“Thank you, Jesus,” the woman said, smiling. “I’m glad I was wrong.”
“Give that data to Uni,” King said, turning and looking at Chip, “so our brother here can be properly treated from now on.”
“Yes, right away.” The woman beckoned to Chip. He got up from the chair.
They left the office. In the doorway Chip turned. “Thank you,” he said.
King looked at him from behind his littered desk—only looked, with no smile, no glimmer of friendship. “Thank Uni,” he said.
Less than a minute after he got back to his room Bob called. “I just got a report from Medicenter Main,” he said. “Your treatments have been slightly out of line but from now on they’re going to be exactly right.”
“Good,” Chip said.
“This confusion and tiredness you’ve been feeling will gradually pass away during the next week or so, and then you’ll be your old self.”
“I hope so.”
“You will. Listen, do you want me to squeeze you in tomorrow, Li, or shall we just let it go till next Tuesday?”
“Next Tuesday’s all right.”
“Fine,” Bob said. He grinned. “You know what?” he said. “You look better already.”
“I feel a little better,” Chip said.
3
HE FELT A LITTLE BETTER every day, a little more awake and alert, a little more sure that sickness was what he had had and health was what he was growing toward. By Friday—three days after the examination—he felt the way he usually felt on the day before a treatment. But his last treatment was only a week behind him; three weeks and more lay ahead, spacious and unexplored, before the next one. The slowdown had worked; Bob had been fooled and the treatment reduced. And the next one, on the basis of the examination, would be reduced even further. What wonders of feeling would he be feeling in five, in six weeks’ time?
That Friday night, a few minutes after the last chime, Snowflake came into his room. “Don’t mind me,” she said, taking off her coveralls. “I’m just putting a note in your mouthpiece.”
She got into bed with him and helped him off with his pajamas. Her body to his hands and lips was smooth, pliant, and more arousing than Peace SK’s or anyone else’s; and his own, as she stroked and kissed and licked it, was more shudderingly reactive than ever before, more strainingly in want. He eased himself into her—deeply, snugly in—and would have driven them both to immediate orgasm, but she slowed him, stopped him, made him draw out and come in again, putting herself into one strange but effective position and then another. For twenty minutes or more they worked and contrived together, keeping as noiseless as they could because of the members beyond the wall and on the floor below.
When they were done and apart she said, “Well?”
“Well it was top speed, of course,” he said, “but frankly, from what you said, I expected even more.”
“Patience, brother,” she said. “You’re still an invalid. The time will come when you’ll look back on this as the night we shook hands.”
He laughed.
“Shh.”
He held her and kissed her. “What does it say?” he asked. “The note in my mouthpiece.”
“Sunday night at eleven, the same place as last time.”
“But no bandage.”
“No bandage,” she said.
He would see them all, Lilac and all the others. “I’ve been wondering when the next meeting would be,” he said.
“I hear you whooshed through step two like a rocket.”
“Stumbled through it, you mean. I wouldn’t have made it at all if not for—” Did she know who King really was? Was it all right to speak of it?
“If not for what?”
“If not for King and Lilac,” he said. “They came here the night before and prepped me.”
“Well of course,” she said. “None of us would have made it if not for the capsules and all.”
“I wonder where they get them.”
“I think one of them works in a medicenter.”
“Mm, that would explain it,” he said. She didn’t know. Or she knew but didn’t know that he knew. Suddenly he was annoyed by the need for carefulness that had come between them.
She sat up. “Listen,” she said, “it pains me to say this, but don’t forget to carry on as usual with your girlfriend. Tomorrow night, I mean.”
“She’s got someone new,” he said. “You’re my girlfriend.”
“No I’m not,” she said. “Not on Saturday nights anyway. Our advisers would wonder why we took someone from a different house. I’ve got a nice normal Bob down the hall from me, and you find a nice normal Yin or Mary. But if you give her more than a little quick one I’ll break your neck.”
“Tomorrow night I won’t even be able to give her that.”
“That’s all right,” she said, “you’re still supposed to be recovering.” She looked sternly at him. “Really,” she said, “you have to remember not to get too passionate, except with me. And to keep a contented smile in place between the first chime and the last. And to work hard at your assignment but not too hard. It’s just as tricky to stay undertreated as it is to get that way.” She lay back down beside him and drew his arm around her. “Hate,” she said, “I’d give anything for a smoke now.”
“Is it really so enjoyable?”
“Mm-hmm. Especially at times like this.”
“I’ll have to try it.”
They lay talking and caressing each other for a while, and then Snowflake tried to rouse him again—“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” she said—but everything she did proved unavailing. She left around twelve or so. “Sunday at eleven,” she said by the door. “Congratulations.”
Saturday evening in the lounge Chip met a member named Mary KK whose boyfriend had been transferred to Can earlier in the week. The birth-year part of her nameber was 38, making her twenty-four.
They went to a pre-Marxmas sing in Equality Park. As they sat waiting for the amphitheater to fill, Chip looked at Mary closely. Her chin was sharp but otherwise she was normal: tan skin, upslanted brown eyes, clipped black hair, yellow coveralls on her slim spare frame. One of her toenails, half covered by sandal strap, was discolored a bluish purple. She sat smiling, watching the opposite side of the amphitheater.
“Where are you from?” he asked her.
“Rus,” she said.
“What’s your classification?”
“One-forty B.”
“What’s that?”
“Ophthalmologic technician.”
“What do you do?”
She turned to him. “I attach lenses,” she said. “In the children’s section.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
“Of course.” She looked uncertainly at him. “Why are you asking me so many questions?” she asked. “And why are you looking at me so—as if you’ve never seen a member before?”
“I’ve never seen you before,” he said. “I want to know you.”
“I’m no different from any other member,” she said. “There’s nothing unusual about me.”
“Your chin is a little sharper than normal.”
She drew back, looking hurt and confused.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said. “I just meant to point out that there is something unusual about you, even if it isn’t something important.”
She looked searchingly at him, then looked away, at the opposite side of the amphitheater again. She shook her head. “I don’t understand you,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was sick until last Tuesday. But my adviser took me to Medicenter Main and they fixed me up fine. I’m getting better now. Don’t worry.”
“Well that’s good,” she said. After a moment she turned and smiled cheerfully at him. “I forgive you,” she said.
“Thank you,” he said, suddenly feeling sad for her.
She looked away again. “I hope we sing ‘The Freeing of the Masses,’” she said.
“W
e will,” he said.
“I love it,” she said, and smiling, began to hum it.
He kept looking at her, trying to do so in a normal-seeming way. What she had said was true: she was no different from any other member. What did a sharp chin or a discolored toenail signify? She was exactly the same as every Mary and Anna and Peace and Yin who had ever been his girlfriend: humble and good, helpful and hard-working. Yet she made him feel sad. Why? And could all the others have done so, had he looked at them as closely as he was looking at her, had he listened as closely to what they said?
He looked at the members on the other side of him, at the scores in the tiers below, the scores in the tiers above. They were all like Mary KK, all smiling and ready to sing their favorite Marxmas songs, and all saddening; everyone in the amphitheater, the hundreds, the thousands, the tens of thousands. Their faces lined the mammoth bowl like tan beads strung away in immeasurable close-laid ovals.
Spotlights struck the gold cross and red sickle at the bowl’s center. Four familiar trumpet notes blasted, and everybody sang:
One mighty Family,
A single perfect breed,
Free of all selfishness,
Aggressiveness and greed;
Each member giving all he has to give
And get-ting all he needs to live!
But they weren’t a mighty Family, he thought. They were a weak Family, a saddening and pitiable one, dulled by chemicals and dehumanized by bracelets. It was Uni that was mighty.
One mighty Family,
A single noble race,
Sending its sons and daughters
Bravely into space . . .
He sang the words automatically, thinking that Lilac had been right: reduced treatments brought new unhappiness.
Sunday night at eleven he met Snowflake between the buildings on Lower Christ Plaza. He held her and kissed her gratefully, glad of her sexuality and humor and pale skin and bitter tobacco taste—all the things that were she and nobody else. “Christ and Wei, I’m glad to see you,” he said.
She gave him a tighter hug and smiled happily at him. “It gets to be a shut-off being with normals, doesn’t it?” she said.
“And how,” he said. “I wanted to kick the soccer team instead of the ball this morning.”
She laughed.
He had been depressed since the sing; now he felt released and happy and taller. “I found a girlfriend,” he said, “and guess what; I fucked her without the least bit of trouble.”
“Hate.”
“Not as extensively or as satisfyingly as we did, but with no trouble at all, not twenty-four hours later.”
“I can live without the details.”
He grinned and ran his hands down her sides and clasped her hipbones. “I think I might even manage to do it again tonight,” he said, teasing her with his thumbs.
“Your ego is growing by leaps and bounds.”
“My everything is.”
“Come on, brother,” she said, prying his hands away and holding onto one, “we’d better get you indoors before you start singing.”
They went into the plaza and crossed it diagonally. Flags and sagging Marxmas bunting hung motionless above it, dim in the glow of distant walkways. “Where are we going anyway?” he asked, walking happily. “Where’s the secret meeting place of the diseased corrupters of healthy young members?”
“The Pre-U,” she said.
“The Museum?”
“That’s right. Can you think of a better place for a group of Uni-cheating abnormals? It’s exactly where we belong. Easy,” she said, tugging at his hand; “don’t walk so energetically.”
A member was coming into the plaza from the walkway they were going toward. A briefcase or telecomp was in his hand.
Chip walked more normally alongside Snowflake. The member, coming closer—it was a telecomp he had—smiled and nodded. They smiled and nodded in return as they passed him.
They went down steps and out of the plaza.
“Besides,” Snowflake said, “it’s empty from eight to eight and it’s an endless source of pipes and funny costumes and unusual beds.”
“You take things?”
“We leave the beds,” she said. “But we make use of them now and again. Meeting solemnly in the staff conference room was just for your benefit.”
“What else do you do?”
“Oh, sit around and complain a little. That’s Lilac’s and Leopard’s department mostly. Sex and smoking is enough for me. King does funny versions of some of the TV programs; wait till you find out how much you can laugh.”
“The making use of the beds,” Chip said; “is it done on a group basis?”
“Only by two’s, dear; we’re not that pre-U.”
“Who did you use them with?”
“Sparrow, obviously. Necessity is the mother of et cetera. Poor girl, I feel sorry for her now.”
“Of course you do.”
“I do! Oh well, there’s an artificial penis in Nineteenth Century Artifacts. She’ll survive.”
“King says we should find a man for her.”
“We should. It would be a much better situation, having four couples.”
“That’s what King said.”
As they were crossing the ground floor of the museum-—lighting their way through the strange-figured dark with a flashlight that Snowflake had produced—another light struck them from the side and a voice nearby said, “Hello there!” They started. “I’m sorry,” the voice said. “It’s me, Leopard.”
Snowflake swung her light onto the twentieth-century car, and a flashlight inside it went off. They went over to the glinting metal vehicle. Leopard, sitting behind the steering wheel, was an old round-faced member wearing a hat with an orange plume. There were several dark brown spots on his nose and cheeks. He put his hand, also spotted, through the car’s window frame. “Congratulations, Chip,” he said. “I’m glad you came through.”
Chip shook his hand and thanked him.
“Going for a ride?” Snowflake asked.
“I’ve been for one,” he said. “To Jap and back. Volvo’s out of fuel now. And thoroughly wet too, come to think of it.”
They smiled at him and at each other.
“Fantastic, isn’t it?” he said, turning the wheel and working a lever that projected from its shaft. “The driver was in complete control from start to finish, using both hands and both feet.”
“It must have been awfully bumpy,” Chip said, and Snowflake said, “Not to mention dangerous.”
“But fun too,” Leopard said. “It must have been an adventure, really; choosing your destination, figuring out which roads to take to get there, gauging your movements in relation to the movements of other cars—”
“Gauging wrong and dying,” Snowflake said.
“I don’t think that really happened as often as we’re told it did,” Leopard said. “If it had, they would have made the front parts of the cars much thicker.”
Chip said, “But that would have made them heavier and they would have gone even slower.”
“Where’s Hush?” Snowflake asked.
“Upstairs with Sparrow,” Leopard said. He opened the car’s door, and coming out of it with a flashlight in his hand, said, “They’re setting things up. Some more stuff was put in the room.” He cranked the window of the door halfway up and closed the door firmly. A wide brown belt decorated with metal studs was fastened about his coveralls.
“King and Lilac?” Snowflake asked.
“They’re around someplace.”
Chip thought, Making use of one of the beds—as the three of them went on through the museum.
He had thought about King and Lilac a good deal since seeing King and seeing how old he was—fifty-two or -three or even more. He had thought about the difference between the ages of the two—thirty years, surely, at the very least—and about the way King had told him to stay away from Lilac; and about Lilac’s large less-slanted-than-normal eyes and her hands that had r
ested small and warm on his knees as she crouched before him urging him toward greater life and awareness.
They went up the steps of the unmoving central escalator and across the museum’s second floor. The two flashlights, Snowflake’s and Leopard’s, danced over the guns and daggers, the bulbed and wired lamps, the bleeding boxers, the kings and queens in their jewels and fur-trimmed robes, and the three beggars, filthy and crippled, parading their disfigurements and thrusting out their cups. The partition behind the beggars had been slid aside, opening a narrow passageway that extended farther into the building, its first few meters lit by light from a doorway in the left-hand wall. A woman’s voice spoke softly. Leopard went on ahead and through the doorway, while Snowflake, standing beside the beggars, sprung pieces of tape from a first-aid-kit cartridge. “Snowflake’s here with Chip,” Leopard said inside the room. Chip laid a piece of tape over his bracelet plaque and rubbed it down firmly.
They went to the doorway and into a tobacco-smelling stuffiness where an old woman and a young one sat close together on pre-U chairs with two knives and a heap of brown leaves on a table before them. Hush and Sparrow; they shook Chip’s hand and congratulated him. Hush was crinkle-eyed and smiling; Sparrow, large-limbed and embarrassed-looking, her hand hot and moist. Leopard stood by Hush, holding a heat coil in the bowl of a curved black pipe and blowing out smoke around the sides of its stem.
The room, a fairly large one, was a storeroom, its farther reaches filled with a ceiling-high mass of pre-U relics, late and early: machines and furniture and paintings and bundles of clothing; swords and wood-handled implements; a statue of a member with wings, an “angel”; half a dozen crates, opened, unopened, stenciled IND26110 and pasted at their corners with square yellow stickers. Looking around, Chip said, “There are enough things here for another museum.”
“All genuine too,” Leopard said. “Some of the things on display aren’t, you know.”
“I didn’t.”
A varied lot of chairs and benches had been set about the forward part of the room. Paintings leaned against the walls, and there were cartons of smaller relics and piles of moldering books. A painting of an enormous boulder caught Chip’s eye. He moved a chair to get a full view of it. The boulder, a mountain almost, floated above the earth in blue sky, meticulously painted and jarring to the senses. “What an odd picture,” he said.