Louis Charbonneau

“ The very fact that in the end each arrived at the same concept of society's structure and purpose is proof enough! Why should the two forms of Organization remain separate when the unalterable pressure of man's own desires had made them finally the same in everything but name? Why shouldn't they merge into one great and final Organization, one supreme affirmation of man's right to freedom!"
Hendley was silent. The truth was that he had no clearly formulated answers. Even in his own mind he was divided. The lure of freedom could not be shaken off. ”

“ And suddenly Hendley knew what he was going to say. In a flash of insight he saw behind the shallow façade of fatherly wisdom before him. Here was only another man trapped by the system, another button-pusher who knew only the answers fed to him by his computer, a man too eager to be sure and safe, too anxious to have everything come out right and gain new tax credits for him. He had only to be told something he could understand—something that would fall into a familiar pattern. ”

“ Happy's long face grew longer and darker as the game progressed, his hawk nose seemed to sharpen, his mouth tightened into a thinner, grimmer line. His derision over Hendley's atrocious play seemed to be the only pleasure he found in the game. Hendley wondered why, with so many other sports and entertainments in the camp to choose from, the tall man should persist in one which merely made him angry.
At the beginning of the fourth hole, as each successive step in the game was called, Curly bristled when Happy's club, trying to stab the ball, struck the stocky man's shin. ”

“ The whole life of the Organization, all human pursuit, rested on the base of freedom's desirability, its ultimate satisfactions. The suggestion that it could give rise to a kind of anarchy, that Freemen would seek to dispel boredom and ennui with barbarous acts of violence, left Hendley with an uneasy feeling, as if a firm surface had quite illogically, unaccountably, turned spongy and uncertain underfoot. ”

“ Hendley remembered one discussion forum for his group a week before. He had been sitting between RED-498, his Assigned, the woman he was soon to contract with, and a short, fat man in the yellow coverall of a 2-Dayman. The round man had constantly been rising to demand the floor, grabbing his seat mike and shouting so loudly that his words over the loudspeaker were distorted and often incomprehensible. His round, full face had a squinty look, the triangle of eyes and nose being squeezed close together like a cluster of dots in the center of a circle. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They rode the slow sidewalk strip downhill from the Rec Hall to the concentration of entertainments in the camp's pleasure center. Hendley wondered what other special revelations his companion had in store for him. High above, the night sky soared in a breathtaking leap of black space, stabbed by stars. His gaze followed the great black arch over his shoulder until it vanished behind the Rec Hall on the hill. ”

“ But Hendley had remained silent. The unseen speaker's words had touched a sensitive nerve. We shouldn't let ourselves get swallowed up. By what? What difference did it make to the bottom of the mountain when the banks of snow shifted on a peak perpetually shrouded by clouds? In its immediate effects that's all the Merger really meant—a reshuffling of men at the top. Down at the bottom you wouldn't feel it. You would go on eating the same food, catching the same copter or sidewalk, pushing the same buttons, paying off the same tax debt. ”

“ But being beautiful isn't just having a certain shape or size or texture...." His fingers brushed the swell of her breast and moved down to trace the deep cut of her waist. Roughly, because suddenly he wanted her, he said, "Your beauty is alive. It's real. That's like the difference between a piece of plastic with wires woven through it, and another that looks similar but has a live current that makes it into a glowing light."
"Oh, Hendley," she whispered. Her hands reached up to pull him down beside her. "I never wanted to be beautiful before! ”

“ Nik said. "Some of them never leave the casino. They fall asleep in the lounges, wake up, go back to the machines. Until they run out of chips."
It seemed incredible to Hendley that Freemen would voluntarily choose to shut themselves off from the sun and the open sky, once having gained them, but the hypnotized faces of the gamblers were convincing. Shaking his head, he looked beyond the first bank of machines toward the inner circles. At various kinds of green-topped tables hordes of Freemen gambled with cards, dice, electronic wheels, light-sticks. ”

“ Work was the foundation of the Organization—the work day, the work hour, the work minute. This was the basic commodity, the medium of exchange, the measure of social status. Work to pay off your tax debt. Work to climb the rungs on the ladder that led to freedom. ”

“ With animation the gray-haired man launched into a discourse on the stroke of genius which had launched man on his upward journey toward Freeman status. Once, it was true, there had been a time when men worked for themselves, were conscious of their individuality, and were paid in some form of money according to their capacity to earn. That money was used by all men to buy the services and necessities of life now provided entirely by the Organization—and to pay for recreation and leisure, the twin aspects of freedom. But few could afford more than a limited glimpse of these pleasures. ”

“ For a little while after the Freemen vanished, the camera continued to probe the line of trees hopefully. Hendley kept wishing it would return to the man lying in the clearing, but it did not.
Another sequence began in the film, but it merely showed some of the camp facilities. No Freemen were visible. Hendley's thoughts kept going back to the men he had seen. What carefree game had they been playing? What must it be like to engage in such openly abandoned sport? To lie endlessly on cool grass, watching the sun? To follow any impulse at will, with no thought of the cost? ”

“ The Freeman's manner was typically at ease, his gaze turning away from Hendley to rest with amused tolerance on the befuddled struggles of a festive group trying to stage an "iggy" race on an enclosed track past which the sidewalk ran. The clumsy, thick-hided, tailless iguana mutants, oversized descendants of one of the few desert species to survive into the Organization world, reared and threw themselves from side to side, trying to unseat their intoxicated riders. ”

“ The heating and air-conditioning unit was of a size and type designed to serve a series of small shops and offices.
No one saw him when he emerged from the room into a walkway behind a row of shops. He strode casually along the walk and stepped out into a crowded street.
Orienting himself, Hendley found that he was only a quarter of a mile from the museum. He began hurrying through the noisy evening crowd. Theater and sports arena marquees were winking. Throngs filled the busy arcades, the sidewalk venders, the discussion halls, the public gyms. ”

“ The drunken man must have recovered enough to leave under his own power.
Hendley emerged from the darkness of the passageway. The street was still quiet and empty. A thinning trickle of traffic rode the moving walk at the bottom of the long incline. Beyond, bright concentrations of light identified the pleasure centers. And in the farther distance, a deeper black against the sky, the camp's fringe of trees was visible. How moved he had been by his first glimpse of those trees as he came through the gate in the wall! ”

“ The tunnel darkened suddenly. The steel door clanked shut, sealing the tunnel off from the adjoining passage. In the dim light remaining from the tunnel's own illumination panel, Hendley stepped away from the pipes into the center of the aisle. He let out a deep breath.
He was safe enough for the moment. But obviously he couldn't risk leaving the building the way he had entered. The guard might be going on his rounds—or the closing of the door might be a ruse. ”

“ From a central spindle, itself as large as an ordinary recreation hall in the cities, curving escalators rose to the main theater or exhibition hall, whose domelike roof vaulted outward on concrete spines like a huge umbrella. Lesser wings on ground level contained varied game rooms. There was one section off to one side which was concealed behind a high wall. On a lower level, also reached from the central lobby by winding escalators, was the great casino. A floodlit pool was set into the lush green gardens surrounding the building complex. ”

“ Ann spoke simply, directly, her vision unclouded, her tone matter-of-fact. "The top men, the ones you never see or hear about, don't come to Freeman Camps. They have all the freedom they want outside. This isn't what they dream about."
"What do they want?"
She shrugged. "Power, I suppose. Other things. But not this."
"How do you know all this?" Hendley felt the ground shifting under him once more. She couldn't be right. To suggest that the Organization was corrupt at the top went far beyond his own questionings. It made the entire society a fraud. It made all work futile, purposeless. ”

“ A knee, missing his groin, sank into his stomach. Strong hands twisted his arm until it seemed ready to pop from its shoulder socket. He swallowed water.
Coming up gagging, he gulped frantically for air. His arm hung limp. As he grabbed the lip of the pool for support, he saw that the ball had moved halfway down the length of the pool. Across the way the brown-eyed, brown-skinned girl was laughing. More than that. She was clapping her hands. Applauding.
Grimly Hendley turned to meet another attack. This time he didn't try for the ball. He kept busy defending himself. ”

“ It was low and suggestive behind the drawn curtains of the private booths in the peekie-houses, where the latest erotic films were created by thought impulses on the individual screens.
Assaulted by the voices, jostled by the crowds, TRH-247 wandered through the camp. The driving tempo of its gaiety infected him, stealing into his blood stream, quickening all his senses into a kind of exaggerated awareness. Several drinks had blurred the residue of horror left from the scene he had witnessed on the golf green, and diluted the angry tension of the last two holes played out in the fading light. ”

“ In the distance other great concrete cylinders glared in the sunlight. A flat table of bare, baked earth, pale and shimmering, stretched between the featureless buildings like the floor of an enormous oven. Far above, sealed, windowless helicopters droned over the city in a steady stream, their blades beating like wings.
She was trembling.
"It's quite safe," Hendley said. "They've been letting people come out for years now, even here. And the Freeman Camps are all exposed like this." ”

“ Near one of the familiar beige service buildings a player was setting a small white ball on the ground and preparing to strike it with the weighted end of one of the slender poles. He was a stocky, vigorous man twice Hendley's age, his skin reddened rather than tanned by the sun, his thick arms choked with dense gray hair, his head completely bald. Behind him another player hovered, watching, a tall angular man of much the same age, with a prominent Adam's apple, knife-edge nose, remarkably long arms, and an angry scowl. ”

“ He grasped for the top of the desk but his fingers slipped on the smooth surface and he knew that he was falling, and as he fell the gates in a great wall opened for him and he toppled through. He felt a wild surge of exhilaration, but then he was spinning through a dazzling whiteness that was like the naked sun, and at the end of the white tunnel a brisk, tight-lipped, white-robed nurse moved toward him with a giant needle. A sense of outrage engulfed him. He cried out: "I've been drugged!"
Then he was shooting toward a tiny pinpoint of darkness at the end of the white tunnel. ”