Part 10

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?"