Part 13

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."