescuers surfaced with the
limp body of the injured player. With practiced efficiency they eased
him onto the deck beside the pool.

"That answers a question I had," Hendley said thoughtfully.

"What's that?"

"About how some of the services are performed in the camp. I didn't
know you had robots."

The girl lost interest. "They're handy, even if they are kind of
creepy."

A small crowd now huddled around the unconscious swimmer. "Do you
suppose he'll be all right?" Hendley wondered aloud.

"Looks like he's only got a broken arm," the girl said indifferently.
"They'll bring him around."

Hendley stared at her, startled by her lack of concern. Before he could
speak a broad-shouldered man with blond hair burned almost white by
the sun heaved himself from the water to flop onto the deck beside the
girl. "Two-minute break," he said loudly. "Bad luck. MTL-619 was a good
guard."

Becoming aware of Hendley standing nearby, he glanced up. "Hey!" he
exclaimed. "How about you? We need a player."

"Oh, I--I don't think so," Hendley demurred.

"Why not? It's fun!"

The girl was watching Hendley. Her brown eyes seemed to hold a
challenge. "You'll never learn unless you try," she said.

Hendley hesitated. "All right," he said, surprising himself. "Where do
I get one of those suits?"

"They'll give you one at that service building," the blond young man
said, waving toward the beige structure from which the robots had
appeared. "We'll have to start without you, but hurry up!"

He pushed off the lip of the pool into the water. Hendley glanced again
at the girl. She was smiling, but the sunglasses hid her eyes once more
and he wasn't sure what the smile said.

       *       *       *       *       *

A dispensomat was built into one wall of the beige service building.
A row of panels, each with an order button, listed various kinds
of sports equipment. Hendley pushed the button after SWIMMING
TRUNKS--MALE, and gave his size in answer to a metallic voice over
an intercom. The white mesh trunks, wrapped in plastic, slid down a
chute into view.

Since no facilities seemed available, Hendley guessed that he was
expected to change clothes in the open. He undressed hastily, wondering
at the insane urge which had made him agree to join the game. He became
exaggeratedly conscious of the warm current of air caressing his body,
and he felt a prickling of anticipation. He wished that he were not so
dead white.

Returning to the pool, Hendley hovered near the edge, not sure what
he was supposed to do. With chagrin he saw that the brown-eyed girl
did not appear to notice him. Almost immediately the dripping head and
shoulders of the husky young swimmer burst from the water, blond hair
plastered to his skull. "Come on!" he shouted.

"What do I do?"

"That's our goal! Just don't let them score. And if you get the ball,
throw it to me!"

He went under. The action was now concentrated at the far end of the
pool. Hendley chose the moment's safety to dive in near his appointed
goal. He wondered if the girl was as oblivious of him as she pretended,
but within seconds the other players were plunging and wrestling all
around him and there was no more time to think.

The rudimentary rules of the game soon became clear. There were five
players on each side. Two were guards--Hendley's position--stationed
near the goal to block an attack. The other three roamed the pool
freely, battling for possession of the ball. That much was simple. What
Hendley was unprepared for was the game's other basic rule: no holds
were barred. To score or prevent a score, anything went.

His first lesson came when the ball squirted from a player's grip and
bobbed loose within Hendley's reach. He got one hand on it. Something
slammed into the back of his neck. A knee, missing his groin, sank into
his stomach. Strong hands twisted his arm until it seemed ready to pop
from its shoulder socket. He swallowed water.

Coming up gagging, he gulped frantically for air. His arm hung limp.
As he grabbed the lip of the pool for support, he saw that the ball
had moved halfway down the length of the pool. Across the way the
brown-eyed, brown-skinned girl was laughing. More than that. She was
clapping her hands. Applauding.

Grimly Hendley turned to meet another attack. This time he didn't try
for the ball. He kept busy defending himself. One attacker got an arm
around his throat, but Hendley had caught the flash of muscular arm
from the corner of his eye. He was able to wrench free with no worse
than a bruised neck.

Hendley surfaced, pleased with himself. The blond young man came up for
air a few feet away. He glared at Hendley with hostile eyes. "You let
'em score!" he snarled. Then he was gone.

For a while Hendley was angry--with the blond man and with
himself--but after a short time he no longer felt anything but a desire
to get out of the water alive. Yet when the attackers threatened his
goal, he threw himself at the nearest one with savage determination.
His arms and legs grew heavy with weariness. His head ached. He
wondered how long the game lasted, and he longed for the end with a
deep yearning. He had forgotten all about the girl watching from the
side of the pool.

Then another player was injured and carried from the pool. He was on
the opposing team. It appeared that the attackers had used up their
substitutions. The game went on, unevenly matched. Hendley's team went
to work to exploit their advantage. They scored once. Moments later
another of the opposing swimmers drifted senseless near the bottom of
the pool. Five players to three. It would soon be over.

Hendley had grown numb to the meaning of what was happening. He was too
tired to feel pity or outrage. The chief emotion he felt as the game
resumed was an increased sense of security. The odds were improving.

That safe feeling lulled him into carelessness. When the other team,
in spite of being outmanned, seized the ball and launched an attack,
three of Hendley's teammates ganged up on the man with the ball. It
bobbed free. Hendley made the mistake of playing the ball instead of
protecting himself. Two men struck at him simultaneously, one at his
head, the other from below. They dragged him down. One seemed to be
trying to twist his leg off at the knee. The other, more direct, was
also more effective. His first blow rocked Hendley's head. The second
drove a tooth through his lower lip. The sun seemed to go down suddenly
and the blue water turned dark. A band of pressure tightened around
his neck. He clawed at it. It was an arm. It wouldn't come loose. His
struggles became weaker. He wondered why his teammates didn't come to
his aid. Then the man who'd been working on his knee changed tactics,
raising the level of his attack--about eighteen inches. Hendley felt
a rocketing pain. He followed its crimson burst. When he reached the
center of it, it turned to water and he was drowning....

       *       *       *       *       *

"He's coming around."

Hendley tried to open his eyes, but the lids were stuck. He stopped
trying and concentrated on his pain. His knee was aflame, and his neck
and jaw and stomach and other, more tender parts ached. Someone seemed
to be kneeling on his chest. But he could flex his toes and fingers. He
could breathe, if wheezingly. He seemed whole--and he was alive.

His eyelids struggled open. He looked into a smooth-skinned brown face
and brown eyes that seemed to devour him. The girl's full, wide mouth
was open. Her expression was no longer indifferent. It was--eager.

He stared past her rounded shoulder at the sky, and at another familiar
face which he did not immediately place. The face smiled.

"Close call," the young man who owned the face said. "But with a little
rest you'll be good as new."

The statement did not seem very credible, but Hendley was unequal to
argument. "What happened?" he asked.

"You won!" the tanned girl said enthusiastically.

"I did?"

"FLN-962--he's my Contracted--said you did very well. The team won.
They're playing a rematch now."

"Oh." The victory did not matter. What mattered was being out of the
game in one piece. He said, "They must be out of their minds."

"FLN is a nut about water polo," the girl agreed.

"I thought I was finished."

"He pulled you out." With a toss of her head the girl indicated the
stranger watching over her shoulder. Hendley tried to identify the
faintly sardonic smile, the cool ascetic face with its expression of
weary boredom. He noted that the man's uniform was soaking wet.

"The robot rescue team was on another call," the man said diffidently,
dismissing his action. "I thought they might not get to you in time."

Hendley closed his eyes. "Thanks," he murmured. He felt terribly tired,
but the pain in his groin had dulled a little and the other aches were
bearable, even the knee. Suddenly he remembered the young man's face.
He had been sitting with his air of indolence at a table near Hendley's
in the outdoor cafe. Hendley looked up again. The young man was gone.

"Where did he go?" Hendley asked.

"Never mind him," the brown-eyed girl said soothingly. Gently she
massaged his neck. "Do you think you can get up?"

"I don't know."

"I'll help you."

Somehow he managed to struggle to his feet with the girl's help. "You
need to relax," she said. "Come with me." Too weak to protest or even
to wonder why it was necessary to move, Hendley allowed himself to be
led away from the pool area. They were on grass, and she steadied him
as he sagged against her. Then they were under a canopy of trees which
screened the sunlight. The cool shade felt good. Sounds of play in the
pool had diminished.

"Lie here," the girl murmured in his ear.

Hendley did as he was told. It was wonderful to lie on the cool grass,
to let his abused muscles relax, to close his eyes, to feel the soft
breath of air against his body....

He tried to sit up. He wasn't in his uniform. He wore only the minimal
cover of the white mesh bathing trunks, and the girl's hands were
busily divesting him of this garment.

"You're so white," she breathed, lowering herself to the ground beside
him. "You don't know what that does--it's been so long since I've seen
anybody so white. And you're hurt. I'll make you feel better--you'll
see."

"Wait!" Hendley protested weakly.

"Mmmm," the girl said, her mouth seeking his. "I don't know what it
is--when I see a man hurt...."

"TLL! TLL!" Someone was calling. A man's voice. "TLL--where are you?"

"Oh, damn!" the girl said.

"TLL?" The voice was coming closer. Hendley's scalp prickled as he
recognized the voice. The muscular blond swimmer, her Contracted! If
the man found them like this, he'd never believe....

"Where the hell ... are you in there?"

With a sigh the girl sat up. Hendley tried to rise to his knees,
fumbling for his trunks. Bushes parted. The tall, broad-shouldered
figure of the blond man loomed over them. "There you are!" he said.
"Didn't you hear me?"

"I heard," the girl said petulantly.

The man gave Hendley a cursory nod. "Come on! I hear a hunt's getting
up. Soon as it's dark."

"A hunting party?" There was a subtle change in the girl's manner and
her voice. Hendley glanced into the large brown eyes. The glitter he
saw there made him uneasy.

"Hurry up! We'll have to eat and get ready!" The man for the first time
looked directly at Hendley, who made a halfhearted effort to cover
himself with the white mesh trunks, knowing the gesture was futile.
"You did all right in there for a beginner," the blond swimmer said
heartily. "Hope you'll keep showing up. Always need good players!"

He gave the girl his hand to pull her to her feet. "Just let me get my
uniform," she murmured, casually adjusting the halter of her swimming
garment. She glanced back at Hendley and said, with what seemed like
regret, "So white...."

Then the couple was striding off and the girl was saying, "We haven't
had a good hunt in so long. Who's the target? Is he playing now?"

Their voices trailed off. Hendley gaped after them. They were
Contracted--but there had been neither jealousy nor disgust in the
man's attitude. He had practically caught Hendley and the girl
violating one of the Organization's first rules of order--and he hadn't
cared!

Hendley caught hold of a heavy branch of the nearest bush and dragged
himself erect. The ways of Freemen were going to take some getting used
to, he thought. Remembering the girl's eyes when she had heard about
the hunting party, he shivered involuntarily. What kind of woman would
react so strongly to a man's pain? And what did they mean by the hunt?

He glanced down at his pale body, unused to the sun, and shivered
again. Even when he emerged from the shade into the warm sunlight, he
still felt cold.

       *       *       *       *       *

Participation was a compulsive act. Less than an hour after Hendley
left the swimming pool in the central park, once more clad in his
visitor's white uniform, he found himself lingering beside a fence
enclosing a series of tennis courts. A shower, a rest, another whiskey
and soda had refreshed him. Walking had loosened bruised, stiff
muscles, although he still limped, favoring his right knee. Except for
the knee and a swollen lip, he felt almost normal. Ready for action,
in fact. Tennis, however, seemed a little too strenuous, even such
indifferent tennis as that being played here. The players lobbed the
ball back and forth listlessly, hardly trying when a shot went out of
reach. Odd. A number of the activities Hendley had watched were carried
on with the same indifference: lawn games, a bowling match, boating.
In the parks and on the streets many Freemen stood around with vacant
expressions. Yet the water polo players had thrown themselves into
their game with a vengeance Hendley could attest to. Some participants
in a football game he'd paused to watch for a while had piled into each
other with an audible crunching impact. Even a group of cyclists racing
around a circular track had competed with real fervor. They weren't
very good riders, for Hendley had witnessed two collisions on a far
turn in the brief time he watched. But they were enthusiastic.

Contact sports, he thought....

He walked on. The afternoon was waning, though the sun remained well
above the horizon. How little the Freemen seemed to notice the sun! He
never saw any of them staring up at the sky, while Hendley frequently
paused to survey that awesome immensity. They brushed heedlessly past
vivid flowers in bloom, trampled upon bushes, failed to turn their
heads when a bird sang from a tree, while Hendley found these things
fascinating. Perhaps in time you became used to them. They might come
to seem ordinary. Even the vaulting sky might fail to make you feel
small.

He came to an area of carefully tended lawns broken here and there by
patches of white sand, defined by rough stretches of taller grass and
shrubbery. Small groups of players strolled in the distance, pulling
carts or carrying bags containing slender sticks. Something tugged at
Hendley's memory. He had seen such a place in a miniature display in
the Sports Museum. In the underground cities there was not enough space
for such a layout, but it made a pretty picture in the late afternoon
in the spacious Freeman Camp.

Near one of the familiar beige service buildings a player was setting
a small white ball on the ground and preparing to strike it with the
weighted end of one of the slender poles. He was a stocky, vigorous
man twice Hendley's age, his skin reddened rather than tanned by the
sun, his thick arms choked with dense gray hair, his head completely
bald. Behind him another player hovered, watching, a tall angular man
of much the same age, with a prominent Adam's apple, knife-edge nose,
remarkably long arms, and an angry scowl. Calling on an old habit,
Hendley attached the nickname Curly to the bald man with the hairy
arms, and Happy to his scowling companion. Nicknames were easier to
remember than numbers.

Curly glanced up from the white ball as Hendley came near. "Join us?"
he called cheerfully. "It's better with three."

"Humph!" the other grunted.

"I'd like to," Hendley said. The exercise, which seemed mild, would
help to limber abused muscles a little more, easing the soreness in
his arms and neck. He was issued a bag of clubs and three white balls
at the service building. When he joined the other players, Curly was
waiting, prepared to hit his ball.

"If you don't know how to play, you can just watch us," Curly said.

Hendley nodded. As Curly faced his ball, Hendley hefted the slender
plastic club with its flat-faced head and tentatively swung it.

"Not until I start my swing!" Curly snapped sharply.

Hendley desisted, not sure what he had done wrong. The stocky man
flexed his hairy arms and drew his club high over his head. He remained
frozen in that position for several seconds. Then he swung, the
clubhead lashing down in a swift arc. At that moment the dour-faced
player suddenly stabbed out with his club toward the ball. He missed by
inches. Curly's club smacked the ball solidly and, following through,
banged into his opponent's stick before it could be withdrawn. The club
shot from Happy's hands. He grabbed his fingers, grimacing with pain.
Curly laughed gleefully. "Caught you that time!" he cried.

The ball had flown almost out of sight down the playing field. The
three men watched it until it came to rest. "That's the fairway," Curly
explained. "Try to hit it there. Over there, that's called the rough.
And those sandy patches are traps. Object is to get to the green--see
it way off there?"

Hendley peered into the distance, wondering how he was ever going to
hit the ball that far. Then the angular player stepped over to place
his ball on the ground, scowling more savagely than before. Curly took
up a position behind the taller man. He winked at Hendley.

A pattern of play emerged. One player was allowed to stand behind
the one driving his ball. He could attempt to dislodge the ball, but
only after the driver had begun his swing. Happy's first maneuver
turned out to be a feint. He began his swing, checked it suddenly and
brought his club into position for a direct overhand smash. But Curly
had anticipated him. His stab at the ball was also a feint. Happy
was left holding his club aloft with no chance to hit his opponent's
stick. Curly laughed until his eyes were moist. "Cost you a stroke!" he
chortled.

Happy managed to make his drive, but he used a short, vicious stroke.
The ball sped out in a low trajectory, hooked sharply, and disappeared
into the tall grass of the rough. Happy muttered angrily to himself.

Hendley, innocent in the tricks of the game, became an object of
amusement to his fellow players. They took turns interfering with him.
Three times they managed to knock his ball away just before Hendley's
clubhead could strike it. On the fourth try Hendley not only hit the
ball but had the satisfaction of catching Curly's club as well. He
could feel the shivering impact.

His drive, with his three misses, he was informed, cost him a total of
four strokes.

Hendley was not sure that he cared much for the game, but he was
now determined to stick it out. At least his companions played in
earnest. Curly took a keen delight in every phase of the game, but
his cheerfulness did not disguise the intensity with which he played.
Happy's long face grew longer and darker as the game progressed, his
hawk nose seemed to sharpen, his mouth tightened into a thinner,
grimmer line. His derision over Hendley's atrocious play seemed to be
the only pleasure he found in the game. Hendley wondered why, with so
many other sports and entertainments in the camp to choose from, the
tall man should persist in one which merely made him angry.

At the beginning of the fourth hole, as each successive step in the
game was called, Curly bristled when Happy's club, trying to stab the
ball, struck the stocky man's shin. They exchanged heated words. Happy
raised his club threateningly, but Curly brandished his own and faced
the other down. They played on in sullen silence.

Hendley, the last to hit his ball successfully as usual, knocked
it once more into the rough. This time the other two players
contemptuously left him to hit out by himself without interference.
They played on ahead. By the time Hendley managed to knock ball onto
the close-cropped grass of the fairway, his companions were both on the
green, a circle of very fine grass visible in the distance. Hendley
paused a moment to watch them. He would quit after this hole, he
reflected. With daylight almost gone--the sun now rested at the tops
of the trees ringing the camp--he had no time to waste on pointless
pleasure. He lacked the fiercely competitive approach of the other two
men, perhaps because he was so inexpert.

On the distant green something had happened. Curly was shaking a fist
at the taller man. They stood so close their chests bumped. Hendley
could not hear them, but he watched the silent tableau of their anger
with a feeling of apprehension. Suddenly Happy's thin, sharp-angled
figure bent, lashing out like a whip. He snatched the other man's club
from him, dropping his own. He brought the slender plastic rod down
viciously across his bony thigh. To Hendley's surprise the plastic rod
bent. At a second blow it snapped in two. With malice evident in the
gesture Happy threw the two broken pieces onto the green.

Hendley had started toward them. For a moment nothing happened, the
two men seeming to glare at each other in impotent rage. Hendley's
pace quickened to a trot. It was a lucky thing that Curly had such a
cheerful disposition....

Hendley started running. The stocky man had suddenly scooped up Happy's
club from the ground. The tall man lunged for it. Curly eluded him.
"Stop it!" Hendley shouted, but he knew he could not be heard. Curly
dodged away from the surly player, whirled, raising the club, lashing
down....

Hendley pulled up short. He seemed unable to breathe. The two figures
on the green were motionless in the bright sunlight. Slowly the
dour-faced man's tall body began to collapse, sliding toward the ground
as if it were strung together in loosely attached sections. The silent
impact of the lean figure hitting the ground prodded Hendley into
action. His mind was still stunned, but his legs moved without his
volition, automatically propelling him toward the green. Far off to the
right another group of players had paused to stare. Hendley waved at
them urgently, but they did not move.

What happened next no longer had the power to shock or terrify him. As
he raced closer to the green, the stocky, good-humored Curly raised the
plastic club in his hands and with careful, deliberate aim brought the
weighted head down to crush the fallen man's skull.

Near the sand trap at the edge of the green Hendley paused to be sick.
When he was able to stagger onto the smoothly clipped carpet of grass
Curly was thoughtfully wiping the clubhead on the grass. Not far away a
small, beige-painted vehicle was speeding toward them. The stocky man
hardly glanced at Hendley or his victim. He made no attempt to escape.

He's mad, Hendley thought, facing him across the green. But at any rate
he wouldn't get away now. The beige vehicle was approaching swiftly.
Hendley stared at the dead man, whose face no longer scowled. Happy, he
thought. Sickened again, he turned away.

The beige car, a motor-powered van carrying two beige-uniformed
attendants, drove directly to the edge of the green. As the men hopped
out Hendley expected Curly to run--or to prepare to resist. To his
astonishment the two attendants paid no more attention to the stocky
man than to Hendley. With silent efficiency they scooped the dead
body onto a stretcher, carried it to the rear of the van, and slid it
inside. Without a word they retreated around the car and began to climb
back onto their seats.

"Wait!" Hendley shouted, running toward them. "Aren't you going to do
anything about _him_?" He pointed accusingly at Curly, who was making
practice swings with his borrowed club. The stocky man looked up.

One of the attendants was already in his seat, but the driver paused.
His head swiveled toward Hendley--stiffly. "He was murdered!" Hendley
shouted. "I saw it! You can't let him get away with it!"

The driver's face completed its turn. It was blank, shining,
impersonal, and, in spite of its perfection of feature, inhuman.
Hendley stared in stunned incredulity. Robots! Cleaning up the human
debris on the golf course as they rescued drowning swimmers from the
pools. No wonder Curly had remained indifferent!

The vehicle drove off while Hendley stared after it. Swinging around,
he tried to find the distant group of players who had paused in their
game to watch what was happening. He saw them far off on another
fairway. Their interest had turned back to their game.

Hendley swung back to confront Curly. Revulsion shook him. The whole
affair was impossible--it couldn't happen! "What kind of a man are
you?" he shouted, hardly knowing what he was saying.

To his horror the stocky man smiled with his usual cheerfulness. "These
things happen," he said. "He never liked the game really. I told him
he shouldn't play it, but...." Curly made another idle swing with his
club, the head whistling in the air. "Don't think about it. You'll soon
feel better. Shall we get on?"

Hendley gaped at him. "Get on with what?"

"The game," Curly said blandly. "I'll wait for you while you hit up to
the green."

Hendley's disbelief burst like a seed pod, spilling out angry words.
"You're insane!" he cried. "You've just murdered a man! If you think
we're going on with this farce--"

"But you have to play," the bald man said, unperturbed. "Rules of the
game, you know. Have to play at least six holes through." He smiled
again, his red face unmarked by concern. He said, "Obviously you're new
here, and there are some things you obviously don't understand. But
anyone who plays golf accepts the risks involved. And the rules." He
hefted his plastic club with his hairy, muscular arms. "You'll play,"
he murmured. "Unless you'd rather fight it out here."

In an arrested moment of stillness in which no bird sang and the air
itself ceased to stir, Hendley faced the murderer on the sun-washed
green. It _was_ happening, he thought stupidly. It could not possibly
happen, but it was.

For some reason he looked up toward the sky, the great blue dome
blazing with fire on the western horizon. Then, his brain numb, his
steps wooden, he turned and walked back along the fairway toward his
ball.




                                   7


The first star of evening rested like a jewel against the night's dark
throat. The moon had not yet risen. At surface level in the Freeman
Camp, away from the gaudy main streets and the floodlit play areas,
the shadows were deep. The clumps of woods and bushes in the parks, so
fresh and cool and inviting during the day, were now black, forbidding
caves.

At night the camp was different. Under the day's warm sun and dazzling
sky, it was a vivid and colorful panorama of flowers and trees and
green grass and gaily painted buildings, with a leisurely pace and a
pervading atmosphere of carefree pleasure which could not be destroyed
by the occasional bizarre incident. With the coming of darkness the
tempo of activity became more frenetic, its spirit caught by the shrill
cacophony of the music blaring from viewscreens and the computer bands
in the better cocktail lounges and dance halls. There was a keener,
more penetrating edge to the sudden peals of laughter, a more insistent
note in the gay, sophisticated talk around the cafe tables and in the
bars, an urgency to the hurrying steps of the crowds pushing along the
streets, a sweaty impatience pervading the lines forming outside the
red-painted PIB's. By day the Freemen were a family group enjoying lawn
games and relaxing by the pool, and the family could hardly be blamed
if a mad uncle brandished a golf club. At night the party started.

The main thoroughfares were thronged with Freemen. They clustered on
street corners. They jammed the lavish restaurants and spilled out of
the tiny bars. They swarmed through the glowing theater lobbies and
filled the recreation halls with noisy confusion. Their merriment had
a voice. It was high and artificially frightened, ringing through the
tunnels of the electronically thrill-packed fun houses. It was hoarse
and raw with savage excitement in the banked spectator rows of the
miniature bird fight arena, where two leggy, long-beaked birds--rare
mutations of an earlier species--controlled by slender string leashes
secured to metal rings around their necks, goaded by electronic
impulses from the whiplike metal rods held by their handler-trainers,
pecked and slashed at each other with their curved sword-beaks. It was
low and suggestive behind the drawn curtains of the private booths
in the peekie-houses, where the latest erotic films were created by
thought impulses on the individual screens.

Assaulted by the voices, jostled by the crowds, TRH-247 wandered
through the camp. The driving tempo of its gaiety infected him,
stealing into his blood stream, quickening all his senses into a kind
of exaggerated awareness. Several drinks had blurred the residue
of horror left from the scene he had witnessed on the golf green,
and diluted the angry tension of the last two holes played out in
the fading light. In the evening's party atmosphere he could almost
forget--although, like someone holding a door closed against a ghost,
he avoided the shadowed places and the dimly lighted side roads which
separated the rows of residential buildings, seeking out the open,
crowded centers and the bright lights.

On those final two holes of golf Hendley had required thirteen strokes.
The number would not easily be forgotten, for each time he had
addressed his ball, the stocky, bald-headed player had stood behind
him, chuckling softly, tapping his weighted clubhead in his hand or
casually lifting it. Hendley had had to fight down panic. His shots
had been erratic and uncontrollable. To his lasting shame, on the last
hole, as he placed himself behind his amused opponent in position to
interfere with a drive, he had found himself thinking: If I struck now,
I could get him first.

But nothing had happened. Hendley had not acted, and the man he called
Curly had been content to smile at Hendley's nervousness and to mock
his ill-concealed anger and revulsion. At the end of the sixth hole the
stocky man had chuckled, saying, "Beat you by nineteen strokes. You're
not much competition." And with that he had picked up his ball and
walked away, leaving Hendley to stare after him bitterly, galled by the
intense relief that left him quivering, unable to walk steadily, his
hands shaking so he had trouble retrieving his ball.

Time, the serene beauty of the camp, and two quick whiskeys at the
nearest refreshment counter quieted Hendley's nerves and helped him to
gain perspective. Obviously there must be some form of internal force
for law and order among the Freemen. Outsiders presumably couldn't
interfere with that internal rule. To do so would be to deny freedom.
When Hendley found out how the system worked, he would have to report
the dangerously mad golfer. Something would be done. Surely the risks
of golf mentioned by Curly didn't include cold-blooded murder!

As reason asserted itself--and the drinks took effect--he began to
feel better. He was able to sip his third drink slowly, enjoying it,
savoring with it his first full view of twilight, painting a stark
black filigree of leaf and branch against a luminous sky. The spectacle
left him breathless. What overwhelming grandeur the world offered! And
here in the Freeman Camp it was continuously on display. The sky itself
seemed to thunder the joys of freedom. Against this awesome splendor
the overzealous enthusiasm of a group of swimmers, the sexual whim of
an impressionable girl, even the petty violence of a deranged mind
shrank into insignificance.

There was so much to enchant the eye and ear. A man would never have
his fill of it. If freedom meant no more than the opportunity--and
the leisure--to enjoy all this to his heart's content: the beauty of
a bird soaring, the sparkle of a sunlit pool, the intricate texture
of a tree trunk, the cool sweep of a green lawn, the vaulting leap of
sky from horizon to horizon--it would be enough. Endless pleasure. No
need to devour it hungrily (except for him, Hendley thought, checking
his rapture). For the others, the truly free, there would never be
the necessity to hurry away to the appointed task, the appointed
recreation hour, the appointed woman. (He hadn't thought of RED-498,
his Assigned, with quite that cold objectivity before, but it was true.)

Darkness came. The insistent beat of the crowded pleasure centers
caught first his ear and then his need to participate, to discover
more of the lures of freedom. He was drawn along the crowded streets,
looking, smiling as the groups grew more boisterous and here and there
an early drunk reeled from a bar, absorbing the sights and sounds as he
had savored his last whiskey. Only occasionally--passing near the dark,
silent, empty places--did he shiver, as if he sensed there the lurking
shadows of pain and insensate cruelty.

At last he was hungry. There were many restaurants to choose from, but
he remembered the reception official's reference to the main Rec Hall
on the hill. He had no trouble locating the hill or identifying the
massive yellow building, whose walls were thrown into sharp relief by
a battery of lights in its spacious gardens. As Hendley rode a moving
walk up the steep incline he could feel the lifting pressure in his
thighs. It had been a long day with far more physical activity than he
was accustomed to.

Up close the Rec Hall was even more impressive than it had seemed at
a distance. From a central spindle, itself as large as an ordinary
recreation hall in the cities, curving escalators rose to the main
theater or exhibition hall, whose domelike roof vaulted outward on
concrete spines like a huge umbrella. Lesser wings on ground level
contained varied game rooms. There was one section off to one side
which was concealed behind a high wall. On a lower level, also reached
from the central lobby by winding escalators, was the great casino.
A floodlit pool was set into the lush green gardens surrounding the
building complex.

Even the lobby was luxurious with an opulence Hendley had never seen
before. Living trees bloomed next to the great concrete pillars. Ornate
plastic and real wood furnishings, intricately worked, were placed in
conversational groupings centered around colorful three-dimensional
paintings and depth sculpture. One entire luminous wall shed a soft,
flattering blue light over the whole room.

Inquiring at the main desk, Hendley learned that a wide selection of
food and entertainment was available. A computer-clerk blinked out a
descriptive layout of the Rec Hall on its message panel. There was a
main dining room on a balcony, where a computer band played discreetly
and a dance floor was jammed with couples doing the Sidewalk Hop.
Hendley chose a quieter cafe in one of the wings on ground level.

The service was excellent. He ordered a martini, punched several
buttons for his meal and sat at the designated table. Just as he
finished his drink a tray carrying his hot dinner slid smoothly off the
conveyor belt which ran past his table. The meat-sub was marvelously
authentic, tender and juicy. Somewhat to his own surprise he devoured
the meal greedily.

Relaxing over coffee and an after-dinner liqueur--which was excellent,
without a trace of chemical taste or side effects--he glanced around
the cafe with a feeling of well-being. Something--a delayed tug of
recognition--brought his gaze back to a young man at an adjoining
table. When their eyes met the young man smiled and nodded. Hendley
returned the greeting. It was the same youth who had saved his life
that afternoon by promptly pulling him from the pool.

With the careless slouch and bored manner of someone long used to
freedom's luxuries, the young man picked up his drink and approached
Hendley's table. "Join you?" he murmured. "You look as if you've been
enjoying your first day in camp."

"It's been quite a day," Hendley admitted. "There's so much to see and
do."

"That's the usual reaction," the other said, faintly patronizing.

Hendley flushed. With a self-conscious laugh he said, half-defensively,
"I didn't say it was _all_ good."

The stranger was surprised. "Now that's unusual."

"Well, I've seen some peculiar things," said Hendley. "Even that water
polo match where you fished me out--by the way, I didn't have a chance
to thank you properly." The young man brushed aside his gratitude.
Hendley went on talking. "They play kind of rough. One of those men
came out with a broken arm. It's hardly what you'd call playing for
fun."

The young man raised a quizzical eyebrow--one only in an exaggerated
arch. The controlled boredom of his expression was deceptive. His
face was in fact remarkably expressive, but each reaction seemed
deliberately languid. He was, Hendley guessed, several years younger
than Hendley's own thirty-three years, but he gave the impression of a
sophisticated worldliness which Hendley could not approach.

"You call hurting people fun?" Hendley demanded.

The young man smiled lazily. "Some people do."

A sudden, vivid image of a golf club, glinting in the sun as it
slashed down in a vicious arc toward a limp figure on the green,
jolted Hendley. The defenses which he had built up with drink and
reason to contain that demoralizing reality abruptly shattered. "There
was something else," he said soberly. "Maybe you can help me--it's
something that happened today in a game. It--it's hard to believe, but
it _did_ happen!"

He recounted the incident as rationally as he could, trying to keep
his voice steady. The young man's face failed to register the shock or
disbelief Hendley had expected. As he listened the youth fingered his
glass and pursed his lips. His expression was grave, but that might
have been only in deference to Hendley's obvious emotion. When Hendley
had finished, the young man's sole comment was to raise his glass to
his lips and drink.

"Don't tell me that sort of thing happens every day!" Hendley
protested, stung by the lack of response.

"Hardly," the other replied. "Though golf bugs are pretty
unpredictable, and it's true about going into the game at your own
risk. But murder is frowned upon, of course, even in golf."

"_Frowned_ upon!"

"Oh, yes. We're not all barbarians here." The young man smiled.

"Isn't there something that can be done? Aren't there any
Investigators--any penalties?"

The young man's tone was cool. "We are the free," he said. When Hendley
continued to stare at him, he explained, "Oh, your bald friend went too
far. There's no denying that. And he won't get away with much of that
conduct. The community will take care of him. We have our own ways. But
you must see that what you're suggesting--Investigators, penalties,
courts of order, that sort of thing--is quite out of place here."

"But there has to be some order! Violence, murder--such things are
unheard of outside!"

His companion smiled again indulgently. "Isn't everything we have here
unheard of outside?"

Hendley had no answer. The Freeman's casual acceptance of equally
casual crime was another shock. Yet he could not argue with the simple
assertion that freedom did not admit arbitrary external controls, even
those guaranteeing order and safety. But perhaps--he grasped the young
man's passing reference with a kind of desperation--such methods as
group pressure, ostracism, some form of social coercion did work. They
must. Otherwise....

"You have a lot to learn," the young man said.

"I guess I have," Hendley said, shaking his head.

"Tell me," the other said abruptly. "That red emblem on your sleeve--it
means you're a visitor, doesn't it?"

"Yes. I was told no one would know."

"I guessed. I've seen that emblem before, always on strangers. And
they've always disappeared quickly. It wasn't hard to figure out. How
long are you here for?"

"Just till noon tomorrow."

"You need someone to show you around, give you the guided tour. Someone
to help you keep things in perspective."

Hendley was not sure whether or not the diffident remark was an
offer. "I'll admit I wasn't very well briefed," he said. "The Morale
Investigator who got me this visiting privilege didn't tell me much."

"Of course not," the Freeman said. "They don't know."

"What do you mean?"

"Just that. Few outsiders are allowed in here. There aren't as many
exceptions as you might think. Chances are your Investigator doesn't
know anything more about freedom than you did before you came here. He
only knows what it's supposed to be."

"But there are official personnel right here who aren't free--in the
administration building, for instance."

"They're not allowed into the camp proper. They can't even see into it.
And the underground service facilities are connected only to windowless
buildings on the surface. But just to make sure, those people are all
on life tenure here. They're 1-Daymen without much time to go, and
they don't go back to the cities." The young man's lips curved in a
reflective smile. "Funny, isn't it? The whole Organization is dedicated
to getting into a Freeman Camp, but no one outside has any idea what
it's really like." He laughed outright. "We did have a kind of official
tour once--before the Merger. Bunch of Easterners being given the high
level treatment. We all put on a good show for them. But they didn't
see what it's _really_ like. You've got to know your way around for
that."

"I guess you know your way around."

"I ought to. I've never been out."

"Never?" Hendley exclaimed, startled.

"I was born here."

The brief statement carried a world of significance. Born free! Never
to have known work, worry, regimentation, routine, discipline. Never to
have wanted anything. Never to have breathed the sterile, chemically
purified air of the underground cities, never to have been contained
in the blind-walled towers, never to have been deprived of the sun and
the stars! Hendley thought of childhood with the parks and the trees
and the sunlight--delightful prelude to a whole lifetime of leisure
and play, with every whim or need indulged, catered to, satisfied. No
wonder the young man wore his Freeman status with such nonchalance!

"It must have been a wonderful life," he said, awed by the prospect.

"I guess you'd say so. Sure," the Freeman said composedly. "But I never
thought of it that way."

"Your parents were both here when you were born?"

"Uh-huh."

"Then you grew up with them." Hendley felt a different envy. "I was
taken away from mine after the first few years. I hardly remember them.
That's the way it's done outside. I didn't see much of them after I was
six. From then on it was schools, work training--you never had that."

"Oh, I had schools," the young Freeman protested. "The best. Nothing's
too good for a Freeman, you know." He laughed. "Those school
computers--they tried to drill it into us. I guess I didn't learn as
much as I should have, but I was exposed to it, anyway. As for my
parents, I never saw much of them. They were always too busy getting
their jolts. This was all new to them when I was a kid. Like with you."

"Jolts?"

"Laughies. Fun. Pleasure-pures. You know."

"Are they still here? I mean--alive?"

"They're around somewhere," the young man said indifferently. "I saw
the old boy on a hunt about six or seven suns ago."

"A hunt! That's where that girl--" Hendley broke off. "I heard someone
talking about a hunting party. What's that all about?"

"You don't know about the hunt?" The young man looked at Hendley oddly.

"No. How could I?"

"That's right." The Freeman hesitated. "We'll get to the hunt later.
First you have to get the dimensional view--you, with depth. Behind the
scenes. And I'm just the little Freeman who can push the right buttons.
How about it?"

"I'm with you."

The Freeman grinned. "We ought to have names. What's yours?"

"TRH-247."

"Mine's a laughie. NIK-700. You can call me Nik," he said. "Everybody
does. We don't run a very tight ship here," he added with humor.
"That's an old saying. I heard it from a computer in one of those
back-time courses in school."

Hendley was unfamiliar with the phrase, but he guessed its meaning. As
he rose with his new friend he thought: The Organization is a tight
ship. As tight as computer ingenuity can make it. Freedom is escape
from that, too.

       *       *       *       *       *

"You have casinos in the outside world, I suppose?" Nik asked.

"No," Hendley said. "The Organization outlawed them many years ago.
Too many people would gamble away a life's work credit. Compulsives,
they used to be called. The Organization acted to protect them from
themselves."

"Gambling is a favorite pastime here," Nik said. "And the casino here
in the Rec Hall is generally considered to be the best. It never
closes, day or night. That's why it's below ground level--so you don't
see the sun."

The main floor of the casino was a half-dozen steps below the entrance
where Hendley and his companion stood. They looked out over a scene of
feverish activity, distinguished as much by the low volume of sound
as by the air of tension. The casino was divided into a series of
diminishing circles. The first and widest circle was the most crowded,
containing row upon row of small gambling machines--computers with
illuminated screens across whose faces paraded a pattern of designs
and figures. Every one of these machines was in use--the majority
of the players being women, Hendley noticed. The gambler could halt
the dancing pattern on the screen by pushing a button. Winning
relationships of designs and figures paid off with a distinct buzzing
and a cascade of round white chips into a cup at the base of the
screen. Throughout this crowded circle the players fed their white
chips into the machines with the automatic, somnambulent attitude of
robots, never pausing, never looking up, seldom reacting to win or loss.

"We have our compulsives, too," Nik said. "Some of them never leave
the casino. They fall asleep in the lounges, wake up, go back to the
machines. Until they run out of chips."

It seemed incredible to Hendley that Freemen would voluntarily choose
to shut themselves off from the sun and the open sky, once having
gained them, but the hypnotized faces of the gamblers were convincing.
Shaking his head, he looked beyond the first bank of machines toward
the inner circles. At various kinds of green-topped tables hordes of
Freemen gambled with cards, dice, electronic wheels, light-sticks. The
circles shrank to an open aisle, wider than the others, near the center
of the huge room. Here a single large table occupied the exact center.
A robot sat immobile at the table. No one was playing. Hendley saw that
robot dealers monitored all of the tables, their impassive metallic
faces immediately recognizable by their light-reflecting quality.

Nik seemed to divine the direction of Hendley's interest. "We used
to have human croupiers and dealers," he said. "But they couldn't be
trusted. They'd hold out chips--fix games for their friends--things
like that. Robots work much better. They can't cheat. And they can't be
bribed or threatened."

Hendley was frowning. "What I don't understand," he said, "is what you
gamble for. What do you get out of it? You have everything you want
or need provided for you. How can all those people go on gambling,
and feel like that about it"--he nodded toward the first circle of
feverishly intent players--"when it's all so meaningless? What do they
have to win or lose?"

Nik hesitated. "Maybe it's hard to understand, but ... do you see those
white chips?"

"Yes."

"The casino issues only a limited number of them--each casino has
its own chips. There are never quite enough to go around. And
they're the only things you can use to gamble. Objectively they mean
nothing--they have no value. But they've come to have a special value
here. A compulsive gambler will do almost anything to get more chips,
especially if he's a heavy loser. Without chips he can't gamble. That's
why there are some things you can buy with chips that you can't get any
other way."

"What could you possibly buy that isn't already free?"

"Oh, quite a few things." The young Freeman smiled tolerantly. "There's
the weed, for instance."

"The weed?"

"A form of opiate. Habit-forming. Quite deadly in the long run, but
some people get hooked on it and have to have it. No one knows how it's
smuggled into the camp. Some say it's grown here, but no one has ever
found out where. It can be bought--if you have white chips."

"But why?" Hendley exclaimed. "I've heard of addicts outside--but here
there are no pressures, no worries, no frustrations. Why would anyone
be driven to using drugs? It's incredible!"

"Well, there are other things you can get with chips that aren't so
incredible." Nik was obviously amused by Hendley's naive astonishment.
"For instance, do you see that blonde girl down there, the one standing
beside the fat gambler at the wheel in the third section?"

Hendley peered toward the inner circle indicated. He had no trouble
identifying the statuesque blonde Nik was referring to. Like a number
of the women in the casino she wore her white coverall zipped open to
the waist--a custom not permissible in the outside Organization. Her
smooth white skin, surprisingly untanned as if she took care to avoid
the sun, and the remarkable ripeness of her exposed figure, enabled
her to stand out easily in the crowd. The face that went with her
more arresting features was like a robot doll's--flawlessly beautiful,
sweetly vacuous. Hendley could not help staring at her. His face began
to feel warm.

"Beautiful, isn't she?" Nik said, laughing.

"Very!"

"She belongs to that gambler next to her. They're Contracted. He's a
big gambler; what you call a compulsive." Nik's smile was worldly,
amused at mankind's overfamiliar decadence. "You may already know that
there's a lot of interchanging of partners in the camp, but not with
her. She's available, but only at a price. She's one of the things you
can buy with white chips."

For a long moment Hendley continued to stare at the tall, lush blonde,
so obviously bored, and at the squat, heavy-set gambler, so evidently
ignoring her, consumed by his gambling passion to the point where other
desires had ceased to exist. Hendley thought of the years the man must
have worked before he had at last paid off his tax debt and won his way
to freedom. And this finally was all it meant to him. Hendley let his
gaze roam over the casino, aware of its peculiar hush, sensing in the
intense absorption of the gamblers a spreading, contagious sickness.
Oppressed, he turned away.

"Let's go outside," he said. "I'd like to see the stars."

       *       *       *       *       *

"We'll go back for the main show," Nik said. "It's worth seeing."

"What kind of show is it?"

"I'll let you find that out for yourself," the young man grinned. "But
I saw the way you stared at the blonde. You'll like the show."

Hendley felt a trace of annoyance, but he let the remark pass. The
girl had been stunning, and he had stared. All of a sudden he was
remembering ABC-331, seeing her face lifted up toward his, and he was
strangely uncomfortable with the memory.

They rode the slow sidewalk strip downhill from the Rec Hall to the
concentration of entertainments in the camp's pleasure center. Hendley
wondered what other special revelations his companion had in store for
him. High above, the night sky soared in a breathtaking leap of black
space, stabbed by stars. His gaze followed the great black arch over
his shoulder until it vanished behind the Rec Hall on the hill.

"That big table at the center of the casino," he said suddenly. "What
is it? No one was playing."

Nik was strangely silent. When he finally answered Hendley had the
impression he was being evasive. "The stakes are too high at the big
table," he said, "But someone will play there before the night is over.
Someone usually does. The smaller the circle the higher the bet,"
he added quickly, not giving Hendley a chance to press him further.
"That's why the outer circle gets the most play." He paused, then added
reflectively, "I tried the big table once. Sooner or later you get the
urge to give it one whirl. I won."

"What are these high stakes?" Hendley asked, curious.

But Nik failed to hear--or chose to ignore the question. "I know where
there's a private party tonight," he said. "We'll have time to get
there and back for the show. I think you'll enjoy it. Some interesting
types. Very arty and all that."

From the bottom of the hill the moving walk sliced through a section of
the central park. The way was brightly lighted, but beyond the ribbon
of light the park was dark. At one point Nik stepped off the walk,
motioning Hendley to follow suit. They faced a narrow path leading
through the shadowed park. Nik stopped. He seemed to be listening for
something. Puzzled, Hendley started to speak. A quick gesture silenced
him. From somewhere along the twisting path there came a scuffling
sound.

Nik grinned. "I thought so," he said. "We take the long way around."

Boarding the walk again, they rode through the park to the main street
of the entertainment section. "What was that all about?" Hendley asked.

"You have to watch the park after dark," Nik said. "And be careful on
any dimly lighted side streets, too, even in the residential area."

"You mean it's dangerous?" It took a moment for the implication to sink
in. There was no place in the cities of the Organization where one
could not ride or walk safely at any hour. If Hendley hadn't carried
with him an all-too vivid memory of the violence that could occur in
the Freeman Camp, he would have been sure his companion was joking.

"I keep forgetting," Nik said. "You don't have crime outside, do you?"

"There are rules infractions, of course," Hendley said, "but nothing
like what you're suggesting." Hearing again in his imagination the soft
scuffling sound floating from the dark path, he gave a shudder. What
had caused the noise? Running footsteps? Fighting?

"There is some individual crime here," Nik said casually. "Robberies,
mostly, or sexual attacks. But lately there's been more and more
trouble with gangs. Unruly packs who roam the parks and back streets at
night."

"Robbers?" Hendley asked in disbelief, finding the concept difficult to
accept.

But the young Freeman slowly shook his head. His smile was sardonic.
"They're called Pleasure Packs," he said. "Robbery is only a
superficial motive, if at all. I guess you'd say they're just looking
for something different." He searched for a way to make Hendley
understand. "It's like sex. You wouldn't expect sex crimes here.
There's plenty of entertainment available along that line. There are
the PIB's and the showgirls--you'll see them later. But after a while
the ordinary thing isn't enough. That's one of our major problems...."
Nik's voice trailed off, as if he had suddenly become aware of what
he was saying and regretted his frankness. "We change here," he said
abruptly, executing a nimble jump to an intersecting walk that rode off
at a tangent from the main street.

Following his new friend awkwardly, favoring his stiff knee, Hendley
puzzled over his words. There had been too many revelations to
absorb all at once. Surely the crimes NIK-700 had mentioned must be
isolated instances. The whole life of the Organization, all human
pursuit, rested on the base of freedom's desirability, its ultimate
satisfactions. The suggestion that it could give rise to a kind of
anarchy, that Freemen would seek to dispel boredom and ennui with
barbarous acts of violence, left Hendley with an uneasy feeling, as if
a firm surface had quite illogically, unaccountably, turned spongy and
uncertain underfoot.

The moving walk wound along a street dividing the entertainment center
from the rows of low-level housing. Hendley wondered if, with so little
time left to him, he would spend much of it in the bright and airy room
assigned to him. Along their way Nik pointed out places of special
interest. "People tend to seek out their own kind, wherever they are,"
he said. "See that cafe? You'll find scientists there mostly. A strange
lot. Stick to themselves, and most of them never go to the casinos or
the shows. They've rigged up a regular laboratory--taken over one of
the rec halls--and they dabble in experiments of one kind or another.
Useless, of course, with the limited equipment they have, but it seems
to keep some of them happy. That gray building is one of the old clubs.
You'd probably find my father there. All the old-timers belong. Of
course, in theory everything in the camp is open to everybody, but
that isn't the way it works out. You're just not welcome in the club
until you've been here years and years." Nik spoke with a trace of
contempt. "They have their private parties and their ritualistic games.
I'm a member really, by birthright, but I seldom go there. Last time
I went my mother was playing one of their little games." He laughed
mirthlessly. "She was trying to take off her uniform while riding in
a rubber raft in the pool, without tipping the thing over. If you got
dunked, that made you fair prey." He glanced at Hendley sharply, almost
suspiciously, as if he were afraid of laughter. "She didn't remember
me," he added curtly, "but I think she'd been on the Weed."

Hendley's head whirled. The complexities of Freeman behavior left him
bewildered. He doubted that he could ever be restless here. There
was too much to do and enjoy without needing to seek out artificial
stimulants and bizarre pleasures. But could he be wrong? Did he know
even himself that well? Everything seemed to change in the perspective
of freedom....

"Here we are," Nik said, leaving the walk.

They stopped before a low, circular, relatively small building from
which came a remarkable volume of sound. As they entered, the noise
burst over them like the resounding coda of a symphony. The main
orchestration was supplied by human voices erupting in every range of
pitch and intensity. Behind these could be heard the whine and sigh of
a computer band. And, bursting up through a center stairwell around
which wound a circular escalator, to crash against Hendley's ears
like a solid wave, came an instrumental thunder of party noises: the
explosion of falling glass, the shudder of the overloaded stairway
straining with its burden, the shifting of a hundred feet, shrieks and
shouts and trills of laughter.

Nik grinned at him. "I'll get us a couple of drinks."

"I could use one!" Hendley said, raising his voice a couple of notches
to be heard.

"You know how artists are," the Freeman shouted back. "They like to
make themselves heard!"

Hendley didn't know. The only art fashioned in the Organization was
created by efficient craftsmen applying known principles--acting
under the direction of a computer. They worked as Hendley worked
in the Architectural Center, by pushing buttons. Order, harmony,
proportion, emphasis, representation, meaningful distortion, suspense,
metaphor--the essential ingredients of the various arts were measurable
quantities, reducible to mathematics. Or so Hendley had thought. What
he saw now was a different art, created by another kind of artist. Free
art, he thought with fresh excitement.

It was also a disturbing art. Directly before him, dominating the
lobby, was a dimensional painting. If he had thought of Freeman
painting before, he would have envisioned representational art of
trees and flowers and blazing skies. Or a concern with light, so
essential a part of the free life. What he saw, vibrating with peculiar
inner tension, was a gray mass which seemed to deny both light and
color. It was a shapeless blob, pulsating with--Hendley groped for
the nature of his response to the painting, seeking to find the cause
through the effect; it was--pain.

"Crass," someone said. "Vulgar." Another voice retorted, "Color isn't
_everything_!" Words and phrases collided and ricocheted and split
into fragments. "--isn't supposed to _mean_ anything. It's supposed
to _be_." "Quite mad--that's the beauty of it...." "Genius...." "The
inner planes are brilliantly suggested...." "Erotic, of course...."
"Feeling!" "Essence...." "I don't _like_ it. That's the real
criticism...." "--see how he used intersecting curves. Marvelous
illusion, don't you think?" "Not _new_ at all...." "--so much life...."
"... death!"

Unnerved, Hendley turned away from the painting. Nik was beside him
again, shoving a drink into his hand. Hendley took a brief swallow,
needing it. The rising crescendo of party noise seemed to diminish as
the drink coursed through his body. Its taste was unfamiliar to him,
but before he could question it Nik was steering him through the crowd
toward the escalator.

"The main party is downstairs," Nik said. "You can see some of the
exhibits along the way. The place is bigger than it looks, isn't it?"

"Yes, from outside--"

"It wasn't built as a gallery, but it's been converted. Used to be a
service building of some kind. Say, I've got to smile at a few faces I
know. See you downstairs on the bottom level. Take a look around as you
go down."

He was gone. The stairway wound slowly past different exhibits of
paintings and sculpture. Knots of Freemen clustered before each work,
talking and arguing and laughing. Curiosity forced Hendley off the
stairway at the first level below the lobby. He edged his way into
a crowded room whose walls and ceiling were covered with paintings.
Their effect, even at first glance, was vaguely alarming. It took him
a while to make a full circuit of the room. By the time he reached
the last painting, a bewildering exercise in spatial relationships in
which ribbons of color entwined like mangled intestines, he was badly
shaken. The art was strikingly personal, each portrait a private image.
The paintings seemed without form or coherent meaning. They ranged
from wildly vivid explosions of light and color to somber experiments
in deliberate dullness. They lacked any common viewpoint. But in spite
of their singularity, they had a sameness. What they shared, what
gave the exhibition a cumulative impact, was the creation in paint and
plastic and metal of a world disturbed, threatened, and threatening, a
world of unimaginable chaos, devoid of tranquillity or joy, a sensual
world which denied the evidence of the senses, an emotional world
terrorized by its feelings.

Hendley wanted to escape. He plunged through the babble and confusion,
fighting his way back to the central escalator, where he leaned over
the railing into the open center well like a man gasping for air. He
was still carrying his glass, forgotten after the first sip in his
absorption with the Freeman art, but in the crush of the crowd half the
drink had been spilled. He raised the glass.

A girl pressed close to him. Her face was daubed with streaks of bright
paint. "Isn't this frantic?" she breathed.

Hendley nodded. "It's that," he agreed dryly.

The girl smiled. The pupils of her eyes were shrunk to small black
pinpoints in a blue field. "You're cute," she said. With a deft
movement she speared his glass. Tilting her head back, she drank
deeply. Her throat worked as she drained the glass. Then she held it
out very carefully beyond the railing of the stairway and dropped
it down the center well. The polished glass winked with light as it
tumbled through the air. The sound of its shattering was lost in the
general noise below.

"I hate empty glasses," the girl said, laughing.

An arm dragged her away. The crowd closed around her like doors
shutting. Then the escalator reached the bottom level and Hendley was
carried through a wide archway into a much larger room. Here there was
less heated discussion, less attention paid to the paintings lining the
walls, more hilarity and shrill excitement. The computer band blared
from the far end of the room. A group of Freemen milling around in the
center turned out to be dancing couples--many pairing men. There were
bars set up on either side of the entrance. Both were jammed. Most of
the dancers and many of the others in the crowd wore strangely cut-out
uniforms, their bare arms or chests or faces smeared, like the face of
the girl on the stairway, with dabs and streaks of color.

Hendley eased past the naked, painted back of a girl locked in an
embrace with a man whose encircling arms were striped with crimson
paint. Suddenly Hendley wished that he were out in the cool evening
air, away from the noise and heat and confusion. But his throat was
painfully parched and his head was spinning. He needed another drink.
He didn't want to think any more. He didn't want to hear the strident
note in the merriment spilling around him. He didn't want to speculate
on the meaning of the bizarrely painted bodies of free artists, whose
lives seemed as desperate as their art.

He fought his way to the nearest bar, jabbed the first button within
reach, and seized the drink that slid from a chute onto the counter. It
was weaker than his previous drink, but it warmed his stomach. He ought
really to be drunk by now, he reflected. Never in his life had he had
so much alcohol in one day. And as a matter of fact he was dizzy. His
eyes were not focusing well. Faces swam across his vision, jelly faces,
without bones. One of them was....

Nik. The young Freeman was smiling his sardonic smile, but his eyes
were speculative. He thinks I'm drunk, Hendley thought. It's all right
for him to laugh. But he forgets that I have only one day. No. One
night, what's left of it. Then I go back....

"--find it interesting?" Nik was talking to him.

"Very," Hendley said. His tongue struggled with the single simple word.
"Don't understand," he muttered vaguely, not sure whether he meant the
painted artists or their shapeless works or his clumsy tongue.

There was a commotion nearby. Briefly the crowd parted, falling back. A
girl had crumpled to the floor. She tried to push up with her arms but
didn't make it. Then she was rolling on her back, writhing in evident
pain, her hands balled into fists that dug into her midriff. As helping
hands reached down toward the girl, the crowd closed around her like a
spider enveloping its prey, walling her off from Hendley's view once
more.

"Know her," he said. "Funny...."

"What's that?" Nik's fingers tightened on his arm.

The gesture annoyed Hendley. He didn't like to be grabbed. He shook his
arm free.

"What did you say?" Nik demanded.

"That girl. Met her on the stairway. She stole my drink," Hendley said
sadly.

For a brief instant the lean, indifferent posture on his friend's face
tightened with emotion. The expression was gone almost at once, but not
before Hendley had recorded it. He was puzzled. Why should a stolen
drink make Nik angry? There was more where it came from. All you could
drink.

"I'll get you another," Nik said with a light laugh. "Can't have girls
getting drunk on your liquor. I guess your drink was one too many for
her."

"Wasn't that," Hendley said with a certainty that surprised him. He
stared in the direction of the girl who had fallen. Something in his
mind struggled toward shape and meaning. The thought resisted form,
remaining as incoherent as a Freeman painting. But Hendley knew that he
had to leave. Whatever the amorphous conviction was, it had something
to do with the stolen drink, and it conveyed fear. "I'm going," he
blurted.

"But--your drink!" Nik protested.

"No more." Hendley started away. Nik grabbed his arm. Hendley whirled
on him in sudden anger. "I'm leaving!" he cried. He took refuge in the
young Freeman's earlier words, not wanting to voice a nameless fear.
"You said there was a show I shouldn't miss. I'm going back to the main
Rec Hall!"

He lurched free of his friend's grasp and plunged through the yielding
crowd toward the escalator. The center well was like a tunnel burrowing
up toward the open sky, the sweet night air, the heavy garden scent of
freedom.




                                   8


Halfway back to the hotel, Nik caught up to him on the moving sidewalk.
The fresh air had cleared Hendley's head a little and helped to relieve
his feeling of oppression. But he turned at the young Freeman's call
with a defensive resentment.

"You took off in a big hurry," Nik said.

"So what?" Hendley snapped.

Nik shrugged. "Thought you'd get a jolt or two out of our would-be
artists," he said indifferently. "They can get on your nerves though.
Say, do you feel all right?"

"Why shouldn't I?"

"I wondered if maybe you weren't used to our drinking habits. Takes
awhile. You were looking a bit green back there."

Hendley relaxed a little. The Freeman's manner was typically at ease,
his gaze turning away from Hendley to rest with amused tolerance on
the befuddled struggles of a festive group trying to stage an "iggy"
race on an enclosed track past which the sidewalk ran. The clumsy,
thick-hided, tailless iguana mutants, oversized descendants of one
of the few desert species to survive into the Organization world,
reared and threw themselves from side to side, trying to unseat their
intoxicated riders. Nik's casual attention to this drunkenly comic
sport did more than anything else to divert Hendley's temper and lull
his vague suspicion. He was forced to admit, after all, that he had
been drinking heavily. It was hardly strange that he should have begun
to feel the effects. Nik couldn't be blamed for that, any more than a
girl's drunken collapse could be charged to a single drink.

Suddenly the darkly shadowed landscape of the Freeman Camp blurred. The
whole star-bitten sky reeled, tilting on its edge, tipping....

Nik was at his side in time to save him from falling off the moving
walk. They were riding the slow strip, but a tumble could have been
nasty all the same, even dangerous. "I say, you're still rocky," the
young Freeman said. "We'd better get you some place where you can rest."

Hendley shook his head. The spasm of dizziness was passing almost as
quickly as it had come. He tried to breathe deeply, leaning against his
friend's supporting arm. He was a good fellow, Hendley thought. Never
should have run off and left him like that. Funny, the notions that
could get into your head. Not even an idea, really, just a--a feeling.

"My quarters aren't far from here," Nik said. "We can go there. Give
you a chance to recuperate."

"I'm all right," Hendley protested. "Just dizzy for a minute. I'm
feeling better already."

"But you need--"

"No," Hendley said firmly. With an effort he pulled himself erect,
disengaging his friend's arm. "This is my only night here. If I rest
now I'll sleep, and if I sleep I won't wake up until it's time to
leave. You said the show at the hotel was worth seeing. I'm going to
see it."

Nik did not answer, but the exasperation on his face was so
transparent, and so unexpected, that Hendley laughed. "Humor me," he
said. "And stick close. You can catch me if I fall."

He grinned at the young Freeman, and after a moment Nik began to join
his laughter. "I'll be imprisoned if I don't think we'll make a real
pleasure-purist out of you yet!" he exclaimed.

Arm in arm, they leaned against each other, laughing uproariously,
as the moving walk carried them through the central park toward the
main Rec Hall on the hill, a brightly lighted yellow mushroom painted
against the night's endless promise.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Tell you what I'm going to do," Hendley said.

"All right, name it."

"I'm going to have another drink."

Nik chuckled. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

"To the desert with your warnings. Drink is pleasure, and pleasure is
all." The familiar Organization slogan came easily to Hendley's lips.
"Bring on the girls! Are you sure this is a good seat?"

"The best. There's a materializer right overhead. And you have a good
view of the main screen over the stage."

Hendley stared at an opaque plastic cylinder suspended from the ceiling
of the great circular auditorium. Less than twenty feet away, the
cylinder was just big enough to contain a grown man. It might have been
a decorative fixture, its smooth surface reflecting a multicolored
flow of light from the auditorium's glowing panels. There were about
two dozen of the cylindrical objects spaced throughout the theater,
overhead for those seated in the balcony, along the sides for the
audience on the main floor. It was difficult to get seats close to
the stage, Nik had explained, unless you arrived very early, but with
the materializers you didn't need front-row seats. The man-sized
cylinders brought the stage to you. Moreover, from a middle distance,
and especially from the balcony, you had a better view of the huge
thought-screen, the giant father of the materializers in shape, mounted
directly over the stage and almost at Hendley's eye level. This huge
screen was also dark.

Drinks arrived on a conveyor belt just as the main lights in the
auditorium began to dim. From his balcony perch Hendley stared down as
the curtain of light obscuring the central stage slowly dissolved. The
stage revealed was in semidarkness.

A spatter of applause broke into thunder as a cone of light slashed
down to sculpture a living bronze--a nude woman standing motionless
on a revolving dais. For an instant the striking figure was enveloped
in brilliant white. Then the light began to change from pink through
rose to a garish red, until at last the figure seemed to be bathed
in blood, unrelieved except for a small white circle lying at the
top of the valley between the woman's red breasts. From the balcony
it was impossible to distinguish the white circle clearly, but on
the materializer, so close to Hendley's seat, it was easy to discern
a thin necklace, the clear outline of a white tag, and the number 1
printed on the tag, which had evidently been treated somehow to reject
the red light. The crimson figure was reproduced slightly larger than
life within the plastic cylinder, and with a breathtaking illusion of
reality, as if she were physically imprisoned there. It was not like
looking at a viewscreen, even a dimensional one. It was as if the
living flesh in its garish costume of light had been transported from
the stage into the plastic cocoon.

A second white cone stabbed down through the darkness, pinning a second
nude figure upon the stage. Again the light changed by degrees to
red. Almost imperceptibly a low, sensuous beat of music had begun to
make itself heard. And with that the audience became more vociferous.
As another and yet another red figure was revealed on the stage, a
persistent murmuring grew. Audible gasps ignited fresh crackles of
applause as each new model appeared. They were all young, shapely,
beautiful. In the brief flash of white light as they were first seen,
their bodies were visibly pale, like Hendley's own, the white sheen of
skin unburned by the sun. When the light changed, they became, in their
bizarre red envelopes, both more vivid and less human. Hendley could
not tear his gaze away as the procession continued. His throat grew
dry, and he drained his glass.

Twelve girls in all took their places in the red spotlights. Hendley
missed seeing the eleventh one closely. He had glanced down at the
stage just before she appeared in closeup on the nearby materializer.
By the time he looked back from the general tableau below to the
intimate revelation on the cylinder, the girl's image was already
fading. And her back was toward him. He had only a glimpse of a
slender, willowy body, narrow-waisted, of long slim legs, and of a
nest of short curls above a graceful neck. She was a red vision from a
dream, but something other than admiration stirred in his mind.

"I missed that one second from the last," he said to Nik.

"A pretty thing," Nik said appraisingly. "Quite well equipped, too."
His hands shaped an imaginary bosom.

"She looked--I'm not sure--familiar."

Nik laughed. "That's not unusual. There's a blue girl--she'll be coming
on shortly--who once reminded me of my mother. I suppose one of your
Morale Investigators would say that was significant. But it's not,
really. A beautiful girl seen in the distance, or not clearly, will
always remind you of someone."

"Only if that someone matters," Hendley said with surprising clarity.

The young Freeman made a mock grimace of pain. "Hmmm," he murmured. "I
should have thought of that."

"What's a blue girl?"

"Same as in your outside world. You see, the showgirls are all
outsiders. Red means a 5-Daygirl. Green a four, blue a three. Obviously
they don't wear their uniforms while they're performing."

Hendley smiled absently. He wished that he had had a clearer view
of the eleventh girl. Even in the distance of the stage, and in the
strangely erotic distortion of the colored spotlight, she seemed
familiar. But whom could she remind him of? There was only....

"What's wrong?" Nik asked. "Feeling dizzy again?"

"No," Hendley said hoarsely. "It's not that."

As if to prove his statement he reached for his glass, only to find
it empty. The resemblance was superficial, he assured himself. That
was all it could be. Ann could not be here. But the nagging impression
that the girl on the stage was enough like her to be a double unnerved
him. He was chagrined to realize how seldom he had thought about her
since his arrival in the Freeman Camp. Perhaps that was understandable
enough--the clockless hours had been full--but this defense did not
dispel a twinge of guilt. Forgetfulness argued a shallow emotion,
undermining the importance he attached to his hours with ABC-331.

"Ah, here come the greens," Nik said. "And I've ordered us a couple
refills on the drinks. Don't take it if you don't think you can handle
it."

Hendley didn't answer. He wanted the drink, and he had a feeling that
he would need it.

The pattern of presenting the showgirls was repeated, except that the
second set were washed with a startling green light. And each girl
wore an identical male face-mask. The slow but insistent beat of the
background music quickened slightly, acquiring a harsher, more driving
rhythm. A perceptible tension of excitement quivered in the air of the
auditorium.

There were twelve girls in green. "They're the males," Nik said
unnecessarily. "You'll be surprised how you get to think of them that
way, the obvious physical evidence to the contrary."

Hendley started to ask what all this was leading up to, but before
he could speak the tempo of the music changed. The twenty-four girls
formed a wide circle near the apron of the stage. Their spotlights
faded until they were only dimly visible. Attention shifted to the
center of the stage. Light panels dropped into place, figuring
suggestively the setting of a pre-Organization city. The technique and
the scene were immediately familiar to Hendley. They were traditional
in the presentation of a Freedom Play.

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.

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."

The doctor smiled. "I couldn't be anything else. I'm ... made that way."

"And I'm a misfit!"

"There are different ways of looking at that." The doctor crossed the
room to stand beside Hendley at the window. The smile was back on his
lips, but it remained pensive. "Do you want to know what I think?"

"What?"

"I envy you."

The phrase seemed disturbingly familiar. Hendley tried to remember who
else had spoken it to him. The answer popped unexpectedly into his
mind. The Morale Investigator had voiced a similar envy on the morning
Hendley departed for the Freeman Camp.

He did not smile at the irony.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was an hour after sunset when Hendley saw the visitor. He was on
his way to the main Rec Hall, being unable to stay away on the night
of the show in spite of the torment he knew he would endure if Ann was
on stage. The glimpse of a red sleeve emblem out of the corner of his
eye was enough to make him jump hastily and precariously off the moving
walk. Regaining his balance, he looked around eagerly. The familiar
identification symbol stood out clearly among the mass of otherwise
identical white uniforms. This was the first visitor Hendley had seen
since his arrival in the Freeman Camp, and he knew that it was more
than curiosity, more than the memory of an experience shared by the
stranger, which made his heart pound as he began to follow the red
beacon on the visitor's arm.

The man seemed awed by the excitement and activity swirling around him.
Hendley wondered if he, too, had gazed about so eagerly on his first
night, if his eyes had been alight with the same glitter, if his lips
had been parted in a continuous expression of wonder. The visitor was
a solidly hewn block of a man with coarse black hair, the outline of
a heavy dark beard, and thighs and biceps so thick they stretched the
unusually loose-fitting coverall taut. But in spite of his muscular
bulk, the stranger moved with surprisingly light, quick steps. Standing
still, he looked heavy and ponderous; in motion he conveyed an
impression of dynamic strength held in check by an instinctive caution.

His alert, inquiring gaze missed nothing. Hendley had been following
him for no more than a few minutes before he realized that his own
curiosity had been too obvious. The visitor, pausing before the
entrance to a dance hall, turned suddenly to stare directly at Hendley.
The glance was bright and hard, but the man's mouth was smiling in a
friendly way.

Approaching him casually, Hendley returned the smile. "Your first
night?" he called out heartily.

"Was I that obvious?" the visitor asked. "It's no wonder. This is the
biggest night of my life!"

"I guess everyone feels that way," Hendley said. He tried to remember
how Nik had first cultivated him, but he quickly realized that the
circumstances had been different. Nik had been prepared. He'd been
waiting for a visitor to come. His every move had been carefully
planned. Was it madness to try to repeat his tactics without any
preparation, without help, without even a plan of attack?

"I'll bet there's a lot I'll miss on my own," the visitor said. The
comment was almost too fortuitous, as if he were offering himself as a
victim. "You must know everything there is to see."

Hendley could not resist the temptation. "I'll be glad to show you
around," he said.

"Great!" The muscular visitor punched Hendley enthusiastically on the
arm. "I didn't really want to ask, but I've only got one night, and I
certainly don't want to pass up anything special just because I didn't
know it was there!"

Hendley nodded. For a moment he couldn't speak, his jaws locked by the
pain in his arm. The visitor had hit him lightly, almost playfully, but
the blow had carried a numbing force. It was absurd to consider trying
to over-power such a man. If he had any suspicion at all, any warning,
he could break Hendley's spine with a casual pressure of those thick
arms.

But he wouldn't be expecting anything, Hendley thought. He was too
excited by the camp's promised pleasures. He would have no reason to
suspect anything. And even a powerful man was vulnerable to a blow
on the skull by a heavy enough weapon--a rock, for instance, or a
makeshift club. All that was necessary was to lure him into a dark,
deserted place where a weapon was handy. It needed daring, quickness,
determination, but the reward would be worth the risk. Anyway, Hendley
had nothing to lose. If the opportunity failed to present itself, he
would simply not act. He would be no worse off than he was now.

"Let's start with this place," the visitor suggested, pointing to a
nearby building. "What is it?"

"A bowling alley."

The stranger dismissed this sport. "We have those outside. Do you have
PIB's here?"

"Of course."

"Better than ours, I'll bet. Can anyone go anytime he wants?"

"Yes."

"Show me."

The tour began. The visitor's interests turned out to be catholic,
his energies inexhaustible, his capacity for food and liquor and sex
prodigious. Before long Hendley, beginning to feel somewhat heady, gave
up the possibility of getting the stranger drunk. Halfway through the
evening, the visitor inquired about the yellow mushroom building on the
hill. Hendley told him about the Rec Hall's casino and the weekly show,
climaxing in the lottery. The visitor's eyes flashed. "That's how I
like to spell pleasure!" he exclaimed, knocking Hendley breathless with
a clap on the back. "Let's go!"

"It's early yet," Hendley said. After a moment's hesitation he
suggested, "A lot of things go on in the parks that you haven't seen."

"I saw plenty there in the daytime. It's the big show for me!"

Hendley forced a laugh. "Don't judge our night sports by daylight. Come
on, we'll take a shortcut through the park and then up the hill."

"You're the Freeman!" the visitor said. "Lead on!"

Hendley tried to think clearly and calmly. Surprise was the important
thing. Surprise--and an effective weapon. It would not do to miss.
He had already decided on the place, a small clearing not far from
the main road through the central park. The spot was well screened by
bushes and trees. Here he could hide the visitor's body until he had
time to fetch the doctor to remove the man's identity disc--or found
some other way of cutting it loose.

They started along a path leading into the park. As they approached the
clearing Hendley had mentally selected, his eyes searched the path for
the weapon he needed. Soon he saw it--a bed of smooth stones defining
a flower bed, some of them as big as a fist, a short distance ahead.
He let the visitor take the lead along the path. "Be careful through
here," he said. "Sometimes there are prowlers at night."

"Prowlers?"

"We have crime here. Freedom doesn't breed constraint. It's best to be
on guard. You might keep an eye on the bushes as you go. You watch the
left, I'll watch the right."

The big man peered curiously into the shadows to the left of the path.
The bed of rocks was on the right. When they drew opposite it Hendley
stooped quickly. His hand closed over a large stone that shaped itself
to his palm. He rose hastily. The visitor's back was toward him.

"I don't see anything," the stranger said. "Say, maybe it wasn't such
a smart idea coming this way. What is it we were supposed to see?"

Now, Hendley thought. Get him beyond that screen of trees into the
clearing. Any pretext will do. He suspects nothing. It will be quick
and painless. With his thick skull, the visitor was unlikely to be hurt
seriously even by a heavy blow. And he'd undoubtedly be glad to wake up
and find himself a Freeman. He liked his pleasures! It might even be
possible to talk him into making the switch without violence, although
Hendley didn't want to risk everything on that chance.

"Well?" the visitor demanded. "Don't keep me in suspense. Where's that
nighttime fun you mentioned?"

Hendley's arm sagged. The tension went out of his body. At that moment
the visitor turned. He seemed to stiffen slightly, but otherwise
he betrayed no reaction. In a tone that held no more than ordinary
curiosity, he asked, "What's that you've got there?"

"Just being cautious," Hendley said. "I thought I heard something off
there in the bushes. You never know what you'll run into in the park at
night."

"Yeah?"

The visitor's voice had sharpened. His hard, bright eyes were fixed on
Hendley's face. He was suspicious now, but it didn't seem to matter.
The moment had passed for action, and Hendley had failed. He'd been
unable to bring himself to the violence needed. The whole impromptu
plan had been reckless, ill-conceived, doomed to failure. But even if
it had not, he had lacked the necessary ingredient to bring it off:
callous indifference to another man's fate.

"I think we'd better get back," he said. "The park seems to be a
washout tonight. Usually there's more going on that makes it worth the
risk."

The visitor laughed softly. "What's your hurry? I'd like to see
everything this place has to offer."

Hendley regarded him uneasily. The man's response was unnatural. "We
don't want to miss the show," Hendley said.

"You told me we had plenty of time."

Hendley glanced nervously over his shoulder toward the main walk. It
was not far, but a bend in the path shut them off from the view of
anyone riding through the park, just as Hendley had planned. He drew
back, turning along the way they had come, but the visitor's thick hand
caught his arm in an unbreakable grip. "You're not playing games with
me, are you?" he asked softly.

Frightened now, Hendley stared at him. The stranger, he realized
suddenly, had been too eager to be alone with him, too ready to dare
the mysteries of a situation about which he knew nothing. Why? At
that moment it seemed obvious that the visitor was not the type to
walk innocently into an ambush. Had the intended victim all along been
cunningly baiting his own trap?

"I'm not playing games," Hendley said. Then, determined to force the
visitor to show his hand, he added, "But I'm beginning to wonder about
you."

The big man's mouth smiled. "Just why did you bring me here?" he asked.

Before Hendley could answer there was a noise behind them. Both men
turned. Shadows moved on the path, solidifying into the shapes of
Freemen. They barred the way back to the main walk.

"What's this?" the visitor asked sharply. "Some friends of yours?"

"No!" Hendley gasped. "A pleasure pack. They roam the parks at night!"

"Pleasure packs, eh?" The visitor was still smiling as the silent
figures moved closer. There were four of them. Without a word they
fanned out in a practiced encircling movement. They would strike
noiselessly, Hendley knew. Not that it mattered, since few Freemen
passing along the main walk would answer a cry for help.

The attack came in a sudden rush. The men paired off, two of them
closing in on each of their intended victims. They carried clubs and
knives. Hendley dodged a blow from a club and struck out blindly with
the rock he still carried in his hand. He felt no hesitation. This
was no premeditated violence but self-defense. The solid impact of
the rock against bone was strangely satisfying. But he had no time to
congratulate himself as the stunned attacker fell away. The other man
closed with him, grabbing his arm, preventing another blow with the
rock. They fell together to the ground. Grunts and cries of pain came
from nearby, but Hendley could see nothing of the other fight.

Suddenly he was flat on his back, the arm holding the rock pinned by
the attacker's knee. Hendley looked up at a distorted grin of pleasure.
An arm rose and a knife blade flashed. He tried to twist free but he
knew that he was already too late.

The knife traveled no more than a few inches toward his chest. Huge
hands seized the attacker and hauled him bodily into the air. Hendley
heard a gasp of pain. The knife dropped to the ground beside him. There
was a soft thud, and the attacker's limp figure flew through the air.
It dropped in a shapeless heap.

The visitor grinned down at Hendley. "I guess you did hear something
in the bushes after all," he said. "But they weren't much."

Hendley scrambled to his feet and looked around. Three of the attackers
lay sprawled on the ground, inert. Hendley had caught one of them
with his first blow. The visitor, he realized with amazement, had
overpowered the others alone--armed men!--with his bare hands. And he
was not even breathing quickly.

"One of them got away," the visitor said. "But he won't be in a hurry
to start any more fights. Not for a while."

Hendley remained speechless. He saw that he was between the visitor
and the main walk. That was all he needed. This was no man to confront
alone in the isolation of the park. He began to back away, watching the
muscular stranger warily.

"I've been waiting for you to make the move," the visitor said. "You
must be satisfied about me by now."

"Satisfied? What do you mean?"

The visitor stepped toward him. "The code word is BAM," he said softly.

The sound was ridiculous in that moment of tension, like a child's play
word. But Hendley did not laugh. The visitor was frowning. This was no
game. The word had a special meaning of some kind, like the key to a
puzzle which seems unimportant and insignificant by itself but acquires
a unique value when properly used. Had the visitor been fencing with
him all evening, waiting for him to come up with the magic word?

"I don't know what you're talking about," Hendley said.

The visitor smiled. "That's the wrong answer," he said.

Without warning he charged. Only the fact that Hendley was already
poised on the verge of flight enabled him to elude the big man's rush.
A thick arm caught at his waist, but he was already spinning clear. The
fabric of his uniform tore as he broke loose.

Then he was running along the path toward the moving walk and safety,
not looking back, not daring to waste even the fraction of a second it
would have taken to glance over his shoulder.

       *       *       *       *       *

For the second time in three weeks, ABC-331 was absent from the
spectacle on the stage of the auditorium. Hendley stared down at
the spotlighted dancers. Each movement, each graceful pose, each
tantalizing glimpse in the nearest materializer brought achingly to
memory Ann's willowy beauty. He could hear the audience breathing
and muttering and shifting about in quickening excitement, like some
huge invisible animal in the darkness of the theater. He felt relief
that she was not there, exposing her beauty to the audience like an
offering, but at the same time he felt cut off from her.

If only he could communicate with her in some way, let her know that he
was alive and safe in the camp, even though he was a prisoner. At least
the knowledge would give her some hope.

Hope for what?

The clear, cold question jarred him. Ann saw things with a more candid
eye than his. She would know what confinement in the camp meant. She
would not blind herself to the impossibility of escape. She would be
relieved to know that he was safe, glad, even happy--but she would know
that his assumption of a Freeman's role erected a wall far more solid
and impregnable than any previous barrier of social status.

Shadowy images flickered on the great thought-screen above the stage.
Lurid shapes of desire, created by the minds of Freemen who had
exhausted every normal area of pleasure, writhed and twisted on the
screen like fugitives from the deepest caverns of the imagination.
Dreading what was coming, loathing it because Ann had been involved in
that same monstrous pantomime, Hendley turned away from the screen. And
in that moment, when his attention shifted, he felt again the pressure
of eyes on the back of his neck.

He looked around. Three rows back, sitting almost directly behind
Hendley, the visitor quietly watched the performance on stage. He was
smiling thinly.

It could have been coincidence. Hendley had come to the Rec Hall
directly from the park. The show had already started, and the only
remaining seats were in the balcony. The visitor must have arrived
shortly after him, and it was natural that he should have found a seat
nearby. But Hendley knew that the big man's presence was no accident.
His seat had been deliberately chosen.

Why? What did he hope to accomplish? In the crowded Rec Hall Hendley
was safe from attack--and in any event why should the man pursue him?
Was it because of that ridiculous-sounding message Hendley had failed
to recognize?

The visitor's gaze started to swivel toward him. Hendley swung quickly
back toward the screen. The pressure was repeated at the back of his
head. BAM, he thought. What could the word mean?

The show went on. The erotic audience impression of it danced above the
stage on the giant screen. And at last the lottery began. Through it
all Hendley sat and watched, torturing himself with fears about Ann's
absence and what it meant. And whenever his self-absorption wavered,
he would become conscious of the patient watch of the visitor sitting
behind him.

The last number was called, the last nude figure stood submissively in
the spotlight of stage center. The light-curtain fell, obscuring the
stage. There was a rush of movement toward the exits. Hendley started
up the aisle, turned quickly and pushed his way through the crowd
toward another escalator. The visitor was unfamiliar with the camp. If
Hendley could reach the sidewalk strip ahead of him without being seen,
he could easily elude pursuit.

The exits were jammed. Hendley shoved and jostled his way forward,
found an opening and slipped through. He rode the escalator down to
the lobby, where the milling crowd again offered a human screen. He
began to breathe more easily. The bar on one side of the lobby offered
a natural escape route. He fought his way through the clamoring horde
of drinkers and ducked out a side door. From there it was only a short
distance across the grounds surrounding the Rec Hall to the moving
walk. He broke into a run.

He stopped at the edge of the walk to look back. The feeling of triumph
drained out of him in a rush. The hulking figure of the visitor was
outlined by the lights from the Rec Hall. He paused as Hendley did,
regarding him impassively, no more than thirty feet away.

Staring back at the stranger, for the first time Hendley felt within
him the coiling presence of hatred.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hendley was, he knew, half-drunk. The condition was becoming a habit,
as indeed it was with an apparent majority of Freemen. The easy
availability of liquor was a superficial reason. More pertinent was the
need to dull one's senses and artificially stimulate the mind. Pleasure
seemed keener when, as in a photograph, it was brought sharply into
focus against a blurred background.

The casino, as always, was crowded. It was therefore safe. Hendley
had had only a few chips, and he had soon lost these. Now, observing
the action at one of the tables, he felt boredom nibbling at him
companionably like an old friend. Gambling meant nothing unless you
could play.

He searched the crowd for the hard, cruel face of the visitor. It
was not visible. But he was there somewhere, patiently watching and
waiting. You have a long wait, Hendley thought. Tomorrow you must be on
the copter heading back to the city. I can wait till then. Sleep is a
bore anyway, a waste.

If only he had some chips!

A winner at the table, raking in a pile of chips, grinned at Hendley.
"No chips, friend?" he asked.

"Not just at the moment," Hendley said eagerly. "But I feel lucky. I'd
be glad to share my winnings if you'll stake me."

The player laughed. "Your kind of luck I don't need," he said. "Why
don't you try the Big Game," he added jeeringly. "You don't need chips
there."

"You don't?" Hendley glanced quickly at the big table in the exact
center of the casino. It was inactive, as it usually was, guarded only
by the silent, motionless robot-dealer.

"You mean you didn't know?" the player asked.

"No. How does it work?"

The player shrugged with an indifference that might have been
exaggerated. "It's you against the house," he said. "You have a chance
to win ten thousand chips--if you feel lucky."

"What if you lose?" Hendley could feel the excitement building in
him. He didn't really care what the penalty was for losing. Here was
something different. He had the rest of the night to get through
somehow. He couldn't risk leaving the Rec Hall while darkness held and
the visitor waited. The game would occupy the time, and bring its own
exhilaration.

"You don't think about losing," the player said evasively. "What
gambler does? The game ends at dawn, no matter who's ahead. If you last
out till then, you win."

Sober, Hendley would have persisted in his questioning. Instead he
stared at the big table. What could happen to him if he lost? He was
a Freeman. Having everything, he had nothing to lose. Anyway, he
_did_ feel lucky. And the prize was huge--enough chips to gamble with
for weeks! Longer than that, for you always stood a better chance of
winning if you had enough chips to ride out the cold streaks and plunge
when you were hot.

With a kind of aggressive, defiant determination he strode through
the casino. The robot-dealer at the center table looked up as he
approached. His plastic face was expressionless, or rather it was set
in a perpetual attitude of slightly curious amiability. He could not
care whether Hendley played or did not play, won or lost. That in
itself was an advantage, Hendley thought. Desire had something to do
with luck.

He slipped onto a stool across the table from the robot. "I want to
play," he said.

With the instant response of the machine, the robot placed two
identical stacks of large chips between them. They were a half inch
more in diameter than the usual casino chips, with smooth white
surfaces marked by a red cross. The robot pushed one of the stacks
toward Hendley. Depressing a button, he activated two pairs of small
viewscreens, one set for each player. Only one of each pair of viewers
was visible to the opposing player, the other being the player's own
record of his moves.

There was a faint whirring, like an old-fashioned museum clock winding
up to strike, and the robot's voice mechanism announced, "We play '100'
game."

It was to be a direct, head-on contest. Hendley knew the game, whose
rules were simpler than the play actually was in practice. It was an
electronic version of the child's trick of guessing how many fingers
are pointing when the hands are held out of sight, except that the
possible combinations of numbers were infinitely greater, with one
hundred as the maximum total. Bets were made for high or low figures,
with each player free to draw additional numbers after the first two
or to stand with what he had. The odds were, on the face of it, even.
But Hendley knew that the robot's precision instrument of a brain
was capable of exact, rapid mathematical calculations far beyond his
powers. He had to offset that edge by turning his human fallibility
into an asset--by doing the unexpected. If he allowed any consistent
sequence to develop in his tactics, the robot would instantly detect
and take advantage of the fact. Hendley forced himself to play
erratically, hoping that he would not unconsciously fall into a pattern
of inconsistency.

In the two-player duel the moves went quickly. In the beginning Hendley
played and bet conservatively. For a while he seemed to be holding his
own. Then, very slowly at first, like a runner inching into the lead
in a closely contested race, the robot's stack of chips began to grow,
Hendley's to shrink.

A crowd gathered almost imperceptibly. Absorbed in the intricacies of
betting, Hendley did not notice the gradual swelling of onlookers.
Then, it seemed simultaneously, he became aware of increasing tension,
a tightening of hidden springs within his body, and of the crowd
surrounding the big table. It was unlike an ordinary gathering in one
thing: its peculiar stillness. No one moved or spoke. When Hendley
looked around, every eye swiveled toward him. Among the intently
watching faces he saw that of the visitor, whose expression was no
longer confident. He seemed puzzled. There was in the other faces a
controlled anticipation that increased Hendley's nervousness. The
crowd's strange silence, its air of breathless waiting, seemed somehow
ominous.

He started to reach for a glass--drinks were brought regularly to the
table. He'd been drinking automatically, without thinking. Now he drew
back his hand. He'd already had far too much. Although his brain seemed
remarkably clear, like the cloudless sky over the Freeman Camp on a
cool night, he realized that that drunken clarity could be deceptive.

He gave all of his attention to his plays. Shortly after he returned
to this grim concentration, the tide of the duel changed. Hendley
thought he detected a fixed sequence in the robot's guesses. Betting
experimentally, he won. Again. Another win. With increasing sureness he
raised his bets boldly. In half a dozen plays he recouped all of his
losses and more. The run continued. He couldn't lose. Then, abruptly,
the pattern of the robot's moves disappeared. Hendley grinned. He had
three-fourths of the chips on the table now--he had the advantage. More
important, he had proved to himself that the robot was vulnerable. A
machine didn't adjust as quickly as a human being, perhaps because it
felt no fear.

Hearing a muttering in the crowd, Hendley stared at the ring of
faces. He was surprised to see a number of the Freemen smiling at him
encouragingly. So they were not all waiting for him to lose! Some of
them appeared disappointed, but almost as many were pulling for him.
The knowledge buoyed him tremendously.

The game dragged on. Hendley kept searching for another weakness in
the robot's play, but without success. The stacks of chips became even
again. Hendley kept varying his guesses, changing his bets at random
from high to low number combinations, but slowly the robot drew ahead
again. At last Hendley admitted to himself that, if the game went on
long enough, the robot would inevitably win. But the game ended at
dawn. If Hendley held out until then he could cash in his chips. He
wondered how long he had been playing. Hours, it seemed. His body
ached, and the continuous tension had begun to affect his nerves.
That was part of the robot's strength, he thought. It was tireless.
Moreover, it did not make the small errors Hendley occasionally made
from carelessness or lack of concentration. With the rest of the
play relatively even, these infrequent slips alone could account for
the robot's superiority. It seemed clear that the robot had made
corrections to prevent the one serious blunder of consistency it had
made. That had been Hendley's only chance to win. Now all he could hope
to do was stave off defeat until the first light of day.

The end came with the suddenness of a physical blow. Only afterward did
Hendley realize that the robot, like a fighter sensing weakness and
stepping up the tempo of his attack, had quickened the speed of play.
Hendley lost several bets in succession. Instinct warned him that so
many losses could not be accounted for by chance alone, but he was
already panicking. He cut his bets down to the minimum. Still the robot
won. Frantically, Hendley stalled for time as much as he could, groping
for the pattern in his play that was betraying him. Now the mind which
had seemed so clear and sharp was a dizzying confusion of numbers. The
robot brushed aside his delaying tactics, continuing the pressure.
Hendley was reduced to three chips. How long had they been playing now?
How much longer did he need? If only the casino had windows so that he
could see the first light in the east!

He lost again. Now chance itself worked against him. He lacked enough
chips to wait out the pendulum swing of luck. He had to risk the final
two chips together in a desperate attempt to gain more of a working
margin. His total in the draw was high--ninety-two. Good enough to win
nine times out of ten....

The crowd burst upon him, shouting, cheering, pounding him on the back.
After the hours of taut silence the noise was overwhelming. Hendley
couldn't understand. He'd lost. Why were they congratulating him?
"Great game!" someone shouted. "Best I've ever seen!" The crowd was
moving out of the casino, carrying him along with them. Someone beyond
the confusion shouted a question. "--lost the big game!" came the
answer. "Almost made it--there's only an hour left 'til dawn!"

A face thrust close to Hendley's, a forehead swollen and red, eyes
bright with excitement. "You've still got a good chance!" the man
cried. "We have to catch you before sunrise. Just an hour to hide out!"

"Hide!" Hendley gaped in bewilderment.

"Sure! You're the target!" the red-faced man yelled above the turmoil.
"You lost the game--now we have the hunt!"

And suddenly, frighteningly, Hendley knew why the big table was almost
always empty, and why the mention of the hunt had always created
such a feverish interest. He saw with terrible clarity what he had
unconsciously guessed all along.

The prey of the hunters was human.




                                  12


The darkness of the woods in the hour before dawn was like a liquid
frozen to a solid, imprisoning within its translucent substance the
thin slivers of starlight, the waxen shapes of frozen leaves, the
brittle tracery of branches, the cubes and cones of inky shadows.
Moving stealthily, Hendley had a sense of shattering this density, of
stealing then along the irregular, jagged cracks of the fragmented
night.

In the distance he heard the hunters' voices, strained by the
intervening trees into the thin cries of children at play. Hendley,
a red marker taped to the back of his uniform to identify him as the
target, had been given a five-minute start. The gap had closed. The
hunters could crash and blunder through the underbrush, careless of
noise, while he must slink in silence.

"No weapons," one of them had told him, grinning. "You don't need to
worry about that. We really have to catch you."

No weapons. But with a shudder Hendley remembered a scene in a newsview
film, not understood at the time, in which a group of Freemen had
swarmed upon a single fleeing figure. And he remembered a glimpse of
that lone figure lying afterward on the grass, motionless, as if he
were asleep. No weapons. Only hands and feet....

He had no idea how many of them there were. In the open near the edge
of the woods they had been a numberless mass, a restless, eager horde
of hunters, impatient for the pursuit to begin, fanning out to blanket
a ridge with their white uniforms. He'd heard their excited mutter,
like a single animal growl, as he plunged into the line of trees. He'd
looked back once, and they had seemed to surge toward him, straining
against an unseen leash.

He paused, trying to place his position. Fortunately he had spent
an afternoon in the woods planning his aborted attempt to scale the
outside wall. He knew roughly where he was and where the main paths
were that would represent added danger.

He analyzed his situation. Leaving the woods would be foolhardy. Of a
certainty there would be sentries posted along the fringes, and in the
open he could easily be seen for some distance even in the darkness.
The cover of the narrow belt of trees and undergrowth was his only
protection. He had to stay ahead of the hunters--or hide--for less than
an hour. Was the sky already graying? Through the tangle of leaf and
branch above he could not be sure.

Could he go overhead, flatten out against a tree trunk as high above
the ground as possible? It might work. But if he were detected there,
he would be trapped. They could shake him loose at their pleasure.
Pleasure! The irony twisted his lips in a bitter smile. There were
thickly clustered bushes where a fugitive might easily escape normal
detection. But the hunters would be expecting this. The natural screens
and covers would be closely searched.

His heart caught and sputtered. From the corner of one eye he'd seen
a glimpse of white. Now it was gone. Fear shrilled in his mind, a
voiceless scream. He flattened himself against the ground, listening.
There was no snap of branch, no scrape of cloth, no rustle of dry leaf
disturbed by a stealthy footstep. Yet there was something--a swift
padding on turf. He wriggled forward to the outer edge of the woods.
Another flash of white! Reaching the last few feet of cover, he waited,
lying still. Moments later a white-clad figure ran past him, not even
glancing his way, not slowing.

He lay still, puzzling over the maneuver. Were these additional
sentries, racing ahead to make sure he did not slip unseen from the
woods? No. The lookouts would already have been posted. This was
another move, designed to....

His body sagged. A feeling of hopelessness settled over him. They had
cut him off. A band of hunters had been sent ahead. They would be
awhile returning, for they could not know how far Hendley had gone and
they would have to range far beyond any point he might have reached.
Then they would group, bisect the woods, and slowly begin to work their
way back. He would be caught in the middle of a pincers movement,
unable to go forward or to retreat. They would not worry about the
time. Even at a careful pace they would find him before dawn. There was
no escape.

For one moment it seemed to Hendley that any further resistance was
futile. He might as well lie where he was and wait for them to find
him. To be trapped at the last moment after desperate attempts to hide,
to be crushed under the fury of the attack as the first light streaked
the sky, would be agonizingly worse than not to have come close at all.
What would he gain by frantic scurrying when there was no refuge? The
woods were too narrow, too thin a line....

In a convulsion of anger he sat up. He shook himself. No, he would
not make it easy for them! At least he could make them feel a little
frustration, a little worry that they might be denied their jolts. With
a bit of the luck which had deserted him until now, he might even fool
them all. He had to try. To give up was somehow to make every step of
his rebellion against the Organization meaningless. He had sought to
find some value in life other than the mechanics of push-button work,
other than, as it had turned out, the purposeless pursuit of pleasure
in freedom. If he had failed, perhaps he had simply not known where and
how to look. In the end the only thing of value he had found was the
personal concern one human being might have for another--a concern
beyond physical need, beyond pleasure, beyond self.

But that alone was worth struggling to save. He might never find Ann
again. He could not give up trying so long as he was alive.

If only he had not drunk so much! He felt a physical let-down now, a
heavy fatigue, that might tell against him. And his mind could not
seem to take a tight grip on the problem of escape. It grasped without
conviction at hazy solutions, lost its hold, slid off into confusion.
Running was futile. Subtlety, not speed, had to save him. No point
in breaking for the wall. The threat of a robot-guard defending the
wall seemed less frightening than the human hunters, but the latter
would be upon him before he could scale the wall. He must stay under
cover. Forward or back then? The larger body of hunters was behind him.
The advance party, fewer in number, might be easier to slip through
undetected. But they would be alert for just that move. In the larger
group there would be more confusion....

He seized the thought as hungry jaws clench over a morsel of food.
Darkness, confusion, limited space and an excess of numbers--there had
to be a way to use these factors. And as he examined the possibilities,
he realized that he could not hope to exploit the situation by acting
like a fugitive. He had to join the hunters. He had to go to them.

Cautiously he began to work his way back along the route over which
he had fled. Nothing so concrete or shapely as a plan controlled his
movements. There were too many unknown factors; too many unexpected
things might happen. He had to act by instinct when the time came,
adjusting to meet the specific situation, following only a general
over-all purpose. But a small current of hope trickled through him,
banishing his fatigue, sharpening his senses.

He was not sure what made him pause. He melted into the shadow of a
tree, his back against the trunk to hide the telltale marker stripe
of the hunted. There were no sounds ahead to give him warning. The
hunters, sensing that he might be close, moved stealthily. Hendley
could feel their presence. As he stood motionless, holding his breath,
straining with eyes and ears, a shadow stirred in the underbrush less
than fifteen feet away.

Muscles in his arms and legs began to jerk spasmodically from the
effort to remain rigid. He felt the beginnings of a cramp in his foot,
a tight hard knotting of muscle in the arch. He set his teeth, willing
himself to remain inert as a stone. The hunter had paused. Was he
looking toward Hendley's tree? Was there a betraying thickness in its
shadow?

The crouching figure crept forward again, one step at a time, his
hands carefully parting the branches through which he moved. Now he
drew level with Hendley's position. Another step took him beyond the
tree.

The hunter wouldn't be alone. The others must be right behind him,
fanned out across the width of the woods. If one of them blundered too
close before Hendley acted, it would all be over. But his plan was
crystallizing. The single advance hunter was the key, the unpredictable
factor he had been hoping for. Now there were other shadows gliding
through the woods. He saw two to his right beyond the first man's
position. And to his left was a slimmer, slighter figure--a woman,
Hendley saw with a start. Others moved on either side, heard but not
seen. They were all around him.

The first man, the eager hunter, was ten yards or more ahead. A
patch of his uniform caught a hazy shaft of--not light, but a grayer
darkness. At that moment Hendley stepped away from the tree.

"There he is!" he shouted, pointing. "There!"

The leading hunter whirled at the outcry. There was a fleeting second
of stillness. Then another shout went up: "We've got him!" And suddenly
the woods were alive with hunters crashing forward toward the lone
figure in the lead. The man threw up his hands as two hunters stormed
through a thicket to get at him. "No!" he yelled. But as they converged
on him he panicked. He turned and ran.

They were on him before he had taken five steps, burying his cries
under the fury of the attack. It wouldn't have mattered what the
unlucky man had shouted, Hendley thought. The hunters were too
tense, their excitement drawn to too high a pitch. He'd relied on
that edginess, but the success of the ruse brought no feeling of
satisfaction. They would learn their mistake all too quickly. Any
second someone might notice that the victim lacked the marker stripe of
the hunted on the back of his uniform.

Hendley forced himself to wait. It would be fatal to turn abruptly and
run from the scene. He would draw attention--and he wore the mark of
the target. Carefully, keeping his back concealed as much as possible
from the hunters who crashed past him through the darkness toward
the struggle ahead, Hendley worked his way back and forth across the
woods, trying to give the illusion of hurrying toward the action while
actually drifting back with each maneuver. Quickly the horde of hunters
thinned out. A last figure pushed past Hendley, breathing heavily,
whimpering with frustration. Then the woods behind him seemed clear.

Using less caution now, Hendley tried to put more distance between him
and the hunters. Even when they discovered their mistake, they wouldn't
expect him to be behind them. They couldn't know that he had shouted
the mistaken identification. Any overeager hunter could have made the
error.

The sounds of the fight receded rapidly. Moments later Hendley heard
what seemed to be an angry bellow. The mistake had been found! But it
was too late, he thought, exulting. Surely dawn could not be far away.
Surely he could elude them long enough to win!

Haste--and the illusion of success--made him careless. He stumbled onto
a cleared path before realizing it was there. It was only six feet
across, but prudence would have made him inspect it carefully if he'd
seen it in time. Instead he found himself momentarily without cover.
And facing him on the open path was a grinning Freeman. "That was a
neat trick," the hunter said.

Hendley spun away. He was not quick enough. Thick, powerful arms
grabbed him from behind, stopped him, wrestled him to the ground. The
other man's bulk crashed on top of him. A hand clamped over his mouth.
"Not a sound," the man breathed.

As Hendley stared up at the hunter, his stunned amazement gave way to
fear. The dark face grinning down at him was that of the visitor.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Surprised? It wasn't so hard," the visitor said. "I threw in with
those joyboys who were after you. I didn't know what the hunt was all
about at first, but one way or another I had to make sure of you. You
know too much. One word too much. BAM."

Hendley shook his head violently, fighting against the hand which
gagged his mouth.

"I couldn't take any chances with you," the visitor said softly. "Once
I saw what the hunters were up to, I figured everything was okay.
You wouldn't be a problem. But when I recognized your voice shouting
back there, I guessed what you were pulling off." There was grudging
approval in the big man's voice. "After that it was easy," he said. "I
heard you working your way back through the trees. I just slipped out
into the clear and got ahead of you." Suddenly the visitor brought his
other hand up, carrying the belt from his uniform. Before Hendley had
a chance to speak, the belt replaced the hand over his mouth, forcing
his teeth apart to press against his tongue. He tried vainly to shout
against the gag. He began to choke.

"Sorry it had to be you, friend," the visitor said, easily controlling
Hendley's struggles to squirm out from under the crushing weight of
the big man's body. "But BAM is too important. If you hadn't been
acting funny, following me around, you wouldn't have got involved. I'd
have had to pick somebody for the switch, but it needn't have been you.
Now it has to be. I can't have you running loose, knowing I'm tied up
with the Brotherhood."

Hendley stared up at him wildly, trying to communicate with his eyes.
Ignoring the look, the visitor abruptly shifted his weight, flipping
Hendley over onto his stomach. Jerking Hendley's arms behind his back,
the visitor tied them securely with the belt from Hendley's uniform.

"Now," he muttered, "the first thing is the identity disc. You're going
to become me, friend, and when they find you dead I'll be officially
dead, and they can stop looking for me. I guess you really didn't know
about the Brotherhood, did you? We're against the Merger, you see--the
Brotherhood of Anti-Mergers. The morale boys got onto me, and that's
why I'm here--before they could catch up with me."

Horrified, Hendley renewed his desperate resistance. He tried to shout
against the gag. "You've got to listen to me! I'm one of you! I feel
the same way!" But there were only meaningless, muffled sounds. The
visitor paid no attention. He was trying to tug Hendley's identity disc
over his hand. You fool! Hendley thought. If you'd just listen to me.
It opens up and slips right off!

"This is going to hurt," the visitor said softly. "But there's no other
way. It's got to come off."

One of the thick, strong hands seized Hendley's recently healed left
hand and began to apply tremendous pressure. Pain erupted blindingly,
filling Hendley's mind, blotting out all other awareness. He screamed
against the gag. The pressure only increased. Waves of nausea seized
him. Then, like a dry twig, the weak new adhesion of bone in his hand
snapped.

He fainted.

       *       *       *       *       *

When Hendley came to, slowly, swimming out of a pool of blackness and
aching pain, his eyes opened to a graying darkness. It was not yet
dawn. He'd been unconscious for only a few minutes. At first the only
significance of this knowledge was that the hunt was not over. But the
gray was a promise of dawn. Soon he could rest.

He saw the figure standing over him, struggling into a uniform which
was far too tight--with a red marker stripe along the back. Hendley
felt the loose folds of a strange uniform wrapped about his own body,
tasted the remains of nausea in his mouth and the wet discomfort of
the sodden gag, and shivered at the searing pain in his hand. He
remembered.

The visitor glanced down at him. Seeing Hendley's open, staring eyes,
he paused. "I didn't think you'd wake up till it was all over," he said
softly. "Too bad."

Hendley began to fight against his bonds with the fury of hysteria,
heedless of the pain tearing up his arm. Everything couldn't end this
way, so stupidly, so insanely! The man had to listen to him! But the
visitor merely watched him as one might with objective curiosity
observe the dying struggles of an insect. In the end Hendley's wild,
bitter rage spent itself as his energies were exhausted. He went limp.

"I'll make it quick," the visitor said, in a tone that was practical
rather than sympathetic. "Sorry about the hand, but it couldn't be
helped."

He finished adjusting the snug uniform. Hendley wondered if the man had
forgotten the target stripe now on his back. It didn't seem to matter.
_He_ would reap the safety dawn would bring. Suddenly the bulky figure
lowered as the visitor squatted over Hendley. One of the meaty hands
reached for Hendley's throat. The gesture was arrested. The visitor
was still, his head cocked, a frown knitting his forehead. Listening,
Hendley heard the sounds which had disturbed the visitor: the rustle,
snap, and whisper of men moving through the woods. They were already
close.

"Organization be damned!" the visitor hissed through set teeth.
"They're coming back!"

Hendley felt no relief. The reappearance of the hunters could not save
him. It made no difference at whose hands he was to die. Either way
was a mockery of life itself. When the visitor's blunt fingers closed
suddenly around his throat he resisted almost automatically until a
spasm of renewed anger against the irony fate had played on him made
his struggles more violent. His legs were free. He tried to catch the
visitor with his knee. His heartbeat was a huge drum exploding in his
chest. He could no longer breathe as his windpipe closed inexorably
under the squeezing fingers.

All of a sudden the pressure left his chest. He sucked air into
his lungs. His vision began to clear. He saw the visitor's back
disappearing rapidly into the grayness of the woods. A patch of sky
overhead was measurably brighter. It was almost sunrise.

There was a crash of bodies plunging swiftly through the underbrush
nearby. A strange voice yelled, "We've got him now! Don't let him get
away!"

There was a lot of movement all around Hendley. Someone stumbled over
him, cursed, picked himself up and ran on. Hendley peered after the
running figure. What was wrong? Why weren't they gathering around him,
throwing themselves upon him? He was helpless....

Hope soared into his mind like a bird taking flight. The visitor wore
the uniform of the hunted! He even wore the identity disc the hunters
would be looking for! They would not ask questions--they had too little
time left. The sky was brightening as if a light-wall had been turned
on, just as the artificial dawn had come to Hendley's small room in the
Architectural Center during those plodding days of work that seemed so
far away.

Hendley struggled to his knees. The visitor might yet escape. If he
did, he would be back to finish off his task--to silence the voice that
could link him with BAM. Hendley pulled feverishly in an attempt to
free his wrists. The pain from his broken hand made him sway, reeling,
consciousness almost blotted out. But the belt securing his hands was
not tied tightly. It had not been meant to hold for long. He braced
himself and tugged again. The belt held. The broken hand squeezed into
a smaller ball. Hendley cried out, no longer able to contain the agony.

And his hand pulled loose.

He collapsed on the ground. He seemed to be able to watch the pain
recede very slowly, like gently rolling waves. An unexpected chill
wrenched his body. He lay shivering, his teeth clicking uncontrollably.
But at last the pain was something he could look at, and measure, and
know that he would endure it. It was no longer larger and stronger and
more real than he was. He could tame it.

The visitor's identity disc lay on the ground. Hendley picked it up.
When he staggered to his feet he realized that day had come. He could
see his way easily through the dense woods.

A scream cut through the cool, damp morning air, rising like the wail
of a siren. It broke off cleanly, as if a wire carrying the sound had
snapped. The air itself seemed to go on shivering, as if it still
trembled from the shrill vibrations of the scream. But there was
another sound now in the distance, the growl of the pack leaping upon
its prey while the flesh was still warm and the hot blood flowed freely.

Shaking with fear and revulsion, Hendley stumbled out of the woods into
the open. The hunt was over.




                                  13


The passengers were told to fasten their seat belts. The precaution
hardly seemed necessary, for the copter's motion was almost
imperceptible in the windowless cabin. An illuminated board flashed
the message that the ship was hovering in the landing pattern over City
No. 9, waiting its turn to descend. Hendley had a mental image of the
great city below, huge concrete cylinders rising from the brown, barren
land. From above a circular eye in the center of each tower would be
visible, peering at the sky.

Wondering what time it was, Hendley was startled to realize how readily
he had come to measure time by the sun. He looked around for the
copter's clock panel, found it at the back of the cabin. It was not yet
two o'clock.

There would be time to reach the Historical Museum before four.

Would she be there? Three weeks had passed since he'd suggested the
museum as a meeting place. Even if she had clung to the hope that
he was alive and safe, she would believe that he was in the Freeman
Camp under Nik's identity. Would she still have come, day after day,
to look for him? How long would such blind hope have lasted before
discouragement came, and then despair?

He looked down at his left hand, held stiff by plastic braces and
wrapped in a fresh bandage. The little doctor had again attended to his
hand without question and without recompense. Only once had he sought
to dissuade Hendley, saying, "If this man was a criminal, you shouldn't
leave the camp in his place. He must have had good reason for smuggling
himself in here. That took some doing."

But Hendley had replied: "It may be my only chance to get out. I have
to take it. Even if I could live with this kind of freedom, which I
can't, I'd have to go back. To find her."

A slight bump alerted him. The copter had landed. Hendley let some of
the other passengers file out ahead of him. The exit led directly along
an enclosed ramp into a reception area. Hendley walked slowly behind
the others. He had no idea what to expect. But for some reason he felt
no fear.

A bank of windows in the outer wall of the receiving area faced the
great circle of the landing field. A six-foot partition of plastic
formed the opposite wall. Set into it was an open gateway. Attendants
stationed on either side of the gate watched the passengers with
routine curiosity, conveying no impression of special alertness. But
Hendley knew that it was not these he had to be concerned about. It was
the master computer stationed by the gate, its unblinking eye waiting
to record the identities of all those who passed through.

The more impatient passengers were already filing through the gate. As
Hendley loitered at the very end of the line, one of the attendants
inspected him idly, looked away, then let his gaze wander back. Hendley
began searching his uniform pockets. When he dared another glimpse,
the attendant had lost interest and was no longer watching.

Everything was all right. The computer might reject his identity
number, but the gateway was open. It appeared that the computer did
not have to control the gate to allow each passenger through. Hendley
guessed that such a process caused too much congestion. When the moment
came, a sudden rush would carry him through the opening. Before the
guards could act, he would be merging into the stream of travelers
thronging the main lobby. With luck he would escape.

It was too much to hope that the computer at the city's central landing
field would not possess information about the visitor whose identity
disc Hendley wore. And the big man had said enough to make it clear
that he was a hunted criminal.

The passenger directly in front of Hendley reached the gate and flashed
his identity disc. The computer emitted a low click. The passenger
walked on. Hendley stepped into his place. He waved his wrist toward
the computer's eye casually. He was too conditioned to computer
efficiency to feel any surprise when the machine buzzed in protest. A
red warning light flickered.

Hendley did not wait any longer. He charged for the open gateway.

A split-second later he was reeling back, his face and body bruised
and battered, his brain numbed by shock. Something had risen to smash
him away from the opening. Awareness seeped into his stunned mind.
An invisible electronic field triggered by the computer's warning.
Impregnable. The way was blocked.

There were voices now. Shouts beyond the barrier, faces swimming toward
him. Green uniforms--guards advancing. He stumbled back, looking
around frantically. There was no other gate. In seconds the attendants
would be on him. Only one path lay open, and that seemed a dead end.
He took it anyway, running blindly down the tubelike ramp which led
back into the copter. A stewardess blocked his way. He brushed by her
into the cabin. A man was coming along the aisle, dressed in beige,
wearing a stitched emblem with wings--the ship's mechanic. Hendley did
not slow his rush. He drove into the man at full tilt, his one good
fist smashing out ahead of him, striking the mechanic's jaw so hard
the impact sent an electric shock along strings of nerves all the way
up Hendley's arm into his shoulder. The man fell backward. Hendley
trampled over him.

Then he was in the control center at the front of the copter. A service
door stood open, a ladder suspended from the doorway. Hendley went
down three steps and jumped to the paved surface of the landing field.

There was a momentary illusion of escape. The landing field was broad
and open, dotted here and there with copters in the process of loading
or unloading. There was no one immediately behind him. Hendley started
across the field, running, putting distance between himself and the
alerted guards. He ran into a wide, bright swatch of sunlight.

A siren began to yip--an ascending series of pulsating cries. Hendley
stopped, looking back. Still there was no one in close pursuit. The
door of the copter from which he had escaped was still open--no! The
ladder withdrew even as he watched. The door swung shut! He whirled.
All around the field the routine of activity had ceased. Ladders were
withdrawing, ramps pulling back, doors closing. Two men at the far side
of the field, mechanics, ran toward an opening and jumped through it
just before a panel sealed the doorway.

Hendley was alone in the center of the deserted landing field, standing
in the glare of the sun as in a spotlight, exposed and defenseless.

The siren's wail died as if it were running down. Silence shut down
upon the great expanse of the landing field like a lid. Hendley took a
couple of aimless steps. The thud of his footsteps echoed across the
pavement. He saw movement behind the high windows all around the field,
faces pressing close to the glass, mouths gaping.

From somewhere high above came the slow, deep grinding of a giant
machine rousing itself, groaning, heaving into motion. Hendley looked
up. The massive interlocking panels of the airfield's domelike roof,
ordinarily closed only against the weather, were moving. Two vast
crescents crept toward each other, straightening out, sluggishly
diminishing the opening through which sunlight and warmth poured down.
Hendley could not tear his eyes away. Alone, isolated in the stunned
silence of the airfield, he watched the roof close over him with a
sensation of physical pain. The two closing crescents were like two
huge presses grinding together, beating the sky into an ever-thinner,
brighter sliver, crushing it at last as the roof panels clashed shut.

Sickened, Hendley tore his gaze away. He saw that doors had opened
now at intervals spanning the wide circle of the landing field.
Green-uniformed guards advanced toward him from each doorway, carrying
weapons he could not identify at the distance. He stood rooted, unable
to run any more. The tight green cordon of guards pulled closer around,
the circle shrinking. He threw an agonized glance overhead at the
blank, sealed grayness of the roof dome, where moments before there
had been a dazzling brightness. A deep chill made him shiver. He looked
once more at the noose of guards tightening around him, and slowly he
sank to his knees.

His rebellion had ended.

       *       *       *       *       *

The trial was brief.

For three days Hendley was kept in a bare, windowless room in the
Judicial Center. There was a single, one-piece pad of plastifoam on
which to lie. The foam was designed so that, intact, it was both
resilient and comfortable. It was almost impossible to tear, but even
if that could have been managed, the damaged web of foam would then
have disintegrated. There was no way it could be used as a weapon,
either against others or oneself. Because it breathed, it would not
even smother if held over the face. The cell was otherwise empty.

He was taken from the room for periodic questionings, some of them
under drugs. Before the trial began he knew that the contents of his
brain had been thoroughly scooped out and examined. All would be
presented in evidence.

His uniform was taken from him, along with the identity disc which had
belonged to the visitor. He wondered if he would be led naked into the
courtroom.

On the fourth day he was given a nondescript uniform of a kind he had
never seen before, a pale gray in color. He was transferred to another
room. Here there was one window. It was covered with unbreakable
plastic, but he could look out and, through a speaker imbedded in the
plastic, listen to the sounds outside. The room was well above street
level, looking out upon the vast underground city.

At first, listening and watching with fascination as the familiar
activity of the city swarmed through the streets, he felt a peculiar
sense of rightness, a feeling of being back in his own element, his
senses lulled by sights and sounds he had always known--the soft
artificial sky of the illuminated roof, the rumble of walk and tube
and hurrying feet, the babble of talk, the faintly discernible odor of
chemically cleansed air--most of all the knowledge of being enclosed,
contained within the city's gigantic womb.

But in a short time Hendley began to feel unnerved by the jostling,
hurrying crowds, even though he was not physically among them. The
noise and confusion made his head ache. The city seemed oppressively
close and warm. There was nowhere a patch of cool shade on which the
eye could rest. He felt a barrenness in the unending surfaces of
stone and glass and plastic and metal, unrelieved by any grass or
living plant. He missed the irregularities of landscape, the sense
of openness, the unexpected breezes which he had so quickly come to
take for granted in the Freeman Camp. He began to feel himself a tiny
creature caught in the intricately meshing gears of a huge, impersonal
machine buried far underground.

He turned off the speaker, welcoming the silence of his cell, and in
the end he did not even look out the window.

The trial began on the fifth day. Wearing his gray uniform, Hendley was
led into an antiseptically clean, white amphitheater. As he was taken
to his seat in the center of the courtroom, spectators, seated behind
glass on the balcony level, ogled him. He was surprised to see a second
empty chair beside his own. The surprise turned to shocked dismay
when a second gray-clad figure was escorted into the court. He rose,
dumfounded, as ABC-331 was seated in the chair next to his.

"What are you doing here?" he exclaimed. "How did they find--" He broke
off. They had scoured out his mind. They knew everything. Everything
from that first forbidden escapade outside the museum.

"It doesn't matter," Ann said, trying to soothe him. "It's all right.
This is the way I want it."

"But they can't--you've done nothing!"

She smiled a little. "Did you think you broke the rule all by yourself
that first day?"

"But they wouldn't try you with me for that alone!"

"There's more. You've made a misfit out of me, too." She spoke without
regret, with even a suggestion of pride. "I was withdrawn from
my--my work. There were complaints that I was--uncooperative. Do you
understand, Hendley?"

As the meaning of her words sank in, he felt a rush of emotion, full
and swelling in his chest. "So that's why you haven't been in the show!"

"Yes, that's why. Then when I learned about your arrest--it's been on
all the news, they're making an issue out of it--I beat them to it
before they could come for me. I gave myself up as an accomplice."
Hendley started to protest but Ann went on quickly, giving him no
chance. "You wouldn't have been caught in the camp by that--that awful
man if you hadn't tried to see me. It's because of me you're here at
all. Don't you know how important that is yet? I wouldn't want to be
anywhere else but with you."

Hendley sank into the chair beside her. He reached out impulsively to
grip her hand.

A stern voice intruded. Hendley looked up at the bench facing the two
chairs of the accused. "The accused will be silent," a grim-visaged
judge said, staring down at them. "This court will now come to order."

As the procedural ritual to open the trial began, Hendley thought of
Ann's reference to Nik. His safe refuge under Hendley's identity would
have exploded around him. He would certainly have been taken into
custody, perhaps returned to the Freeman Camp. Hendley smiled grimly.

Two beige-clad men came forward at the judge's order. One was
designated as a pleader for the defense, the other for the prosecution.
There was also a bailiff, several guards, and, ranged along one wall,
a bank of twelve computers, six in each of two rows. Each was of a
different design and manufacture. These, Hendley knew, were the jurors.
Such trials were unusual in the Organization, but not unknown, and the
system was familiar to him. He guessed that the rarity might account
for the crowded spectator gallery.

"They're here because of all the news coverage," Ann whispered, as
if she had divined his thoughts. "Not just over you, but over that
man whose disc you were wearing. There's been a lot of furor over
BAM. They're said to be guilty of sabotage--it's caused all kinds of
excitement." She paused. Then, nodding at the jury, she asked, "Why are
there twelve of them?"

"It's an old tradition."

"Wouldn't one of them do?"

"Yes. A more sophisticated computer could even make twelve separate
sets of calculations, for that matter. But it's traditional--it's
always been done that way."

The two pleaders began to present their cases. Each spoke rapidly,
without emotion--the emotional factor could not be considered by the
computers who would render the verdict, and was, in fact, regarded as
inconsistent with absolute justice. The presentation by the prosecution
took most of the morning. Its weight of evidence was exhaustive. At
noon the court recessed. Hendley was taken back to his cell, where he
was given a spare meal. When the trial resumed, it seemed to him that
Ann was paler, more drawn than before.

The defense made no attempt to refute the evidence, pointing instead to
the instability of morale shared by the two accused, and to the series
of events beyond their control which had driven them into infractions
of the Organization's rules of order. The defense was palpably weak. A
sense of the hopelessness of their case began to weigh upon Hendley.

The defense rested. Two legal computers were brought into the courtroom
and hooked up to the jury. Each in turn fed into the twelve jurors
all recorded legal precedents which bore upon the case for or against
the accused. During this time Hendley could not help staring at the
flickering screens of the twelve jurors. He had the strange sensation
that they were watching him, examining and judging what they saw.

Ann sat with her head down, her hands clasped in an attitude of
resignation. But her face, when she glanced up at him, was calm.

"It's all right," she whispered reassuringly. But he knew that she did
not mean they would be acquitted.

At last, after a brief address to the jury by the judge, the twelve
computers went into action. A bailiff pushed a button to start them
off. Hendley could see excited activity among the spectators in the
balcony as they craned their necks to see and talked animatedly among
themselves. In the soundproofed courtroom only the calculations of the
jury were audible, each computer racing to its decision--clicking,
humming, whirring, finally coughing up, each in turn, a strip of white
tape. The bailiff ceremoniously collected each strip and handed all
twelve to the judge. As he examined them his stern face did not change
expression.

"The accused will rise," he intoned. Staring down gravely at Hendley
and Ann, he said: "You have been accused of rebellion and sedition
against the rules of order of the Organization. The verdict is
unanimous--guilty!"

Hendley was surprised to find that he felt no reaction. Too much had
happened to him in recent weeks. Or perhaps it was just that he had
already accepted the inevitability of the decision.

"It is within the prerogative of this court," the judge said slowly,
"to determine the severity of sentence. In the light of the male
accused's persistent and determined efforts to defy the Organization's
accepted mode of conduct and way of life, the court does not see that
leniency would serve any just purpose. As for the female accused, known
as ABC-331, it would appear that her emotional relationship with her
fellow accused accounts in great part for her actions. Rehabilitation
in the Morale Center--"

"No!" Ann cried, leaping to her feet. "We're both guilty!"

The judge frowned severely. "The accused will refrain--"

"But I must! You can't separate us!" She whirled toward Hendley,
seizing his arm with desperate fingers. "Don't let them! Hendley,
please, I have to be with you!"

"Bailiff!" the judge stormed. There was turmoil in the gallery as the
judge pounded his bench with a gavel.

"Stop it!" Hendley spoke to Ann sharply. "They'll make your punishment
easy!"

"I don't care about punishment!" she cried. "I don't care about the
Organization! I care about us! What kind of life would I have without
you now?"

The bailiff reached them. Shoving Hendley aside, he grabbed Ann's arms.
Hendley spun the bailiff around, breaking his hold. The courtroom
guards converged on the scene. In the brief struggle one of the guards
clipped Hendley a glancing blow with a club. Ann was pushed into her
chair.

As suddenly as it had begun the scuffle was over. With an effort
Hendley brought his anger under control. The bailiff glared at him
threateningly, but Hendley ignored him as he resumed his seat and
looked anxiously at Ann. Her hand reached out to him in mute appeal.
Her cheeks were damp with tears.

He looked up bitterly as the judge began to speak. The eyes that met
his showed neither compassion nor understanding. These would be out of
place, Hendley thought angrily, in such a court, just as they could not
really exist in a world governed by machines.

"It is the judgment of this court," the judge said harshly, "that
the names TRH-247 and ABC-331 be erased from all the records of the
Organization, that their identity discs be destroyed, and that the
accused formerly known by said numbered designations be taken from the
city and banished forever into the outer light...."




                                  14


At night, in the second week, they slept wrapped in each other's arms
for warmth. The last matches were gone, and a battery had burned out in
the electric fire starter. Try as he might, hampered by the stiffness
remaining in his left hand as well as by inexperience, Hendley could
not create enough spark with stones or dry sticks to fan a flame into
life. By then they were both hungry, a deep continuous hunger which
seemed to add to the cold's penetration, as if the blanket of flesh
covering their bones, already worn thinner, could no longer keep out
the chill which spread over the land after the sun went down.

Each day he had tried to put more miles between them and the city. The
copter had left them some distance away, but still in sight of the
tall, faceless cylinders of the major centers. Viewed across the barren
plain, the towers appeared more like dead, naked trees than buildings
swarming with human life. Moving always west, away from the hated
towers, Hendley kept expecting to see them sink below the horizon, but
they remained persistently in view, seeming no further away.

He slept fitfully. Waking in the cold darkness before dawn, he could
see the beams of light shooting up from the circular cores of the great
cylindrical towers, as if they were giant torches held up to illuminate
the sky. Ann shivered in her sleep and tried to hug him more tightly,
seeking to warm her body with his. Pity washed through him. Holding
her, he felt a growing, spreading ache that was like the cold but
deeper, that would not yield to warm rays of the morning sun.

He had brought her to this, and he was failing her.

Once, in the first week, he had trapped a small animal, one of the few
species that seemed to be alive on the plain. He had had matches then,
had built a fire, and it seemed they had never tasted anything more
delicious than the fresh meat they shared in that festive meal. "I
think," Ann had said, "Hendley, I think now we are really free. For the
first time."

Later that night, lying before the warm glow of the fire, they had made
love, and it had been like that first day of discovering each other.

Now they no longer made love. They were both dull with fatigue at the
end of each day, even though they rested during the period of brutal
midday heat. They were weakened by having had little to eat for days.
They had tried various wild plants and even grasses that looked edible.
Some were acceptable to their stomachs, some were impossibly bitter,
one had made both of them sick. Hunger and thirst had jealously driven
out other appetites.

The need for water, Hendley knew, would soon be more urgent even than
food. In all this brown, empty land they had found no stream, no
spring, no sign of water. They had started out with a two-week supply
in the canteens provided them, but in the first days, unused to the
weight of the desert sun, they had drunk too generously. It was only
near the end of the first week that the necessity for strict rationing
became painfully clear. There were mountains to the west, creeping
infinitesimally higher each day, and Hendley reasoned that there must
be water flowing down from the mountains, but he wondered, the strange
new ache piercing to his heart as he held Ann more closely, if they
would find it in time.

Really free, he thought. It was true. But this freedom was demanding.
They were unprepared for it. Nothing in their lives before had equipped
them to cope with it. Everything had always been provided--all the
needs of mind and body. The social machine had taken care of its moving
parts. Could they manage even to exist cut off from the benevolent
machine?

There must have been others banished from the cities. Hendley could not
guess how many. Had any of them learned to survive? Where would they
have gone? Instinctively toward the mountains, as he had, in search of
shelter from the sun and life-giving water? Had they begun to regret
their transgressions against the Organization, to wish themselves back
in the familiar routine of work and reward, the accepted pursuit of an
artificial freedom? Had any of them crawled back to the cities, begging
to be taken in?

The last question made Hendley start. A new chill crawled up his spine.
Was that part of the punishment--reducing the criminal to abject
surrender? Did they expect Hendley and Ann to return to the towers as
beggars, shaken by cold and tormented by hunger, ready to accept any
terms of rehabilitation?

Angrily he shook his head. There was an insidious weakness in the
direction of his thoughts, a half-wish concealed behind the resentment.
But the wish was for her, the woman whose body he covered with his own,
feeling the bones more sharply outlined, seeing the pinched look of
hunger around her mouth....

He waited until the sun's first rays lanced through the concrete
fingers projecting along the eastern horizon. Very carefully he eased
out of Ann's tight grasp, trying not to wake her. She stirred once,
then fell back into the drugged sleep of exhaustion.

For an hour Hendley labored--doggedly, frustrated and tormented by his
repeated failures--until at last a puff of smoke drifted from the small
pile of powdery leaves and wood pulp he had fashioned. Perspiring in
spite of the early morning chill, his face flushed with anxiety, he
fanned the first sparks into a steady glow. At length, adding fresh
twigs and seeing firm tongues of flame lick around them, he sat back on
his heels and luxuriated in a sense of triumph. He had made his first
fire.

There was powdered coffee remaining from their meager rations. When he
had heated water he carried a cup of the steaming beverage to where Ann
lay. He woke her gently.

"We may not have a feast," he said. "But there's hot coffee, and a fire
to take away the chill. Come on over closer to it."

Her happy exclamations of surprise and praise amply rewarded all his
effort. He felt a slow surge of pride as he watched her crouch close
to the fire, warming her hands and face and thin, shivering body. She
drank too deeply of the coffee, scalding her tongue, but when she
looked up at him, choking and smiling, her drawn face was flushed with
color.

There were some things he could do, he thought with renewed
determination. There would be other small animals he could trap,
perhaps more of them nearer the mountains. There would be a fire each
night to give them warmth and to cook their food. He would have to
learn to strip the hides of any usefully covered animals so that the
hides could be saved and warmer clothes eventually made from them. He
would have to learn a lot of things. It would not be easy--but he had
made a beginning.

"That was marvelous of you," Ann said, reaching for him with one
slender hand, pulling him down beside her.

When he let the fire die later, the sun was well above the horizon and
the air was warming.

       *       *       *       *       *

He felt, at the last, a sense of being cheated.

They had reached the foothills ascending in steps to the great purple
vastness of the mountains when Ann collapsed for the first time.
Hendley was sure that water could not be far away. The last drop had
been squeezed from their canteens two days before. Yet even this
conviction of being so close to the desperately needed water did not
affect him as much as the tracks on which they had stumbled.

They were human tracks--feet soled in what seemed to suggest smooth
leather. The tracks had crossed their path a day before they reached
the foothills. They had eagerly followed the apparently purposeful line
of the footprints--not a single set of prints, but many, indicating
that the trail was frequently used. Their own progress was slow all
that day, held back by Ann's weakness. In his excitement over the
discovery of the freshly made tracks Hendley had found an untapped core
of strength and stamina, and not until Ann stumbled twice late in the
afternoon did he become sharply aware of how weak and sick she was.

He had insisted on stopping immediately. Hurriedly he built a fire,
before which he made her rest while he scoured the area for fresh
roots. From these and the juice squeezed from green plants he made a
kind of thick, stringy soup. During the night, in spite of his own deep
fatigue, he slept little, watching over Ann anxiously. She kept waking,
and what sleep she had was disturbed and restless. He waited several
hours after dawn, putting down her objections, before they sat off
again.

Early in the afternoon she collapsed. "I'm sorry, Hendley," she kept
repeating as he lifted her and carried her into the shade of an
outcropping of rock. "I'm sorry."

He brushed her words aside almost brusquely. "What have you to be
sorry for? I've been pushing you too hard--I should have realized. I
haven't let you rest."

"It's not that. If only I had some water...."

Hating to leave her for long, he made quick forays through the
remainder of the afternoon searching for some sign of water. The
foothills were greener than the main desert plain--there had to be
water not too far away. It must be there!

But, though he ranged farther each time, he found nothing, returning
after each trip with a sharper fear.

Night again found him watching over her worriedly, listening to her
dry, hacking cough. Her lips were cracked and swollen. He was vaguely
surprised to find his own lips split so that one was bleeding.

And on his last scouting trip he had stumbled badly. A low grade had
exhausted him. His strength was waning.

They could not live long without water. The human trail they had
followed for two days must surely lead to help, to a source of food and
water. But time was running out on them. Should he keep following the
tracks, or strike out across the foothills, searching for a stream? He
didn't know, and the uncertainty plagued him through the long night.

Falling into fitful sleep, he dreamed of a rushing mountain stream,
clear and cold, frothing as it boiled over beds of rock, cold and sweet
and nourishing...

In the morning Ann seemed stronger. They set off at an easy, careful
pace. Hendley helped her when the way was steep, carrying her over the
most difficult stretches. They climbed steadily, following the fresh
trail. When she could go no farther, he lifted her across his shoulders
and went on, laboring.

They made little progress. At noon he had to rest. Because the day was
cloudy and cool, with a stiff cutting wind whining through the gullies
and bending the grasses that covered the foothills. Hendley searched
carefully for a sheltered cove. He knew they had gone almost as far
as they could go. Alone he might have struggled on for another day,
perhaps more. But he would not leave her to save himself.

After a brief rest he made one more fruitless search for water.
Exploring a ravine which looked promising, a slash across the hills
once carved by a river but now dry, he was gone longer than he had
intended. When he returned, he found Ann sprawled on the ground, only
half-conscious.

They were absolutely alone in the vast, empty land. To the east now
there was only an endless reach of denuded prairie. The towers of
the city were no longer visible. The only sign of human existence
other than themselves was the tauntingly recent trail they had been
following. What men were these? Where did the tracks lead? How far?

He felt again the sense of being cheated, of a promise made, a hope
nurtured, which could not be fulfilled.

Shortly after dusk he heard the buzz of an aircraft overhead, but he
could not find it. This remote sign of life quickened no hope. The
blind copters droning across the sky carried no one who could, or
would, save them.

Ann came out of her delirium to stare at him. Her eyes were large, wide
open, unexpectedly lucid. "You must go on without me," she said calmly.
"You can make it without me."

He shook his head. "There is nothing without you."

"You could find help--come back for me."

"No, Ann," he said gently. "We have to face it. There is no help. And I
won't leave you alone."

She stared at him for a long moment. He saw, peering closely, that her
eyes were liquid with tears. "Are you sorry you came?" he asked, not
knowing until the words were out what he was saying. "Would you go
back?"

She seemed to gather strength for her reply, drawing from a worn, thin
body a surprising vigor. Her eyes shone. "Never!" she cried.

He lay beside her on the ground near the fire and folded her into his
arms. "Nor I," he said.

When, some time later, the fire began to die, the two figures bundled
together before it did not stir. The fire slowly darkened, its orange
glow turning to gray ash, and then to black, obscuring the last feeble
flicker....




                                  15

                               Epilogue


_So few of them survived, the hunter reflected. So few lasted long
enough to be found. And of those who did, few were able to adapt to the
rigors of the new life._

_But the survivors were strong. The tribe was growing stronger all the
time, larger and stronger and more skilled. While those in the cities
were growing weaker._

_Time, he thought, is on our side._

_For a moment longer he gazed thoughtfully down at the two prone,
wasted figures. The branches of a gnarled, twisted tree reached almost
over their shelter. Absently, the hunter probed with his hand into one
of the low-hanging branches to pluck one of the round fruits concealed
among the waxen leaves. With strong white teeth he bit through the
outer skin and sucked up the delicious juice. He scraped out all of
the nourishing pulp with his teeth. When he had finished he tore the
rubbery skin into strips and placed these in a pouch at his waist,
except for one piece which he kept in his mouth to chew on._

_Using a blanket, he repeated his earlier smoke signals, alternately
smothering and exposing the fire he had raised on the coals of the old
one. He worked patiently, whistling softly through his teeth._

_The woman must have been very pretty, he mused._

_The curling puffs of smoke climbed into the bright morning sky and
scattered slowly before the wind. After several minutes the hunter
desisted._

_From a leather gourd he poured water into a crude, hand-shaped cup.
He knelt beside the two strangers and, for the second time since his
arrival, forced a little water between their cracked lips. The man
was breathing well now, he noted. The woman had been much weaker, her
heartbeat almost imperceptible. But with care she would live._

_They had come a long way, he thought. The man, stronger, could have
continued. That was important. Love and loyalty were always important.
These two would be valuable additions to the tribe. And from them would
come another generation, born to freedom, stronger and more adaptable
than their parents. It was a pleasure to watch the children cope with
the new world so easily, so naturally...._

_While the hunter was still engaged in caring for his two sick charges,
the drone of an aircraft wove a thin thread of sound across the bright
blue sky. Reaching the drifting smoke signals, the aircraft swung in
slow circles, each one lower. It was a crude craft, lightweight and
spindly looking, but very maneuverable._

_The hunter glanced up. Banking low above him, the aircraft seemed to
balance on one wingtip. From the windowed cabin the pilot waved. The
hunter, smiling, returned the salute._

_As the plane veered off toward the flat plain below, where it
would be safe to land, the hunter rose. He began to search the area
for materials from which to fashion a stretcher. It would take, he
reckoned, a half hour for the pilot to reach him, another hour to
transport the two strangers down to the aircraft. He set to work._

_The man on the ground stirred and opened his eyes._

       *       *       *       *       *


                                RIGID!

                                LOCKED!

                               ENSLAVED!


that was our Earth in 2200. East and West had merged at last, so there
were no more wars, no more political differences.

Citizens everywhere could concentrate on working off their TAX DEBTS!
If you were capable and industrious, you might be able to make freeman
status for the last few years of your life.

No one questioned. No one spoke out. No one rebelled until one bright
morning Citizen TRH-247 decided not to go to work--and worse than that,
became desirous of a girl below his own classification!

Thus he made himself an outcast with the whole world against him and
mere survival dependent on his wits, his daring, his strength.

THE SENTINEL STARS--a novel of our world run as the Bureau of
Internal Revenue would run it!

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SENTINEL STARS ***

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