Part 2

He repeated them, convinced that he was saying the right thing. The Orientation Officer nodded and smiled. “Sometimes we have a little trouble over such situations and corrective steps are necessary. Apparently none will be needed in your case.”

He looked directly at Rick.

“As to your own situation now the Machine has discovered an extraordinary combination of potential abilities in you, and has been able to match them in a very desirable counterpart with whom you will be paired.

“You must understand that we are not wholly unhuman and mechanical about all of this. You will be properly introduced and given adequate opportunity to become well acquainted. We have special areas set aside for these courtship preliminaries. Whenever you find it mutually agreeable an official sanction is given to your pairing and you are then ready for the next step of preparation for your place in our society. The getting acquainted period usually takes about two to three weeks.”

“What if it doesn’t become mutually agreeable?” Rick asked impulsively and wished immediately that he’d held his tongue.

Bernard Jackson was not disturbed by the question, however. He merely smiled. “That just doesn’t happen. The Machine doesn’t make mistakes.”

Rick managed to get a good night’s sleep in spite of the experiences of the day. A long time later he reminded himself that his ability to sleep had been a very fortunate thing, too--considering all that was to follow during the next twenty-four hours.

He was introduced to Deva Warel, the woman with whom he was scheduled to pair, at noon the following morning.

Bernard Jackson brought them together for lunch. She was seated at a table near the window of the dining room in the Orientation Building. With her was Jackson’s counterpart, a female Orientation Officer, who seemed unhappy about the whole arrangement.

Jackson pointed her out ahead of time, as they came into the room. “That’s her, sitting right over there,” he said.

Rick looked. For a moment he seemed to be staring at a small, golden sunburst. Then it turned into the reddest head of hair he had ever seen or imagined.

“That’s Deva? The one with the red hair?”

“In the flesh.”

He knew at once that the Machine’s traditional infallibility was sheer idiocy. This girl was as unlike Barie as it was possible for a woman to be, and on her face, as she caught sight of him and turned, was a look of total, unadulterated antagonism.

“She has the highest potential value of any Mech designer we have discovered for many years,” Jackson whispered as they approached. “So you see, you are being entrusted with a very valuable property,” he added, with a smile Rick didn’t understand at all.

Introductions were quickly completed. The name of Deva’s companion was Flora Johns. She nodded politely, but Deva was openly contemptuous. Inside himself, Rick felt like laughing. It occurred to him that the machine must give out a good many solutions that human beings found difficult to assimilate. This, certainly, was going to be one of the most indigestible on record. In a way, he and Deva were going to be partners after all.

As soon as the painful meal was over, Jackson cleared his throat. “I presume you have carefully explained the preliminaries to Miss Warel, Dr. Johns?”

“I’ve explained nothing!” the woman officer snapped. “Deva Warel states that she absolutely refuses to go through with this arrangement. She had already committed herself to a companion in the University.”

“That’s extremely unfortunate,” Bernard Jackson said. “However, in all fairness to my ward, I believe we should go ahead in conformity with established custom.”

“You young people,” he said, “will be assigned quarters in the orientation area. Every opportunity will be offered you to become acquainted and acquire mutual interests. Should this--ah, determination of Miss Warel’s not be overcome we shall consult the Machine for other arrangements. But let us have a fair trial and see what comes of it.”

V

For three days Rick remained in his room without leaving it, except for the brief periods he spent in the restaurant. He wondered how long they would allow the farce to go on, and what would happen to him after it was over.

The fact that Deva Warel was as opposed to the arrangement as he was made it a little easier to bear. But all the humor had gone out of the situation. His heart was sick and empty for all that he had left behind--for the farm, the cattle, even the friends who had refused to help him.

On the fourth day he decided he’d at least have to get out in the open if he was going to preserve his sanity. He left the building and walked out through a large, park-like area enclosed by buildings and masonry walls. He passed occasional couples who were apparently becoming acquainted and “acquiring mutual interests.” For the most part they seemed to exhibit a good deal of enthusiasm about the process.

Then he stopped short. A dozen feet away, seated on the grass with a thick book open in her lap, was Deva Warel.

She looked up as he approached and grinned. “Welcome to the bull pen,” she said. “I wondered when you were going to come down. Guess I must have really scared you, huh?”

“No, I was just taking my time,” he told her. He dropped down beside her on the grass and glanced at the title of the book. _Associative Reflex Circuits of the Memory Package!_

“That’s too deep for you, farmboy,” she said. “Anyway, since we’re here to court, suppose you start courting and get it over with. I’ve heard they have some real cute customs down on the farm.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” said Rick slowly. “But ordinarily we use courtesy and kindness to the animals. They’re the only creatures below an Agro Sixth Rating, of course.”

She looked at him with an expression of regret in her eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. Or maybe I _did_. I just don’t know!” She turned away again, her expression changing to one of anguish. “You couldn’t know anything about what this means to me. A week ago I hoped and halfplanned to marry a man of my own status--a Mech, First Rating. He’s a genius, and we’ve worked together all our lives.”

“I’m told that’s what you have to expect in return for the benefits of the Machine’s great wisdom. But even an Agro can understand what it means to rebel. I had hopes too--of marrying the woman I loved.”

* * * * *

She looked up quickly, her eyes searching his face. “I didn’t know. That makes us partners in at least one respect, doesn’t it?”

“I guess it does. The question is: What will they do to us for refusing to pair with each other? Will it mean prison, or alteration?”

“I don’t really know. It happens so rarely. I don’t suppose you’d marry me even to escape imprisonment.”

“Not if the future of the whole race depended on it,” Rick said fervently. “An Agro Sixth may not have much to be proud of. But he has a great deal of pride, just the same!”

“I thought so,” said Deva. “That makes the feeling _completely mutual_.”

Abruptly, she got up and moved to a more open spot away from the trees and bushes. She gestured to him to follow her. Irritated, he almost decided to walk back to the building, but his curiosity got the better of him.

“Closer,” she said as he approached. “This place is wired for sound in every bush and pebble. They’re watching us from observation posts on the walls and in the buildings--and they are taking continuous pictures. They’re interested in the progress of our courtship, you see.”

Rick straightened in sudden anger. The whole ordeal was becoming more disgusting by the minute.

“No, be careful!” Deva said. She put her hands up and drew his head closer to her. “Pretend you are whispering endearments in my ear,” she said. “Keep your face down so they can’t get your lips on the film. They won’t be able to read your words then.”

He did as she advised. She turned her face downward, too, and plucked idly at blades of grass as if they were exchanging only words of love and discussing the most blissful of futures.

“We’ve a chance to get away,” Deva said, “if you have the courage to risk it.”

“I’ve already made one try,” Rick told her. “It failed because I didn’t prepare far enough ahead.” He described his desperate, last-minute attempt to get the plane ready.

Deva looked up in surprise, and then quickly lowered her head again. “You’re a bigger boy than I thought,” she said. “Gerald wouldn’t take the chance either. He had that much in common with Barie.”

“Gerald?”

“The man I worked with and loved.”

Rick looked at her. “Where did you want to go?” he asked. “Tell me, Deva.”

“There are ten thousand square miles of open country outside the cities. They aren’t patroled very well, because the Machine doesn’t consider the area a vital factor. You’d be surprised how many have escaped and are living in perfect freedom between the cities. Gerald and I could have joined them if he had possessed the nerve--and had loved me enough.”

“Why did he back down?” Rick asked, knowing in advance what her answer would be.

“He said there was no future for us out there. We were civilized citizens of a great community, and had an obligation to do our part. If that obligation included bowing to the superior wisdom of the Machine our only alternative was to obey. Can you imagine a weak-kneed evasion like that from a man who _knows_ Mech theory and operation. But of course _you_ wouldn’t understand how that knowledge should have made him scorn the Machine. Gerald said he had his work to consider.”

“It hit pretty hard?” said Rick. “Yes--I can see that it did.”

“When he heard I’d been scheduled to pair with an Agro Sixth he acted as if he’d just had a very narrow escape--as if I’d suddenly become unclean. I’d loved him since I was a little girl. But I could have killed him then.”

“You’d take him back, though--if you had the chance?”

Deva nodded. “I’d be fool enough to take him back in a minute if he had the courage to go with me.”

“But he hasn’t,” Rick said, thinking of Barie. “And you haven’t answered my first question. Just what do we do?”

“_We_ can go out there,” Deva said fiercely. “We can help each other escape from the city. After that, we can split up and go our separate ways. I haven’t quite figured out what I’ll do with the rest of my life. But I’d rather be a wilderness outcast than remain chained here, forced to obey every life-denying whim of the Machine.”

“Married to an Agro Sixth, of course.”

Deva nodded. “Married to an Agro Sixth. Do you know what you’ll do? Have you given it serious thought?”

He shook his head, thinking suddenly of all the blank years ahead, without Barie, without home or land or friends. But what Deva said was true. Anything would be better than a life of blind obedience to the whims of the Machine.

“You don’t believe then that the Machine is the infallible god it’s supposed to be?” he asked curiously. “I thought all Mechs bowed to it three times upon arising, and before going to bed.”

Deva’s lips tightened in disgust. “It’s a man-made machine, and only a fool would let it dictate his life for him.”

“There are a good many fools, apparently.”

“Millions of them,” Deva agreed.

“Including Gerald?”

“Including both Gerald and Barie,” said Deva.

Rick started to protest, then grinned. “I think we’ll manage this getaway if it’s physically possible. Just what are your plans?”

“Because you’re an Agro it will be possible for me to get permission to take you out in the city--away from the bull pen. We’ll make several trips, and come back each time. But on the final trip, we’ll just keep going.”

“Is it that easy?”

“There’ll be a search, of course. A search is routine, but it’s never very intensive. After that, however, it’s a long way to the nearest Outlander post and decent food and shelter. You won’t think it’s easy when it’s over.”

“I’m ready to start now,” Rick said, pressing her hand.

She shook her head. “No. Our wisest course is to separate now. Tonight there will be a musical show put on for the benefit of all the gay lovers in the bull pen. You’ll take me to that.”

“Fine. We’ll go on our first tour tomorrow?”

“I’ll see about the arrangements. You’d better pretend to steal a kiss now--just to make it look real.”

Rick complied. After a moment Deva broke away, protesting, with fire in her eyes. “It doesn’t have to be _that_ real, farmer-boy! You’ll behave yourself--or find yourself left here alone.”

Rick grinned. “From what you have just told me, you’d have great difficulty in escaping without me. So I don’t intend to worry.”

* * * * *

Even in the sanctuary of his own apartment Rick forced himself to suppress his excitement over the prospects of immediate escape. From what Deva had said, he was certain that the watch circuits were observing him constantly--here as well as out in the park.

He smiled to himself at the memory of Deva’s name for it. The bull pen. Well, what could be more appropriate? He looked down at the strolling couples walking arm-in-arm, as if the whole revolting spectacle had been entirely their idea. In disgust he turned away again. How could men and women make love at the dictates of a machine? What had happened to the human race, anyway?

At least he had to admire and respect Deva. She had courage enough to rebel against the system, despite her certain knowledge that she would lose her place in the only kind of society she knew. And perhaps the price would be death.

Inevitably, his thoughts went back to Barie. He imagined her in a similar position, facing the same kind of challenge. What if the Machine actually should call her up. It could happen!

He went on to imagine her walking down through the gardens and along the flower-scented paths with some man she’d never even seen before, a love choice selected for her by a mindless machine.

The thoughts made him almost physically ill and sharply increased his bitterness.

That night at the entertainment Deva had reassuring news. She had been granted permission to take Rick on extensive tours of the city to acquaint him with the unfamiliar civilization he would soon be expected to embrace as his own. This orientation preliminary was acceptable as part of their courtship period, since he was an Agro.

“But we’ll have to wait another four or five days,” Deva said. “They want us to become better acquainted in the gardens where there are not too many other distractions. So just be patient,” she said as he frowned wryly. “It won’t embitter you for life to endure my company for a few extra days!”

She’s right, he thought with a grin as he tucked her arm in his. She was going to be real easy to get along with.

The show was not too bad, he guessed. He’d never seen anything quite like it, but it wouldn’t matter if he never repeated the experience, either. His mind refused to remain passive. It lunged about, from considerations of his vague and shadowy future to Lonestar and Barie, and then back to the strange little Mech girl sitting beside him. He wondered what would become of her when once they were safely away into the Outlander country. Had she some secret plan of her own?

During the succeeding days they spent most of their time together discussing with each other their past lives in the widely divergent worlds from which they had come. They spent long, idle hours in the gardens or at the music bar. They ate together and Deva read to Rick poems and stories that opened up a new world of beauty to him.

The time passed more quickly than he could have dreamed. Then on the fifth day Deva said, “Tomorrow we can take a trip through the city. I don’t suppose I’ll need a leash--”

He laughed and drew her to him and kissed her soundly as had become their custom at parting--solely to impress the watchers who recorded all their actions.

“I told you to behave!” Deva said, how angrily he could only guess.

“Tomorrow,” Rick promised.

VI

It was almost like being let out of jail. The administrator, Bernard Jackson, gave them a few brief instructions and showed them the way out of the building.

“Just a kind of once-over-lightly today,” Deva said. “We’ll just go along the streets and through some of the shops to give you an idea of what things are like here.”

“I’d be a lot more interested in seeing--”

“Hush! General sightseeing is _expected_ of us. Do you want to ruin everything?”

He found himself fascinated by the sights and sounds of the city in spite of his reluctant interest. The metropolis was built like a machine itself, with precision-placed masses of pleasant-hued steel and concrete flung against the sky and linked with a lacy network of connecting ways up to the highest levels. There was no darkness or filth or visible deterioration anywhere.

“There was a time when big, massed cities like this were considered failures,” Deva said. “It was all the fashion to abandon them, tear them down, and spread the buildings out all over the landscape. That was before we understood the true function of a city. Now we know it can be both a thing of supreme beauty and of maximum efficiency. It’s a device for civilized living. But today’s model compares with a city before the Atom War in about the same way that a starship compares with the first wooden cartwheels.”

“Are you trying to sell me something?” Rick asked.

Deva shook her head. “I’d like to sell it to myself.”

“Why can’t you?”

“Because of the Machine. It’s inexplicable. The Machine actually made possible the cities we have now. And yet because of the Machine I can’t bear to live here any longer. It just doesn’t make sense!”

“Everybody seems happy enough.” Rick said.

And it was true. The people he passed on the street seemed universally content and peaceful--to judge by their expressions. Within a block or two a hundred strangers had smiled and nodded to him. The city was certainly not a place of violent discontent.

“It’s me and you!” said Deva bitterly. “Even Barie is happy to conform to the will of the Machine. But you’re not. Gerald is glad to be free of me because he’s convinced that Utopia has come. And maybe it has! No one lacks food, shelter, luxuries, aggressive outlets. Nothing is lacking--except whatever is tormenting you and me.”

Rick smiled at her outburst. “In the Agro regions you have a chance to become very wise,” he said quietly. “There’s something lacking, all right--something most people don’t even know exists. The love of something that belongs to you alone. You take pride in moulding it to a state of perfection. Pride in yourself because you’re not _owned_.”

“Owned?”

“Of course. All men are property now. Don’t you see? They belong to the Machine and can be dispensed and manipulated as the Machine decides through its all-powerful wisdom. A man cannot have pride if he is owned--and by a mere automaton, at that! He can’t even experience love, because he hasn’t the right to offer himself. He’s no longer the proprietor of his own being.”

Deva walked slowly beside him, her face sober with thought. “I don’t know. That may be the answer. It _would_ be strange if it took an Agro to show us what was wrong!”

They walked all day--to the outskirts of the city and back. They stood silently at the edge of the great mass, where the towers dwindled to a thin layer of individual homes. Beyond these stretched the river and the highways leading north and south. Their eyes scanned the distances in silence, each sensing the thoughts of the other, and each saying nothing.

They went more deeply into the heart of the city on the following days. Deva showed Rick the factories and plants that worked in total silence and without attendants, each throwing up a mountain of goods that were automatically inspected, packed and shipped to locations within the city itself or across the continent without a single human voice to guide them.

On the last day she took him to the headquarters of the Machine. These were many tiers of banked memory circuits and blinking lights below the surface of the city itself, in the depths of the solid rock where nothing short of a convulsion of the Earth could disturb the intricate mechanism.

But there wasn’t a great deal to see. And the Machine’s more intangible aspects were totally foreign to Rick’s mind. They stood in the visitors’ gallery, behind the impregnable plastic sheets which afforded them a clear view of the mechanisms and the attendants on the other side.

“There is really no such thing as _the_ Machine,” Deva said. “In reality there are many hundreds of machines. Every city has one. Its storage vaults contain data on each and every resident. It computes upon that data, and its judgment circuits render decisions based upon its final computations.

“Each machine is interconnected with all others in the nation by tremendous microwave cables. A main clearing panel located somewhere in Kansas links the function of all local machines to a central, coordinating unit.

“In addition, there is a worldwide network of interconnections between New York, London, Paris, Rome, and Moscow. It even extends to Africa and the cities of Central Asia. Actually, for instance, a Mech, First Rating, could be checked out for pairing against a South African native if the Machine so decided. It’s never happened as far as I know. But it could happen.”

“It’s _the_ Machine, all right,” said Rick bitterly. “I never quite realized before how viciously it has succeeded in wrapping itself around the whole world. You can almost feel it strangling, crushing--”

“Hush!” Deva warned, her fingers tightening in his clasp.

They stood apart from the other visitors to the gallery. But Rick could almost feel invisible eyes and ears ominously recording their every change of expression. He understood Deva’s caution.

“There must be some kind of human administration involved in the operation of the Machine,” he said more quietly.

Deva nodded. “There is, of course. In the beginning they were the elected representatives of the people--the remnants of the old democratic system.” She tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “But now that human safeguard doesn’t even exist any more. The machine picks its own personnel. The original administrators spent most of their time watching and checking on each other to see that no tampering with the mandates occurred. The Machine decided it could do much better by picking men who would not be tempted to tamper.”

The Machine seemed so harmless, with its rows on rows of black panels and glowing tubes and murmuring relays! But it was the enemy. Its very existence had made it forever impossible for him to possess Barie as his own. From every man upon the face of the Earth it had taken something. A desire, a dream, a woman, a treasured possession.

They left the gallery quietly, for they had seen all that they cared to see. They went quickly out and up to the street level and took one of the cars that were freely available to the citizens. Rick glanced at his watch. “It’s almost time to get back to the bull pen,” he said.

Deva did not reply. Her lips were compressed, and she was staring straight ahead of her. Rick looked around at the magnificent towers and airy bridges of the city.

“No regrets?” he whispered.

“No,” Deva said. “No regrets.”

She started the motor of the car, punched the button for the lane and route she desired, and leaned back against the seat with her eyes closed. Swiftly the car moved out into the stream of traffic, and picked up speed.

VII

Rick could not shake off a chill sense of foreboding as the mass of the city was left behind. It did not seem possible they could so easily escape a monster whose tentacles encircled the earth. Might it not even now be watching them through unseen eyes in the walls of the great buildings? When they had gone far enough would it not jerk them back, willing to play a cat-and-mouse game with them until they no longer had energies enough left to continue the fight?