Part 12

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."