by Ben Bova
“Quite right.” Control cut the connection and the doctor’s face vanished from the viewscreen.
For a long moment Control sat staring at the wall, at the face of the First Control. Then he reached for the communicator switch again.
LUH lay in a pool of her own blood. She couldn’t see out of one eye, her lips felt numb, her whole mouth raw. The pain in her body had reached the point where it slid into numbness. She felt them kicking her, but the shock was gone. Agony had reached its maximum, her nerves couldn’t carry any greater intensity of pain.
“That’s enough,” a voice said. A sharp voice, accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed instantly.
“Clean her up and deliver her back to Mercicontrol,” the voice said.
LUH looked up too late to see who had spoken. The viewscreen on the wall was fading into darkness.
“Cut the camera,” one of the men said.
“Whew… these damned lights are hot.”
She felt one of them hauling her up and depositing her onto the chair again. She was dizzy, everything was blurring out of focus.
A man’s face swam into view, very close to her. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” He laughed.
“Clean her up, is it?”
“Plenty of time for that later. Mercicontrol won’t be in any hurry to get her.”
“Give her a whiff of this.”
Something pungent exploded in her face. She snapped her head back. They pressed a cold compress against her face.
“Not too bad… you still look kind of pretty.”
“Here…” A pair of pills were pushed past her swollen lips. “Swallow.”
She had to try several times before she could get them down. Almost instantly, though, the pain seemed to fade slightly. The room, the men, slid into reasonably sharp focus. Against one wall the robots stood deactivated, smeared with her blood.
“See, she’s coming around.”
“Ready to watch yourself on the viewscreen? Look!”
The screen brightened, and she saw herself—with THX. Sitting next to him on the contour seat in the holoroom. And then in bed with him.
“Look at that,” one of the men said.
“Really going at it.”
She tried to turn her face away, but they held her head. “Watch it! You enjoyed doing it then, why don’t you want to watch it?”
“No…” Her own voice sounded strange, strangled.
She tried to get out of the chair, but all she could do was slide to her knees. One of them pulled her head up, and she saw a man standing in front of her, naked, swollen, bestial.
“Try this one,” he said.
Control worked his communicator again and saw the room with LUH and her three jailors. She was slumped against the metal chair, gagging.
One of the jailors pulled her up and draped her across the arms of the chair.
Control shuddered. Why are the jailors worse than the criminals? If we didn’t need them… He sensed his pulse quickening as he watched. Well… as long as we can preserve the fetus, what difference how she’s destroyed? And he rocked back and forth, awash with pleasure, watching them.
Chapter 13
THX opened his eyes and saw that PTO was standing beside his bed.
“You’re frightened, aren’t you?” the old man asked quietly. “Just as frightened as the boy the policeman brought in.”
THX said nothing.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, PTO smiled warmly and continued, “You’re frightened that at any moment you’ll be taken away, to be consumed, to have your organs used for other people’s bodies. I know, I’ve felt the same way. I couldn’t eat. I still have trouble sometimes… sometimes it’s difficult to keep one’s balance. Even at my age.”
He looked up, scanned the little group of them, then said, “But how is this place different from anywhere else? We all die sooner or later. None of us knows when it will come, or how. At least, here our death serves the masses. Your heart will help someone to live. Your eyes can give sight to a blind man.”
LUH’s eyes in someone else’s head. Her hands, her voice… our baby… What are they doing to her? To them?
“I know how you feel,” PTO was saying gently. “Why, when I first came here—oh, ages ago—I was intent on escaping. But… escape to where? That’s the problem. You see—there is no other place.”
THX looked up at him. There is no other place! The enormity of it began to sink into his consciousness. There is no other place. Everyplace in the vast city is a prison. Everyplace.
“No place at all,” PTO continued. “The city is more or less like this, isn’t it? And where else can you go? The superstructure, up above? It’s radioactive from all the power units that’ve been there for so long. No one there except monsters. Yes, actual monsters… mutations, horrible creatures, all twisted and insane from the radiations.”
The old man made a helpless gesture. “And beyond that is the outside. Poisonous. Air too foul to breathe, sulfurous rains, germs and filth. The water is undrinkable and the whole place smells of corruption. Do you know the legend about the outside?”
“I know, I know…” It was DWY, anxious to join the conversation—or monologue.
“Men used to live outside, up on the actual surface, where there was cold and extreme heat and something called snow—like powder that fell down on them from the overhead.”
PTO nodded benignly. “Yes. Once men lived in the open, in a paradise. Oh, there was heat and cold, but OMM provided everything that men needed to deal with it and survive. Men lived in splendor and never had to work. Everyone was happy, and there was no need of medicines or sedations, for no one ever got sick or even tired.”
“But someone ruined everything,” DWY put in, his eyes glittering.
“Yes,” said PTO. “Some men were not content with OMM’s paradise. They wanted more—they wanted to breed their own children, to populate the world without control, without planning.”
DWY said, “OMM’s Law was: Increase and multiply only within the limits of society’s plan. But some people wanted to forget the plan and increase at random.”
THX’s head was beginning to throb. Stop it, he demanded silently. Stop it!
“Well, you can see what happened. With uncontrolled breeding, the outside world eventually became overcrowded, and filthy. Pollution and sickness and starvation were everywhere. Thanks to a few far-sighted, saintly men, the underground cities were built…”
“And men have lived in them safely and cleanly ever since.”
“And those up on the outside have long since died in their own filth,” PTO said with great finality.
“And good riddance to them!” DWY added.
“So you see,” PTO concluded, “this is the best place to be. We’re safe and warm and comfortable. Don’t be afraid. There’s no other place to go to.”
The pounding of a police robot’s pole on the floor startled the three of them. THX hadn’t noticed the robot approaching.
“OUE 6662,” announced the robot. A blank-faced middle-aged man stood there, seemingly in a trance.
The robot left him there, circled the cluster of beds, and reached for the wiry little man who had once attacked IMM. He slapped at the robot’s extended hand, pushed into its chest and the robot toppled backward and fell with a hollow metallic thud. Laughing hysterically, the man jumped up and down on the robot’s face. The chrome, which looked so solid, gave way like a fender crumpling. With a triumphant shriek, the little man ran off into the distance.
They all watched him getting smaller and smaller against the featureless white expanse. Then he screamed horribly and disappeared altogether. THX turned back and looked at PTO, who was shaking his head sadly.
“Violence,” he said, like a physician identifying a fatal disease. “Violence.”
Just after the next food arrived, with its musical tone and blue flash of light, two more robots came to take their battered colleague away.
It’s all insane, THX knew. They�
��re killing us in our minds, because they want to save our organs for themselves.
Don’t let them do it to you, he heard LUH’s voice urging him. Be strong. You can win over them.
He ached when he thought of her. LUH. Where is she? How can I find her?
PTO was walking slowly around the bed modules with the teen-aged boy, CAM 5254, beside him.
“Yes, your point is well taken, my boy,” the old man was saying, “but it lacks the balance that a broader and deeper range of experience can lend it. When I first arrived here, I saw things as perhaps you do now. I was confused about my predicament…”
THX shook his head. Nothing ever changes here. New people come and old ones go but nothing changes.
PTO and CAM circled the modules and came back within hearing range:
“Listen to the mumblings of an old man and bank those flames of violence with earnest inquiry and honest observation…”
From his own bed, SEN broke in, “Mumblings!”
PTO stopped in midsentence. SEN wagged a finger at CAM.
“Do you know,” he shouted, “how many times we’ve had to listen to that speech?”
The boy, confused, looked from SEN to PTO and back again.
“Do you have any idea,” SEN demanded, rising from his bed, “how many times… we’ve had to listen to that identical speech? He thinks everyone’s as blind as he is!”
PTO tried to smile but his face wouldn’t do it. He almost looked angry.
“You know what you are?” SEN snapped at him. “You make me sick. If we all thought like you…”
IMM screamed from across the cluster of beds, a single sharp howl of terror. Everyone turned to her. She was sitting alone, no one within ten meters of her.
SEN dismissed her with a wave of his hand. “You know what I want?” he said to the rest of the group. “Ideas… One idea. One idea could get us out of here if it was the right idea. You know what I mean?”
His eyes wide with fervor, SEN called out, “Not a bunch of facts! Who even knows if they’re facts? He probably makes them up in his sleep. The time has come to act!”
THX sat on the edge of his bed. His stomach felt fluttery.
“We’ve just got to be sure it’s the right idea,” SEN went on. “But we’ll find it. We’ll know it when we see it. I’ll know it when I see it. Clear and straight and forward and plain as the nose on your face.”
The new inmate, OUE, suddenly stepped up to SEN and punched him directly on the nose. SEN staggered back painfully, holding his nose. OUE walked away laughing.
PTO turned back to CAM as if nothing had happened. “In the years to come you will be grateful for what may now seem like senseless sacrifices. With a passion such as yours…”
SEN, more intense than ever, rushed over to them and shook his fist in PTO’s face. “Sooner or later you’ll be taken away and destroyed like the others.”
“Not destroyed,” PTO corrected calmly. “Consumed. And so will you be.”
THX stood up. His knees felt weak. He began to slowly walk away from his bed, slowly, slowly.
He heard PTO saying, “Of course it is true that no one really knows what happens when one is taken away, history tells us that, but it is idle to speculate about it. SEN has destroyed himself with worry many times over. LOO 3122, who was taken away long before you arrived, believed that he was going to a wonderful place where he would be supremely happy…”
His voice was getting fainter, THX kept walking. He was well away from the beds now, walking steadily. Away.
A chrome police robot passed him, heading in the ther direction, toward the beds. The policeman didn’t even seem to notice THX. After a while, far in the distance, he heard one of the inmates shouting:
“No… not me… take her… no, no!”
THX kept walking.
Chapter 14
Blankness. No horizon, no walls, no glare and no shadow, no sound except the soft padding of his own slippered feet against the slightly resilient floor. Neither heat nor cold. Like a vast white womb the prison enclosed THX, huge yet suffocating.
On he walked.
It might have been hours or days, his only clock was the growling pain of his empty stomach.
When he got too tired to move, he lay down and slept. When he awoke, he started moving again. Once, far off in the distance, he thought he saw a cluster of modules and people standing nearby. But it wavered out of sight as he walked; he couldn’t find it again.
Maybe it’s my own cluster, with SEN and PTO and the others, he thought. Maybe I’ve been walking in a circle.
There was no way to tell. As closely as he could, he kept to a straight line. Even when he lay down, he tried to make certain that he kept his body pointed in the direction in which he was moving. But usually he was sprawled in a completely different posture when he woke up again.
The hunger was getting bad. THX felt a constant, burning ache in his middle. His legs were getting fluttery. And he was seeing things.
Off in the corner of his eye, strange lights nickered at him. When he turned to look directly at them, the lights disappeared.
Does hunger cause hallucinations? he wondered.
Then the voice of OMM came to him from out of the nowhere: “Blessings on you. Even here, in the realm of confessed and condemned felons, I am with you. Do not try to evade your fate. Rest. Surrender your will to the necessities of reality. I will provide. Rest and sleep. Sleep.”
The taped voice was supposed to be hypnotic, but hot anger kept THX going.
“You let this happen to me,” he shouted into the nothingness. “I was your faithful follower and you led me into this. You let them do this to me. And to her.”
OMM’s taped voice serenely ignored his words. “Even here, in the realm… Rest… Surrender… Rest and sleep.”
When he finally did sleep, his dreams were filled with OMM’s voice, but now it was a fierce demanding voice telling him:
“Thou hast sinned greatly and must suffer for it. The masses will not rest until you have payed for your sins.”
And he saw himself back at his job in the assembly bay, standing on aching rubbery legs, hands trembling as he worked the remote manipulators. But inside the assembly area, on the other side of the leaded window, there was not a robot. LUH lay there, her body open and shining metal organs gleaming in the overhead lights. And THX saw that he wasn’t assembling her, he was taking her apart.
He awoke screaming.
At his feet were four brown food cubes. His scream choked off as he stared at them. He reached out and touched them. They were real.
“Even here, I provide,” said OMM’s lofty voice.
Why? he wondered as he slowly picked up one of the cubes. Why feed a condemned man, a man they’re going to kill?
The answer came easily. “Because they want my body to be in good health when they kill me. They want my organs.”
The food was at his lips when he told himself that truth. Far off in the distance, he saw the blinking lights again. This tune they remained even when he stared right at them. Blinking red and blue lights, going on and off in sequence, like a signal.
His stomach was wrenching, his mouth dry and caked. He held the food cubes before his face, a brown gritty lump that contained nourishment without taste.
No, he told himself. Starve yourself. Let your body shrivel and die. Don’t give them what they want.
But his body answered, “If they can bring you food, they can make you eat it. Don’t be a fool. Eat now, or they’ll make you eat later. They’re not going to let a valuable collection of organs destroy its usefulness to them.”
Be strong, he said. Don’t give in to them. Even if they can overpower you, don’t go along with them. Fight!
But it was a losing argument. He held the food cube in his shaking hands for a few moments longer, then took a bite of it, then wolfed down all four of them.
The blinking signal lights disappeared.
Slowly, his stomach rumbling with
unaccustomed fullness, he got to his feet and resumed walking.
No voices now, no lights. But far off in the distance he saw something—a dark blob that grew and took shape, a human shape, a man, approaching him.
THX quickened his pace. The man was heading straight for him, tall and purposeful. Then THX saw that it was a chrome robot.
But not a police robot. The same size and model, but this one wore the pastel green uniform of Mercicontrol.
THX stopped as the robot came up to him.
“Don’t you think you’ve gone far enough?” asked a human voice from the robot’s mouth grill.
“No. I want to get out.”
“There is no way for you. Why don’t you let me lead you back to your compound?” The robot extended one gloved hand.
THX backed away. “I’m going to find a way out. I’m not going to stay here and wait for you to kill me.”
“Kill you?”
“Consume me… it’s the same thing.”
If a robot could look confused, this one would have.
“Who are you? Identify yourself.”
THX glared at the robot’s impassive face and said nothing.
“Wait… wait…” the human voice said. “I have your picture file… you’re a felon. How did you get into the hospital area?”
“Hospital area?”
“You’re trespassing. Felon 1138, prefix THX. You belong back in the prison area. You’re trespassing!”
THX laughed. “Then arrest me.”
“Don’t move. I’m calling the police. They’ll pick you up and return you to your proper area.”
Still laughing, THX started to walk past the robot.
“I said don’t move! You’re not allowed here…”
Shaking his head, THX answered, “You’re crazy—why should I wait here for the police?”
The robot started walking with him. “Very well, I’ll just have to keep you in sight until the police arrive. You can’t get away, you know.”
Shrugging, THX asked, “This is a hospital area? Where are the patients?”
“Can’t you see…” the voice hesitated. “Oh, of course not, the food conditioning. Well, the patients are here. Most of them in cryosleepers, in stasis.”