by Ira Levin
“Yes, I certainly can,” Chip said. He tipped ashes from his cigarette into the clean white tray.
“I’d just as soon you didn’t say anything to Wei about it,” Dover said. “You’re having lunch with him at one o’clock.”
“Karl too?”
“No, just you. I think he’s got you pegged as High Council material. I’ll come by at ten-of and take you to him. You’ll find a razor inside there—a thing that looks like a flashlight. This afternoon we’ll go to the medicenter and start de-whiskerizing.”
“There’s a medicenter?”
“There’s everything,” Dover said. “A medicenter, a library, a gym, a pool, a theater—there’s even a garden that you’d swear was up on top. I’ll show you around later.”
Chip said, “And this is where we—stay?”
“All except us poor shepherds,” Dover said. “I’ll be going out to another island, but not for at least six months, thank Uni.”
Chip put his cigarette out. He pressed it out thoroughly. “What if I don’t want to stay?” he said.
“Don’t want to?” Dover said.
“I’ve got a wife and a baby, remember?”
“Well so do lots of the others,” Dover said. “You’ve got a bigger obligation here, Chip; an obligation to the whole Family, including the members on the islands.”
“Nice obligation,” Chip said. “Silk coveralls and two girls at once.”
“That was for last night only,” Dover said. “Tonight you’ll be lucky to get one.” He sat up straight. “Look,” he said, “I know there are—surface attractions here that make it all look —questionable. But the Family needs Uni. Think of the way things were on Liberty! And it needs untreated programmers to run Uni and—well, Wei’ll explain things better than I can. And one day a week we wear paplon anyway. And eat cakes.”
“A whole day?” Chip said. “Really?”
“All right, all right,” Dover said, getting up. He went to a chair where Chip’s green coveralls lay and picked them up and felt their pockets. “Is everything here?” he asked.
“Yes,” Chip said. “Including some snapshots I’d like to have.”
“Sorry, nothing you came in with,” Dover said. “More rules.” He took Chip’s shoes from the floor and stood and looked at him. “Everyone’s a little unsure at first,” he said. “You’ll be proud to stay once you’ve got the right slant on things. It’s an obligation.”
“I’ll remember that,” Chip said.
There was a knock at the door, and the girl who had taken the tray came in with blue silk coveralls and white sandals. She put them on the foot of the bed.
Dover, smiling, said, “If you want paplon it can be arranged.”
The girl looked at him.
“Hate, no,” Chip said. “I guess I’m as worthy of silk as anyone else around here.”
“You are,” Dover said. “You are, Chip. I’ll see you at ten of one, right?” He started to the door with the green coveralls over his arm and the shoes in his hand. The girl hurried ahead to open the door for him.
Chip said, “What happened to Buzz?”
Dover stopped and turned, regretful-looking. “He was caught in ’015,” he said.
“And treated?”
Dover nodded.
“More rules,” Chip said.
Dover nodded again and turned and went out.
There were thin steaks cooked in a lightly spiced brown sauce, small browned onions, a sliced yellow vegetable that Chip hadn’t seen on Liberty—“Squash,” Wei said—and a clear red wine that was less enjoyable than the yellow of the night before. They ate with gold knives and forks, from plates with wide gold borders.
Wei, in gray silk, ate quickly, cutting his steak, forking it into his wrinkle-lipped mouth, and chewing only briefly before swallowing and raising his fork again. Now and then he paused, sipped wine, and pressed his yellow napkin to his lips.
“These things existed,” he said. “Would there have been any point in destroying them?”
The room was large and handsomely furnished in pre-U style: white, gold, orange, yellow. At a corner of it, two white-coveralled members waited by a wheeled serving table.
“Of course it seems wrong at first,” Wei said, “but the ultimate decisions have to be made by untreated members, and untreated members can’t and shouldn’t live their lives on cakes and TV and Marx Writing.” He smiled. “Not even on Wei Addressing the Chemotherapists,” he said, and put steak into his mouth.
“Why can’t the Family make its decisions itself?” Chip asked.
Wei chewed and swallowed. “Because it’s incapable of doing so,” he said. “That is, of doing so reasonably. Untreated it’s— well, you had a sample on your island; it’s mean and foolish and aggressive, motivated more often by selfishness than by anything else. Selfishness and fear.” He put onions into his mouth.
“It achieved the Unification,” Chip said.
“Mmm, yes,” Wei said, “but after what a struggle! And what a fragile structure the Unification was until we buttressed it with treatments! No, the Family has to be helped to full humanity—by treatments today, by genetic engineering tomorrow—and decisions have to be made for it. Those who have the means and the intelligence have the duty as well. To shirk it would be treason against the species.” He put steak into his mouth and raised his other hand and beckoned.
“And part of the duty,” Chip said, “is to kill members at sixty-two?”
“Ah, that,” Wei said, and smiled. “Always a principal question, sternly asked.”
The two members came to them, one with a decanter of wine and the other with a gold tray that he held at Wei’s side. “You’re looking at only part of the picture,” Wei said, taking a large fork and spoon and lifting a steak from the tray. He held it with sauce dripping from it. “What you’re neglecting to look at,” he said, “is the immeasurable number of members who would die far earlier than sixty-two if not for the peace and stability and well-being we give them. Think of the mass for a moment, not of individuals within the mass.” He put the steak on his plate. “We add many more years to the Family’s total life than we take away from it,” he said. “Many, many more years.” He spooned sauce onto the steak and took onions and squash. “Chip?” he said.
“No, thanks,” Chip said. He cut a piece from the half steak before him. The member with the decanter refilled his glass.
“Incidentally,” Wei said, cutting steak, “the actual time of dying is closer now to sixty-three than sixty-two. It will grow still higher as the population on Earth is gradually reduced.” He put steak into his mouth.
The members withdrew.
Chip said, “Do you include the members who don’t get born in your balance of years added and taken away?”
“No,” Wei said, smiling. “We’re not that unrealistic. If those members were born, there would be no stability, no well-being, and eventually no Family.” He put squash into his mouth and chewed and swallowed. “I don’t expect your feelings to change in one lunch,” he said. “Look around, talk with everyone, browse in the library—particularly in the history and sociology banks. I hold informal discussions a few evenings a week— once a teacher, always a teacher—sit in on some of them, argue, discuss.”
“I left a wife and a baby on Liberty,” Chip said.
“From which I deduce,” Wei said, smiling, “that they weren’t of overriding importance to you.”
Chip said, “I expected to be coming back.”
“Arrangements can be made for their care if necessary,” Wei said. “Dover told me you had already done so.”
“Will I be allowed to go back?” Chip asked.
“You won’t want to,” Wei said. “You’ll come to recognize that we’re right and your responsibility lies here.” He sipped wine and pressed his napkin to his lips. “If we’re wrong on minor points you can sit on the High Council some day and correct us,” he said. “Are you interested in architecture or city planning, by any cha
nce?”
Chip looked at him and, after a moment, said, “I’ve thought once or twice about designing buildings.”
“Uni thinks you should be on the Architectural Council at present,” Wei said. “Look in on it. Meet Madhir, the head of it.” He put onions into his mouth.
Chip said, “I really don’t know anything . . .”
“You can learn if you’re interested,” Wei said, cutting steak. “There’s plenty of time.”
Chip looked at him. “Yes,” he said. “Programmers seem to live past sixty-two. Even past sixty-three.”
“Exceptional members have to be preserved as long as possible,” Wei said. “For the Family’s sake.” He put steak into his mouth and chewed, looking at Chip with his slit-eyes. “Would you like to hear something incredible?” he said. “Your generation of programmers is almost certain to live indefinitely. Isn’t that fantastic? We old ones are going to die sooner or later—the doctors say maybe not, but Uni says we will. You younger ones though, in all probability you won’t die. Ever.”
Chip put a piece of steak into his mouth and chewed it slowly.
Wei said, “I suppose it’s an unsettling thought. It’ll grow more attractive as you get older.”
Chip swallowed what was in his mouth. He looked at Wei, glanced at his gray-silk chest, and looked at his face again. “That member,” he said. “The decathlon winner. Did he die naturally or was he killed?”
“He was killed,” Wei said. “With his permission, given freely, even eagerly.”
“Of course,” Chip said. “He was treated.”
“An athlete?” Wei said. “They take very little. No, he was proud that he was going to become—allied to me. His only concern was whether I would keep him ‘in condition’—a concern that I’m afraid was justified. You’ll find that the children, the ordinary members here, vie with one another to give parts of themselves for transplant. If you wanted to replace that eye, for instance, they’d be slipping into your room and begging you for the honor.” He put squash into his mouth.
Chip shifted in his seat. “My eye doesn’t bother me,” he said. “I like it.”
“You shouldn’t,” Wei said. “If nothing could be done about it, then you would be justified in accepting it. But an imperfection that can be remedied? That we must never accept.” He cut steak. “’One goal, one goal only, for all of us—perfection,’” he said. “We’re not there yet, but some day we will be: a Family improved genetically so that treatments no longer are needed; a corps of ever-living programmers so that the islands too can be unified; perfection, on Earth and moving ‘outward, outward, outward to the stars.’” His fork, with steak on it, stopped before his lips. He looked ahead of him and said, “I dreamed of it when I was young: a universe of the gentle, the helpful, the loving, the unselfish. I’ll live to see it. I shall live to see it.”
Dover led Chip and Karl through the complex that afternoon—showed them the library, the gym, the pool, and the garden (“Christ and Wei.” “Wait till you see the sunsets and the stars”); the music room, the theater, the lounges; the dining room and the kitchen (“I don’t know, from somewhere,” a member said, watching other members taking bundles of lettuce and lemons from a steel carrier. “Whatever we need comes in,” she said, smiling. “Ask Uni”). There were four levels, passed through by small elevators and narrow escalators. The medicenter was on the bottom level. Doctors named Boroviev and Rosen, young-moving men with shrunken faces as old-looking as Wei’s, welcomed them and examined them and gave them infusions. “We can replace that eye one-two-three, you know,” Rosen said to Chip, and Chip said, “I know. Thanks, but it doesn’t bother me.”
They swam in the pool. Dover went to swim with a tall and beautiful woman Chip had noticed applauding the night before, and he and Karl sat on the edge of the pool and watched them. “How do you feel?” Chip asked.
“I don’t know,” Karl said. “I’m pleased, of course, and Dover says it’s all necessary and it’s our duty to help, but—I don’t know. Even if they’re running Uni, it’s Uni anyway, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Chip said. “That’s how I feel.”
“There would have been a mess up above if we’d done what we planned,” Karl said, “but it would have been straightened out eventually, more or less.” He shook his head. “I honestly don’t know, Chip,” he said. “Any system the Family set up on its own would certainly be a lot less efficient than Uni is, than these people are; you can’t deny that.”
“No, you can’t,” Chip said.
“Isn’t it fantastic how long they live?” Karl said. “I still can’t get over the fact that—look at those breasts, will you? Christ and Wei.”
A light-skinned round-breasted woman dived into the pool from the other side.
Karl said, “Let’s talk some more later on, all right?” He slipped down into the water.
“Sure, we’ve got plenty of time,” Chip said.
Karl smiled at him and kicked off and swam arm-over-arm away.
The next morning Chip left his room and walked down green-carpeted painting-hung corridor toward a steel door at the end of it. He hadn’t gone very far when “Hi, brother,” Dover said and came along and walked beside him. “Hi,” Chip said. He looked ahead again and, walking, said, “Am I being guarded?”
“Only when you go in this direction,” Dover said.
Chip said, “I couldn’t do anything with my bare hands even if I wanted to.”
“I know,” Dover said. “The old man’s cautious. Pre-U mind.” He tapped his temple and smiled. “Only for a few days,” he said.
They walked to the end of the corridor and the steel door slid open. White-tiled corridor stretched beyond it; a member in blue touched a scanner and went through a doorway.
They turned and started back. The door whispered behind them. “You’ll get to see it,” Dover said. “He’ll probably give you the tour himself. Want to go to the gym?”
In the afternoon Chip looked in at the offices of the Architectural Council. A small and cheerful old man recognized him and welcomed him—Madhir, the Council’s head. He looked to be over a hundred; his hands too—all of him apparently. He introduced Chip to other members of the Council: an old woman named Sylvie, a reddish-haired man of fifty or so whose name Chip didn’t catch, and a short but pretty woman called Gri-gri. Chip had coffee with them and ate a piece of pastry with a cream filling. They showed him a set of plans they were discussing, layouts that Uni had made for the rebuilding of “G-3 cities.” They talked about whether or not the layouts should be redone to different specifications, asked questions of a telecomp and disagreed on the significance of its answers. The old woman Sylvie gave a point-by-point explanation of why she felt the layouts were needlessly monotonous. Madhir asked Chip if he had an opinion; he said he didn’t. The younger woman, Gri-gri, smiled at him invitingly.
There was a party in the main lounge that night—“Happy new year!” “Happy U year!”—and Karl shouted in Chip’s ear, “I’ll tell you one thing I don’t like about this place! No whiskey! Isn’t that a shut-off? If wine is okay, why not whiskey?” Dover was dancing with the woman who looked like Lilac (not really, not half as pretty), and there were people Chip had sat with at meals and met in the gym and the music room, people he had seen in one part of the complex or another, people he hadn’t seen in before; there were more than had been there the other night when he and Karl had come in— almost a hundred of them, with white-paploned members channeling trays among them. “Happy U year!” someone said to him, an elderly woman who had been at his lunch table, Hera or Hela. “It’s almost 172!” she said. “Yes,” he said, “half an hour.” “Oh, there he is!” she said, and moved forward. Wei was in the doorway, in white, with people crowding around him. He shook their hands and kissed their cheeks, his shriveled yellow face grin-split and gleaming, his eyes lost in wrinkles. Chip moved back farther into the crowd and turned away. Gri-gri waved, jumping up to see him over people between them. He waved b
ack at her and smiled and kept moving.
He spent the next day, Unification Day, in the gym and the library.
He went to a few of Wei’s evening discussions. They were held in the garden, a pleasant place to be. The grass and the trees were real, and the stars and the moon were near reality, the moon changing phase but never position. Bird warblings sounded from time to time and a gentle breeze blew. Fifteen or twenty programmers were usually at the discussions, sitting on chairs and on the grass. Wei, in a chair, did most of the talking. He expanded on quotations from the Living Wisdom and deftly traced the particulars of questions to their encompassing generalities. Now and then he deferred to the head of the Educational Council, Gustafsen, or to Boroviev, the head of the Medical Council, or to another of the High Council members.
At first Chip sat at the edge of the group and only listened, but then he began to ask questions—why parts, at least, of treatments couldn’t be put back on a voluntary basis; whether human perfection might not include a degree of selfishness and aggressiveness; whether selfishness, in fact, didn’t play a considerable part in their own acceptance of alleged “duty” and “responsibility.” Some of the programmers near him seemed affronted by his questions, but Wei answered them patiently and fully; seemed even to welcome them, heard his “Wei?” over the askings of the others. He moved a little closer in from the group’s edge.
One night he sat up in bed and lit a cigarette and smoked in the dark.
The woman lying beside him stroked his back. “It’s right, Chip,” she said. “It’s what’s best for everyone.”
“You read minds?” he said.
“Sometimes,” she said. Her name was Deirdre and she was on the Colonial Council. She was thirty-eight, light-skinned, and not especially pretty, but sensible, shapely, and good company.