“I hope so.”
“You will. I’m sure of it.”
He smiled and said, “Were you sure about those two who tried and didn’t make it?”
“No,” she said. Then, “Yes, I was sure of one, but not of the other.”
“What’s step two?” he asked.
“First get through step one.”
“Are there more than two?”
“No. Two, if it works, gets you a major reduction. That’s when you really come alive. And speaking of steps, there are three right ahead of us, going up.”
They went up the three steps and walked on. They were back in the plaza. It was perfectly silent, with even the breeze gone.
“The fucking’s the best part,” Snowflake said. “It gets much better, much more intense and exciting, and you’ll be able to do it almost every night.”
“It’s incredible.”
“And please remember,” she said, “that I’m the one who found you. If I catch you even looking at Sparrow I’ll kill you.”
Chip started, and told himself not to be foolish.
“Excuse me,” she said; “I’ll act aggressively toward you. Maxi-aggressively.”
“It’s all right,” he said. “I’m not shocked.”
“Not much.”
“What about Lilac?” he said. “May I look at her?”
“All you want; she loves King.”
“Oh?”
“With a pre-U passion. He’s the one who started the group; first her, then Leopard and Hush, then me, then Sparrow.”
Their footsteps became louder and resonant. She stopped him. “We’re here,” she said. He felt her fingers picking at the side of the bandage; he lowered his head. She began unwinding, peeling bandage from margins of skin that turned instantly cool. She unwound more and more and finally took the cotton from his eyes. He blinked them and stretched them wide.
She was close to him and moonlit, looking at him in a way that seemed challenging while she thrust bandage into her medicenter coveralls. Somehow she had got her pale mask back on—but it wasn’t a mask, he saw with a shock; it was her face. She was light. Lighter than any member he had ever seen, except a few near-sixty ones. She was almost white. Almost as white as snow.
“Mask neatly in place,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“That’s all right,” she said, and smiled. “We’re all odd in one way or another. Look at that eye.” She was thirty-five or so, sharp-featured and intelligent-looking, her hair freshly clipped.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
“I said it’s all right.”
“Are you supposed to let me see what you look like?”
“I’ll tell you something,” she said. “If you don’t come through I don’t give a fight if the whole bunch of us get normalized. In fact, I think I’d prefer it.” She took his head in both hands and kissed him, her tongue prying at his lips. It slid in and flickered in his mouth. She held his head tight, pushed her groin against his, and rubbed circularly. He felt a responsive stiffening and put his hands to her back. He worked his tongue tentatively against hers.
She withdrew her mouth. “Considering that it’s the middle of the week,” she said, “I’m encouraged.”
“Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei,” he said. “Is that how you all kiss?”
“Only me, brother,” she said, “only me.”
They did it again.
“Go on home now,” she said. “Don’t touch scanners.”
He backed away from her. “I’ll see you next month,” he said.
“You fighting well better had,” she said. “Good luck.”
He went out into the plaza and headed toward the Institute. He looked back once. There was only empty passageway between the blank moon-white buildings.
2
BOB RO, seated behind his desk, looked up and smiled. “You’re late,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” Chip said. He sat down.
Bob closed a white folder with a red file tab on it. “How are you?” he asked.
“Fine,” Chip said.
“Have a good week?”
“Mm-hmm.”
Bob studied him for a moment, his elbow on his chair arm, his fingers rubbing the side of his nose. “Anything in particular you want to talk about?” he asked.
Chip was silent, and then shook his head. “No,” he said.
“I hear you spent half of yesterday afternoon doing somebody else’s work.”
Chip nodded. “I took a sample from the wrong section of the IC box,” he said.
“I see,” Bob said, and smiled and grunted.
Chip looked questioningly at him.
“Joke,” Bob said. “IC, I see.”
“Oh,” Chip said, and smiled.
Bob propped his jaw on his hand, the side of a finger lying against his lips. “What happened Friday?” he asked.
“Friday?”
“Something about using the wrong microscope.”
Chip looked puzzled for a moment. “Oh,” he said. “Yes. I didn’t really use it. I just went into the chamber. I didn’t change any of the settings.”
Bob said, “It looks like it wasn’t such a good week.”
“No, I guess it wasn’t,” Chip said.
“Peace SK says you had trouble Saturday night.”
“Trouble?”
“Sexually.”
Chip shook his head. “I didn’t have any trouble,” he said. “I just wasn’t in the mood, that’s all.”
“She says you tried and couldn’t erect.”
“Well I felt I ought to do it, for her sake, but I just wasn’t in the mood.”
Bob watched him, not saying anything.
“I was tired,” Chip said.
“It seems you’ve been tired a lot lately. Is that why you weren’t at your photography club meeting Friday night?”
“Yes,” he said. “I turned in early.”
“How do you feel now? Are you tired now?”
“No. I feel fine.”
Bob looked at him, then straightened in his chair and smiled. “Okay, brother,” he said, “touch and go.”
Chip put his bracelet to the scanner of Bob’s telecomp and stood up.
“See you next week,” Bob said.
“Yes.”
“On time.”
Chip, having turned away, turned back and said, “Beg pardon?”
“On time next week,” Bob said.
“Oh,” Chip said. “Yes.” He turned and went out of the cubicle.
He thought he had done it well but there was no way of knowing, and as his treatment came nearer he grew increasingly anxious. The thought of a significant rise in sensation became more intriguing by the hour, and Snowflake, King, Lilac, and the others became more attractive and admirable. So what if they smoked tobacco? They were happy and healthy members—no, people, not members!—who had found an escape from sterility and sameness and universal mechanical efficiency. He wanted to see them and be with them. He wanted to kiss and embrace Snowflake’s unique lightness; to talk with King as an equal, friend to friend; to hear more of Lilac’s strange but provocative ideas. “Your body is yours, not Uni’s”—what a disturbing pre-U thing to say! If there were any basis for it, it could have implications that might lead him to—he couldn’t think what; a jolting change of some sort in his attitude toward everything!
That was the night before his treatment. He lay awake for hours, then climbed with bandaged hands up a snow-covered mountaintop, smoked tobacco pleasurably under the guidance of a friendly smiling King, opened Snowflake’s coveralls and found her snow-white with a throat-to-groin red cross, drove an early wheel-steered car through the hallways of a huge Genetic Suffocation Center, and had a new bracelet inscribed Chip and a window in his room through which he watched a lovely nude girl watering a lilac bush. She beckoned impatiently and he went to her—and woke feeling fresh and energetic and cheerful, despite those dreams, more vivid and convincing tha
n any of the five or six he had had in the past.
That morning, a Friday, he had his treatment. The tickle-buzz-sting seemed to last a fraction of a second less than usual, and when he left the unit, pushing down his sleeve, he still felt good and himself, a dreamer of vivid dreams, a cohort of unusual people, an outwitter of Family and Uni. He walked falsely-slowly to the Center. It struck him that this of all times was when he should go on with the slowdown, to justify the even greater reduction that step two, whatever it was and whenever he took it, would be aimed at achieving. He was pleased with himself for having realized this, and wondered why King and the others hadn’t suggested it. Perhaps they had thought he wouldn’t be able to do anything after his treatment. Those other two members had apparently fallen apart completely, unlucky brothers.
He made a good small mistake that afternoon, started to type a report with the mike held wrong-side up while another 663B was looking. He felt a bit guilty about doing it, but he did it anyway.
That evening, to his surprise, he really dozed off during TV, although it was something fairly interesting, a tour of a new radio telescope in Isr. And later, during the house photography club meeting, he could hardly keep his eyes open. He excused himself early and went to his room. He undressed without bothering to chute his used coveralls, got into bed without putting on pajamas, and tapped out the light. He wondered what dreams he would have.
He woke feeling frightened, suspecting that he was sick and in need of help. What was wrong? Had he done something he shouldn’t have?
It came to him, and he shook his head, scarcely able to believe it. Was it real? Was it possible? Had he been so—so contaminated by that group of pitiably sick members that he had purposely made mistakes, had tried to deceive Bob RO (and maybe succeeded!), had thought thoughts hostile to his entire loving Family? Oh, Christ, Marx, Wood, and Weil
He thought of what the young one, “Lilac,” had told him: to remember that it was a chemical that was making him think he was sick, a chemical that had been infused into him without his consent. His consent! As if consent had anything to do with a treatment given to preserve one’s health and well-being, an integral part of the health and well-being of the entire Family! Even before the Unification, even in the chaos and madness of the twentieth century, a member’s consent wasn’t asked before he was treated against typhic or typho or whatever it was. Consent! And he had listened without challenging her!
The first chime sounded and he jumped from his bed, anxious to make up for his unthinkable wrongs. He chuted the day before’s coveralls, urined, washed, cleaned his teeth, evened up his hair, put on fresh coveralls, made his bed. He went to the dining hall and claimed his cake and tea, sat among other members and wanted to help them, to give them something, to demonstrate that he was loyal and loving, not the sick offender he had been the day before. The member on his left ate the last of his cake. “Would you like some of mine?” Chip asked.
The member looked embarrassed. “No, of course not,” he said. “But thanks, you’re very kind.”
“No I’m not,” Chip said, but he was glad the member had said he was.
He hurried to the Center and got there eight minutes early. He drew a sample from his own section of the IC box, not somebody else’s, and took it into his own microscope; put on his glasses the right way and followed the OMP to the letter. He drew data from Uni respectfully (Forgive my offenses, Uni who knows everything) and fed it new data humbly (Here is exact and truthful information about gene sample NF5049).
The section head looked in. “How’s it going?” he asked.
“Very well, Bob.”
“Good.”
At midday he felt worse, though. What about them, those sick ones? Was he to leave them to their sickness, their tobacco, their reduced treatments, their pre-U thoughts? He had no choice. They had bandaged his eyes. There was no way of finding them.
But that wasn’t so; there was a way. Snowflake had shown him her face. How many almost-white members, women of her age, could there be in the city? Three? Four? Five? Uni, if Bob RO asked it, could output their namebers in an instant. And when she was found and properly treated, she would give the namebers of some of the others; and they, the namebers of the ones remaining. The whole group could be found and helped within a day or two.
The way he had helped Karl.
That stopped him. He had helped Karl and felt guilt—guilt he had clung to for years and years, and now it persisted, a part of him. Oh Jesus Christ and Wei Li Chun, how sick beyond imagining he was!
“Are you all right, brother?”
It was the member across the table, an elderly woman.
“Yes,” he said, “I’m fine,” and smiled and put his cake to his lips.
“You looked so troubled for a second,” she said.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I thought of something I forgot to do.”
“Ah,” she said.
To help them or not to help them? Which was wrong, which was right? He knew which was wrong: not to help them, to abandon them as if he weren’t his brother’s keeper at all.
But he wasn’t sure that helping them wasn’t wrong too, and how could both be wrong?
He worked less zealously in the afternoon, but well and without mistakes, everything done properly. At the end of the day he went back to his room and lay on his back on his bed, the heels of his hands pressing into his shut eyes and making pulsing auroras there. He heard the voices of the sick ones, saw himself taking the sample from the wrong section of the box and cheating the Family of time and energy and equipment. The supper chime sounded but he stayed as he was, too tangled in himself for eating.
Later Peace SK called. “I’m in the lounge,” she said. “It’s ten of eight. I’ve been waiting twenty minutes.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll be right down.”
They went to a concert and then to her room.
“What’s the matter?” she said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve been—upset the last few days.”
She shook her head and plied his slack penis more briskly. “It doesn’t make sense,” she said. “Didn’t you tell your adviser? I told mine.”
“Yes, I did. Look”—he took her hand away—“a whole group of new members came in on sixteen the other day. Why don’t you go to the lounge and find somebody else?”
She looked unhappy. “Well I think I ought to,” she said.
“I do too,” he said. “Go ahead.”
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” she said, getting up from the bed.
He dressed and went back to his room and undressed again. He thought he would have trouble falling asleep but he didn’t.
On Sunday he felt even worse. He began to hope that Bob would call, would see that he wasn’t well and draw the truth out of him. That way there would be no guilt or responsibility, only relief. He stayed in his room, watching the phone screen. Someone on the soccer team called; he said he wasn’t feeling well.
At noon he went to the dining hall, ate a cake quickly, and returned to his room. Someone from the Center called, to find out if he knew someone else’s nameber.
Hadn’t Bob been told by now that he wasn’t acting normally? Hadn’t Peace said anything? Or the caller from the soccer team? And that member across the table at lunch yesterday, hadn’t she been smart enough to see through his excuse and get his nameber? (Look at him, expecting others to help him; who in the Family was he helping?) Where was Bob? What kind of adviser was he?
There were no more calls, not in the afternoon, not in the evening. The music stopped once for a starship bulletin.
Monday morning, after breakfast, he went down to the medicenter. The scanner said no, but he told the attendant that he wanted to see his adviser; the attendant telecomped, and then the scanners said yes, yes, yes, all the way into the advisory offices, which were half empty. It was only 7:50.
He went into Bob’s empty cubicle and sat down and waited for him, his hands
on his knees. He went over in his mind the order in which he would tell: first about the intentional slowdown; then about the group, what they said and did and the way they could all be found through Snowflake’s lightness; and finally about the sick and irrational guilt-feeling he had concealed all the years since he had helped Karl. One, two, three. He would get an extra treatment to make up for anything he mightn’t have got on Friday, and he would leave the medicenter sound in mind and sound in body, a healthy contented member.
Your body is yours, not Uni’s.
Sick, pre-U. Uni was the will and wisdom of the entire Family. It had made him; had granted him his food, his clothing, his housing, his training. It had granted even the permission for his very conception. Yes, it had made him, and from now on he would be—
Bob came in swinging his telecomp and stopped short. “Li,” he said. “Hello. Is anything wrong?”
He looked at Bob. The name was wrong. He was Chip, not Li. He looked down at his bracelet: Li RM35M4419. He had expected it to say Chip. When had he had one that said Chip? In a dream, a strange happy dream, a girl beckoning . . .
“Li?” Bob said, putting his telecomp on the floor.
Uni had made him Li. For Wei. But he was Chip, chip off the old block. Which one was he? Li? Chip? Li?
“What is it, brother?” Bob asked, leaning close, taking his shoulder.
“I wanted to see you,” he said.
“About what?”
He didn’t know what to say. “You said I shouldn’t be late,” he said. He looked at Bob anxiously. “Am I on time?”
“On time?” Bob stepped back and squinted at him. “Brother, you’re a day early,” he said. “Tuesday’s your day, not Monday.”
He stood up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’d better get over to the Center”—and started to go.
Bob caught his arm. “Hold on,” he said, his telecomp falling on its side, slamming the floor.
“I’m all right,” Chip said. “I got mixed up. I’ll come tomorrow.” He went from Bob’s hand, out of the cubicle.
“Li,” Bob called.
He kept going.
He watched TV attentively that evening—a track meet in Arg, a relay from Venus, the news, a dance program, and Wei’s Living Wisdom—and then he went to his room. He tapped the light button but something was covering it and it didn’t work. The door closed sharply, had been closed by someone who was near him in the dark, breathing. “Who is it?” he asked.