“I’m beginning to think it is what’s best,” Chip said, “and I don’t know whether I’m being convinced by Wei’s logic or by lobsters and Mozart and you. Not to mention the prospect of eternal life.”
“That scares me,” Deirdre said.
“Me too,” Chip said.
She kept stroking his back. “It took me two months to cool down,” she said.
“Is that how you thought of it?” he said. “Cooling down?”
“Yes,” she said. “And growing up. Facing reality.”
“So why does it feel like giving in?” Chip said.
“Lie down,” Deirdre said.
He put out his cigarette, put the ashtray on the night table, and turned to her, lying down. They held each other and kissed. “Truly,” she said. “It’s best for everybody, in the long run. We’ll improve things gradually, working in our own councils.”
They kissed and caressed each other, and then they kicked down the sheet and she threw her leg over Chip’s hip and his hardness slipped easily into her.
He was sitting in the library one morning when a hand took his shoulder. He looked around, startled, and Wei was there. He bent, pushing Chip aside, and put his face down to the viewer hood.
After a moment he said, “Well, you’ve gone to the right man.” He kept his face at the hood another moment, and then stood up and let go of Chip’s shoulder and smiled at him. “Read Liebman too,” he said. “And Okida and Marcuse. I’ll make a list of titles and give it to you in the garden this evening. Will you be there?”
Chip nodded.
His days fell into a routine: mornings at the library, afternoons at the Council. He studied construction methods and environment planning; examined factory flow charts and circulation patterns of residential buildings. Madhir and Sylvie showed him drawings of buildings under construction and buildings planned for the future, of cities as they existed and (plastic overlay) cities as they might some day be modified. He was the eighth member of the Council; of the other seven, three were inclined to challenge Uni’s designs and change them, and four, including Madhir, were inclined to accept them without question. Formal meetings were held on Friday afternoons; at other times seldom more than four or five of the members were in the offices. Once only Chip and Gri-gri were there, and they wound up locked together on Madhir’s sofa.
After Council, Chip used the gym and the pool. He ate with Deirdre and Dover and Dover’s woman-of-the-day and whoever else joined them—sometimes Karl, on the Transportation Council and resigned to wine.
One day in February, Chip asked Dover if it was possible to get in touch with whoever had replaced him on Liberty and find out if Lilac and Jan were all right and whether Julia was providing for them as she had said she would.
“Sure,” Dover said. “No problem at all.”
“Would you do it then?” Chip said. “I’d appreciate it.”
A few days later Dover found Chip in the library. “All’s well,” he said. “Lilac is staying home and buying food and paying rent, so Julia must be coming through.”
“Thanks, Dover,” Chip said. “I was worried.”
“The man there’ll keep an eye on her,” Dover said. “If she needs anything, money can come in the mail.”
“That’s fine,” Chip said. “Wei told me.” He smiled. “Poor Julia,” he said, “supporting all those families when it isn’t really necessary. If she knew she’d have a fit.”
Dover smiled. “She would,” he said. “Of course, everyone who set out didn’t get here, so in some cases it is necessary.”
“That’s right,” Chip said. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“See you at lunch,” Dover said.
“Right,” Chip said. “Thanks.”
Dover went, and Chip turned to the viewer and bent his face to the hood. He put his finger on the next-page button and, after a moment, pressed it.
He began to speak up at Council meetings and to ask fewer questions at Wei’s discussions. A petition was circulated for the reduction of cake days to one a month; he hesitated but signed it. He went from Deirdre to Blackie to Nina and back to Deirdre; listened in the smaller lounges to sex gossip and jokes about High Council members; followed crazes for paper-airplane making and speaking in pre-U languages (“Français” was pronounced “Fransay,” he learned).
One morning he woke up early and went to the gym. Wei was there, jumping astride and swinging dumbbells, shining with sweat, slab-muscled, slim-hipped; in a black supporter and something white tied around his neck. “Another early bird, good morning,” he said, jumping his legs out and in, out and in, swinging the dumbbells out and together over his white-wisped head.
“Good morning,” Chip said. He went to the side of the gym and took off his robe and hung it on a hook. Another robe, blue, hung a few hooks away.
“You weren’t at the discussion last night,” Wei said.
Chip turned. “There was a party,” he said, toeing off his sandals. “Patya’s birthday.”
“It’s all right,” Wei said, jumping, swinging the dumbbells. “I just mentioned it.”
Chip walked onto a mat and began trotting in place. The white thing around Wei’s neck was a band of silk, tightly knotted.
Wei stopped jumping and tossed down the dumbbells and took a towel from one of the parallel bars. “Madhir’s afraid you’re going to be a radical,” he said, smiling.
“He doesn’t know the half of it,” Chip said.
Wei watched him, still smiling, wiping the towel over his big-muscled shoulders and under his arms.
“Do you work out every morning?” Chip asked.
“No, only once or twice a week,” Wei said. “I’m not athletic by nature.” He rubbed the towel behind him.
Chip stopped trotting. “Wei, there’s something I’d like to speak to you about,” he said.
“Yes?” Wei said. “What is it?”
Chip took a step toward him. “When I first came here,” he said, “and we had lunch together—”
“Yes?” Wei said.
Chip cleared his throat and said, “You said that if I wanted to I could have my eye replaced. Rosen said so too.”
“Yes, of course,” Wei said. “Do you want to have it done?”
Chip looked at him uncertainly. “I don’t know, it seems like such—vanity,” he said. “But I’ve always been aware of it—”
“It’s not vanity to correct a flaw,” Wei said. “It’s negligence not to.”
“Can’t I get a lens put on?” Chip said. “A brown lens?”
“Yes, you can,” Wei said, “if you want to cover it and not correct it.”
Chip looked away and then back at him. “All right,” he said, “I’d like to do it, have it done.”
“Good,” Wei said, and smiled. “I’ve had eye changes twice,” he said. “There’s blurriness for a few days, that’s all. Go down to the medicenter this morning. I’ll tell Rosen to do it himself, as soon as possible.”
‘Thank you,” Chip said.
Wei put his towel around his white-banded neck, turned to the parallel bars, and lifted himself straight-armed onto them. “Keep quiet about it,” he said, hand-walking between the bars, “or the children will start pestering you.”
It was done, and he looked in his mirror and both his eyes were brown. He smiled, and stepped back, and stepped close again. He looked at himself from one side and the other, smiling.
When he had dressed he looked again.
Deirdre, in the lounge, said, “It’s a tremendous improvement! You look wonderful! Karl, Gri-gri, look at Chip’s eye!”
Members helped them into heavy green coats, thickly quilted and hooded. They closed them and put on thick green gloves, and a member pulled open the door. The two of them, Wei and Chip, went in.
They walked together along an aisle between steel walls of memory banks, their breath clouding from their nostrils. Wei spoke of the banks’ internal temperature and of the weight and number of them. They turned into a n
arrower aisle where the steel walls stretched ahead of them convergingly to a faraway crosswalk
“I was in here when I was a child,” Chip said.
“Dover told me,” Wei said.
“It frightened me then,” Chip said. “But it has a kind of— majesty to it; the order and precision . . .”
Wei nodded, his eyes glinting. “Yes,” he said. “I look for excuses to come in.”
They turned into another cross-aisle, passed a pillar, and turned into another long narrow aisle between back-to-back rows of steel memory banks.
In coveralls again, they looked into a vast railed pit, round and deep, where steel and concrete housings lay, linked by blue arms and sending thicker blue arms branching upward to low brightly glowing ceiling. (“I believe you had a special interest in the refrigerating plants,” Wei said, smiling, and Chip looked uncomfortable.) A steel pillar stood beside the pit; beyond it lay a second railed and blue-armed pit, and another pillar, another pit. The room was enormous, cool and hushed. Transmitting and receiving equipment lined its two long walls, with red pinpoint lights gleaming; members in blue drew out and replaced two-handled vertical panels of speckled black and gold. Four red-dome reactors stood at one end of the room, and beyond them, behind glass, half a dozen programmers sat at a round console reading into microphones, turning pages.
“There you are,” Wei said.
Chip looked around at it all. He shook his head and blew out breath. “Christ and Wei,” he said.
Wei laughed happily.
They stayed a while, walking about, looking, talking with some of the members, and then they left the room and walked through white-tiled corridors. A steel door slid open for them, and they went through and walked together down the carpeted corridor beyond.
5
EARLY IN SEPTEMBER OF 172, a party of seven men and women accompanied by a “shepherd” named Anna set out from the Andaman Islands in Stability Bay to attack and destroy Uni. Announcements of their progress were made in the programmers’ dining room at each mealtime. Two members of the party “failed” in the airport at SEA77120 (head-shakings and sighs of disappointment), and two more the following day in a carport in EUR46209 (head-shakings and sighs of disappointment). On the evening of Thursday, September tenth, the three others—a young man and woman and an older man—came single-file into the main lounge with their hands on their heads, looking angry and frightened. A stocky woman behind them, grinning, pocketed a gun.
The three stared foolishly, and the programmers rose, laughing and applauding, Chip and Deirdre among them. Chip laughed loud, applauded hard. All the programmers laughed loud and applauded hard as the newcomers lowered their hands and turned to one another and to their laughing applauding shepherd.
Wei in gold-trimmed green went to them, smiling, and shook their hands. The programmers hushed one another. Wei touched his collar and said, “From here up, at any rate. From here down . . .” The programmers laughed and hushed one another. They moved closer, to hear, to congratulate.
After a few minutes the stocky woman slipped out of the crush and left the lounge. She turned to the right and went toward a narrow upgoing escalator. Chip came after her. “Congratulations,” he said.
“Thanks,” the woman said, glancing back at him and smiling tiredly. She was about forty, with dirt on her face and dark rings under her eyes. “When did you come in?” she asked.
“About eight months ago,” Chip said.
“Who with?” The woman stepped onto the escalator.
Chip stepped on behind her. “Dover,” he said.
“Oh,” she said. “Is he still here?”
“No,” Chip said. “He was sent out last month. Your people didn’t come in empty-handed, did they?”
“I wish they had,” the woman said. “My shoulder is killing me. I left the kits by the elevator. I’m going to get them now.” She stepped off the escalator and walked back around it.
Chip went with her. “I’ll give you a hand with them,” he said.
“It’s all right, I’ll pick up one of the boys,” the woman said, turning to the right.
“No, I don’t mind doing it,” Chip said.
They walked down corridor past the glass wall of the pool. The woman looked in and said, “That’s where I’m going to be in fifteen minutes.”
“I’ll join you,” Chip said.
The woman glanced at him. “All right,” she said.
Boroviev and a member came into the corridor toward them. “Anna! Hello!” Boroviev said, his eyes sparkling in his withered face. The member, a girl, smiled at Chip.
“Hello!” the woman said, shaking Boroviev’s hand. “How are you?”
“Fine!” Boroviev said. “Oh, you look exhausted!”
“I am.”
“But everything’s all right?”
“Yes,” the woman said. “They’re downstairs. I’m on my way to get rid of the kits.”
“Get some rest!” Boroviev said.
“I’m going to,” the woman said, smiling. “Six months of it.”
Boroviev smiled at Chip, and taking the member’s hand, went past them and down the corridor. The woman and Chip went ahead toward the steel door at the corridor’s end. They passed the archway to the garden, where someone was singing and playing a guitar.
“What kind of bombs did they have?” Chip asked.
“Crude plastic ones,” the woman said. “Throw and boom. I’ll be glad to get them into the can.”
The steel door slid open; they went through and turned to the right. White-tiled corridor stretched before them with scanner-posted doors in the left-hand wall.
“Which council are you on?” the woman asked.
“Wait a second,” Chip said, stopping and taking her arm.
She stopped and turned and he punched her in the stomach. Catching her face in his hand, he smashed her head back hard against the wall. He let it come forward, smashed it back again, and let go of her. She slid downward—a tile was cracked—and sank heavily to the floor and fell over sideways, one knee up, eyes closed.
Chip stepped to the nearest door and opened it. A two-toilet bathroom was inside. Holding the door with his foot, he reached over and took hold of the woman under her arms. A member came into the corridor and stared at him, a boy of about twenty.
“Help me,” Chip said.
The boy came over, his face pale. “What happened?” he asked.
“Take her legs,” Chip said. “She passed out.”
They carried the woman into the bathroom and set her down on the floor. “Shouldn’t we take her to the medicenter?” the boy asked.
“We will in a minute,” Chip said. He got on one knee beside the woman, reached into the pocket of her yellow-paplon coveralls, and took out her gun. He aimed it at the boy. “Turn around and face the wall,” he said. “Don’t make a sound.”
The boy stared wide-eyed at him, and turned around and faced the wall between the toilets.
Chip stood up, passed the gun between his hands, and holding it by its taped barrel, stepped astride the woman. He raised the gun and quickly swung its butt down hard on the boy’s close-clipped head. The blow drove the boy to his knees. He fell forward against the wall and then sideways, his head stopping against wall and toilet pipe, red gleaming in its short black hair.
Chip looked away and at the gun. He passed it back to a shooting grip, thumbed its safety catch aside, and turned it toward the bathroom’s back wall: a red thread, gone, shattered a tile and drilled dust from behind it. Chip put the gun into his pocket, and holding it, stepped over the woman and moved to the door.
He went into the corridor, pulled the door tightly closed, and walked quickly, holding the gun in his pocket. He came to the end of the corridor and followed its left turn.
A member coming toward him smiled and said, “Hello, Father.”
Chip nodded, passing him. “Son,” he said.
A door was ahead in the right-hand wall. He went to it, opened it, and w
ent through. He closed the door behind him and stood in dark hallway. He took out the gun.
Opposite, under a ceiling that barely glowed, were the pink, brown, and orange memory-banks-for-visitors, the gold cross and sickle, the clock on the wall—9:33 Thu 10 Sep 172 Y.U.
He went to the left, past the other displays, unlighted, dormant, increasingly visible in the light from an open door to the lobby.
He went to the open door.
On the floor in the center of the lobby lay three kits, a gun, and two knives. Another kit lay near the elevator doors.
Wei leaned back, smiling, and drew on his cigarette “Believe me,” he said, “that’s how everybody feels at this point. But even the most stubbornly disapproving come to see that we’re wise and we’re right.” He looked at the programmers standing around the group of chairs. “Isn’t that so, Chip?” he said. ‘Tell them.” He looked about, smiling.
“Chip went out,” Deirdre said, and someone else said, “After Anna.” Another programmer said, ‘Too bad, Deirdre,” and Deirdre, turning, said, “He didn’t go out after Anna, he went out; he’ll be right back.”
“A little tired, of course?” someone said.
Wei looked at his cigarette and leaned forward and pressed it out. “Everyone here will confirm what I’m saying,” he said to the newcomers, and smiled. “Excuse me, will you?” he said. “I’ll be back in a little while. Don’t get up.” He rose, and the programmers parted for him.
Straw filled half the kit, held in place by a wood divider; on the other side, wires, tools, papers, cakes, whatnot. He brushed straw away—from more dividers that formed square straw-filled compartments. He fingered in one and found only straw and hollowness; in another, though, there was something soft-surfaced but firm. He pulled away straw and lifted out a heavy whitish ball, a claylike handful with straw sticking to it. He put it on the floor and took out two more— another compartment was empty—and a fourth one. He ripped the wood framework from the kit, put it aside, and dumped out straw, tools, everything; put the four bombs close together in the kit, opened the other two kits and took out their bombs and put them in with the four—five from one kit, six from the other. Room for three more remained.