Part 8

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

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

"You call hurting people fun?" Hendley demanded.

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

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

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

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

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

"_Frowned_ upon!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Just till noon tomorrow."

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

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

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

"What do you mean?"

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

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

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

"I guess you know your way around."

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

"Never?" Hendley exclaimed, startled.

"I was born here."

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

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

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

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

"Uh-huh."

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

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

"Jolts?"

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

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

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

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

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

"No. How could I?"

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

"I'm with you."

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

"TRH-247."

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes."

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

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

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

"The weed?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Very!"

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

"What kind of show is it?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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