5
"I envy you," the Morale Investigator said.
The copter landing station was a huge circle cut into the earth to a depth of two levels, but open to the sky. The field was suitable only for copters, but, in accordance with the truce made a century before between East and West, these harmless planes were the only air vehicles in existence. After the holocaust of atomic war, there had been no resistance to the banning of dangerous aircraft. In weather so inclement that the copters were grounded, massive plastic panels closed over the entire station, sealing it tightly at surface level. But on this day, midmorning of Hendley's second day in the custody of the Morale Investigating Department, the sun shone brightly and was reflected with glaring brilliance from the smooth surface of the landing field.
The field's perimeter was completely enclosed. Hendley stood in a boarding area with the Investigator looking out at the field through thick plastic windows. The circle of the open roof line cupped a patch of blue sky. Once in the copter he would see nothing until he arrived at the Freeman Camp. The pilotless, instrument-guided planes had no windows.
"This is your ship now," the Investigator said.
One of the copters glided close to the boarding area where Hendley waited. It hovered a few feet above the ground, supported on columns of air. As an enclosed boarding ramp swung out to meet the ship, a panel in its side slid open to receive the ramp.
"You have your visitor's card?" the Investigator asked.
Hendley nodded, but he fished automatically in his pocket for perhaps the twentieth time to check the card. It bore an impression of his own identity disc. Its authorization was for twenty-four hours from time of arrival at Freeman Camp No. 17. Idly Hendley wondered how many camps there were, and how many Freemen enjoyed the pleasures of each.
"I may not see you again," the Investigator was saying. "Other assignments are waiting for me, but you can be sure I'll check on your progress reports. Enjoy your freedom, TRH-247. Experience it! For one day you will know pure pleasure!"
"Pleasure Is Pure," Hendley murmured, echoing one of the familiar Freeman slogans. "Freedom Is All."
"Open your heart to it," the Investigator urged him warmly. "I know you'll come back a dedicated man."
Before the big man's enthusiasm Hendley felt a confusion of emotions. The Investigator so obviously believed in what he was doing. It seemed to Hendley that he should at this moment voice some grateful phrase, give some evidence of excitement felt and eagerness shared. But the words were blocked by the ambivalence of his reaction, as if his instinct warned him that the freedom he was shortly to discover was itself some kind of trap, like an exotic plant whose beauty concealed a deadly poison.
"I guess it's time," he said. "They're signaling for passengers to board." And then, hesitantly, "It's all happened so quickly—"
"There's no need to say it." The Investigator smiled. His huge hand swallowed Hendley's shoulder and gave a reassuring squeeze. "Your rehabilitation will be all the satisfaction I need."
The phrases rolled easily from his lips. Too easily, Hendley thought uncomfortably, as if the words composed a slogan learned, memorized, converted into an act of faith by repetition. Even the reassuring hand was a practiced gesture. Category: Friendship. Purpose: To Instill Confidence. Method: Place Hand On Shoulder....
The door to the boarding ramp stood open. A metallic voice spoke over an intercom. "Last call for Flight Three-four-seven. Boarding now. Repeat. Last call for...."
"Good luck!" the Investigator said.
Then Hendley was stumbling down the ramp, turning once to wave awkwardly.
There was no sensation of motion beyond a vibration so faint that it could almost be put down to imagination. Yet the knowledge that the copter was in flight gave Hendley, sitting in the blind-walled passenger cabin, a strange feeling of being helplessly adrift. Deprived of the sight of land below, he had no way of knowing whether the ship rose or fell, moved forward or backward, and no point of reference by which to judge its speed. He might have been in a runaway rocket, plunging out of control through space, like those legendary vehicles of an earlier world a century dead.
After a while he recognized the sensation of being watched. Eyes probed like feelers at the back of his neck. When he glanced around, the nearest passenger, a man seated across the center aisle and one row behind, quickly averted his gaze. Only then did Hendley realize that he was sitting apart from the other passengers, who were tightly grouped to the front and rear, as if they had consciously avoided the seats close to him. A woman several rows ahead masked her interest guiltily, pretending to stare over Hendley's head—fascinated by the empty baggage rack.
Puzzled, Hendley frowned. He felt self-conscious enough in this strange uniform....
Understanding came. Of course! The other passengers wore blue, yellow, in two instances beige. His was the only white coverall. The curiosity, the averted and envious eyes, the careful avoidance of adjoining seats were suddenly explained. Freemen were never seen in the city—as far as Hendley knew they never left the Freeman Camps. The fact had never before struck him as unusual. Chances were that none of his fellow passengers had ever seen a white uniform before except on a viewscreen. And it was extremely doubtful that any of them would recognize the meaning of the red sleeve emblem—the only mark, Hendley had been told, distinguishing his coverall from that of a permanent Freeman.
He settled back in his seat, half-amused, aware of a peculiar sense of pleasure, of—what was it?—superiority. If only they knew he was to be free for only twenty-four hours! But they would undoubtedly envy him still. How many had the chance to know what freedom was really like?...
He gave himself up to the feeling of being adrift, carried helplessly along. For the first time since his rebellion began he had time to think. On that first day too much had happened too fast. Even at the Morale Center he'd had no time for the luxury of collecting his thoughts. It had been close to morning when the Investigator's astonishing pronouncement ended his questioning. Hendley had had no rest for twenty-four hours. Exhausted, he had slept through most of the day. Shortly after waking he learned that the morale computer had approved his visit to the Freeman Camp. When he expressed a desire to return to his room to prepare for the trip, the Investigator demurred politely. "That won't be necessary," he said.
"But I'll need a fresh uniform, at least—"
"Not at all. Whatever you need will be supplied. And in any event, you'll wear white...."
The Investigator had explained. No one was allowed to visit a Freeman Camp in other than the prescribed white coverall. Any other color would attract too much attention, even hostility. The precious right of freedom was an exclusive privilege. Moreover, to move freely—the Investigator chose the word with obvious care—to know what it was like to live as a Freeman, it was essential that Hendley should pass unnoticed. The red sleeve emblem would identify him to official personnel as a visitor, but to most Freemen it would have no significance. Hendley would go into the camp empty-handed as any permanent Freeman would. Even his watch would be left behind. There were no clocks in the land of the free.
"Those of us who work are shackled to the clock," the Investigator said. "The day, the hour, the minute measure our distance from freedom. To be free is to be liberated from the need to recognize time...."
So Hendley had been unable to leave the Morale Center. The manner of refusal was so gentle, so persuasive, so reasonable that not until he was alone that night did he think of his custody in the Center as a form of imprisonment. Even then, with his morning departure imminent, he was unable to relax or to analyze what was happening to him and what it meant.
Now, sitting by himself in the cabin of the copter, he tried to sort out his reflections. They refused to be channeled. Bits and pieces of the previous two days skittered into and out of his consciousness. From the disordered montage one face kept emerging: Ann's. He tried to capture it, to hold it before his mind's eye. It danced from light to shadow, changed, slipped elusively away from him. What was wrong? The brief hours with her under the open sky had made him feel more vividly alive than all the experience of his lifetime. Her disappearance could not change that. Her inexplicable behavior couldn't change it. He would find her again—hehadto find her. But now he was unable even to recapture her image. It faded as he reached for it. The spirit of their adventure—its warm intimacy, its sense of escape, its essentialnewness—was already dimming. Why? Hendley couldn't accept the Investigator's view of her.Hehadn't held Ann in his arms.Hehadn't felt her tremble.Hehadn't seen the mingled joy and pain in her eyes.
Pain, Hendley thought. Why pain?
"Mind if I sit here?"
The strange voice dissolved Hendley's confused reverie. He glanced at a beige uniform clothing a stout figure. His gaze rose to include a fleshy smile and small, bright, eager eyes.
"No, of course not," he said.
"I didn't know—never met a Freeman before. Not in uniform, I mean." The seat next to Hendley groaned and shifted to accommodate the balloon of flesh. "Mind you, I've known some who've become free. I'm a 1-Dayman myself, as you can see," he went on. "I'm not so far from freedom. Plenty of those in my line—I'm in Distribution, recreation equipment is my specialty—have paid off the tax debt and gone over."
Hendley merely nodded, awash in the high tide of words.
"You're young," the fat man said accusingly. "That's what gets me. You must have had it easy from the start."
"I wouldn't say that."
"You can't kid me. Nobody gets over the hump that quick unless he's got a head start on the rest of us. Family, I'll bet. That's usually the answer."
Hendley was tempted to reveal his real status, in spite of the Investigator's instructions about concealing his visiting privilege. But the fat man's belligerence checked the urge to explain and defend himself. Let the man think what he wanted.
"Now I'm one who'd really appreciate freedom," the fat man declared. "I've had toworkmy way up. Started as a 4-Dayman. Yeah, it's true. That surprises you, don't it? You wanta know how I've done it?Work, that's how! No time off, no vacations, no extracurricular recreation. Sure I distribute game equipment, but I don't get to use much of it, except in prescribed recreation hours. Look at me! You think I eat a lot, I bet. Everyone thinks so. Well, half rations is all I eat—to save the credits! It's glands, that's why I'm heavy like this. You think it's been easy?" he demanded angrily. "Well, it ain't! It's been all work for me—I didn't have it handed to me on a tray!"
The swiftly generated violence of the attack left Hendley speechless with surprise. Then the irony of the situation struck him so forcibly that he started to laugh.
"What's so funny?" The fat man's face turned faintly purple with rage. Above the bulging cheeks veins crawled across his temples like swollen worms. "Sure, you can laugh! You never had to work for yours!"
"You don't understand!" Hendley protested. "I'm not laughing at you. It's just...." He shook his head helplessly.
"I'll bet they're all like that!" another voice cut in. It belonged to the woman near the front of the cabin. She had risen to confront Hendley, her long face pinched tight with hostility. "Making fun of the rest of us!"
A third passenger intruded. "Fair's fair," he said. He was a 3-Dayman, like Hendley himself, attired in the familiar blue coverall. "It isn't his fault he's young. Somebody had to work to pay off his tax debt. That's the system, and it works the same for all of us."
"Hedidn't do the work!" the fat man retorted. "Look at him! Gloating over us. I'm sixty-two years old—I've worked all my life. Never let myself have anything I didn't need. And it'll be two, maybe three years before I make it. How much time will I have left?" His red face thrust close to Hendley's. "But why should you care? You've forgotten what it is to work!"
"They have all those women!" the pinched-faced woman up front cried shrilly. "I've seen them on the viewer. That's all they ever think about!"
Hendley's laughter had long since evaporated. He could only gape in amazement at the swollen anger of the fat man, the shrill resentment of the woman. He wondered how widespread was this envy of the free. Had he been so absorbed in his own unrest that he hadn't looked around him? And what soothing platitudes would the computers in the Morale Center recommend to patch this crack in the Organization's perfect structure?
Had he felt this same resentment himself? The question pulled Hendley erect in his seat. Was his rebellion rooted in a common envy? The possibility made him uneasy with himself. It offered an explanation for the way in which the idyllic moments with ABC-331, which had seemed so intensely important, should so quickly have receded in his memory. He had been offered a chance to glimpse the true freedom, the goal of all. Did everything fade into unimportance before that dream? Had his protest, disguised as the yearning for individuality, been no more than a subtler face of envy?
"Don't have much to say for yourself, do you?" the fat distributor in the beige uniform muttered.
Hendley turned to meet the bitter little eyes with a level gaze. In sudden anger he forgot the Investigator's insistence on silence. "I started as a 2-Dayman myself," he said flatly. "I'm not even a—"
The copter dipped abruptly. Hendley broke off. A faint pull in his stomach told him the ship was descending. That brief tug released a tingle of excitement through his body.
A stewardess appeared from the lounge, wearing a tight-fitting green uniform and a vacuous smile. She advanced straight to Hendley's seat. "You will go forward now, sir," she said, her tone a little too eager, too flatteringly awed. "The private debarking platform is through that door."
Hendley rose. Glancing down once more at the fat passenger who had been so angered by the white uniform, he thought: It's just as well you don't know the truth. Envy grew vigorously enough without nourishment, as a weed forced its way through the smallest crack in solid pavement.
He turned abruptly and made his way along the aisle to the narrow door at the front of the cabin.
Just before the outer panel swung open Hendley donned the sunglasses he had been issued. Even this protection did not keep his eyes from aching as the full glare of sunlight struck them. He stepped from the copter onto a concrete apron. The exit panel instantly closed behind him, and a moment later the copter rose swiftly and quietly, blasting Hendley with a column of hot air.
He shut his eyes against the sun's glare and felt its weight for a long moment after the copter's funnel of air had spun away. When he opened his eyes again, squinting, he surveyed a desolate, empty world. A broad expanse of concrete—cracked, broken, uneven, erratically patched—stretched to the fringe of a brown desert, which rose in smooth shallow steps to a ring of brown mountains hazy in the distance. In all that wilderness there was neither sight nor sound of life—nothing but the deteriorating white concrete of the landing strip, the brown earth, the aching sunlight.
Panic closed on him. He whirled. The sight of the familiar massive wall of a Freeman Camp brought sharp relief. The landing was outside the wall, of course, to prevent any unauthorized glimpse of what lay beyond that barrier. But one thing about the wall was puzzling. Like the concrete landing field, it was visibly crumbling and neglected.
The broad sweep of the wall was broken by a single gate. A lone attendant in a beige uniform sat in a small glass-walled cubicle beside the narrow gate. He glanced up without interest as Hendley approached.
"I'm a visitor," Hendley said. "This is my card."
The attendant gave the card a cursory inspection, consulted a list and nodded perfunctorily. As he made a notation on the list, Hendley was moved to break the heavy silence.
"Your landing strip isn't in very good shape, is it?" he commented lightly.
"People don't complain," the attendant said laconically. "It's what's inside that counts." Without looking up he gestured toward the windowed slot indicating the presence of a computer set into the wall next to the gate. "Check in," he said. "Then report to Administration."
Hendley lifted his wrist to present his identity disc to the machine. It responded with a low hum, followed by a click. The gate swung open. Hendley walked through.
Before him was an expanse of green lawn, extending in a smooth, unbroken carpet a hundred feet wide to a grove of trees, shadowy and inviting in the sunlight.
The gate clicked shut behind him.