"You know better than I, he said bitterly, trying to take the wristband off and slap it in her palm. The gesture failed, because it still would not come open.
"You'll feel better when we get going, she said. "I've got a Thermos of coffee. It's about an hour's drive.
"I know, I know, grumped Cowpersmith, who had, after all, been in and out on the Kennedy-Manhattan run more times than he could count. But when the chauffeur took a right-hand turn where there had always been a left, he realized he did not know. It did not seem important, and he drowsed until the car stopped, doors opened- "Here's your boy, Morrie.
"Looks like we'll have to carry him in.
-and he opened his eyes to see Mr. Morris and the chauffeur tugging at him.
"Em all right, he said with dignity, and halfway up the pebbled walk looked around and said. "Where is this place, anyway? Porticoed porch, ivied walls, he had not seen it before.
"Where you get debriefed, said Shirley, pausing at the door. "So long, Tud.
He hesitated. "You're not coming in? Will I see you again?
"I'll see you, she said, patted his shoulderblade and returned to the car.
Sensory impressions smote him: An entrance hall, with a staircase winding up under a huge canvas-shrouded painting in a gilt frame. A library of glassed-in shelves, mostly empty, with drop-clothed chairs around a cold and swept fireplace. A dining hall, and beyond it a closed door.
"Does he live in this place, whoever he is? asked Cowpersmith, staring about.
Mr. Morris sighed. "There is no he, ' he said patiently. "There are they.' They are here, some of them ... This is the part I hate, he added morosely.
"Why ?"
"Well, you're going to ask a lot of questions again. You all do. And you're going to figure you've done your bit, now you have a right to know. Right? And maybe in a sense you do, although it's pretty pointless. . . Anyway. What we do now, we take the recordings from you, and when we've got enough to make a shipment, we send them off. I don't know where, exactly. I don't know what they do with them, exactly. But it's a big business with them.
"Big business? Misconceptions and erroneous assumptions were splintering in Cowpersmith's brain.
"Well, like a TV network. I mean, I think they kind of broadcast them, sort of like a National Geographic television speciaclass="underline" sensory impressions from all over, strange pleasures of the aborigines-
"I never, said Cowpersrnith positively, apprehensions dissolving the sleep from his mind, "heard any broadcast like that.
"No. Not on this planet, no.
Cowpersmith swallowed, choking on apprehensions and the splinters of former certainties.
"The mistake you made, said Mr. Morris sympathetically, "is that you assumed the people who hired you were human beings. They're not. No. You wouldn't think so if you'd seen one. They, uh. . . Well, they look a little bit like fish and a little bit like the devil. All red, you see. And not very big-
"But Murray said-
"Oh, Christ, said Mr. Morris, "how could Murray know? If it's any consolation to you, when he was debriefed he was as surprised as you are. It gets everybody the same way.
"Bloody charming, said Cowpersmith bitterly. "Now I'm an agent of a foreign power. I wouldn't be surprised if the FBI picks me up about this.
"I would, said Mr. Morris. "In there, go on.
"Where?
"There. Through the door.
"What do we do in there? Cowpersmith demanded, truculent because the only alternative was being terrified.
"You turn over the recording to them and that's that." said Mr. Morris.
Cowperstnith swallowed again, choking this time on plain panic. He wished that the car hadn't gone away. Still, he thought, they had to be somewhere on Long Island. Maybe Sands Point'? Maybe Patchogue. And he still had most of the fifty dollars, plus whatever had been left in his coat, plus, of course, that Swiss bank account. There would be a taxi...
"Okay, he said, tugging at the wristband. "Let's get it over with and I'll get out of here.
"Oh, said Mr. Morris, annoyed, "what are you doing? That's not the recording. That's only the monitor, so we could tell how you were doing and where you were. You turn over the recording in there.
And he opened the door behind the dining hall.
Two men in white stepped through. They were not smiling. They were without expression, like saloon bouncers or dog catchers.
The room behind them looked like an operating chamber: bright lights over a flat white table. Rows of transparent jars lined the shelves around the room. They came in two sizes:
In the large (there were two of them) red and hideous things stirred uneasily, looking out toward Cowpersmith with great pale eyes.
In the smaller jars, of which there were more than a dozen- Were the floating objects in them really human heads?
And that one there, next to the brighter of the two red creatures, the one with the wild red eyebrows-wasn't it very familiar?
It was too late to turn; the men were reaching out for him as Mr. Morris said from behind him, sadly, disclaimingly, "What better recording could they have than the one in your own brain?
GROWING UP IN EDGE CITY
Among the closest friends I had in the thirty years I lived in Red Bank, New Jersey, was a family named Waterman. Bob and Dorothy and their offspring, who were much of an age with my own. It was a great loss when they moved nearly a hundred miles away, to the antique New Jersey resort city of Cape May, which is about as far south as you can get in The state without swimming. So, when I could, I drove down to visit them with as much of my family as could be collected for the purpose. All the way down the Garden State Parkway, on one visit, a story was nibbling at my mind-not just a set of characters and situations but a particular way of telling the story that I had just invented and wanted to try out. After we'd all caught up on old times over lunch, and the kids had none off to the boats or the shopping centers or the boardwalk and beach, I mentioned to Dorothy Waterman that I had just realized the right place to set the story was right in Cape May. "Well, she said, "I've got a typewriter I'm not using- And so, sitting on the Watermans' porch, between lunch and our dinner date at one of the best seafood restaurants in the world, this came out.
In the evenings after school Chandlie played private games. He was permitted to do so. His overall index of gregariousness was high enough to allow him to choose his own companions, or no companion at all but a Pal, when he wanted it that way. On Tueday and Fourthday he generally spent his time with a seven-year-old female named Marda, quick and bright, with a chiseled, demure little face that would have beseemed pretty woman of twenty, apt at mathematical intuitions and the stringing of beads. The proctors logged in their private games under the heading of "sensuality sensitivity training, but they called them "You Show Me Yours and I'll Show You Mine. The proctors, in their abstract and deterministic way, approved of what Chandlie did. Even then he was marked for special challenge, having been evaluated as Councilman potential. and when on most other evenings Chandlie went down to the machine rooms and checked out a Pal, no objections were raised, no questions were asked, and no follow-up warnings were flagged in the magnetic cores of his record-fiche. He went off freely and openly, wherever he chose. This was so even though there was a repeating anomaly in his log. Almost every evening for an hour or two, Chandlie's personal transponder stopped broadcasting his location fix. They could not tell where he was in Edge City. They accepted this because of their own limitations. It was recorded in the proctors basic memory file that there were certain areas of the City in which old electromagnetic effects interfered with the radio direction finding signals. They were not strategically important areas. The records showed nothing dangerous or forbidden there. The proctors noted the gap in the log but attached no importance to it. As a matter of routine they opened up the Pal's chrome-steel tamper-proof course-plot tapes from time to time, but it was only spot-checking. They did the same for everyone's Pal. They never found anything significantly wrong in Chandue's. If they had been less limited, they might have inquired further. A truly good program would have cross- referenced Chandlie's personality profile, learned from it that he was gifted in man-machine interactions, and deduced from this the possibility that he had bugged the Pal. If they had then checked the Pal's permanent record of instructions, they would have learned that it was so. They did not do that. The proctors were not particularly sophisticated computer programs. They saw in their inputs no reason to be suspicious. Chandlie's father and mother could have told the programs all about him, but they had been Dropouts since he was three.