Part 2

The coffee came and he gulped it eagerly, realizing that he hadn't eaten for several hours. The suspicion was taking form in his mind now, and he grasped at it greedily. He had seen many Free Agents before. They had become an accepted, harmless facet of a society rather too hurried to be bothered much by introspection. Free Agents? They were--well, they were around. They didn't do any harm, the news articles had said that only psychologically safe people were accepted for prosthesis, and then they were conditioned against criminal activities in the course of the remodelling. Why worry about them? They were seen here and there, and they bothered no one, and no one bothered them.

But what happened to them? Some went back to their old lives. He knew that. Some came back and took up their old places as if they had merely taken a vacation trip. And others came back, and then left--

Where did they go?

Griffin tried to think. Specifically, whom did he know who had come back permanently?

He ran over names in his mind. Jack Townsend--he'd come back. Fine boy, Jack, and never a whisper of a change. Ted Maroneck? He'd bolted after two weeks back, and Griffin had run into him in the city one day, with a coarse blonde woman, slightly drunk, and very raucous. How about Phil Steinberg? Only a week at home. Couldn't blame him, though. Ellie had been enough to drive anybody back to the woods. They'd never heard from him since. And Bob Whittaker--he'd been gone six months, now. And Joe Meyer--where was Joe?

Griffin took up his coat, preparing to leave, and now suddenly he was afraid. There was something wrong. In his own acquaintance, a couple who had come home and stayed. And a dozen who were gone, like the month of May.

_Where?_

He wanted to know. And something screamed in his mind that he had better find out where they had gone. And very soon.

* * * * *

The building said Bureau of Public Records on the facade, and he walked up the marble steps quickly, his mind now hard with suspicion. In the center of the huge lobby he found the Directory, and read down the lines of names and departments. Under R he found "Reading Room, Microfilm Library," with a floor number after it. A few moments later he was stepping off the elevator, walking into the long, narrow room with the reading booths glassed in against the walls. He found a place, and lifted the order-phone from its hook. "Let me have the documentary file on Robert L. Whittaker of this city," he said.

"I'm sorry, sir." The operator's voice was harsh in his ear. "Personal files are not available without proper authorization--"

"I'm a Free Agent," said Griffin shortly. "I'd like to see that file."

The visiphone screen came to light quite suddenly, and the girl's face appeared. "Identification, please?"

He held up a card from his pocket. There was no name on it. It carried a tri-di photo-impression, and a fingerprint, and said FREE AGENT in large green letters, followed by a code number. The girl watched him stamp his thumb on a duplicator card, and then the screen snapped off. Then, seconds later, a microfilm spool plopped down in the groove before him.

He took it out and threaded it into the reader, his heart pounding wildly in his throat. "Send me the same on Philip C. Steinberg and Joseph B. Meyer," he said. "And any other information you have on their activities--"

The documents were there, of course. Birth certificate, baptismal record, licensing record, application for prosthesis, application approval. He blinked at the last frame on the spool, a chill going down his back.

The death certificate. With Bob Whittaker's signature on it.

He snatched up the order phone again, his hand trembling. "I'd like Robert Whittaker's Free Agent records," he snapped at the operator's smooth voice.

There was a pause. Then the operator said, "There aren't any records, sir."

"WHAT?"

"I'm sorry, there is no record of Robert Whittaker reapplying for his name."

"Well then, what name did he take?"

"I'm sorry, that information is not available."

"I told you I'm a Free Agent."

"I'm sorry. Free Agent records are not available to anyone. Not even Free Agents."

It was the chink in the wall that he had known he would find. He slammed down the receiver with a crash, and threaded the second spool. It had been too good, too smooth for it to be true. He had known, deep in his mind, that somewhere he would find the flaw in the Free Agent's freedom--and he had found it. And knowing where the flaw was only fed his suspicions and fanned his fears into brighter flame.

It was the same with every spool. Phil Steinberg was legally dead. Sorry, but information regarding his Free Agent period is restricted. Ted Maroneck was legally dead. So was Joe Meyer--

_So was Dan Griffin_--

He sat there trembling, a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead. He had known there would be a flaw. He wasn't supposed to know it. A marionette wasn't supposed to know that it was only a creature on a string, a lifeless piece of wood until hands drew the strings and made it do its little dance of life. Like the monkey-on-a-stick he had owned as a boy, so many years before, which would climb up, and down, and up, and down, every time he pressed the button.

And somewhere, he had a button now. And somewhere, somebody was pushing it. Something had happened to him quite apart from the physical rebuilding. Neatly hidden behind a careful screen of helpfulness and humanity and a brave new life was something else, something that he had not been told. And he was being manipulated, like a monkey on a stick, and he couldn't do anything about it, because he wouldn't know about it.

But now he did know.

IV

Somewhere to the west of the city a Mars-bound rocket rose on its fiery tail with a roar, higher and higher on its wings of flame until its roar had dwindled to a high, penetrating whine. It flickered in the morning sun, and disappeared.

Griffin awoke with a jolt, and stared out the window of the hotel, watching the rocket move like an arrow across the sky, a sight that he had always loved. Then he rolled back with a groan, the anger and fear of the night before rushing back into his sleep-dulled mind like a nightmare.

He had not found them. When he had finally taken the room, and fallen down fully clothed on the bed to sleep, he knew he had reached a dead end. He could do nothing but wait now. And knowing what he knew, he was afraid to wait.

And then he heard a sound in the room, and jerked upright, and saw the girl standing in the door. She was watching him as he lay there, her face without expression. She might have been pretty once; her hair had been long and shining black, and there was even a trace of a wave left in it, a pitiful attempt to pin it back in some semblance of order. But her face was hard, and she watched him with sharp dark eyes like an animal's.

He sat up slowly, his feet on the cold floor. "All right," he said. "What do you want? How did you get in here?"

Her lips curled into a sneer. "You can go where you want to. Why can't I?"

His eyes drifted to her wrist. It was blank. "Who are you?"

"You don't recognize me? With all the slinking around and watching through the corner of your eye, you haven't even seen me before?" She sank down in a chair, regarding him as if he were some sort of bug. "I spotted you up in the restaurant last night. I've been following you ever since. You didn't know that?"

He was on his feet now, a snarl of anger in his throat. He started across the room for the telephone, and she said, "You'd better leave that alone."

"I'm going to call the police."

"The police won't help you. You're dead, remember? Or was it somebody else's records you were looking up last night?"

He whirled on her, his eyes blazing. "Get out of here," he said, "before I throw you out."

The girl's face was contemptuous. "Sit down, buddy," she said. "You Retreads really think you're God Almighty, don't you? Walk out all shiny and new, and you think you own the world, with your pretty Free Agent stripe and all the tripe that goes with it."

Comprehension began to seep through now. The girl's voice was bitter. Griffin sat down, watching the girl closely. "What have you got against Free Agents?"

"Plenty, buster."

"Like what, for instance?"

"Like the way the Hoffman Center sets itself up as judge and jury and makes a chosen people out of you. Not out of me. Oh, no, I won't stand a chance when the time comes. Not my old man, either. He tried for a retread, and they turned him down flat. Psychopathic inferior, they called him. He had to die. I'll have to die, too. But sooner or later they're going to find something wrong with the setup, and when they do, all hell is going to break loose, and they'll cut it out altogether, just like they tried to do at the first, and then there won't be any more snakes like you walking around with your pretty green stripes. Just one thing's got to go wrong, that's all." Her face was bitter. "How does it feel to be the Lord Master, buster? What are you so scared of? Or hasn't it been all it's cracked up to be?"

Griffin closed his eyes tiredly. "I think we'll get along better if you'll just state your business and get out. What do you want?"

"I want you, buddy."

"What do you know about me?" His eyes snapped open sharply.

She made a bored face. "Mister, I don't know you from Adam's off ox. All I know about you is the little green stripe on your arm."

"So I'm a Free Agent."

"That's all I need. A Free Agent. Any Free Agent will do."

He shook his head. "No dice. I don't get mixed up in any shady deals."

Quite suddenly the bitterness and contempt were gone from the girl's face, and only the fear remained, a craven, hopeless kind of fear. "There's nothing shady about it, Mister. Nothing bad, nothing you can't do, I swear it. Just going aboard a rocket ship for an inspection tour. Is there anything wrong with that? So you take a friend aboard with you. Then you walk off again. Is there anything wrong with that?"

Griffin blinked at her. There was no denying the desperation in her voice, the fear in her eyes. Griffin's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "What rocket are you talking about?"

"The Venus Rocket. It leaves tonight. I want on board it."

"Why?"

"Maybe I like Venus. Maybe I don't like it here. Maybe I've got to get away. Take your choice."

"What about the Colonization Board?"

Her eyes were dark with fear. "They'd never let me aboard. I wouldn't dare apply. They'd find out--things--on my record here."

His mouth hardened. "You mean they'd turn you over."

"Well, maybe they would," she snarled. "What are you doing, playing cop or something? Look, I want on that rocket. I've got to get aboard it. You're a Free Agent. You can go wherever you like--and so can anyone who's with you, if you vouch for him. They can't touch you. And you're scared, you've been scared ever since you left the Records Bureau last night. It sticks out all over you--"

"All right, maybe I am!"

"Maybe you want something."

He turned on her sharply. Something in his mind was screaming a protest at the idea that was forming in his mind, but he shrugged it off. So maybe it was illegal, maybe even criminal--was what they had done to him any less criminal? "I want records," he said softly. "I want information and records. I want them very much."

"I can get them for you."

"The records I want are restricted."

"Do tell."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean if they're on paper they can be bought."

"I have no money."

"Well, I have." She looked up at him sharply. "I've got enough money to buy passage to Venus. It can buy information if I can get free passage to Venus. It can buy information like nothing."

He sat down, his face very close to hers. "I want to know what's happened to other Free Agents," he said. "I can give you some names. I want their records, everything that's known about them, where they've gone, where they are now. I want them in a hurry."

The girl stared at him for a long minute. "You _are_ scared," she said. She lit a cigarette, and tossed the match on the floor. "Let's get moving," she said.

* * * * *

She said her name was Nan Baker, and that was about all she would say. Griffin doubted even that, but he didn't press conversation as they left the surface car at the Lower Level junction, and moved down the roads and alleys into the depths of the Old City. The itinerary itself was more illuminating than any words; her very familiarity with their route offered more lethal insight into the girl's background and motives and trustworthiness than anything she could possibly have told him. She knew her way through this jungle of crowded, dilapidated buildings; without hesitation they threaded their way through a bewildering tangle of dirty streets and darkened alleys.

Some of the buildings were in ruins, but many still showed signs of dismal habitation. This was the Old City, the area of decay and violence and crime where no one in his right mind would think of going, or allow himself to be taken. It was the crumbling ruin of the earlier city that had been here, ignored by advancing architecture and a more savory society, its reputation falling to the level of the dregs who had sunk here. And the girl found her way through the streets with an air of long familiarity.

They moved down a long, dank tunnel, formed of dripping concrete and decaying beams, obviously an old viaduct, long since decaying in disuse. At the far end was a building with a screen across the window. There was the sound of a juke box, and a roar of loud laughter as they stepped inside and shouldered through the crowd of people sitting at the long bar in the half-light.

A woman was dancing on a walkway behind the bar, totally nude, and the crowd were laughing and shouting at her as a sick-looking drummer pounded a cymbal and the juke box whined. Griffin followed the girl through the fringes of the crowd and back along a dark, dripping corridor. They found a room, a frowsy makeshift of a dressing room that reeked of cheap perfume and dead rats. The girl motioned him inside. "You wait here. I'll be back."

Ten minutes later she returned, followed by a short, obese individual who sank down on a chair and regarded Griffin with pale, dead eyes. "Got yourself a Retread friend, huh?" he said to the girl, jerking a fat thumb at Griffin.

She nodded tensely, and looked at Griffin. "Tell him what you want."

Griffin told him. The fat man listened. Then he said, "Rough. That's Government records. It'll take time."

"We've got no time," the girl snapped.

"Then it'll take money." His pale eyes flicked up to the girl. "You financing?"

"I'm financing."

"All right." He rubbed his chin with a greasy finger. "How much time can you give me?"

"About twelve hours. There's a flight leaving at ten tonight. I've got to be on it."

The fat man hoisted himself out of the chair. "Relax," he said. "You got a long wait." Then he was gone in a breath of stale air.

* * * * *

They waited. They didn't relax. They sat in the reeking little room, and the noise from the front drifted back to them, tinny and unreal. There was laughter, and footfalls on the stairs beyond their wall. Then there was a clink of broken glass, and more laughter over their heads somewhere. The girl watched Griffin, and paced the room, her hands so jittery she could hardly hold them still to light a cigarette. Finally she said, "I'm going up front for a drink."

"You're staying here."

"Who do you think you are, you damn--"

"You leave, I leave," Griffin snapped. "In the opposite direction. Think it over."

She picked up a dusty whiskey bottle and slammed it against the far wall with a snarl. It bounced off, without even breaking. "Go to hell!" she spat. Then she sat down. "You'd think they were robbing the Treasury or something."

He closed his eyes, trying to get his breath in the dead air. His mind screamed with impatience. Why was it taking so long? But then, what good would it do him when he had his information? Whatever the plan had been, he had already upset it. Whoever was pushing the button, manipulating the strings, must be in a fine state by now. The thought gave him a certain degree of sour pleasure. The button had been pushed, and he had not responded quite properly. And here, he knew he was beyond manipulation, beyond the grasp of whatever agency was making the plans for him. But whoever was directing the show would know now that he knew--

And he didn't doubt for a minute that something was planned for him. A man who was legally dead, a man whose wife would be resigned to his being dead, to her, and never expect to see him again, a man whose family had received the death insurance money that was due them upon his signature on the death certificate--whether he ever returned to his old life or not, that insurance would be paid--and now, a man who was wandering and frightened, a ghostly nonentity, existing in a society where he could not fit in, seeking something that he did not know. Personalities change, they had said. Perhaps.

But there were other changes, carefully controlled changes, he was certain of that now, changes that were made for a purpose, concealed from public inspection and public wrath by a careful groundwork of legal nonsense and humanitarianism. If anything about prosthesis went wrong, the public would fall upon it in an instant. Prosthesis was too touchy a thing, life was too fearful and mysterious and sacred, for halfway measures. The prosthesis had to be perfect. It could not have a price-tag....

But now he knew that the sixty years' extension of life did have a price-tag, somehow. And very soon he would know the price.

V

Someone jabbed him in the ribs, and he awoke with a jerk, blinking in the gloom. His mouth tasted like sweaty leather; he knew he had been sleeping. "What's the matter?"

"Wake up!" The girl was standing over him, her voice a harsh whisper.

He was alert in an instant. "The records--"

She thrust a packet into his hands, "We've got to go," she said. "There isn't much time. They were late."

"Just relax a minute." He ripped open the packet. A roll of photostats fell out into his lap, still damp. He threw them on the dressing table, and snapped on a dirty yellow light.

"You can't read them now--"

He didn't even hear her. He stared at the names on the papers before him. Names he had never seen before. Not all new, though. Bob Whittaker had kept his old name. But the others--changed, just as their faces had changed. He read the entries under Whittaker's name. Job after job on Earth, months of drifting, observing, then drifting again. A run on the Mars-Earth line as a crew-hand. Imagine Whittaker a crew-hand on a space liner! Work in the mines on Mars. Back to Earth, and married to a girl he had never heard of.

And then, at the end of the page, a number, and a letter, and a date, and the words: CHECKED THROUGH.

There was nothing else.

Griffin stared at the paper, his heart pounding in his throat. The next was shorter. But at the bottom, the same story. Joe Meyer's picture, with a name Griffin had never seen before--

CHECKED THROUGH.

Phil Steinberg--_Checked through._

It was like a trail in the snow that led one way out into the bright moonlight, into the middle of a field, and then stopped dead, without sign or struggle. Impossible. But the papers were there before him. _Checked through._

Nobody to suspect, nobody to worry about tracing them down. Because they were dead. Free Agents. Beyond the law, beyond search and tracing. Dropped from sight.

The girl was shaking his arm, begging him to hurry. He rolled up the papers, thrust them into his inside pocket. He could not find his hat, and he swore under his breath, and they went out without it. Then they were on a surface car, curving up through the twilight into the New City again, until they spotted a street where cabs were passing. They hailed one, and the girl leaned back in the seat, trembling, as Griffin said, "Rocket Landing. Hurry."

And then he leaned back, a thousand phantoms flickering through his agitated mind.

* * * * *

He had to get rid of her before he could do anything. He glared at the girl as they made their way across the Landing Building pavilion toward the endless rows of loading platforms, wishing he had never agreed to help her. Instinct told him to run, to leave her there and let her get aboard her ship as best she could, but he followed her grimly. The entrance guard passed them without argument when Griffin showed him his green stripe. "Venus ship? Platforms are down to the right--"

They moved down the rows of silent ships, and then she pointed. It was a huge ship, with a single light swinging on top of the gantry. "That's the one."

He glanced up at the ship. The gantry stood tall by her side, and her airlock was standing open. He pushed the crane buzzer; up above, the machinery began to squeak and groan as the platform started down.

"Who's down there?" The voice from above was harsh, and Griffin saw a head appear over the edge of the crane. "What do you want?"

"Free Agent," said Griffin. "I'd like to come aboard and take a look around."

"Not supposed to start loading for two hours," the voice grumbled.

"We're not shipping, we're just looking."

"All right. Come along."

The crane rumbled down and squeaked to a stop. Griffin and the girl stepped on the platform, and it started up again. At the top the guard peered at them suspiciously, hand on his gun belt. He fluoresced the green stencil on Griffin's arm, grunting. "Who's she?" he said.

"Free loader," said Griffin, tense. "Friend of mine."

The guard didn't like it. It was written a yard wide across his face. "Going to be long?"

"Not long. Just want to look around."

"Better keep forward, Free Agent. The pile's active."

"We won't go aft." Griffin moved through the lock, and the girl followed him. He heard a sound, then, a soft, swishing sound that sounded wrong. He whirled too late as the guard moved toward him. Powerful arms trapped him, held him tightly, and a hand clamped unceremoniously across his mouth. Something sharp bit his arm, and he let out a little scream. And then, like pieces in a puzzle the whole grotesque picture slammed into place in his mind, and he fought like a wild man to break loose from the arms that held him.

After a while, he stopped struggling.

* * * * *

The first sound he heard was not a sound at all, but a vibration, low, deep seated, swallowing his whole body as he lay there. He tried to sit up, and felt the leather bands catch his arms and legs and chest. He let out a little cry, and fumbled to unbuckle them, and then he rolled and spun crazily through the air until his boots struck metal, and caught him tight to the floor. A pang of nausea shot through him; he stared wide-eyed at the empty cabin, the dozen slanted acceleration cots, all empty. He struggled to the closed hatchway in front, and fought it open, his mind screaming. And then he was in the control room, staring at the empty seats in front of the panel, and above the rows of glittering keys, the curved plexiglass giving out to the black expanse of space with its millions of bright pinpoints.

He gave a strangled cry, and pushed up against the glass, staring down at the still-dwindling discs below him, one pale greenish-blue, the other, much smaller, dead white against the blackness. And then he was clawing the glass, screaming and sobbing and cursing like a madman. He stared out the glass, and down at the panel, and slowly, like a malignant poison seeping into his mind, he began to realize what it meant.