The early morning mist which blanketed the park was already burning off when Hendley made his way toward the concrete beige shells of the administration buildings at the east end of the Freeman Camp. Detouring across a stretch of lawn, he quickly found his shoes soaked through from the heavy dew. The wet grass was a vivid green. Leaves and bushes glistened in the hazy sunshine. Singing birds made a cheerful din high among the trees.
He would miss these things. But the atmosphere of the camp was so corrupting that its beauty was soon forgotten or ignored, blurred out of focus by the astigmatism of the free…
What Hendley felt as he neared the beige buildings was not regret but a kind of relief. Perhaps if ABC-331 had been with him, if they could have shared the sunlight and the carefree hours of leisure, life as a Freeman might have been different. And again it might not. Was this kind of freedom, as Ann had seemed to suggest, a monstrous deception? He was not sure what he believed. All he knew for certain was that he had to get out of the camp.
And he had to find her.
He felt no misgivings as he reached the administration building through which he had passed on the day of his arrival. There would be questions about his failure to report Nik’s assumption of his identity. The prospect of stiff debits against his tax debt no longer had the power to frighten. Even the possibility of more severe penalties, whatever they might be, did not matter.
There was a reassuring familiarity in the whir and drone of office machinery inside the beige building. One of the uniformed personnel behind a counter looked up brightly. He had an air of eagerness accentuated by prominently bulging blue eyes that reminded Hendley of a frog’s. “Good morning, sir!” the clerk piped. “What can we do for you? Not that there’s much we can do for the free, eh?”
Hendley decided there was no point in avoiding the issue. “I’m not a Freeman,” he said bluntly.
A startled look crossed the face of the clerk, whose pop-eyes blinked. The surprise gave way to amusement. “Ha! Ha!” He was pleased to share Hendley’s joke. “That’s quite good, sir.”
“It’s not a joke. I’m here by mistake. I mean, I don’t belong here. I’m only a visitor.”
“Oh!” The clerk managed a nervous smile. “For a moment I thought—but you’re not wearing a visitor’s uniform!” he exclaimed. “I don’t understand.”
“My name is TRH-247,” Hendley explained patiently. “You’ll find me in your records. They’ll show me leaving a week ago—but I didn’t leave. Someone else left in my place—a Freeman.”
The clerk was bewildered, his protruding eyes growing larger than ever. “I—I think you’d better talk to the Office Manager,” he said quickly. “If you’ll wait just a moment…” Breathless, he almost ran for the glass door of an adjoining office. In a few seconds he reappeared, flushed with excitement, pointing Hendley out to a beige-uniformed official. Hendley was relieved to recognize the brisk, efficient man who had given him his final briefing when he entered the camp.
“Now then,” the Office Manager said with a genial smile which failed to cover an acute inspection. “What is this about a confusion in status? I’m afraid my assistant was a bit, ah, excited.”
“It’s simple enough,” Hendley said. “I’m a visitor. I shouldn’t be here. A week ago I—”
“I think we’d better be concerned only with the, er, the present,” the official said with a touch of impatience. “I see you’re not wearing a visitor’s uniform. Can you explain that?”
“Another man switched uniforms with me,” Hendley said. “And more than just uniforms!”
The Manager frowned. “I see. It’s irregular, of course, but no great harm done, I suppose. You were scheduled to leave today? What is your number?”
“TRH-247,” Hendley said. “And I was scheduled to leave a week ago!”
The assistant, still hovering nearby, gasped. His superior eyed Hendley coldly, turned to the shocked clerk, and snapped, “Check that!” To Hendley he said, his manner now less carefully polite, “I think you’d better explain.”
“I’ve been trying to,” Hendley said evenly. “I was a visitor. A week ago I was attacked by a Freeman. He took my uniform and switched identity discs with me. He left camp in my place. That’s all there is to it. I know I should have reported this sooner, but—”
“Here it is, sir!” the clerk said, rushing up with a section of tape from a computer. “But he left!”
The Manager glanced at the tape. When he looked up at Hendley his expression was disapproving, his eyes cold. “Now then,” he said, “I think you’d better tell us your real name. If you’ll let me see your identity disc—”
“I just told you my name!” Hendley said angrily. “TRH-247!”
“TRH-247 was a visitor to the camp. I gather you knew that. He left as scheduled at noon six days ago.”
“This is ridiculous!” Hendley cried. “You’re not listening to me! The man who left was an impostor! Look at this hand—they broke the bones to get my identity disc off! I’m wearing his. NIK-700 is his name. He’s the Freeman! I’m only a 3-Dayman sent here for therapy.”
The clerk did not need his superior’s curt nod. He was already hurrying off to question a computer.
“This, ah, ruse has been tried before,” the Manager said to Hendley, his voice deceptively soft.
“I suppose it has. I’m just surprised you didn’t catch him when he left,” Hendley said. “After all, you were the one who processed me in yourself. You must remember. You suggested that I take in the show at the main Rec Hall.”
“I tell that to everyone who enters the camp,” the official said. “And I don’t remember you. I was not referring to any illegal departure from the camp as a ruse—I meant your obvious attempt to claim another identity. Our records, I can assure you, do not show mistakes. The machines cannot make errors. You must be aware of that. The visitor, TRH-247, left on schedule—that much we can be sure of. As to your identity, sir—”
The assistant reappeared. This time the Manager barely glanced at the section of tape from the computer. He waved the pop-eyed clerk away. When he faced Hendley his manner was distant, his voice clipped. “I trust you will not try this again, NIK-700,” he said. “Freemen are not permitted to re-enter the Organization. You are familiar with the rule.”
“You’re a fool!” Hendley burst out. He waved his broken hand in front of the official’s face. “Doesn’t this hand mean anything to you? Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?”
“Bandages are easy to make,” the official said remotely. “Even broken bones are simple enough to manage, I suppose, if you’re, ah, desperate enough. I’ll recommend that you receive morale therapy, of course. We are quite familiar with the, er, aberration which occasionally makes a Freeman lose his, ah, perspective and wish to leave the camp. But I can assure you it’s quite impossible.”
“But I’m not a Freeman!” Hendley raged, gripped by a kind of terror.
“I’m afraid I will have to ask you to leave the Administration area,” the Office Manager said coldly. “Except for necessary business, it is out of bounds for Freemen.”
Hendley stared at him in stunned disbelief. It was incredible that the man would not remember him—even more inconceivable that he would attach no plausibility whatever to Hendley’s story. Numbers were all that mattered—the set of symbols setting forth a man’s identity, establishing his status, certifying his existence, a combination filed away in an electronic brain which could, on demand, reveal who and what a man was.
“You’ve got to listen to me,” Hendley said with an effort for control. “I’m Thomas Robert Hendley. TRH-247. I’m not a Freeman. There’s been a switch—”
“I’m sorry, sir,” the beige-clad official said in brisk tones that contained no sorrow, only a curt dismissal. “Our computers do not make mistakes.”
Hendley backed away. The unknown, unnameable terror shook him. It was the demoralizing fear which might have been felt by some very clever, almost human machine which had been taught every emotion a man could feel except this one, and which, confronted with the unknown, began to clash and grind to a halt, stripping its intricate gears, shattering its neatly made cogs and bolts, flying into a thousand pieces, until it was no longer an almost human machine, but merely a collection of unidentifiable pieces of something that did not exist any more.
Terrorized by a glimpse of non-existence, Hendley burst from the administration building and ran across the cool, wet, and slippery grass toward the beckoning shadows of a grove of trees.
Hendley crouched at the edge of the woods where a low growth of bushes crowding against tree trunks was dense enough to hide even a white uniform. All day he had loitered in the woods, at first in dumb panic, later in despair, and at last with a growing determination. He had spent the afternoon measuring the depth of the grove, verifying the fact that it followed the exterior wall of the camp along its entire length, following each footpath to see where it led—and watching the wall. He had learned several facts he had not known before. The wall was patrolled by robots. Its surface was somehow sensitized, the slightest touch setting off an unheard alarm which in less than a minute brought mobile robots trundling along the wide, flat top of the wall. The interior surface of the wall, unlike the outside, was well maintained. There were no cracks, no soft crumbling places to provide holds for hand or foot. A group of men might have made a human pyramid, from which the topmost man could have reached the top of the wall. But before this feat could have been accomplished, a robot would have appeared with silent efficiency. Hendley did not know what action the robot-guards would take, but it was certain that they would have been trained to act firmly and decisively. Resistance would be futile.
On two occasions, once during the early afternoon, again near dusk, he had deliberately scraped the wall with a broken-off branch. Each time he had scurried back to the cover of the woods to watch the robots. Each time he had barely reached the first line of trees before the guards appeared. They made no attempt to leave the wall and gave no sign of having seen him.
Watching their impersonal inspection bitterly, he thought about the wall. It did more than keep out unauthorized persons and screen from the curious the activities in the camp. Walls worked two ways. While Freemen blissfully pursued their endless pleasure, the wall made their camp a prison.
Waiting for total darkness, Hendley let his reflections range beyond the wall to the bleak prospect of the endless desert. Would he find food and water in that wasteland? Would he lose himself in its vastness without ever finding his way to the nearest city? Angrily he brushed aside his doubts. Frightening as the desert might be, it could be no more terrible than a meaningless freedom.
In the last light Hendley made his preparations, stripping leaves and thin useless branches from the long slender trunk of a fallen sapling he had found earlier in the day. He doubted that this rude pole-ladder would reach all the way to the top of the wall, but it would bring him close enough. He would have to clamber up in frantic seconds. And if he failed, there might be no second chance.
At last he was ready. The darkness was deep. He crept to the edge of the woods, dragging his improvised ladder. For several minutes he crouched motionless, searching the wall. Something had disturbed his eye. Not movement, but a sense of something foreign in the darkness, a shape…
He went cold. Directly opposite his position, immobile on top of the wall, sat a robot-guard. Against the night sky its gray shape was almost invisible. How long had it been there? It must have come while he was busy cleaning off the tree trunk. But surely its station opposite him was a coincidence.
Stealthily Hendley retreated into the woods, taking great pains to pull his pole-ladder silently through the undergrowth. Not until he had covered an estimated fifty yards to the left of his original position did he angle again toward the edge of the woods facing the wall. This was still too close, but it would give him a check against the tactics of the robot wall patrol. He had to know how many of them were on guard, and how they functioned.
Reaching the cleared strip, he peered toward the wall. A robot—silent, impassive, tirelessly observant—sat exactly across the way.
Hendley plunged back among the trees. Running blindly, indifferent to the branches which stung and scratched his face and arms, he covered another thirty yards, this time without his makeshift ladder. He slowed his pace, stole forward another ten paces, then approached the clearing. The robot-guard was ahead of him. Its silent posture on top of the wall seemed to mock the labored heaving of Hendley’s chest, the clamorous protest in his mind.
He sank to his knees. “They can’t be everywhere,” he whispered aloud. But he knew in his heart that, wherever he approached the wall, the guard would be waiting. Whatever move he made would have been anticipated. The pattern of his actions during the day in testing the wall had been recorded. A computer would have analyzed the sequence. The robots would have been briefed accordingly.
There was no escape.
The warning voice seemed to be coming over a loudspeaker, magnified and distorted. The voice was some distance away when Hendley, lying on the damp ground in the woods, first heard it. As it approached, its droning message was repeated at regular intervals. “Clear the woods!” the voice urged with metallic emphasis. “This is a warning. All persons not engaged in the hunt must vacate the woods. Repeat: Clear the woods…”
Slowly the urgency of the warning penetrated Hendley’s despair. Several times he had heard of the hunt, but he’d never learned exactly what it was. Obviously there was danger of some kind involved. He supposed that a prey—he’d heard the word “target” used once—was let loose in the woods. What kind of target? An animal of some sort? Was the danger real, or was it all simply a game with a formidable imitation of reality?
Hendley rose and made his way out of the woods. As he emerged into the open lawn of the park contained by the belt of trees, a group of Freemen—as many women, it seemed in the darkness, as men—were crowding toward the dark labyrinth he had left. “Hey! What were you doing in there?” one of the men called. And another said, with laughter that had an almost hysterical edge, “Lucky you got out when you did! The hunt’s starting any minute!”
Hendley stopped to stare at the group. He was tempted to join them in their hunt. Curiosity pulled at him. They seemed an eager, exhilarated group. In the excitement of the chase he might even be able to forget the day’s events. He might lose himself.
In anguish he turned away. He was already lost. No artificial pleasure could alter that shattering truth. Nothing could change it.
He walked without aim or purpose. Careless of the menace lurking in deeply shadowed places, he was protected by his very indifference—or perhaps by the distant activity of the hunt. No yelling band of attackers burst upon him. He wandered through the camp, pausing here and there at a bar to gulp down whiskey he neither tasted nor felt. His whole body grew numb, and his thoughts became mercifully fuzzy, with only a small projection of reality poking up through the haze to bring him pain.
At last he came reeling along the street leading to the dwelling unit he had inherited from Nik. Hazily he thought: it is mine now. It is really mine. And mine is his, as if I had never occupied it. With painful perception he realized that the room in which he had lived for so many years in the outer ring of the Architectural Center bore no mark of his personality, no stamp that made it his. Everything in it belonged to the Organization. Everything had been issued—not to a man, but to a number. To a faceless tool which had been taught a limited pattern of activity.
A tall figure loomed in Hendley’s way. He stopped, trying to focus his gaze. A strange face, youthful in outline but lined and reddened as if the skin did not react well to the sun’s direct rays, smiled at him. “I say there,” the man cried cheerfully. “Out having your jolts, eh?”
Hendley tried to stumble past him, made vaguely uneasy by the stranger’s hearty manner and forced good humor. But the tall Freeman caught his arm. “What’s your hurry?” he asked, his tone cajoling rather than resentful. “The night’s young!”
“I’ve had enough,” Hendley mumbled.
The grip tightened on his arm. The man’s fingers were not still. Hendley became aware of a gentle kneading of his bicep. “I can teach you some real pleasure-pure,” the tall man suggested, suddenly coy. “A new experience! I’ll bet you haven’t—”
“No, I haven’t!” Angrily Hendley jerked away from the overfriendly grasp.
“But you don’t know what you’ve missed!” The young-old face was eager. The “s” sound hissed through his teeth in coquettish invitation. “You’ll never know unless you try. I can show you!”
Hendley struck furiously at the simpering smile. Something of the long day’s frustration went into the brutal blow. The Freeman staggered back. Through bleeding lips came an outraged protest. “Beast! You have no sensitivity, no imagination! I should have known it!”
Hendley spun away. He wanted only to reach the privacy of his room, to find the oblivion of drugged sleep. But before he had traveled a hundred feet his legs gave way and he crumpled to the pavement. He lay where he had fallen, head whirling, the ground revolving slowly. He had a sense of flying, and then of the surface on which he was borne beginning to tip at an angle until he felt sure that he would slide off into empty space.
“You poor thing! Let me help you.” Gentle, insistent hands plucked at Hendley’s sleeve. Yielding helplessly to the pressure, he rolled over onto his back. A woman’s face rocked slowly across the sky of his vision, like a pendulum with painted features. Pale face, capped with wavy hair defined by a row of bangs across a wide forehead. A red mouth smiled. The lips moved. “Dear boy! You need to rest. Do you live near here?”
Hendley nodded. The woman’s tone was sympathetic, soothing. Her fingers were not demanding. He tried to sit up, and with the woman’s help he managed it. Soon he was standing, leaning against her. She was quite short, her head no higher than his shoulder, her body a neat, well-rounded package, compact and strong. A full breast pressed warmly against his arm, but the woman seemed to be oblivious of the contact.
“I’ll help you,” she said. “Is it this way?”
Hendley mumbled directions. He felt better now that he was back on his feet and moving. When he reached his room he was prepared to thank the plump-bosomed stranger, but she gave him no chance to speak. “I’m not going to leave you alone until you’re safe in bed!” she admonished him firmly, as if talking to a child.
He made no protest. Though he wanted only to be left alone, he was grateful for her help. He wasn’t sure that he could have made it to his room on his own.
The woman led him to his bed. “What a pleasant room!” she murmured. “Just lie down now. No, don’t fight me, relax.”
Deftly, efficiently, it seemed impersonally, she stripped him of his uniform. Hendley was too absorbed in the problem of remaining in place to feel more than mild surprise at her attentions. Then, without his realizing how it had happened, the woman was beside him on the bed, her uniform gone, her warm body an unexpected abundance of sweetly scented, swelling hills and dipping valleys.
“He tried to pick you up, didn’t he?” she whispered huskily. “I saw him.”
“What? Oh.” Hendley realized obscurely that she was referring to the tall blond Freeman with the red face.
“You didn’t like him, did you?”
“No. Listen, I didn’t mean for you to…” His feeble protest trailed off. There was no resistance left in him.
“He’s always following me,” the woman said resentfully. “Trying to take men away from me. But you like me better, don’t you?”
“You—you know him?”
“Oh, yes. We’re Contracted.” The woman’s hands stroked Hendley’s weary body. They floated together on the slowly drifting bed. Hendley had a sense of unreality, of existing in the distorted world of a dream. The woman’s voice purred in his ear, her breath warm. “I’m glad you like me better. Wait’ll I tell him. Won’t he be jealous!” She chuckled. “What’s your name?”
Hendley groped for an answer. He couldn’t think. His flesh was betraying him, betraying his weariness, denying his hopeless despair.
“You do have a name, don’t you?” the woman asked with a low giggle. “You must have a name.”
“Yes, it’s…” At last the answer came to him. With a cry that might have been a gasp of pain, he said, “NIK-700!”