Part 9

"Crass," someone said. "Vulgar." Another voice retorted, "Color isn't _everything_!" Words and phrases collided and ricocheted and split into fragments. "--isn't supposed to _mean_ anything. It's supposed to _be_." "Quite mad--that's the beauty of it...." "Genius...." "The inner planes are brilliantly suggested...." "Erotic, of course...." "Feeling!" "Essence...." "I don't _like_ it. That's the real criticism...." "--see how he used intersecting curves. Marvelous illusion, don't you think?" "Not _new_ at all...." "--so much life...." "... death!"

Unnerved, Hendley turned away from the painting. Nik was beside him again, shoving a drink into his hand. Hendley took a brief swallow, needing it. The rising crescendo of party noise seemed to diminish as the drink coursed through his body. Its taste was unfamiliar to him, but before he could question it Nik was steering him through the crowd toward the escalator.

"The main party is downstairs," Nik said. "You can see some of the exhibits along the way. The place is bigger than it looks, isn't it?"

"Yes, from outside--"

"It wasn't built as a gallery, but it's been converted. Used to be a service building of some kind. Say, I've got to smile at a few faces I know. See you downstairs on the bottom level. Take a look around as you go down."

He was gone. The stairway wound slowly past different exhibits of paintings and sculpture. Knots of Freemen clustered before each work, talking and arguing and laughing. Curiosity forced Hendley off the stairway at the first level below the lobby. He edged his way into a crowded room whose walls and ceiling were covered with paintings. Their effect, even at first glance, was vaguely alarming. It took him a while to make a full circuit of the room. By the time he reached the last painting, a bewildering exercise in spatial relationships in which ribbons of color entwined like mangled intestines, he was badly shaken. The art was strikingly personal, each portrait a private image. The paintings seemed without form or coherent meaning. They ranged from wildly vivid explosions of light and color to somber experiments in deliberate dullness. They lacked any common viewpoint. But in spite of their singularity, they had a sameness. What they shared, what gave the exhibition a cumulative impact, was the creation in paint and plastic and metal of a world disturbed, threatened, and threatening, a world of unimaginable chaos, devoid of tranquillity or joy, a sensual world which denied the evidence of the senses, an emotional world terrorized by its feelings.

Hendley wanted to escape. He plunged through the babble and confusion, fighting his way back to the central escalator, where he leaned over the railing into the open center well like a man gasping for air. He was still carrying his glass, forgotten after the first sip in his absorption with the Freeman art, but in the crush of the crowd half the drink had been spilled. He raised the glass.

A girl pressed close to him. Her face was daubed with streaks of bright paint. "Isn't this frantic?" she breathed.

Hendley nodded. "It's that," he agreed dryly.

The girl smiled. The pupils of her eyes were shrunk to small black pinpoints in a blue field. "You're cute," she said. With a deft movement she speared his glass. Tilting her head back, she drank deeply. Her throat worked as she drained the glass. Then she held it out very carefully beyond the railing of the stairway and dropped it down the center well. The polished glass winked with light as it tumbled through the air. The sound of its shattering was lost in the general noise below.

"I hate empty glasses," the girl said, laughing.

An arm dragged her away. The crowd closed around her like doors shutting. Then the escalator reached the bottom level and Hendley was carried through a wide archway into a much larger room. Here there was less heated discussion, less attention paid to the paintings lining the walls, more hilarity and shrill excitement. The computer band blared from the far end of the room. A group of Freemen milling around in the center turned out to be dancing couples--many pairing men. There were bars set up on either side of the entrance. Both were jammed. Most of the dancers and many of the others in the crowd wore strangely cut-out uniforms, their bare arms or chests or faces smeared, like the face of the girl on the stairway, with dabs and streaks of color.

Hendley eased past the naked, painted back of a girl locked in an embrace with a man whose encircling arms were striped with crimson paint. Suddenly Hendley wished that he were out in the cool evening air, away from the noise and heat and confusion. But his throat was painfully parched and his head was spinning. He needed another drink. He didn't want to think any more. He didn't want to hear the strident note in the merriment spilling around him. He didn't want to speculate on the meaning of the bizarrely painted bodies of free artists, whose lives seemed as desperate as their art.

He fought his way to the nearest bar, jabbed the first button within reach, and seized the drink that slid from a chute onto the counter. It was weaker than his previous drink, but it warmed his stomach. He ought really to be drunk by now, he reflected. Never in his life had he had so much alcohol in one day. And as a matter of fact he was dizzy. His eyes were not focusing well. Faces swam across his vision, jelly faces, without bones. One of them was....

Nik. The young Freeman was smiling his sardonic smile, but his eyes were speculative. He thinks I'm drunk, Hendley thought. It's all right for him to laugh. But he forgets that I have only one day. No. One night, what's left of it. Then I go back....

"--find it interesting?" Nik was talking to him.

"Very," Hendley said. His tongue struggled with the single simple word. "Don't understand," he muttered vaguely, not sure whether he meant the painted artists or their shapeless works or his clumsy tongue.

There was a commotion nearby. Briefly the crowd parted, falling back. A girl had crumpled to the floor. She tried to push up with her arms but didn't make it. Then she was rolling on her back, writhing in evident pain, her hands balled into fists that dug into her midriff. As helping hands reached down toward the girl, the crowd closed around her like a spider enveloping its prey, walling her off from Hendley's view once more.

"Know her," he said. "Funny...."

"What's that?" Nik's fingers tightened on his arm.

The gesture annoyed Hendley. He didn't like to be grabbed. He shook his arm free.

"What did you say?" Nik demanded.

"That girl. Met her on the stairway. She stole my drink," Hendley said sadly.

For a brief instant the lean, indifferent posture on his friend's face tightened with emotion. The expression was gone almost at once, but not before Hendley had recorded it. He was puzzled. Why should a stolen drink make Nik angry? There was more where it came from. All you could drink.

"I'll get you another," Nik said with a light laugh. "Can't have girls getting drunk on your liquor. I guess your drink was one too many for her."

"Wasn't that," Hendley said with a certainty that surprised him. He stared in the direction of the girl who had fallen. Something in his mind struggled toward shape and meaning. The thought resisted form, remaining as incoherent as a Freeman painting. But Hendley knew that he had to leave. Whatever the amorphous conviction was, it had something to do with the stolen drink, and it conveyed fear. "I'm going," he blurted.

"But--your drink!" Nik protested.

"No more." Hendley started away. Nik grabbed his arm. Hendley whirled on him in sudden anger. "I'm leaving!" he cried. He took refuge in the young Freeman's earlier words, not wanting to voice a nameless fear. "You said there was a show I shouldn't miss. I'm going back to the main Rec Hall!"

He lurched free of his friend's grasp and plunged through the yielding crowd toward the escalator. The center well was like a tunnel burrowing up toward the open sky, the sweet night air, the heavy garden scent of freedom.

8

Halfway back to the hotel, Nik caught up to him on the moving sidewalk. The fresh air had cleared Hendley's head a little and helped to relieve his feeling of oppression. But he turned at the young Freeman's call with a defensive resentment.

"You took off in a big hurry," Nik said.

"So what?" Hendley snapped.

Nik shrugged. "Thought you'd get a jolt or two out of our would-be artists," he said indifferently. "They can get on your nerves though. Say, do you feel all right?"

"Why shouldn't I?"

"I wondered if maybe you weren't used to our drinking habits. Takes awhile. You were looking a bit green back there."

Hendley relaxed a little. The Freeman's manner was typically at ease, his gaze turning away from Hendley to rest with amused tolerance on the befuddled struggles of a festive group trying to stage an "iggy" race on an enclosed track past which the sidewalk ran. The clumsy, thick-hided, tailless iguana mutants, oversized descendants of one of the few desert species to survive into the Organization world, reared and threw themselves from side to side, trying to unseat their intoxicated riders. Nik's casual attention to this drunkenly comic sport did more than anything else to divert Hendley's temper and lull his vague suspicion. He was forced to admit, after all, that he had been drinking heavily. It was hardly strange that he should have begun to feel the effects. Nik couldn't be blamed for that, any more than a girl's drunken collapse could be charged to a single drink.

Suddenly the darkly shadowed landscape of the Freeman Camp blurred. The whole star-bitten sky reeled, tilting on its edge, tipping....

Nik was at his side in time to save him from falling off the moving walk. They were riding the slow strip, but a tumble could have been nasty all the same, even dangerous. "I say, you're still rocky," the young Freeman said. "We'd better get you some place where you can rest."

Hendley shook his head. The spasm of dizziness was passing almost as quickly as it had come. He tried to breathe deeply, leaning against his friend's supporting arm. He was a good fellow, Hendley thought. Never should have run off and left him like that. Funny, the notions that could get into your head. Not even an idea, really, just a--a feeling.

"My quarters aren't far from here," Nik said. "We can go there. Give you a chance to recuperate."

"I'm all right," Hendley protested. "Just dizzy for a minute. I'm feeling better already."

"But you need--"

"No," Hendley said firmly. With an effort he pulled himself erect, disengaging his friend's arm. "This is my only night here. If I rest now I'll sleep, and if I sleep I won't wake up until it's time to leave. You said the show at the hotel was worth seeing. I'm going to see it."

Nik did not answer, but the exasperation on his face was so transparent, and so unexpected, that Hendley laughed. "Humor me," he said. "And stick close. You can catch me if I fall."

He grinned at the young Freeman, and after a moment Nik began to join his laughter. "I'll be imprisoned if I don't think we'll make a real pleasure-purist out of you yet!" he exclaimed.

Arm in arm, they leaned against each other, laughing uproariously, as the moving walk carried them through the central park toward the main Rec Hall on the hill, a brightly lighted yellow mushroom painted against the night's endless promise.

* * * * *

"Tell you what I'm going to do," Hendley said.

"All right, name it."

"I'm going to have another drink."

Nik chuckled. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

"To the desert with your warnings. Drink is pleasure, and pleasure is all." The familiar Organization slogan came easily to Hendley's lips. "Bring on the girls! Are you sure this is a good seat?"

"The best. There's a materializer right overhead. And you have a good view of the main screen over the stage."

Hendley stared at an opaque plastic cylinder suspended from the ceiling of the great circular auditorium. Less than twenty feet away, the cylinder was just big enough to contain a grown man. It might have been a decorative fixture, its smooth surface reflecting a multicolored flow of light from the auditorium's glowing panels. There were about two dozen of the cylindrical objects spaced throughout the theater, overhead for those seated in the balcony, along the sides for the audience on the main floor. It was difficult to get seats close to the stage, Nik had explained, unless you arrived very early, but with the materializers you didn't need front-row seats. The man-sized cylinders brought the stage to you. Moreover, from a middle distance, and especially from the balcony, you had a better view of the huge thought-screen, the giant father of the materializers in shape, mounted directly over the stage and almost at Hendley's eye level. This huge screen was also dark.

Drinks arrived on a conveyor belt just as the main lights in the auditorium began to dim. From his balcony perch Hendley stared down as the curtain of light obscuring the central stage slowly dissolved. The stage revealed was in semidarkness.

A spatter of applause broke into thunder as a cone of light slashed down to sculpture a living bronze--a nude woman standing motionless on a revolving dais. For an instant the striking figure was enveloped in brilliant white. Then the light began to change from pink through rose to a garish red, until at last the figure seemed to be bathed in blood, unrelieved except for a small white circle lying at the top of the valley between the woman's red breasts. From the balcony it was impossible to distinguish the white circle clearly, but on the materializer, so close to Hendley's seat, it was easy to discern a thin necklace, the clear outline of a white tag, and the number 1 printed on the tag, which had evidently been treated somehow to reject the red light. The crimson figure was reproduced slightly larger than life within the plastic cylinder, and with a breathtaking illusion of reality, as if she were physically imprisoned there. It was not like looking at a viewscreen, even a dimensional one. It was as if the living flesh in its garish costume of light had been transported from the stage into the plastic cocoon.

A second white cone stabbed down through the darkness, pinning a second nude figure upon the stage. Again the light changed by degrees to red. Almost imperceptibly a low, sensuous beat of music had begun to make itself heard. And with that the audience became more vociferous. As another and yet another red figure was revealed on the stage, a persistent murmuring grew. Audible gasps ignited fresh crackles of applause as each new model appeared. They were all young, shapely, beautiful. In the brief flash of white light as they were first seen, their bodies were visibly pale, like Hendley's own, the white sheen of skin unburned by the sun. When the light changed, they became, in their bizarre red envelopes, both more vivid and less human. Hendley could not tear his gaze away as the procession continued. His throat grew dry, and he drained his glass.

Twelve girls in all took their places in the red spotlights. Hendley missed seeing the eleventh one closely. He had glanced down at the stage just before she appeared in closeup on the nearby materializer. By the time he looked back from the general tableau below to the intimate revelation on the cylinder, the girl's image was already fading. And her back was toward him. He had only a glimpse of a slender, willowy body, narrow-waisted, of long slim legs, and of a nest of short curls above a graceful neck. She was a red vision from a dream, but something other than admiration stirred in his mind.

"I missed that one second from the last," he said to Nik.

"A pretty thing," Nik said appraisingly. "Quite well equipped, too." His hands shaped an imaginary bosom.

"She looked--I'm not sure--familiar."

Nik laughed. "That's not unusual. There's a blue girl--she'll be coming on shortly--who once reminded me of my mother. I suppose one of your Morale Investigators would say that was significant. But it's not, really. A beautiful girl seen in the distance, or not clearly, will always remind you of someone."

"Only if that someone matters," Hendley said with surprising clarity.

The young Freeman made a mock grimace of pain. "Hmmm," he murmured. "I should have thought of that."

"What's a blue girl?"

"Same as in your outside world. You see, the showgirls are all outsiders. Red means a 5-Daygirl. Green a four, blue a three. Obviously they don't wear their uniforms while they're performing."

Hendley smiled absently. He wished that he had had a clearer view of the eleventh girl. Even in the distance of the stage, and in the strangely erotic distortion of the colored spotlight, she seemed familiar. But whom could she remind him of? There was only....

"What's wrong?" Nik asked. "Feeling dizzy again?"

"No," Hendley said hoarsely. "It's not that."

As if to prove his statement he reached for his glass, only to find it empty. The resemblance was superficial, he assured himself. That was all it could be. Ann could not be here. But the nagging impression that the girl on the stage was enough like her to be a double unnerved him. He was chagrined to realize how seldom he had thought about her since his arrival in the Freeman Camp. Perhaps that was understandable enough--the clockless hours had been full--but this defense did not dispel a twinge of guilt. Forgetfulness argued a shallow emotion, undermining the importance he attached to his hours with ABC-331.

"Ah, here come the greens," Nik said. "And I've ordered us a couple refills on the drinks. Don't take it if you don't think you can handle it."

Hendley didn't answer. He wanted the drink, and he had a feeling that he would need it.

The pattern of presenting the showgirls was repeated, except that the second set were washed with a startling green light. And each girl wore an identical male face-mask. The slow but insistent beat of the background music quickened slightly, acquiring a harsher, more driving rhythm. A perceptible tension of excitement quivered in the air of the auditorium.

There were twelve girls in green. "They're the males," Nik said unnecessarily. "You'll be surprised how you get to think of them that way, the obvious physical evidence to the contrary."

Hendley started to ask what all this was leading up to, but before he could speak the tempo of the music changed. The twenty-four girls formed a wide circle near the apron of the stage. Their spotlights faded until they were only dimly visible. Attention shifted to the center of the stage. Light panels dropped into place, figuring suggestively the setting of a pre-Organization city. The technique and the scene were immediately familiar to Hendley. They were traditional in the presentation of a Freedom Play.

Quietly a cast of characters appeared. The play was presented in pantomime, its drama heightened by music and dance. Every move and pose had its traditional meaning. The all-female cast was also a tradition. Only the nudity of the performers was different, and that one fact subtly altered the effect of the play.

Through it all--the early scenes of man's frustrations and drudging labor, the spectacular fireworks and sound effects of the great war which climaxed the third act, the final scenes which depicted man's building of a new world underground and the gradual emergence of his dream of freedom from something unattainable to an immediate goal--Hendley's attention kept going back to the line of showgirls ringing the stage, specifically searching for the one who had seemed so familiar. He thought he saw her but in the dimmed spotlight could not be sure. Only in the triumphant dance number climaxing the play did these showgirls participate, functioning as a dancing chorus in the background. In the confusion of movement Hendley could not find the one he sought.

Applause greeted the end of the play. It was loud and warm, but Hendley had the feeling the audience's enthusiasm was as much for what it knew was coming as for the performance it had just seen. A steady buzz of excited comment continued long after the freedom players had exited, leaving only the original chorus of showgirls on the stage.

"What now?" Hendley asked.

"You'll see," Nik said with a grin. And he added, shoving a glass toward Hendley, "Here's that refill."

The murmur from the audience grew louder. A computer band, simulating the sounds of old-fashioned man-played instruments, raised a triumphant peal. Abruptly a single spotlight speared the center of the stage. A section of the floor slowly folded back, and into the spotlight rose a naked woman, aggressively feminine, her legs spread wide, her magnificent bosom high, her head thrown back to let long hair stream down over her shoulders. The light turned swiftly to blue, and the spontaneous audience applause turned into a roar.

Above the noise Nik cried, "Remarkable woman! I won her once! Tremendous!"

Startled, Hendley stared at him. "You _won_ her?"

Nik waited until the crowd's uproar had begun to subside. "In the drawing," he said then. "That's what those little white tags they wear are for. There's a filter over the tags, by the way--that's what screens out the colored rays. You have that ticket you got when we came into the theater? Well, there'll be a drawing. Winning tickets are matched to the girls. All of them. Red ones go first, then the green, the blue last." He grinned reminiscently. "That's really the part of the show that's special. Oh, the dancing and the rest are all right, and the thought-screen is interesting--that'll be starting up soon--but wait till the drawing!"

Hendley felt sick. His stomach stirred uneasily. He swallowed hard. A sad, enigmatic statement kept running through his head: "That's what I'm supposed to be." Beautiful, he thought. Selected because she was beautiful. Trained to please with her beauty. Trained, too, to simulate passion.

No, it was impossible! What he feared couldn't be true! He had drunk too much, and his mind was as unsettled as his body. The resemblance was superficial, deceptive, a trick of lighting.

But the sick fear could not be reasoned away.

A group dance number began. The woman painted in blue light was taller than the others, more blatantly sexual, dominant. Now she raised one arm, holding up a slender metal rod. Her wrist flicked. A string of white light danced across the stage like the lash of a whip. Where it snapped off a red dancer cringed, cowering, pantomiming fear. Or was she acting? Was the whiplash real?

Using her sting of light the blue woman drove the dancers robed in red and green light through their routine. Each girl stayed within her narrow frame of light--or rather, the cones of color nimbly followed the girls as if attached to them. Hendley tried to single out the girl tagged number 11. He kept losing her, searching, finding her again, afraid of what he would see, helpless to turn away.

For a brief instant she passed through the field of the materializer and was reproduced in the cylinder no more than twenty feet away. She turned her head, seeming to glance over her shoulder directly at Hendley. The slight gesture brought a stab of pain to his chest. She had tilted her head exactly that way toward him when he found her outside the Agricultural Research Center. No two women would have that precise balance of grace and reserve, that particular angle of the head in turning. He knew that dip of waist, that soft swell of breast, that slender column of neck--that hidden sadness.

ABC-331 looked into his eyes without seeing him, whirled and spun away.