by Ira Levin
“At this hour?”
“We’ve done it before and had no trouble,” she said. “You don’t mind?”
He shrugged. “I guess not,” he said.
“Hold these over your eyes.” She gave him two wads of cotton. He closed his eyes and put the wads in place, holding them with a finger each. She began winding bandage around his head and over the wads; he withdrew his fingers, bent his head to help her. She kept winding bandage, around and around, up onto his forehead, down onto his cheeks.
“Are you sure you’re really not medicenter?” he said.
She chuckled and said, “Positive.” She pressed the end of the bandage, sticking it tight; pressed all over it and over his eyes, then took his arm. She turned him—toward the plaza, he knew —and started him walking.
“Don’t forget your mask,” he said.
She stopped short. “Thanks for reminding me,” she said. Her hand left his arm, and after a moment, came back. They walked on.
Their footsteps changed, became muted by space, and a breeze cooled his face below the bandage; they were in the plaza. “Snowflake’s” hand on his arm drew him in a diagonal leftward course, away from the direction of the Institute.
“When we get where we’re going,” she said, “I’m going to put a piece of tape over your bracelet; over mine too. We avoid knowing one another’s namebers as much as possible. I know yours—I’m the one who spotted you—but the others don’t; all they know is that I’m bringing a promising member. Later on, one or two of them may have to know it.”
“Do you check the history of everyone who’s assigned here?”
“No. Why?”
“Isn’t that how you ‘spotted’ me, by finding out that I used to think about classifying myself?”
“Three steps down here,” she said. “No, that was only confirmation. And two and three. What I spotted was a look you have, the look of a member who isn’t one-hundred-per-cent in the bosom of the Family. You’ll learn to recognize it too, if you join us. I found out who you were, and then I went to your room and saw that picture on the wall.”
“The horse?”
“No, Marx Writing,” she said. “Of course the horse. You draw the way no normal member would even think of drawing. I checked your history then, after I’d seen the picture.”
They had left the plaza and were on one of the walkways west of it—K or L, he wasn’t sure which.
“You’ve made a mistake,” he said. “Someone else drew that picture.”
“You drew it,” she said; “you’ve claimed charcoal and sketch pads.”
“For the member who drew it. A friend of mine at academy.”
“Well that’s interesting,” she said. “Cheating on claims is a better sign than anything. Anyway, you liked the picture well enough to keep it and frame it. Or did your friend make the frame too?”
He smiled. “No, I did,” he said. “You didn’t miss a thing.”
“We turn here, to the right.”
“Are you an adviser?”
“Me? Hate, no.”
“But you can pull histories?”
“Sometimes.”
“Are you at the Institute?”
“Don’t ask so many questions,” she said. “Listen, what do you want us to call you? Instead of Li RM.”
“Oh,” he said. “Chip.”
“ ‘Chip’? No,” she said, “don’t just say the first thing that comes into your mind. You ought to be something like ‘Pirate’ or ‘Tiger.’ The others are King and Lilac and Leopard and Hush and Sparrow.”
“Chip’s what I was called when I was a boy,” he said. “I’m used to it.”
“All right,” she said, “but it’s not what I would have chosen. Do you know where we are?”
“No.”
“Fine. Left now.”
They went through a door, up steps, through another door, and into an echoing hall of some kind, where they walked and turned, walked and turned, as if by-passing a number of irregularly placed objects. They walked up a stopped escalator and along a corridor that curved toward the right.
She stopped him and asked for his bracelet. He raised his wrist, and his bracelet was pressed tight and rubbed. He touched it; there was smoothness instead of his nameber. That and his sightlessness made him suddenly feel disembodied; as if he were about to drift from the floor, drift right out through whatever walls were around him and up into space, dissolve there and become nothing.
She took his arm again. They walked farther and stopped. He heard a knock and two more knocks, a door opening, voices stilling. “Hi,” she said, leading him forward. “This is Chip. He insists on it.”
Chairs scuffed against the floor, voices gave greetings. A hand took his and shook it. “I’m King,” a member said, a man. “I’m glad you decided to come.”
“Thanks,” he said.
Another hand gripped his harder. “Snowflake says you’re quite an artist”—an older man than King. “I’m Leopard.”
Other hands came quickly, women: “Hello, Chip; I’m Lilac.” “And I’m Sparrow. I hope you’ll become a regular.” “I’m Hush, Leopard’s wife. Hello.” The last one’s hand and voice were old; the other two were young.
He was led to a chair and sat in it. His hands found tabletop before him, smooth and bare, its edge slightly curving; an oval table or a large round one. The others were sitting down; Snowflake on his right, talking; someone else on his left. He smelled something burning, sniffed to make sure. None of the others seemed aware of it. “Something’s burning,” he said.
“Tobacco,” the old woman, Hush, said on his left.
“Tobacco?” he said.
“We smoke it,” Snowflake said. “Would you like to try some?”
“No,” he said.
Some of them laughed. “It’s not really deadly,” King said, farther away on his left. “In fact, I suspect it may have some beneficial effects.”
“It’s very pleasing,” one of the young women said, across the table from him.
“No, thanks,” he said.
They laughed again, made comments to one another, and one by one grew silent. His right hand on the tabletop was covered by Snowflake’s hand; he wanted to draw it away but restrained himself. He had been stupid to come. What was he doing, sitting there sightless among those sick false-named members? His own abnormality was nothing next to theirs. Tobacco! The stuff had been extincted a hundred years ago; where the hate had they got it?
“We’re sorry about the bandage, Chip,” King said. “I assume Snowflake’s explained why it’s necessary.”
“She has,” Chip said, and Snowflake said, “I did.” Her hand left Chip’s; he drew his from the tabletop and took hold of his other in his lap.
“We’re abnormal members, which is fairly obvious,” King said. “We do a great many things that are generally considered sick. We think they’re not. We know they’re not.” His voice was strong and deep and authoritative; Chip visualized him as large and powerful, about forty. “I’m not going to go into too many details,” he said, “because in your present condition you would be shocked and upset, just as you’re obviously shocked and upset by the fact that we smoke tobacco. You’ll learn the details for yourself in the future, if there is a future as far as you and we are concerned.”
“What do you mean,” Chip said, “’in my present condition?”
There was silence for a moment. A woman coughed. “While you’re dulled and normalized by your most recent treatment,” King said.
Chip sat still, facing in King’s direction, stopped by the irrationality of what he had said. He went over the words and answered them: “I’m not dulled and normalized.”
“But you are,” King said.
“The whole Family is,” Snowflake said, and from beyond her came “Everyone, not just you”—in the old man’s voice of Leopard.
“What do you think a treatment consists of?” King asked.
Chip said, “Vaccines, enzymes, the cont
raceptive, sometimes a tranquilizer—”
“Always a tranquilizer,” King said. “And LPK, which minimizes aggressiveness and also minimizes joy and perception and every other fighting thing the brain is capable of.”
“And a sexual depressant,” Snowflake said.
“That too,” King said. “Ten minutes of automatic sex once a week is barely a fraction of what’s possible.”
“I don’t believe it,” Chip said. “Any of it.”
They told him it was true. “It’s true, Chip.” “Really, it’s the truth.” “It’s true!”
“You’re in genetics,” King said; “isn’t that what genetic engineering is working toward?—removing aggressiveness, controlling the sex drive, building in helpfulness and docility and gratitude? Treatments are doing the job in the meantime, while genetic engineering gets past size and skin color.”
“Treatments help us,” Chip said.
“They help Uni,” the woman across the table said.
“And the Wei-worshippers who programmed Uni,” King said. “But they don’t help us, at least not as much as they hurt us. They make us into machines.”
Chip shook his head, and shook it again.
“Snowflake told us”—it was Hush, speaking in a dry quiet voice that accounted for her name—“that you have abnormal tendencies. Haven’t you ever noticed that they’re stronger just before a treatment and weaker just after one?”
Snowflake said, “I’ll bet you made that picture frame a day or two before a treatment, not a day or two after one.”
He thought for a moment. “I don’t remember,” he said, “but when I was a boy and thought about classifying myself, after treatments it seemed stupid and pre-U, and before treatments it was—exciting.”
“There you are,” King said.
“But it was sick excitement!”
“It was healthy,” King said, and the woman across the table said, “You were alive, you were feeling something. Any feeling is healthier than no feeling at all.”
He thought about the guilt he had kept secret from his advisers since Karl and the Academy. He nodded. “Yes,” he said, “yes, that could be.” He turned his face toward King, toward the woman, toward Leopard and Snowflake, wishing he could open his eyes and see them. “But I don’t understand this,” he said. “You get treatments, don’t you? Then aren’t you—”
“Reduced ones,” Snowflake said.
“Yes, we get treatments,” King said, “but we’ve managed to have them reduced, to have certain components of them reduced, so that we’re a little more than the machines Uni thinks we are.”
“And that’s what we’re offering you,” Snowflake said; “a way to see more and feel more and do more and enjoy more.”
“And to be more unhappy; tell him that too.” It was a new voice, soft but clear, the other young woman. She was across the table and to Chip’s left, close to where King was.
“That isn’t so,” Snowflake said.
“Yes it is,” the clear voice said—a girl’s voice almost; she was no more than twenty, Chip guessed. “There’ll be days when you’ll hate Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei,” she said, “and want to take a torch to Uni. There’ll be days when you’ll want to tear off your bracelet and run to a mountaintop like the old incurables, just to be able to do what you want to do and make your own choices and live your own life.”
“Lilac,” Snowflake said.
“There’ll be days when you’ll hate us,” she said, “for waking you up and making you not a machine. Machines are at home in the universe; people are aliens.”
“Lilac,” Snowflake said, “we’re trying to get Chip to join us; we’re not trying to scare him away.” To Chip she said, “Lilac is really abnormal.”
“There’s truth in what Lilac says,” King said. “I think we all have moments when we wish there were someplace we could go, some settlement or colony where we could be our own masters—”
“Not me,” Snowflake said.
“And since there isn’t such a place,” King said, “yes, we’re sometimes unhappy. Not you, Snowflake; I know. With rare exceptions like Snowflake, being able to feel happiness seems to mean being able to feel unhappiness as well. But as Sparrow said, any feeling is better and healthier than none at all; and the unhappy moments aren’t that frequent, really.”
“They are,” Lilac said.
“Oh, cloth,” Snowflake said. “Let’s stop all this talk about unhappiness.”
“Don’t worry, Snowflake,” the woman across the table, Sparrow, said; “if he gets up and runs you can trip him.”
“Ha, ha, hate, hate,” Snowflake said.
“Snowflake, Sparrow,” King said. “Well, Chip, what’s your answer? Do you want to get your treatments reduced? It’s done by steps; the first one is easy, and if you don’t like the way you feel a month from now, you can go to your adviser and tell him you were infected by a group of very sick members whom you unfortunately can’t identify.”
After a moment Chip said, “All right. What do I do?” His arm was squeezed by Snowflake. “Good,” Hush whispered.
“Just a moment, I’m lighting my pipe,” King said.
“Are you all smoking?” Chip asked. The burning smell was intense, drying and stinging his nostrils.
“Not right now,” Hush said. “Only King, Lilac, and Leopard.”
“We’ve all been doing it though,” Snowflake said. “It’s not a continuous thing; you do it awhile and then stop awhile.”
“Where do you get the tobacco?”
“We grow it,” Leopard said, sounding pleased. “Hush and I. In parkland.”
“In parkland?”
“That’s right,” Leopard said.
“We have two patches,” Hush said, “and last Sunday we found a place for a third.”
“Chip?” King said, and Chip turned toward him and listened. “Basically, step one is just a matter of acting as if you’re being overtreated,” King said; “slowing down at work, at games, at everything—slowing down slightly, not conspicuously. Make a small mistake at your work, and another one a few days later. And don’t do well at sex. The thing to do there is masturbate before you meet your girlfriend; that way you’ll be able to fail convincingly.”
“Masturbate?”
“Oh, fully treated, fully satisfied member,” Snowflake said.
“Bring yourself to an orgasm with your hand,” King said. “And then don’t be too concerned when you don’t have one later. Let your girlfriend tell her adviser; don’t you tell yours. Don’t be too concerned about anything, the mistakes you make, lateness for appointments or whatever; let others do the noticing and reporting.”
“Pretend to doze off during TV,” Sparrow said.
“You’re ten days from your next treatment,” King said. “At your next week’s adviser meeting, if you’ve done what I’ve told you, your adviser will sound you out about your general torpor. Again, no concern on your part. Apathy. If you do the whole thing well, the depressants in your treatment will be slightly reduced, enough so that a month from now you’ll be anxious to hear about step two.”
“It sounds easy enough,” Chip said.
“It is,” Snowflake said, and Leopard said, “We’ve all done it; you can too.”
“There’s one danger,” King said. “Even though your treatment may be slightly weaker than usual, its effects in the first few days will still be strong. You’ll feel a revulsion against what you’ve done and an urge to confess to your adviser and get stronger treatments than ever. There’s no way of telling whether or not you’ll be able to resist the urge. We did, but others haven’t. In the past year we’ve given this talk to two other members; they did the slowdown but then confessed within a day or two after being treated.”
“Then won’t my adviser be suspicious when I do the slowdown? He must have heard about those others.”
“Yes,” King said, “but there are legitimate slowdowns, when a member’s need for depressants has lessened, so if yo
u do the job convincingly you’ll get away with it. It’s the urge to confess that you have to worry about.”
“Keep telling yourself”—it was Lilac speaking—“that it’s a chemical that’s making you think you’re sick and in need of help, a chemical that was infused into you without your consent.”
“My consent?” Chip said.
“Yes,” she said. “Your body is yours, not Uni’s.”
“Whether you’ll confess or hold out,” King said, “depends on how strong your mind’s resistance is to chemical alteration, and there’s not much you can do about it one way or the other. On the basis of what we know of you, I’d say you have a good chance.”
They gave him some more pointers on slowdown technique —to skip his midday cake once or twice, to go to bed before the last chime—and then King suggested that Snowflake take him back to where they had met. “I hope we’ll be seeing you again, Chip,” he said. “Without the bandage.”
“I hope so,” Chip said. He stood and pushed back his chair. “Good luck,” Hush said; Sparrow and Leopard said it too. Lilac said it last: “Good luck, Chip.”
“What happens,” he asked, “if I resist the urge to confess?”
“We’ll know,” King said, “and one of us will get in touch with you about ten days after the treatment.”
“How will you know?”
“We’ll know.”
His arm was taken by Snowflake’s hand. “All right,” he said. “Thank you, all of you.”
They said “Don’t mention it,” and “You’re welcome, Chip,” and “Glad to be of help.” Something sounded strange, and then—as Snowflake led him from the room—he realized what it was: the not-being-said of “Thank Uni.”
They walked slowly, Snowflake holding his arm not like a nurse but like a girl walking with her first boyfriend.
“It’s hard to believe,” he said, “that what I can feel now and see now—isn’t all there is.”
“It isn’t,” she said. “Not even half. You’ll find out.”