by Ben Bova
“What?”
“Never mind. Two police robots are heading toward us. They’ll have you in custody in a few minutes.”
THX looked around. In every direction, nothing but white nothingness.
“Don’t be alarmed,” the robot said. “The police won’t hurt you if you don’t resist.”
“No, they’ll just take me out one time to be consumed.”
The voice from the robot said, “Well, if it’s any consolation, that’s what happens to everybody here.”
Puzzled, THX said, “You told me this was a hospital.”
“Yes,” the voice explained pleasantly, “we take in the people who are incurably ill and put them into cryogenic stasis. If we can cure them, we do. If we decide they can’t be cured, then we consume them for their organs. Sooner or later, everyone who comes here is consumed. It’s economically efficient.”
The police robots came into view. THX said, “Everybody is consumed.”
“Yes,” the Mercicontrol robot said. “So don’t feel bad about it. We all have to go sooner or later.”
“Thanks,” said THX as the police robots came up and silently stood before him.
They walked him in an amazingly short time back to a point where he could just barely make out a dark fleck in the middle of the white nothingness.
One of the police robots pointed to it. “That is your area. Go to it and stay there until sent for. This is your final warning.”
THX felt an urge to spit at them, but he did nothing. The robots stood there and watched as he walked toward the modules.
After a long time walking he could make out the flat bed modules and the standing, gesticulating people. One of them—the boy, perhaps—climbed up on a bed and began waving to him.
THX walked steadily. Their voices began drifting toward him:
“I can just barely see him…”
“He’s free! Can’t you see, he’s free!”
“No. I think he’s coming back.”
“I don’t see anything… I can’t see him at all. I think he’s been destroyed.”
“I can see him. He’s coming back. There.”
Finally he was close enough for even old PTO to see him. “Fool!” the old man called out “Completely reckless behavior. I’m not responsible.”
Finally he was close enough for a few of them to run out to him.
“What stopped you?”
“How cold was it?”
THX said nothing, simply kept walking. SEN was standing by the edge of the nearest bed, legs straddled like an emperor surveying his domain.
“Wait,” he said. “Let me talk to him. I know how to handle these things.”
THX walked right past him, toward his own bed.
PTO eyed him narrowly, “You have nothing to fear… you’re safe again.”
DWY went to SEN and clutched at his arm. “Ask him about the air. He sounds out of breath.”
SEN nodded and went to THX’s bed. Sitting beside him, SEN said, “We have to face the facts… you know? We have come down to practical reality. I’m a practical man. Forget the personal side of things.”
Hovering behind SEN, DWY nodded eagerly. THX, bone-tired, so tired his hunger had gone, wordlessly stretched out on the bed.
“I think he’s deficient,” DWY snapped.
Annoyed, SEN snapped back, “Why don’t you go find something else to do?”
“Why doesn’t he speak? Can’t he hear?” DWY edged away from the bed. “I don’t think he knows.”
THX closed his eyes and tried to sleep. But he felt SEN still sitting alongside him. He heard PTO droning a history lesson at CAM. His legs ached, his head was buzzing.
“I want to help you,” SEN said, so low it was almost a whisper. “You can help me. Here, take some food.”
THX looked at him. SEN was holding out one of the food cubes that he had been hoarding. THX frowned at him.
“You understand,” SEN went on, “we’re all in this together. You want to leave. You’re not like the rest of them. What did you see out there?”
THX turned his head away.
“As soon as you give me a detailed description of the barrier, I can begin delegating responsibility. I’ll see to it that we all get out of here safely.”
The barrier, THX thought. The only barrier is your own blindness. Then LUH’s face filled his memory and he added bitterly, And mine.
Suddenly there was a loud yell, scuffling, shouting and cursing. THX looked over his shoulder and saw DWY and CAM fighting on the floor near the bed where TWA lay. They banged into the bed, jarring TWA so hard that he nearly fell on top of them. Swearing angrily, he swung his legs down over them, stood up, and pulled the boy away from DWY.
“He took my food!” CAM yelled, struggling to get past TWA. “He stole it!”
DWY was holding a single brown cube. It was cracked and its edges rubbed raw. Crumbs from it were scattered on the floor around them.
TWA turned toward DWY. “Well?” he asked, menacingly, as he released his hold on CAM.
“I… I thought it was mine,” DWY said lamely. “I couldn’t tell.”
SEN shook his head and said to THX, “Look at them… it’s pitiful. They’ve even begun to go into my module and look for things. My things. It’s all for them anyway… it’s all for their own good… After all my saving… starving…” He shook his head like a disappointed savior.
With a loud sigh, he added, “You can’t really blame them, though, can you? But we’ve got to find something to give them motivation. Mold them into a working team.”
Words, THX thought. Meaningless, stupid words. He just talks to hear himself sound important.
“Information is the key,” SEN was saying to him. “We must concentrate on gaining information. You’re with me now, I know. I have a contract.”
Amazingly, he took a piece of paper from the pocket of his blouse. “Here.” He proffered it to THX. “All it says is that you’re with me. We can only make it together. We must convince the others.”
THX wanted to laugh at him, but he was too serious to laugh at.
SEN’s hand, holding the paper toward THX, was trembling. Abruptly, he took the paper back, stuffed it in his pocket again.
“Well,” he said, with a forced smile, “later then.”
Chapter 15
A chrome robot took IMM. It grabbed for the collar of her blouse, as usual, but the torn garment came off in its hands. She stood there sullenly, the scar jagged across her tight, firm breasts. For a ludicrous instant, THX thought the robot was going to walk off with the empty blouse. But then it dropped the blouse and took IMM by the arm. She went, eyes still smoking as she looked back at them all for the last time.
THX slept. When the musical tone started and the blue light flashed, he reached into the dispenser bin under his mattress and ate the food cubes that had arrived there. Ate all of them, left none for SEN. Sometimes there were two or three, usually only one. Several times the tone and light came, but the bin remained empty. It never works the same way twice. Do they do that to relieve our boredom? Or their own?
DWY took to sharpening a spoon by scraping it against the edge of his bed module. Where he got the spoon, he refused to tell. But he kept sharpening it, a little each day. The rest of the time he talked about how he was going to fight his way to freedom. With a sharpened spoon. Against chrome robots.
Immediately after one of their meals, SEN began giving a speech. He stood in the middle of the little cluster of beds and raised his voice:
“Without most of us realizing it, a ‘new alignment’ has been formed, and it is an exciting, healthy development… This alignment is already a new majority; it will affect the future of us all. We need a new unity, but not a unity that discourages dissent. We need dissent.” He pointed straight at PTO to make his meaning absolutely clear.
When everyone had turned to PTO, SEN added, “But we need creative dissent. Our voices are not joined in any harmonious chorus, but the differences a
re differences of emphasis, not of fundamentals.”
I’ve heard this before, THX realized. It was on tape, an ancient political speech… He’s memorized it word for word!
“Now, the new alignment’s greatest need,” SEN continued, “is to communicate with all its elements, rather than march along in parallel lines that never converge. Tomorrow as we focus on the new movement more clearly, we will gain a new unity.”
“What was that?” PTO said.
“Look!” shouted CAM.
They all turned to see where he was pointing. A police robot was bringing in a new prisoner. But this one was as small as a child, dangling feet off the ground in the policeman’s grip.
“A child!”
“No, a shelldweller.”
It was horribly ugly. Hairy, long matted hair all over its head and face. Stumpy twisted arms and legs. Teeth flashing in the midst of all that filthy hair. Even its clothing looked like hair or hide of some long-extinct animal. Its eyes were sunken and dark.
The policeman dropped the freak unceremoniously on the floor. Stamping his pole three tunes, it announced:
“A nondescript: designation 643-1399284.”
SEN stared at it, goggle-eyed. For once his smug self-assurance seemed shattered.
PTO was explaining to young CAM, “A shelldweller. They live in the superstructure, the outer shell. Deformed, you see. Rather unique; there have only been two others here before. They smell, don’t they?” The old man seemed quite proud of his knowledge.
TWA cautiously edged toward it. The shelldweller bared its teeth at him and growled. But TWA slowly stepped closer, closer—and then he kicked it. The shelldweller screeched and jumped back, then hopped with lightning speed away from TWA. It jumped up into DWY’s lap.
DWY screamed in terror. “Get away! Get away!” He became a blurred frenzy of flailing arms and legs.
Screeching shrilly, the shelldweller jumped from one bed to the next until he found one on the edge of the cluster, several meters away from any of the people who were standing watching it, shocked and afraid.
The little twisted man huddled on the bed, pulled himself into a furry ball, quaking and whimpering.
He’s more afraid than we are, THX realized.
Slowly, they all returned to normal. PTO began his pedagogical ritual with CAM again, SEN returned to making political commentary and hoarding food. But THX watched the shelldweller. He looked so small and so afraid. Except when he bared those teeth.
THX was walking around the cluster of beds, pacing slowly. TWA and DWY were standing together at the edge of the cluster. The blind TWA was pointing out into the nothingness, and DWY was squinting in the direction of his aim.
“There?” asked TWA.
“No, nothing.”
“You’re sure?”
“Certainly.”
TWA shook his head. “I wish I could see.”
“It’s got to be out there somewhere.”
“I know.”
“SEN claims that if we can spot the barrier, actually see it, we can begin to figure out how to get past it. Do you believe that?”
Shrugging, TWA said, “Let’s look over in that direction.”
SEN was saying to PTO, “I think that a leader must, whenever he possibly can, make the decision for more knowledge rather than less. But he must also have the wisdom to limit freedom so as to insure freedom. That is what will keep us strong and give us direction.”
PTO threw up his hands in helpless protest against SEN.
TWA and DWY trooped over and stood before SEN.
“Well?” SEN asked eagerly.
“We made one hundred and fifty sightings, randomly located, just as you said,” DWY reported.
“And… and?”
“There were one hundred and forty-six absolute negatives and four conditionals, most of which occurred in the early familiarization stages of the project and can probably be discounted.”
PTO chuckled. “Not very encouraging.”
“On the contrary!” DWY retorted. “It absolutely proves what I’ve always suspected. We’re located in a uniform space with no visible limits…”
Cutting him short, SEN said, “Yes, yes, fine. But we must find the barrier. We can do nothing until it’s been located.”
THX walked away from them. They were all insane. Then he heard a policeman approaching, and the triple thud of his pole against the floor. “LUH 9998.”
Before the robot could finish the new prisoner’s number, THX had whirled around and called, “LUH…”
But the newcomer was a quiet-looking man of middle years, still blinking and stunned- looking, surprised and scared at being here.
“He can speak!” DWY marveled. They were all staring at THX.
“Of course he can,” SEN said. “I knew it all along. I told you so.”
But THX didn’t hear them, didn’t see them. For a flash of a second he had felt hope, even happiness. Now he walked dejectedly back to bis bed, slumped onto it, rubbed his face tiredly.
And SEN sat down beside him. “Are you all right? What’s wrong?”
“Go away,” THX said. “I’m tired.”
The chrome robot hadn’t left. He advanced on DWY, who had turned his back to the policeman and was eating a few hoarded crumbs of food. The police robot picked him up by the collar.
DWY looked up in terror. “What are you going to do?” he squeaked.
The robot said nothing, began hauling him away, his legs dangling limp and useless, feet dragging on the floor. A wet stain sprouted in the crotch of DWY’s pants and trickled down his trouser leg to the floor, leaving a trail behind him while he whimpered, “Uhhh… uhhhnn…”
The shelldweller hopped off his bed, scampered to the wet trail, dabbed a finger in the urine and tasted it. It was impossible to tell, behind all that hair, whether he frowned or smiled.
The musical tone and blue flash of food arrival broke their mood. Everyone went to his bed and reached into the dispenser bins. Conditoned reflex. But the bins were empty.
“Empty again,” TWA raged.
“What are we going to do? They’re empty more than they’re full anymore. They’re going to starve us to death!”
But THX thought he heard someone laughing, someone who was watching them all on observation screens.
“Be calm,” SEN was saying. “Remain calm above all else. This elemental crisis is one that makes us feel endangered. But so-called bravery is not as useful in these situations as the ability to eliminate any elements of individual fear by thinking selflessly…”
TWA interrupted, “You’ve got food hidden away. It’s easy for you to talk!”
“Yeah!”
SEN raised his hands for quiet. “Now, now. Selfishness won’t help the situation. We must all…”
“Search his module!”
Five of the men started toward SEN.
“Wait,” he said, smiling hugely. “Of course I have been storing food away. For just such an emergency as this! What kind of a leader would I be if I didn’t prepare for emergencies?”
They stopped and watched him as SEN reached well down under his mattress and pulled out a handful of food cubes.
“All in line now, share and share alike.”
They lined up obediently.
“No pushing, no jostling,” SEN called out. “There’s enough here for everybody.”
He handed each man a food cube in turn, while he muttered, “Discipline and order, the basic ingredients of true freedom. Discipline and order.”
THX watched from his bed. He wasn’t hungry; they had been fed only a little while ago. At least, it seemed like only a little while ago to him. But the others seemed to think they were starving. Even old PTO was standing in line. SEN absolutely beamed when he handed the old man a food cube.
PTO accepted the cube, then said, “Our life is brief and powerless. On all of us, the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent author
ity rolls on its relentless way.”
SEN turned to THX with a look of absolute disgust on his face.
As if in anger, the musical tone sounded again and the blue food light flashed. There was the unmistakable clunk! of arrival in the dispenser bins. Everyone rushed to his module and opened the bins. Four cubes in each one!
“We’re saved!” CAM shouted, his boyish voice cracking.
“Friends, friends,” SEN called, his arms outstretched, his smile beatific, “we have survived the crisis. But, as your duly elected leader, I must point put that we never know when another emergency will descend upon us. Let us prepare now. Store half your food with mine, share and share alike, one and all.”
So now the line formed again and reversed itself, each man dumping two food cubes on SEN’s bed. The pile became quite respectable.
Through it all THX remained on his own bed. Finally, when everyone was busily eating and SEN had finished tucking the last of the hoard in the crannies inside his module, SEN walked smilingly over to THX.
“Everyone is sharing his good fortune,” he said softly. “From each for each, that’s how we survive. As your leader, I must ask you to do your share, too.”
THX looked at his round smiling face and thought for a moment how pleasant it would be to smash a fist through it. But instead he reached down and opened his dispenser bin. Pulling out four brown food cubes, he handed them all to SEN.
“All of them?” SEN seemed overwhelmed.
THX got up from the bed. “Yes. Enjoy them all.”
“But what are you going to do? Where are you going?”
Without looking back, THX said, “I’m leaving.”
“Leaving! Leaving what?” Then, “Yes, I see! Wait a minute!”
Clutching the four food cubes to his chest with one arm, SEN ran after THX and grabbed at his arm. “Wait! Just for a moment… wait.”
THX stopped. SEN turned to the other prisoners.
“After long deliberation, I have decided to go out and personally examine the barrier. To see first-hand what difficulties are involved and decide how to overcome them. I realize that there is an element of risk, even danger, but moments such as this require that a choice be made and action taken regardless of the danger involved. We will return soon, but we will be gone long enough to form an accurate and functional plan of escape, and I will have an honest idea of how best to organize us into a working unit.”