9
As he had done each evening—he had missed only one night, awakening after dark on the day NIK-700 left the Freeman Camp in his place—Hendley sat at a table in the central park, a half-empty glass before him, and watched the sunset. There were clouds above the horizon, and against this billowing canvas the sun painted a dazzling richness of colors—fiery red, gold, lavender, vivid streamers of yellow. Hendley shifted restlessly in his chair. So quiet! he thought impatiently. There had been nothing of interest going on through most of the day.
Unmoved by the spectacle on the horizon, he let his gaze wander across the tops of the distant line of trees, indifferently over a green expanse of lawn, to come to rest at a swimming pool near the foot of the slope. A girl was standing by the pool, wearing only the thin white strips affected for bathing. Hendley's eyes lingered on the ripe curves of her body. He wondered if she could be the same girl he had met on his first day in the camp almost a week before, the one who had led him off among the bushes. That chapter had been unfinished. Her Contracted had interrupted them. Hendley thought that he really ought to look her up some day....
His good hand reached absently for the inevitable glass with the inevitable whiskey. His left hand rested on the table, still held in its rigid plastic braces, still wrapped with a cumbersome white bandage. There was little pain now, unless he grew careless and brushed the hand too hard against a table edge or door frame. And the doctor had assured him that the bones were set properly, that they were slowly knitting together and would eventually be almost normal. No deformity would result.
Hendley could think of the event now without having the bile of anger rise to his throat, and without beginning to tremble. That first night, pushing aside the lingering shreds of the drug's effects as he struggled to consciousness, he had begun to rave wildly. He'd banged his hand in his furious thrashings, and had almost fainted with the pain. The doctor—he'd worked in the medical center of City No. 7 before coming to the Freeman Camp, Hendley learned later, and enjoyed keeping up his medical activities just for amusement—had given him an opiate to put him to sleep. The next afternoon Hendley had been more rational. He had been allowed to sit outside in the park and watch the sun go down, his awe in the vision tempered by the raw bitterness that remained in his mind and heart.
Ann had gone. Hendley had been unable to learn anything about her, but the doctor had assured him that she would have departed with the troupe of showgirls on the morning after the show. At noon on that same day, Nik, wearing Hendley's identity disc adapted to his wrist with a concealed expansion mechanism, had left on the copter for the city, clothed in the uniform with the visitor's sleeve emblem.
"There's no point in exciting yourself now," the doctor had told Hendley cheerfully. "It's done, and you might as well accept it."
"He'll be back!" Hendley had retorted. "He's insane to think he can get away with impersonating me. Why ever did he do it? I still can't understand!"
"There's some don't take to freedom," the doctor said. "But he knew what he was doing. Insane he might be, but he's very levelheaded about it." The chunky man chuckled at the paradox. "He planned this all out for a long time."
The doctor, whose name was JMS-908, but whom Hendley always thought of simply as the doctor, was an amiable, very hirsute man a head shorter than Hendley, with thick hairy arms and stubby hands covered with mats of black hair across the backs, even along the fingers. They were hands whose sure delicacy of touch always seemed incongruous. After the first day Hendley was unable to hold any enmity toward him. The affair had not been of the doctor's doing.
"I like to keep in practice," the doctor said more than once. "If you don't, you lose your touch. Man's not a machine that can be started up any time you feel like it by just pushing a button...."
The operation on Hendley's wrist, for which Nik had paid him handsomely in white chips, had been a welcome diversion for the little man. The postoperative services he offered Hendley were free. "I just like to see my patients come along," he said. "Don't have many of them any more."
He was a compulsive gambler. On the day Hendley lay drugged, the doctor lost all the white chips Nik had paid him.
When he began to feel better, Hendley expressed curiosity about the expansion device on Nik's identity disc, which now circled Hendley's left wrist above the bandage. "Simple enough," the doctor explained. "See? A little tug and lift at the same time and it opens up. If you merely tugged, or just lifted, it wouldn't work. Very neat."
Hendley was impressed. The tampering with the disc was completely invisible except on very close inspection. "He'll be caught anyway," he said with certainty. "They'll know at the Architectural Center that he's not me. And at the rec halls. Somebody's bound to notice!"
"That may be," the doctor said agreeably. "Still, people are out of the habit of questioning things any more. And when I try to remember my patients, when I think back on them, it's strange, but I don't remember their faces. I remember only some of their numbers...."
For the next few days Hendley kept waiting for NIK-700 to be returned to the camp. The Organization would conclude that he needed morale therapy, of course, for wanting to escape from freedom. Hendley would undoubtedly be penalized for being a party to the switch, no matter what story he told. Strangely enough, the prospect of losing his borrowed freedom did not disturb Hendley. He had only one good explanation for this: Ann was outside.
No word came. Incredulity turned into uncertainty, then apprehension. Surely someone would have reported Nik as an impostor by now. RED-498 would have made inquiries about her Assigned. (But she wouldn't really care, Hendley realized uncomfortably. If Nik had been shrewd enough to act quickly to break the contract, RED-498 would have been temporarily disturbed, but only until the Marital Computer assigned another partner to her. Nik might have brought it off without ever seeing her.) At last the suspicion that no one would be concerned about the change, as long as Nik was obedient to the Organization's scheduled routine of work and play, grew into conviction.
Hendley was free.
Now, nearing the end of a week in the role of a Freeman, he watched the last color on the western horizon fade into a thin red streak. His eyes no longer really saw the marvel. A bird winging overhead, swooping in a wide bank toward the trees near the camp's perimeter, did not make him turn his head. Ennui weighed on him. He was able to get about the camp at will, he could engage in any play that struck his fancy, as long as it didn't require two good hands. There was fine food and drink available whenever he desired them. He had sampled only a small fraction of the camp's varied entertainments. There had been a series of parties each night, there would be others already starting for the new period of darkness ahead. And—he was restless, uneasy with his leisure. The day had seemed interminably long. The night would be even longer—until it ended, as each night did, when, alone in his inherited room, he woke shivering, bathed in sweat, hearing the echo of Ann's anguished screams.
Hendley's hand shook as he pushed a refill button for his drink. The whiskey was necessary. It dulled physical and mental pain. It helped to pass the unnumbered hours.
There was a rustling in a clump of bushes nearby. Peering, Hendley was able to make out two figures lying on the ground. He guessed the couple had been there for a while. He simply hadn't paid them any attention. The shadows being not yet deep enough for him to take the precaution of moving to more open, safer areas, he remained where he was. Idly he watched the spirited wrestling going on behind the partial concealment of leafy foliage. It broke up in laughter. There was low, hurried conversation, too low to be understood at the distance. The couple scrambled up from the ground. Hendley started to look away.
A gleam of white caught his eye. He flicked a glance back toward the spot where the couple had been lying. Yes! Something was there. A rapid hammering filled his chest. But the man would remember, he would come back, or the girl would turn for a last fond glimpse of the place where their lovemaking had begun and she would see the flat white circles pale against the grass.
Hendley restrained the urge to jump up and hurry behind the bushes. The movement might draw the couple's attention. They were still in sight, half-embracing as they walked away. In a short while they would drop behind the rise. That would be time enough to act. Not before.
Hendley's heartbeat skipped. At the top of the shallow rise of land the man and woman had paused. They looked back toward Hendley and the clump of bushes not far from his table. The man was pointing as he spoke. He'd remembered. Hendley groaned aloud.
Seconds later the couple turned away and began to sink beyond the line of the rise. Elation swept over Hendley. His bandaged, rigid left hand thumped nervously against his thigh. His gaze remained fixed on the receding figures until there were only two heads bobbing against the sky above the rise. Then even these were gone, dropping out of sight like two golf balls vanishing into their cups.
Stumbling in his haste, Hendley did not even circle around the bushes. He plunged directly through the tangle of branches to the clearing behind them. He dropped to his knees. His fingers scurried eagerly over the grass, scooping up the small quantity of white casino chips which had fallen from the departed Freeman's pockets.
The casino's stimulating effect was really quite remarkable, Hendley reflected during a brief pause as the robot-dealer cleared the table of losing bets and pushed the winners' chips toward them. It was as if Hendley's whole system had been toned up. Blood which had flowed sluggishly now tingled in his veins. His mind was alert, ranging ahead to dissect possible plays on the table like a quick, keen instrument. The steady whir of wheels, the clink of chips, the murmur of low-pitched talk through the casino as bets were called and players reacted audibly to the click of a ball into place, the buzz signaling winning patterns on the outer row of betting machines—all blended into a controlled current of suppressed excitement that was highly contagious.
Hendley kept his chips arranged in neat, equal stacks. His luck had been good. The original handful of chips had grown to a tall stack, then two, three. The fingers of his right hand tapped anxiously on the edge of the table. As if in answer, the hard fist of the frozen-faced robot struck the warning board. All bets down. Quickly Hendley slid a small pile of chips onto the black square bearing the number five. On a hunch he hedged the bet with smaller groups of chips on the four and six squares. The robot-dealer pressed a button. A bar of light whirled through its circular spin, holding the eyes of the players hypnotically, giving the illusion, like light on water, of bobbing up and down. It slowed, hopped, stuck. Black five! Hendley had made his side bets, and the five paid two to one. His stack of chips had grown to four!
Grinning, Hendley raked in his winnings. "I can't lose!" he exclaimed to no one in particular, unmindful of the malevolent glare he received from the player at his side who had been losing heavily. Hendley's thoughts darted around the board, measuring possibilities, calculating risks. His eyes gleamed. Though the room was comfortably cooled, he was perspiring faintly....
An hour later Hendley suffered his first major setback. By then he counted nine full stacks of chips before him, and even a reckless bet resulting in the loss of one full stack did not disturb him. Luck rode on his shoulder. She might look the other way for a moment, but she wouldn't leave him. Boldly he pushed out another full stack, bent on recouping his loss. There was a confident smile on his face as the light-wheel went into its hypnotic dance. "Nine," he whispered eagerly. "Big red nine!" The bar of light revolved slowly, skittered over a section of numbers, hesitated exactly over a red nine—and jumped three more spaces. Even Hendley's cover bets had been passed over.
Chagrined, he checked his winnings. Still seven stacks. He could pull out now while he was way ahead. But he'd been close to having ten stacks, and it wouldn't take much to regain that position. He would have to be a little more conservative, however. He couldn't afford to risk full stacks every time. Just a few more spins to see if luck really was deserting him. He couldn't believe that it was. Besides, he didn't want to quit now....
The run was on. With a swiftness that left him no time to pause, no time to reflect, that generated a kind of unrealizing madness in which he fed chips automatically to the hungry wheel as if he had no choice, Hendley lost everything. Stunned, he watched the impersonal fingers of the plastic rake extending from the indifferent arm of the robot-dealer scoop his last few chips across the green table.
In desperation Hendley turned to the player on his right, grasping his arm. "Let me borrow a few chips!" he urged. "I'm due now! Overdue! I'll pay them back—I'll pay you double!"
Stonily the Freeman shrugged off Hendley's grasp and pushed in front of him. "Go to the desert," he said curtly. "I've heard that tale before."
"Just a couple of chips," Hendley begged.
The player did not bother to answer. Hendley felt anger boil through him. His jaw muscles knotted tightly. His lips pulled back over clenched teeth. Only his deep conditioning against violence kept him from spinning the surly player around and smashing his fist against the contemptuous mouth. A thin, weak current of warning trickled through the haze of anger. There were too many people watching. The Freeman had done nothing to him. He was angry because he had lost. To create a scene might get him into trouble, perhaps jeopardize his chance to play in the casino when he did obtain more chips.
Hendley stalked away from the table, pushing quickly and rudely across the crowded floor of the casino. He didn't want to watch the action. He had to be able to play, to feel the keen whisper of excitement as the light-wheel danced, to ride with it, his whole being attached to the streaking bar of light, coaxing it, urging it, soothed and excited by it as if he were its lover. Unless he could be part of that, he could not bear to see the fever of hope and fear in other faces.
Outside the main Rec Hall the air was cool, actually chilly against his sweat-dampened body and his flushed face. He shivered. Oddly, even after the first involuntary spasm had passed, he continued to feel a faint quivering in his arms and thighs. With it came a tug of discomfiture, the first pull of a nagging guilt. Defensively he brushed it aside. The casino was only one of the Freeman Camp's many pleasures. As long as he was here, he might as well enjoy them all. That's what freedom was.
He stopped abruptly. Less than ten steps away, broad-leafed foliage at the edge of the grounds surrounding the Rec Hall stirred in the night breeze. The area was dark, ominously dark. Hendley turned away and strode quickly toward the bright ring of light thrown by the floodlights in the garden. Six days of freedom had taught him better than to stray alone into shadowed places. At night the pleasure-packs roamed freely in the parks and side streets, sometimes even striking boldly and quickly in well-lighted, crowded streets. The motive often seemed to include robbery, but the packs appeared to take an equal pleasure in beating their victims, even those who carried nothing valuable. If he hadn't been disturbed, preoccupied, Hendley would never have wandered into the remote, empty corner of the thickly planted grounds. The realization that he'd done so left him uneasy, his imagination conjuring up visions of sudden brutality. He tried to shake them off.
Ahead of him a drunken Freeman was having trouble boarding the slow-moving walk that ran downhill. Twice he fell off. On the third try he managed to stay on the strip. Hendley rode down behind him, idly watching his precarious leanings. The drunk was singing to himself in a quavering but enthusiastic voice. Hendley thought: With the announcement you're making of your condition, old man, you'd do well to mingle with crowds. Don't wander off by yourself.
He did not pursue the thought further. Yet, at the bottom of the hill, when the drunken Freeman headed across the central park for the noisy entertainment section, Hendley followed suit. Near the edge of the park the drunk stumbled off the walk. Hendley prepared to disembark behind him. Without conscious purpose he slowed his own natural pace as he followed the man into the crowded main street, lagging well behind. At one point the drunk swiveled his head. Hendley jerked his gaze away, pretending to peer at the sky. The night was particularly dark. There was no moon, and clouds hid the stars. What are you doing? he asked himself. Stalking him?
He felt a cold pressure at the base of his skull. When he glanced again at the drunken Freeman it was with harder eyes and a sharpened interest. The man was moving on again, ignoring Hendley. Good.
The drunk paused before an entertainment arcade, apparently debating with himself. After a moment he walked on, weaving unsteadily. He hesitated only briefly before a restaurant. At the third stop, a newsview theater, he went inside. The theater was less than half-filled. Hendley was able to take a seat a few rows behind the Freeman's now-familiar nodding head with its thinning strands of gray hair.
A large, circular viewscreen formed most of the wall surface of the theater, surrounding the viewer. Hendley paid little heed to the turbulent crowd scenes on the screen. The news was all about the Organization outside, which explained the nearly empty theater. Few in the camp followed the events of the working world with any interest, Hendley had already caught the prevailing attitude. The camp seemed completely isolated. Even the word "Merger!" repeated several times in a newscaster's rich drone did not distract Hendley's attention from the man he had followed. Finally, just when Hendley had begun to fear that the drunk had fallen asleep, his stoop-shouldered figure rose in silhouette against the viewscreen. He was leaving!
The Freeman stopped at a nearby bar for a superfluous drink. Hendley walked on by without even a sidelong glance. He had to be careful now, do nothing to arouse suspicion. Outside a peekie-house he mixed with a small crowd, as if considering the blatant suggestions on the announcement board: YOUR INNERMOST THOUGHTS REVEALED! one said, and another leered: FREE YOUR HIDDEN DESIRES! And what are your hidden desires? Hendley asked himself. Care to look at them? Angrily he brushed the questions aside. The constraints of the outside world had no place here. Pleasure was all!
The drunk left the bar. Coldly determined now, Hendley waited until the man was a hundred feet ahead of him, half-screened by late night traffic, before he set off in pursuit. Sooner or later his prey would become careless, wander into the park or off into a quiet side street. The only worry was that he might have a room in one of the buildings immediately bordering the main street. Then there would be no chance to catch him alone.
The drunken Freeman took another brief ride on a moving walk. When he alighted he stumbled to his knees. He was an older man with thinning hair, but he was stocky and well muscled, Hendley noticed, even though drink had slowed his reflexes. He scrambled up readily. Hendley let the distance between them narrow, in spite of the fact that the crowd was thinning out away from the main entertainment complex. He didn't want to lose the man now, and he was convinced that the Freeman was too drunk to notice him. Dusting himself off, the stocky man looked around in a bemused way as if he were lost. Then, purposefully, he headed for a side street leading into the residential section.
Hendley ran to the intersection. The drunk was trudging slowly up the inclined road between rows of two-storied dwelling units. The street was partially lighted, patches of darkness deepening between the occasional light panels. There were no other pedestrians. Hendley kept close to the wall of the apartment building on his left, taking advantage of every concealing shadow. Quickly he began to close the gap between him and his victim. He was no longer disturbed by thinking of the man ahead as a victim. He thought only of the need for silence, speed, caution. There were only fifty feet separating the two men now. The drunk had not turned. He was muttering to himself, his voice clearly audible in the quiet street. Hendley's foot scraped the pavement and he flattened himself into a doorway opening. The drunk did not look back. Hendley eased away from the doorway, berating his clumsiness. He could take no more chances. He would have to cover the last steps in a rush....
The drunk staggered close to the wall of the building across the way and suddenly vanished as if a trapdoor had opened. For an instant Hendley stared in bewilderment, his heart pounding. Then he saw the black gash of an opening between buildings, the entrance to a narrow walk. He raced forward. No time for caution now. The dark passageway was the perfect spot to attack. Chances were he wouldn't get another. The drunk must be close to his room....
Blundering recklessly around the corner into the tunnel-like blackness of the passage, which was no more than an armspread wide, Hendley was saved only by a last-second instinctive hesitation. A blow grazed his cheek, striking his shoulder with glancing impact. The force was enough to slam him into a cement wall.
The Freeman he had followed faced him squarely, grinning with drunken malice. "Caught you!" he said gleefully. "Thought I didn't know you was after me, huh?"
He struck again before Hendley could recover. Hendley's chest seemed to explode. Reeling, he thought fleetingly that no fist could hit with such weight or force. The drunk must have found a rock or club. If he landed another blow, the fight would be over. Hendley crouched and dodged, sick with the knowledge of his foolish blunder.
"Think you're so smart!" the drunken voice rasped in the darkness. "I carry this just for smart ones like you!"
But the man's drunken aim was erratic. Something heavy and metallic clanged against the cement wall of the passage. The solid, heavy sound quickened fear in Hendley for the first time. The blow had been close enough to fan the air against his neck. In desperation he came out of his crouch in a sudden, furious rush. One of his fists landed with a meaty thump. The drunk's breath wheezed. He swung wildly, missing Hendley's head by a foot. For a moment he was off-balance, staggering as his momentum carried him forward. Hendley saw the squat, black shadow stumbling past him. He lashed out at the exposed head and neck. The drunk went down with a soft gasp. He did not move.
Legs trembling, Hendley stood over the fallen man, drawing breath in great gulps. His chest ached and his shoulder felt strangely numb. His first impulse was to run. Instead he dropped to his knees. When the Freeman had hit the ground, there had been a faint, familiar clink. Hendley slapped at the man's pockets squeamishly, choking back a threatening sickness. He had to roll the inert figure over onto his back to reach the breast pocket. The same clinking sound answered his tentative probing. Feverishly now his fingers dug into the pocket and closed around a small nest of chips. He drew them out. Their white gleam was visible in the darkness of the passageway.
A hasty search of the drunken man's remaining pockets turned up no other casino chips. Hendley stumbled to his feet. The man was alive, he assured himself defensively. He hadn't been seriously hurt. He'd collapsed as much from drunkenness as from Hendley's blows. And the white chips were fair payment for Hendley's own bruised chest and shoulder. A small length of heavy metal pipe lay on the pavement near the fallen man's hand, mute evidence of how close Hendley had come to having his skull crushed.
He peered nervously along the side street from which he'd entered the passageway. The street was empty. No curious spectators had been attracted by the fight. But now, conscious of the white chips he carried, Hendley felt apprehensive. No telling what he might run into on a dimly lighted side road. The bright channel of the main street was a full hundred yards away. He started toward it. Before he'd taken a half-dozen steps he was running, panic riding his heels.
Not until he was safely in the brightness of the main thoroughfare did Hendley slow his headlong pace. Even then he quickly boarded the moving walk that would carry him to the more crowded pleasure center. It took a long while for the labored heaving of his chest and the furious hammering of his heart to subside. By the time he had calmed enough to think rationally about what he had done, he was in sight of the main Rec Hall on the hill. Its rounding yellow shoulders pushing against the night sky were like a woman's invitation, promising warmth, closeness, pleasure. He stared up at it, hearing in his mind the seductive whisper of the casino's action. The weight of the small cluster of chips lay heavy against his thigh. For this he had done violence. For this, like some pre-Organization animal, he had stalked another man in the darkness....
Revulsion seized him like a giant fist. Half-falling, he stumbled off the moving walk. The grip of anguished self-contempt tightened painfully, crushing every defensive protest, destroying the barriers he'd erected so easily to contain an image of himself he could not face—the picture of a greedy pleasure-seeker scrabbling on the ground, pawing through the pockets of a helpless drunk. His eyes squeezed shut, as if their closing curtains could form a merciful new shield against the harsh vision of what his freedom had come to mean. He opened them to stare bitterly at the great wheel of sky which had meant so much to him in the beginning.
A last, dry-eyed, cold, and empty, he turned back along the route he'd taken in fear and panic. There was a different urgency in him now, prompted by the feeling that he had somehow forged an unbreakable link between his life and the fate of the drunken Freeman. As if he were—responsible. The concept was quite new to him, foreign to anything he had known in the automated world of the Organization, but he could not deny it.
Weary, aching, disturbed by the strangeness of his emotions, Hendley searched for the quiet street where he had followed the Freeman. He rode past it once, retraced his steps, and at length found an inclined road which seemed familiar. The narrow, dark passage appeared where he remembered it. Cautiously he stepped through the opening.
The way was empty.
Frantically Hendley searched the area. Had he found the wrong street—the wrong passage? The dwelling units were so completely identical that it would be easy to mistake them, but he was sure that he'd identified the street correctly. There must be some mark of his presence in the passageway, some trace of the fight. His right hand probed the wall. There—could that gash have been made by the Freeman's metal weapon? The man had fallen here—yes!
Relief washed away Hendley's consternation. A single white chip had fallen into a drift of dust at the edge of the wall. Such a find, even though it lay half-buried, would not have remained through a half hour of daylight. The fresh imprint of a hand had been made in the dust. And at Hendley's eye level as he knelt, a raw gouge was visible in one wall, recently made by a sharp, heavy blow. This was the right place. It was doubtful that anyone finding the drunken Freeman there would have bothered to carry him away. The length of metal pipe was gone. The drunken man must have recovered enough to leave under his own power.
Hendley emerged from the darkness of the passageway. The street was still quiet and empty. A thinning trickle of traffic rode the moving walk at the bottom of the long incline. Beyond, bright concentrations of light identified the pleasure centers. And in the farther distance, a deeper black against the sky, the camp's fringe of trees was visible. How moved he had been by his first glimpse of those trees as he came through the gate in the wall!
Now he wanted only one thing: to be outside that wall.
Slowly he dug the cluster of chips from his pocket. He stared at them wonderingly. In a sudden spasm of disgust he drew back his arm and hurled the white chips far down the street, where they bounced and skittered and rolled, making a thin clatter in the silence. As Hendley started down the inclined street, one of the chips, still rolling on its edge, crossed his path, wheeled, lost momentum and tipped over. Deliberately he ground it under his heel.