Naked, TRH-247 sat on a cool white plastic bench and repressed a shiver. The room was not cold, but gooseflesh stood out on his arms. Though he was now alone in one of a series of examination rooms to which he had been taken, he felt ill at ease in his nakedness—an effect no doubt carefully calculated, he reflected, to increase the insecurity anyone must feel in the Morale Investigation Center.
Everything in the Center was designed to create the impression that here nothing was—nothing could be—concealed. The walls, the ceilings, the floors, the spare furnishings, the instruments—all were a gleaming, immaculate white plastic, bathed in clear white light. Even the attendants and nurses, as well as the gray-haired Investigators, donned white robes over their uniforms when they entered the Center.
Hendley had not seen the first Investigator since they parted at the beginning of his processing. But in the course of his tests—psychological, intelligence and reaction tests, a humiliatingly thorough physical examination, along with other tests unfamiliar to him—he had met two other men identified as Investigators. Each might have been cast from a single mold. In the small interrogation rooms they seemed to grow, looming larger to the eye like figures on a viewscreen expanding as the camera moved in for a closeup. They were all big men, all distinguished, all gray-haired, all easy of manner—big, handsome, confident men, like idealized father-images.
Suddenly, sitting on the cold white bench, hugging his body with his arms against the unreasonable chill that shook him, Hendley remembered an incident long forgotten, a fragment from that strangely blank period of pre-work—he thought of it that way; not as childhood, but as pre-work. It had been a negative time, like a period of non-existence in preparation for existence. If it had seemed then a time of freedom, that illusion prevailed only because the concept of freedom was not understood. In fact those days had been strictly regimented, filled with classes, recreation hours, group games, prescribed activities from waking to sleeping.
But on one occasion, at least, there had been a kind of escape into life. Hendley hadn’t been alone in the daring escapade, although he could not recall the numbers of the other two boys, or even their faces. One had been fat and very blond, with an intense dislike of exercise not of his own choosing. The other had been a small, slender, lively, black-haired boy whose memorable characteristic in Hendley’s mind was a flashing smile and a high-pitched, squealing laugh.
The idea had been the blond boy’s in the beginning, Hendley was sure, but there had been no sense of being led. For all three boys the action had been spontaneous, unpremeditated, without malice or special meaning. One moment they were walking toward their classroom along an underground street—it was morning, but there was no awareness of time then, in a pre-work day beneath the surface—and the next moment they were opposite a pedestrian ramp leading to the sidewalk strips and the fat blond boy was yelling, “Let’s go for a ride!” And in the instant they were racing exuberantly up the ramp, dodging among the uniformed men and women, excitedly jumping onto the moving walk, pausing only when they were safely together on the walk to stare at each other in flushed, panting triumph. A glitter of challenge had danced in the fat boy’s eyes—Why could he remember that exact expression, Hendley wondered, but not the face which shaped it?—and he had made a reckless, clumsy leap to the fast strip. Hendley and the slender boy had hurtled after him, the latter’s shrill peal of laughter trailing behind them. In that moment when he was airborne between the strips, his heart bumping with fear, Hendley experienced a surge of happy exhilaration such as he’d never felt before. Suddenly the thoughtless flight acquired a sharp spirit of adventure. Soon it was he who took the lead, challenging his companions to new and more intricate maneuvers on the walks, bolder excursions into the bustling center of the city.
They stayed out all day, wandering through the crowded, noisy arcades, exploring the colorful stores, filing in wonder through the great stone plaza in the middle of the business district past the giant statues and sculptured stone trees and strange marble animals. When the sightseeing began to pall, they boarded the walks again, riding them to remote parts of the city. It was only at the end of the day when, tired and hungry, they tried to retrace their way and found themselves lost, that the realization came to them slowly that they had done something unheard of, something very wrong, for which they were sure to be punished.
They had strayed far from the sidewalk strips, and in their search for the walks they came upon a clearing which ended in a high, blank wall. Curiosity gaining the better of their increasing nervousness about the day’s adventure, they followed the line of the wall, speculating about it.
“I know what it is,” the fat boy said confidently.
“I’ll bet you don’t!” the smallest of the trio said.
“What is it?” Hendley demanded.
“He doesn’t know,” the slender boy jeered.
“I do too! It’s where people go when they’re old!”
“No, it isn’t,” the slim one said quite seriously. “That isn’t where they go. They die.”
“I didn’t say dead people!” the fat boy retorted. “It’s where you go when you don’t have to work any more, when you’re free!”
And then Hendley remembered. His father had talked about the Freeman Camps, during those early years which Hendley remembered only as a brief and pleasant interlude before he was taken from his parents and enrolled in the Organization’s training schools.
The three boys walked in silence alongside the high wall for a while. The fat boy said, “I bet we could get over if we really wanted to.”
“How?” Hendley wanted to know.
“We could climb it.”
“No, we couldn’t. What would you get hold of?”
“We could use a rope.”
They reached a break in the wall, which turned out to be a high, metal-barred gate coated with an opaque plastic between the bars so that you could not see through it. There was no one around.
“Look!” the slim, black-haired boy said, pointing.
Near the bottom of the gate there was a tear in the plastic film between two of the metal bars. Even when the film was pushed aside, the opening was only a few inches wide—but it was an opening. (How strange it was now to recall the easy accessibility of the camp to three curious boys! But in those days the surface was not yet considered safe for human life, and even the camps had to be underground, located on the outskirts of the great cities.)
“I bet I could get through there,” the slim boy said.
“What would you want to do that for?” the fat, blond boy scoffed, covering his chagrin, for it was evident that he could never squeeze through the opening.
“Well, you wanted to climb over.”
“No one’s supposed to go in there,” the fat boy insisted.
The declaration was like a dare, and the black-haired boy reacted to it instantly. “I’m going to!” he asserted with his quick, flashing smile. “I bet you’re scared,” he said to Hendley.
“No, I’m not!”
“I’ll go first,” the other boy said. And with a darting glance along the wall in both directions to make sure no one was watching them, he crouched before the narrow opening and began to worm his way through. The damaged section of plastic film tore easily, but the bars were so close together that the boy winced as he struggled to wriggle between them.
“You’d better not!” the fat boy warned apprehensively.
But the small, slim body gave another twist and suddenly the boy was gone, disappearing through the opening into the mysterious place beyond the wall.
“Come on!” they heard him call excitedly. “Hurry up! Wait’ll you see it!”
Hendley tried to follow him. Halfway through the opening he could go no farther, no matter how much he shoved and twisted. His chest was skinned and bruised by the effort, and he had trouble breathing. “I—I’m stuck!” he cried.
Beyond the wall the slender, black-haired boy’s shrill laughter rang briefly. It broke off. There was a moment’s silence. Hendley and the fat boy listened. Anxiously they began to shout. There was no answer from within the camp. And then it seemed to Hendley that he heard a muffled, whimpering cry.
At that instant a huge, heavy hand fell on the fat boy’s shoulder. The two boys by the wall had been so intently absorbed that they had failed to see or hear anyone approaching. Hendley stared up in fright at a broad, towering figure in a beige uniform with a small emblem on one shoulder. A big hand seized him by the arm and effortlessly pulled him free of the bars…
They were taken to a white building, where they were separately questioned. Hendley had vowed to himself that he would say nothing about the day’s events, but he found himself at first frightened and then awed by the huge, gray-haired man who talked to him. The man spoke gently, reassuringly, and after a while Hendley was blurting out the whole story, trembling and stammering, moved at last to tears by the mystery of his small friend’s fate.
The following day he and the fat, blond boy were taken back to their school. Oddly enough, Hendley could not now remember what their punishment had been. A week deprived of recreation hours, he supposed. It couldn’t have been very bad or he would remember.
Stranger still, the black-haired boy who had vanished behind the wall did not return to school. Hendley never saw or heard of him again.
A door opened into the white room where Hendley sat on the cold bench. A nurse entered. She glanced at him with clinical objectivity. In one hand she carried a small vial and a hypodermic needle.
“What’s that?” Hendley asked sharply.
“Protective inoculation,” the woman said with brisk indifference. “Hold out your arm.”
Conditioned from childhood to frequent inoculations, Hendley raised his arm. The nurse was as efficient as her manner. He hardly felt the prick of the needle.
“Now you will follow me,” she said, after deftly removing and discarding the detachable needle.
The room to which she led him turned out to be a large office, facing the typical open courtyard around which all of the central building towers were constructed. Drapes were drawn back over a broad window. Pale moonlight filtered through the courtyard from the invisible sky above. A large white desk dominated the room. Behind it sat the Morale Investigator who had come to Hendley’s room.
The door closed and Hendley was alone with the Investigator, who gestured toward a comfortably upholstered, backless couch to the left of the desk. “Sit down,” the big man said. And then, solicitously, “Are you cold? I can raise the heat level.”
“No,” Hendley said stiffly. “I’m not cold.”
It was only after he had sat on the couch that he realized how low it was. In contrast, the wide, high desk and the large swivel chair behind it seemed higher than normal. Hendley found himself looking up at the Investigator. The inferior position, he reflected. He remembered from his architectural studies that in some of the offices in Administration buildings the floors were actually angled, so that an official at his desk would always be on a somewhat higher level than any caller.
“Would you like to tell me about it now?” the Investigator asked. His tone was mild, personal, inviting confidence. Hendley studied him more closely. The impression of size still predominated, but with it there was a clear effect of controlled, well-muscled, even graceful movements. The man’s features were large but well balanced. His complexion was ruddy. There was about him an aura of well-disciplined strength. Here was a man you could trust—a man you could lean on.
“There’s nothing to tell,” Hendley said, stalling, wishing again that he had his uniform on, unable to shake the feeling that, with his body exposed to the most casual scrutiny, the workings of his mind must also be visible.
The older man smiled. “Perhaps you don’t realize how much we know.”
Hendley thought suddenly of ABC-331—of Ann. Did they know about her? Had she found someone waiting when she returned to her room? Or had she been caught even earlier?
The Investigator swiveled in his chair to face Hendley directly, looking down at him, his expression tolerant and benign. “As of the moment you failed to report to the infirmary in response to the notice delivered at—let me see—9:35 this morning, your number was fed to the master board for automatic recording and analysis.” The Investigator smiled. “Would you care to know exactly what time you had coffee in the vending cafe across from the Agricultural Research Center? Or just when you entered that newsview theater this afternoon?”
Hendley parried the smile with one of his own. He knew that the information was supposed to impress and frighten him. But he thought: They can only track the identity disc when I used it, or tried to use it. That wouldn’t tell them about the meeting with Ann. Aloud he said, “I guess you know the whole story then. There isn’t much point to all this.”
“We are less interested in what you did than why,” the Investigator said. “Though of course knowing precisely what your activities were helps us to understand their pattern.” He leaned forward confidentially. “There is a gap—between the time you left the theater and the time you tried to have dinner. You might as well tell me about it, because I’ll find out as soon as all the reports are in.”
Relief flooded through Hendley. They didn’t know about Ann! How foolish to try to take him in with so transparent a warning—as if the computers needed time to correlate reports!
“You must have found her very attractive,” the Investigator said suddenly.
Hendley was caught unprepared. In his relief he had begun to relax into overconfidence. Now, stunned, he felt the blood draining from his face—a sure betrayal of his emotions. “Her?” he questioned automatically. “I—I don’t understand.” But his thoughts darted this way and that in his skull like trapped particles. The guard at the museum, he thought. But there had been no careful search for Hendley there. She must have escaped. How did the Investigator know about her? Was it a trick? Was he only guessing? Had Hendley then given himself away, letting his reaction to a simple ruse betray him?
“You needn’t bother to pretend,” the Investigator said. His expression remained kindly, sympathetic, warmly understanding. In spite of his predicament Hendley felt drawn to the man. But that was the idea, he caught himself. Gain the confidence of the adult as you did of the child. Make him feel helpless in the face of superior knowledge, superior skills, superior forces. Helpless—but with nothing to fear.
“It’s generally a woman,” the Investigator went on. “You shouldn’t feel that you’re the only one who’s been tempted. There are certain women”—he spread his hands in a gesture that said: We are both men of understanding. We know about these things. There is nothing to conceal from each other—“usually 5-Daywomen who have lost sight of the true goal, who think only of today’s physical pleasure. Often we can help them—when we find them. Such women are generally young and quite attractive, even beautiful. Beauty in a way is their undoing. They are unable to see beyond it.” He coughed apologetically. “Just as men are sometimes unable to see beyond it. It’s easy for them to make a man forget his goal.”
But Hendley was no longer listening. Beautiful, he thought, remembering how ABC-331 had seemed to protest when he tried to tell her how beautiful she was. What had she said? “It’s what I’m supposed to be.” Almost bitterly, her soft lips twisting wryly. What had she meant? Was she one of those women the Investigator referred to? No! That, too, was a trick to make him talk.
“There was nothing like that,” he said firmly. “There was no woman. I’m already Assigned.”
“And you’re perfectly happy with your Assigned?” the older man shot at him quickly.
“Of course.”
The Investigator frowned. Disappointment and disapproval were clearly reflected in his gaze. “I’m trying to help you, TRH-247,” he said slowly. “But you must cooperate. What you have done is a grave infraction of the rules of order of the Organization. You must know that. I had hoped you’d be frank with me, as I have been with you. Together we might find some way of lessening the penalty. But—”
“Would the penalty be less if there had been a woman? Is that what you mean?”
There was a slight stiffening of the Investigator’s handsome features, hardly visible to the eye, yet subtly altering his friendly aspect into something sterner, colder. “You choose not to talk?”
“All I said was that there was no woman.”
“You must have had a reason. Are you asking me to believe that you acted purely on a whim? You failed to report for work, TRH-247! You threw away an entire day’s work credit against your tax debt and risked far more in penalties! No sane man would do that without a reason. And I have checked your examination reports thoroughly. You’re in excellent health, mentally and physically. There is no evidence of emotional instability. This is the only defection in your record for the past ten years. Otherwise I would not even be trying to help you!”
He was too angry, Hendley thought with surprise. Was he so unused to defiance? Was it always easy for them? And suddenly Hendley knew what he was going to say. In a flash of insight he saw behind the shallow façade of fatherly wisdom before him. Here was only another man trapped by the system, another button-pusher who knew only the answers fed to him by his computer, a man too eager to be sure and safe, too anxious to have everything come out right and gain new tax credits for him. He had only to be told something he could understand—something that would fall into a familiar pattern.
“I had a reason,” Hendley said.
“What, then?”
“The Merger.”
Startled, the Investigator gaped at him, his composure abruptly shattered. “The Merger?”
“Yes. Maybe it was foolish, but I didn’t report for work today as a protest.” Hendley paused, reminded of one of the exhibits in the Historical Museum. “It was like a—a strike. That’s something workers used to do long ago when they wanted to protest.”
“Yes, yes, I know—go on!” the Investigator broke in eagerly.
“You wanted to know where I was this afternoon. I was in the Historical Museum. I like to go there. I like to know how things used to be. I was against the Merger all along. It—it’s like we’re all being swallowed up in something that’s too big even to know we exist. In the old days being a man meant something important in itself. Our ancestors—they weren’t just parts of a machine!”
“Ah!” The Investigator almost beamed. His eyes held a gleam of pleasure. “An ideological protest!”
“I guess you could call it that,” Hendley said slowly, wondering at the reaction his words had produced. “Surely I’m not the only one who’s ever felt this way.”
“Yes, yes, you’re quite right,” the gray-haired man said with some enthusiasm. “But an active protest! That is rare in this entire section. Why, I’ve had only one similar case in three years as a senior Investigator!”
Hendley nodded soberly, concealing a satisfaction which held a trace of malice. Tricks could work both ways. And yet what he had said was not really dishonest. He had merely selected that part of the truth which he wanted to reveal. Strangely enough, less than twenty hours earlier, as he had lain in bed while his vaguely formed protest crystallized into a decision, the feeling and the ideas he had just expressed had seemed all-important. Now it was more vital to protect a woman who had lied to him and disappeared—whom he might never be able to find again, even if she wanted to be found.
“This puts an entirely different complexion on your case,” the Investigator said, his enthusiasm no longer restrained. “Entirely different! Tell me, when did these symptoms first begin? Obviously they didn’t appear overnight. When did you first feel this intense dislike of the idea of the Merger?”
“I don’t know,” Hendley said honestly. Should he mention the childhood escapade? Had that been significant even at so early an age? Evidently the morale computer didn’t think so, for at some stage the fact had been eliminated from his record. Presumably it had appeared to be a meaningless youthful prank.
He thought of his dream of standing on a beach and seeing all of the other beaches within sight blend into one vast, featureless desert. On impulse he recounted the dream, deliberately going into great detail. As an added embellishment at the end he said, “I’ve had the same dream several times.”
“Splendid!” the Investigator exclaimed, as if Hendley had passed some kind of a test. “But surely, as a student of history, TRH-247, you must realize that the Merger was inevitable, that it is the culmination of centuries of social progress under the Organization?”
“Inevitable doesn’t mean good,” Hendley said. “If it was inevitable.”
“An excellent point,” the Investigator said warmly. “But in this instance irrelevant, of course. Aren’t you willing to admit that freedom is good? That it has always been, in different guises, man’s real dream? That an Organization which makes this possible for all men is the true fulfillment of that ageless dream?”
The Investigator’s eyes glinted with a zealot’s fever. He was so close to Freeman status, Hendley thought, so close to the goal. How could he believe anything which might stain or vitiate that prospect?
“Consider the record of history,” the gray-haired man said, his broad hand emphatically slapping the smooth white top of his desk. “The development of the Eastern and Western Organizations was a natural evolution. The very fact that in the end each arrived at the same concept of society’s structure and purpose is proof enough! Why should the two forms of Organization remain separate when the unalterable pressure of man’s own desires had made them finally the same in everything but name? Why shouldn’t they merge into one great and final Organization, one supreme affirmation of man’s right to freedom!”
Hendley was silent. The truth was that he had no clearly formulated answers. Even in his own mind he was divided. The lure of freedom could not be shaken off. And he could not argue with the fact that, along their separate routes over the years, East and West had arrived at the same social and economic structure, the same ordered relationship between the individual and the mass of society, the same ultimate goal of freedom. War between the two had ended not because weapons and opportunities ceased to exist, but because, during the century of recovery after the great atomic war which had left both societies weak and vast areas of the earth barren and uninhabitable, differences had gradually eroded until they ceased to be a source of conflict.
“How much do you really know of our history?” the Investigator demanded. “How much do you know, for instance, about the tax debt and how it all began?”
“Not very much,” Hendley admitted. “The general facts—”
“But you must go beyond the general facts, TRH-247!” the Investigator declaimed. “Consider the brilliance of that single concept—the very foundation of the Organization as we know it today!”
With animation the gray-haired man launched into a discourse on the stroke of genius which had launched man on his upward journey toward Freeman status. Once, it was true, there had been a time when men worked for themselves, were conscious of their individuality, and were paid in some form of money according to their capacity to earn. That money was used by all men to buy the services and necessities of life now provided entirely by the Organization—and to pay for recreation and leisure, the twin aspects of freedom. But few could afford more than a limited glimpse of these pleasures. Many never achieved them at all. Men fought one another for them, and the weak were crushed by the strong.
Somewhere along the line a point was reached when the money received for work was not enough to pay taxes to the government, which was the clumsy, early form of the Organization, and still buy the necessities of food, clothing, and lodging, to say nothing of leisure and recreation. The limited inhabitable land was one problem. Exploding population and ever-increasing automation complicated the situation. At that time an anonymous government worker originated the revolutionary concept of the tax debt. Every worker was allowed to carry over part of his taxes as a debt to the government, thus keeping more spendable money for himself and his needs. This preliminary measure proved inadequate. There were too many workers, labor was inefficiently used, and the spiraling cost of even that early form of Organization could not be held down. A point of balance was passed. It became impossible for the tax debt to be paid in the old way. It was only natural that in the end the worker should be employed directly by the Organization—that he should finally work not for money, but for credit against his debt.
The Corporate Tax Debt followed closely upon the origin of the personal debt—with the same result. Within the span of a few generations the Western Organization arrived at the crude, rough form of an economic and social structure already realized in the East. The Organization owned, controlled, supplied, managed everything. Concurrently with that first century of the Organization’s growth to maturity—and in large part because of its development—automated efficiency came into its own. Computers came more and more to dominate life. Under their guidance, wasteful and unrewarding ventures were gradually eliminated from man’s work and his dreams—like the costly and unsuccessful attempts to invade outer space. Man’s world narrowed—but man flourished.
Then came the war—a residue, the Investigator asserted, from the hostilities of the pre-Organization world. Only the wisdom of the computers enabled civilization to survive, for, a score of years before the first bomb fell, the computers on the Peace Planning Boards of both East and West had directed the movement of the cities underground.
The second century was one of recovery from the war, of continuing progress toward a more streamlined, automated and efficient society, and of the slow but steady return toward the surface of the earth. But if those years presented unusual obstacles—new ways of producing foods had constantly to be found, new methods of decontaminating air and water, new systems of construction and transport, new ways to accommodate a population which entered another phase of explosion in spite of the limitations of underground life—if there were difficulties, there were also advantages.
“At last the opportunities were present,” the Investigator cried with unflagging vigor, “for a truly controlled progress. Even the strictures of space underground became an aid rather than a deterrent. Controls were easier to put into effect, easier to enforce. And we had the tools, TRH-247—the computers to guide our way. No longer were we stumbling blindly, planned progress was possible!”
“But is it progress?” Hendley interjected defensively, for the first time breaking into the Investigator’s narrative. “Haven’t we lost a lot of things? That’s what I feel. It seems to me those early societies had something we don’t have. They were always moving outward, discovering new horizons, exploring—even if they blundered, they tried. We’re not trying. Our world isn’t expanding, it’s shrinking. It has less—less meaning.”
The Investigator’s smile was patronizing. “You say they were always questing—of course they were. Blindly, inefficiently, between their wars. But who benefited, TRH-247? All men? No. A few favored ones. And what were they really searching for on their new horizons?” He thundered the question. “What those favored few had! What is now possible for all of us! Man’s real goal, TRH-247, always known but never really understood—freedom! Freedom from the burdens of indebtedness and the necessity to work! Freedom for total leisure and recreation! The freedom which the system of the tax debt and the structure of the Organization has brought within the reach of all men—Freeman status!”
Breathless, the Investigator paused. Hendley felt an urge to protest further, but he was not sure of his ground. He wanted to say that efficiency should not be the only yardstick of achievement. He felt that there might be more to human endeavor than the pursuit of pleasure. He would have deplored the shriveling of a commodity which had no place in the Organization’s impersonal, automated world—man’s curiosity. But he was confused and uncertain. His growing confusion, in fact, seemed greater than could be accounted for by the Investigator’s argument. Hendley had to make an effort to focus his gaze on the older man’s face.
The Investigator resumed in a calmer tone. “I realize it’s hard to assimilate all of this at once,” he said, “and to see it in all its beauty and truth. Emotional reactions often resist reason. But you will be convinced, TRH-247. The first step has been made. Because you’ve told me the reasons behind your confusion, I think I can now help you. You believe the Organization doesn’t know and understand you. You’re wrong. The Organization exists for the individual—it has no other purpose. It is your Organization, TRH-247! It doesn’t seek to punish or hold you back, only to help you reach your goal. The Merger is no more than another giant step in that direction. If you could understand that, you’d realize how foolish you’ve been.”
Hendley stared at him. Where was all this leading? He didn’t see what the historical discussion—or indeed the whole interrogation—had solved other than the Investigator’s own immediate problem. He at least had found the answer he wanted—a pattern into which Hendley’s rebellion would neatly fit—for which there would be a specific, predictable number of solutions already worked out by the morale computer. Did the Investigators gain special tax debt credits for solving a difficult case? Probably not. In the Architectural Center there were debits for failure but no extra credits for success. Success was simply expected. But when you were a 1-Dayman like the Investigator, the avoidance of any debits would become enormously important.
How simply the system worked! But it had made the Investigator too anxious to discover an unusual case for his record. And too eager to find an orthodox interpretation.
“I’m going to make a recommendation in your case, TRH-247,” the big man said gravely. “You understand, it is only a recommendation, but I believe it will be accepted. Because of the far-reaching implications of the Merger, and its manifest importance for all mankind, the Organization is prepared to deal very generously with emotional disturbances which have occurred as a result.”
“I see,” Hendley said, not understanding at all. Why was he finding it so difficult to concentrate?
“Now,” the Investigator said, with the air of a parent about to produce an unexpected tidbit. “That newsview you went to see this afternoon—it was about a Freeman Camp, wasn’t it?”
“Well—yes,” Hendley said, puzzled by the abrupt change of subject.
“You’ve always wished that you could see inside a Freeman Camp, haven’t you? Don’t be embarrassed. It’s a natural wish.”
“I guess everyone would like to.”
“It’s quite impossible for that universal wish to be granted, of course. Privacy is one of freedom’s obvious privileges,” the Investigator said. “And the unrest that would result among those still far removed from Freeman status, if they were to see all they were denied, would be detrimental to general morale. That’s a risk I’m taking in your case, TRH-247,” he added. “But I think it’s justified.”
Hendley wondered what the man was leading up to. The smug air of benevolence was compounded by an evident relish for the secret about to be revealed. Or was it a secret? Hendley’s heart began to beat rapidly as a glimmer of understanding came. The possibility so overwhelmed him that he felt faintly dizzy.
“In cases like yours,” the Investigator said, “where there is clear indication of perplexity created by sincere doubts and understandable confusion, there is a precedent for the recommendation I’m going to make.” He paused with deliberate drama. “You probably didn’t know this, but there are circumstances in which visitors are allowed in Freeman Camps.”
“No,” Hendley said, his heart hammering now, “I didn’t know.”
Was this what he wanted? Had the incident with ABC-331, the adventure under the sun, been merely a substitute—a prelude?
“There will be a penalty, of course, for your failure to report for work. That cannot be erased. But I think I can promise you it won’t be too severe. And I think you’ll feel that the price is well worth paying.”
“A—a Freeman Camp?” Hendley stammered.
The Investigator rose. His towering figure seemed to fill the room with an overpowering presence of Authority. This was the personification of the Organization—huge, benevolent, kindly, all-knowing, all-powerful. “You will be one of the few fortunate ones, TRH-247,” the gray-haired man said triumphantly. “You will see what freedom really means. You will know the goal for which you work—to which we all aspire. You will see it with your own eyes—what even I have never seen! You will visit a Freeman Camp!”
The room began to swim around Hendley, and the immense figure blurred into a great gray mass bending over him. He grasped for the top of the desk but his fingers slipped on the smooth surface and he knew that he was falling, and as he fell the gates in a great wall opened for him and he toppled through. He felt a wild surge of exhilaration, but then he was spinning through a dazzling whiteness that was like the naked sun, and at the end of the white tunnel a brisk, tight-lipped, white-robed nurse moved toward him with a giant needle. A sense of outrage engulfed him. He cried out: “I’ve been drugged!”
Then he was shooting toward a tiny pinpoint of darkness at the end of the white tunnel. He threaded the black hole neatly with his body and emerged into total darkness…
“You will answer my questions as directly as possible,” the Investigator said. “Do you understand me?”
“Yes.”
“Now then—tell me what you think of the Merger.”
He groped for words. It was terribly important to answer the questioner truthfully. The need to talk was irresistible. His mind was like a dam whose floodgates were slowly opening. A torrent of words surged toward the widening gap, spilling through one by one, then with gathering force and relentless pressure, gushing out, a cascade of words so wonderful to speak, so compelling…
The eruption of words slowed and at last was still.
“You had never seen this woman before then?” the Investigator asked. Such a calm voice, so marvelously soothing!
“No.”
“Yet you were willing to risk everything to take her outside?”
“It was beautiful out there. I—I found something. It was like—freedom.”
“Ah!” The quiet voice breathed satisfaction.
“We gave ourselves so completely. I never felt so complete, so—so free!”
“You want freedom very much, don’t you?”
“Yes. I—I think so.”
“This woman—you kept calling her Ann. What is her real name? Do you remember it?”
A struggle was taking place deep in the recesses of Hendley’s being. He wanted to speak, to answer, but something was straining to contain the words. Her name—her number…
“What was her real name?”
“It was”—the word burst out—“Ann!”
“Ann?” The Investigator frowned. “That’s all she told you?”
“Yes.” The struggle was renewed. Inwardly Hendley writhed. He wanted to speak truthfully, to murmur the complete name: ABC-331. It beat against his skull, waiting only for the question to be repeated. If the Investigator would only ask once more he could speak and end this terrible pressure.
“Hmmm. Clever of her,” the Investigator said. “It will be difficult to trace her without the complete name. But of course she knew that. Some of them are very cunning.”
He fell silent. Hendley waited, yearning for the question to be asked again, but it never came. The feeling of compelling eagerness to speak began to wane, as if the deprivation of that one need to answer had weakened the entire structure of desire. The compulsion began to break up, to weaken, to dissolve into less forceful fragments of need…
“Hypno-serum,” Hendley said bitterly.
“Naturally,” the Investigator said, flashing his tolerant smile.
“Why did you go through with the rest of it?” Hendley demanded. “Why bother with direct questioning when you were going to get all the answers anyway?”
“It was necessary to know what you would tell us voluntarily,” the gray-haired man said. “And then to corroborate or disprove your statements by comparing them to your answers under hypno-questioning.”
Hendley’s stony expression concealed a sense of wonder. He had heard of cases in which individuals were able partially or completely to resist the truth drug for limited periods. He marveled at the struggle of will he had endured, and at the lucky chance which had enabled him to give Ann’s archaic first name instead of the complete number. But his feeling of relief was diluted by a lingering disappointment.
“Was it necessary to make that promise of a visit to a Freeman Camp under the circumstances?” he said a little caustically. “What did you gain by that device?”
“Device?” The Investigator showed surprise. “But that is still my recommendation.” He beamed at Hendley’s astonishment. “The hypno-questioning confirmed the genuine sincerity of your ideological protest and verified my diagnosis completely. Oh, there is the woman, of course, but she is merely symptomatic. These women prey on confusion and uncertainty, on the need for a love-object—or, as you so aptly suggested, TRH-247, a freedom-object. Your rebellion, as you call it, is motivated by a true desire for freedom. It merely needs focus and understanding to be directed toward intelligent channels. Your case will go to the morale computer for review in the morning, but I think I can assure you…”
The rest of his words were lost in the roaring which filled Hendley’s ears. He sat abruptly on the slab couch across from the Investigator’s desk, his legs trembling. The extreme reaction, coming immediately after his bout with the truth serum, left him feeling weak and giddy, his thoughts churning confusedly, his emotions a stew of incredulity, relief, and elation.
It was some moments before he thought again of Ann. His elation dimmed. Now there would be more delay—he didn’t know how long—before he could begin to search for her.
Or was the Investigator right? Was she no more than an objectivization of a deeper hunger? Would he, after knowing the reality of freedom, still feel the same way about her—still want her, regardless of the cost?
From his low couch TRH-247 stared up at the graying father-image in the high swivel chair, who returned his gaze with sympathetic understanding, and he felt a helpless doubt…