But the man who limp-stumped up to Ryeland had none of these things. He was totally bald. (In a moment, as the sunlight caught it, Ryeland saw that what had seemed to be the man's scalp was a plastic covering.) He walked with a shoulder-cane—almost a crutch. And what he walked on were not flesh-and-blood feet but prosthetic appliances. One eye was only a patch; the other was drawn into a squint by another area of pink plastic that covered the place where once he had had an ear.
"You! Did you just come in?" he cried. His voice was deep and vibrant; that, at least, he had kept.
Ryeland said, keeping his expression polite with some difficulty, "Yes, that's right. My name is Steve Ryeland."
"Never mind that. Do you play bridge?"
The difficult expression collapsed for a second, but Ryeland got it back. "I'm afraid not."
"Damn." When the man scowled it pointed up another peculiarity of his face. He had no eyebrows. "How about chess?"
"Yes, a little."
"Speak up!" the man barked, turning his good ear irritably to Ryeland.
"I said yes!"
"Well, that's worth something," the man said, grudging the words. "Um. Maybe you could learn bridge, hey? We're a good house. No rough stuff, no stealing. And no basket cases." He said proudly: "I'm the senior inmate in the house. Take a look at me. See? I've got plenty left."
Ryeland said slowly, "You mean I can pick out the house I live in? I don't know the rules here yet."
"There aren't any rules. Oh," the man shrugged, "no fights resulting in bodily injury, no hazardous sports—they salvage you total for that sort of thing. You know. What you've got, it doesn't belong to you any more. It's the Plan's and you're supposed to take care of it." He hitched himself forward on his shoulder-cane. "Well, what about it? You look all right to me. Take my advice and come in with us. Never mind what the other houses say—those Jupiters will be talking about their pingpong table, and what good is that when tomorrow morning you maybe won't have what to play pingpong with!" He grinned confidentially, revealing a set of casually placed artificial teeth.
Ryeland went with the one-eyed man, whose name turned out to be Whitehurst. The man was a good salesman, but he had not exaggerated the value of choosing the right hut. Ryeland could see that for himself; some cottages had a rundown, disreputable air, the inmates lounging around, surly and bored. Whitehurst's house was busy if nothing else.
It was amazing, but Ryeland found Heaven rather pleasant. There was food—good food. Whitehurst told him proudly, no synthetics or retreads! (The tissues had to be kept up.) There was plenty of leisure. (The patient had to be always in shape for major surgery.) There was . . . well . . . freedom, said Whitehurst, almost embarrassed as he said it and unwilling to explain. But Ryeland found out that it was so. If Heaven was a jail, at least the walls were out of sight. There was no fear of making a mistake and falling to ruin; there was no farther to fall.
The physical plant was ideal. Small cottages dotted a green landscape. Palms stood on green hills. There was a grove of oaks and cedars by a lake, and the lake contained actual fish. The tropic sky was a permanent milky blue, with high-piled cumulus to give it life.
Whitehurst's cottage called themselves the Dixie Presidents. No one remembered what doomed antiquarian, generations before, had selected the name, but it was the custom to name each house and successive inmates kept the names; it was a tradition. The Dixie Presidents were an all-male cottage, by choice. It was up to the inmates. Not all the houses were so monastic. There were as many women as men in Heaven, and the co-ed cottages were given to wild sounds late at night. But that was up to the inmates too.
Listening to the evening conversation of his fellow inmates, Ryeland found a few things which struck him as odd. The cottage across the way was occupied by a family group. Strange! Their name was Minton— Mr. Minton, Mrs. Minton and their five grown children. What mass crime had the Minton family committed to be scrapped en masse? It was queer.
The principle that lay behind the Body Bank he knew well. It had been explained to him in detail on his travel orders, even if he had been the one man alive under the Plan who didn't know all about it from infancy. Each human under the Plan of Man was required to make a contribution toward the good of all. If inefficiency, malevolence or carelessness kept him from doing what he was asked, he would then be permitted to contribute in another way. He would be scrapped. His limbs and organs would be put to the use of more valuable citizens, replacing parts damaged through accident or disease.
It was a project more attractive to the recipient than to the donor, of course. Yet it did have a sort of rough justice, and Ryeland thought he could bring himself to tolerate whatever might happen—the world's good was more important than his own!
And yet. . .
One thing did bother him. In his life he had known or heard of a fair number of persons who had been scrapped for the salvage of their parts in the Body Bank.
And yet he could not remember ever, not even once, having encountered a man who had benefited from these organs. , .
Now at last, when it was too late to matter, Ryeland had time to return to the riddle of his three missing days. He was tormented with the possibility that he had once known a precious secret which could somehow transform the Plan of Man—if he could just recall it.
That night after he had watched the bridge game for a few minutes he lay trying to remember. Had there been a knocking twice on his door, on Friday and again on Monday? If Horrock had really come to him, what message could he have brought? Even if a jetless drive could be invented, how could it threaten the Plan? Who besides Donderevo was free from the Machine?
He found no answers. The fog was thicker in his memory. Even the fat, apologetic face of Dr. Thrale was growing dim. He no longer flinched when he remembered the cold electrodes clamped on his body. He fell asleep and dreamed that he had discovered a jetless drive.
It was a broomstick. He rode it through a jungle of five-pointed tinsel stars, with General Fleemer astride a spaceling close behind him. Fleemer was goading and spurring the spaceling, and it was screaming horribly.
"Reveille! Reveille! Everybody up!"
Ryeland woke up with a start; he had been dreaming that he was in the Body Bank, in an unusually soft bed, and woke to find it true. He sat blinking at the bunk across from him. It looked more like a surgical supply house than a human being's bed. The cords of a bone conduction hearing aid dangled from the stainless-steel shafts of a prosthetic arm. A self-powered wheelchair bore ten pounds of assorted steel, copper, rubber and plastic. As in the ancient joke about the wedding night, there was more of Ryeland's roommate on the bureau than in the bed.
The roommate was a plump man of rosy complexion, what there was left of it, and ill temper. His name was Alden. "Come on, Ryeland," he screeched faintly in the high-pitched whisper of the newly deaf. "You know the rules of the house. Give me a hand."
"All right." There was plenty of time before morning shape-up and breakfast, so Ryeland had been told; there had to be, for the senior members of the community needed plenty of time to get their miscellaneous artificial parts in place. As a newcomer, still complete in his organs, Ryeland had obligations. The juniors took care of the seniors. Seniority ruled—not age, but length of time in Heaven. It was a fair system, it was explained to Ryeland, and it was enlightened self-interest besides. "You'll find out," Whitehurst had said grimly. "Wait till you're missing a few little chunks."
In the morning the conversation was less placid, less polite than at night. It was odd too, thought Ryeland, listening carefully. In the morning the one universal topic was Escape. Perhaps it was only the wake-up irritability of the normal human, but even the advanced basket cases from the huts next door laid their plans and carefully measured the daily patrol of the guard helicopters. Alden muttered for twenty minutes about the chance of swimming to a miraculously borrowed fishing submarine that some incredibly loyal friend from Life might arrange to have out beyond the breakers. It was foolish, it was pathetic. There was hardly enough left of him to bother escaping with. And his tone the night before had been bland resignation: "You'll learn, my boy," he told Ryeland, "we're here for a reason. It's right" It was puzzling.