In the night Ryeland had been bothered by something sticking him in the ribs.
Once Alden was wheeled away he searched, and there, thrust under the seams of the mattress, was a flat aluminum case. He opened and spilled out lump sugar, maps, terribly amateurish faked travel orders from the Machine. And a journal.
The journal was the work of some previous occupant who signed himself only by initials—D.W.H.—and it covered a period of almost three years. The first entry was sober self-appraisaclass="underline"
June 16. I arrived in Heaven this morning. I can't get out. If I did get out, there would be no place to go. But if I let myself give up the hope of somehow getting out I might as well be dead. Therefore I will try to escape. And I will not brood.
The last entry, in a palsied hand, was less sober, less analytic:
May the—what? 9th, maybe. Just a min. bfr shape-up. I think I've got it! Nbdy ever looks at the scrap-heap carcasses! I've seen some that look better than I do now and, whoosh, they're down the chute & out on the barge when they clean up. So tonight's the night. All I have to do is pass one more shape-up. I've plenty left. Aprnces don't matter. If I can just—There's the bell. More ltr.
The remaining pages were blank.
Breakfast came before the morning shape-up and Ryeland, stuffing the journal back in the mattress, went thoughtfully out to eat.
The food was all Whitehurst had promised! There was no rationing here, none at all. Sugar. Coffee. Real, thick cream. Ham with red gravy; cereal with more of the thick cream; fruits and hot biscuits.
Ryeland ate until his stomach bulged. He began to feel better. The world seemed calmer, brighter; his housemates left off grumbling and plotting and began to laugh and shout along the long tables.
Ryeland sat next to Whitehurst and brought up the subject of the previous occupant of his bunk.
"Oh, him," said the one-eyed man. "Old Danny. He was here for ever, considering. I mean, he must have been a very popular type, they took so much of him. I thought they'd never salvage him total, though all he had keeping him going at the end was a whirl-pump heart and twice a day Alterations on the kidney machine. Funny thing about Danny, his bidding was good enough but when he played a hand—" "What happened to him?"
Whitehurst scowled. "Took both lungs at one time. Pity, too. He still had two arms, clear down to the fingers."
The bell summoned them out to the morning shape-up. There were three of them a day, Whitehurst whispered, and you had to be present. Otherwise total salvage, right away. The white guards with red hearts appliqued on their tunics moved up and down the ragged lines, checking the tattooed identification against lists. "Gutnick, Fairweather, Breen, Morchant," the one at the house of the Dixie Presidents chanted. "Nothing for you boys. You can fall out. Alden, Hensley—Hensley? Say, how did that name get on the list? Wasn't he scrapped last week?" Half a dozen voices agreed he had been; the guard scratched the name off his list. "Lousy administrative work. Say. Who are you?" He took Ryeland's arm. "Oh, Steve Ryeland. Welcome to our little community. Nothing for you today, though. Whitehurst. Oh, yes. Come on, Whitehurst, you're in business."
Ryeland got away as soon as he could. The others were laughing and relaxed, but seeing Whitehurst led away had chilled the soft warmth that had spread over Ryeland at breakfast. At any moment it might be his name that was on the list; if there was anything at all he could do about it, the time to do it was now.
He retrieved the journal from his bed, escaped the back way and found a sunny spot on a hill. He sat down against a stone retaining wall and studied the diary of the late D.W.H.
There was nothing about the man's life-in-Life in his journal. But whatever he had been he was a man of method and intelligence. He had begun by systematically investigating his surroundings. From the first month's entries Ryeland learned a number of possibly useful statistics. There had then been 327 inmates in Heaven, counting twelve children under the age of eighteen (and what had they done to be here?). This was not the only Heaven; there probably were a number of others; twice shipments of inmates had gone out through the gate, to replenish another Heaven temporarily low in stock. There were never any guards inside the walls except at the shape-ups. Usually about a dozen came in then, and D.W.H. had once been able to count the outside guards at fifteen more. Heaven roamed over nearly a hundred acres, and there was a map, heavily erased and redrawn, tucked into the journal. A note on the map told Ryeland that the walls were electrified and impenetrable, even down to a depth of fifty yards under the surface. Apparently someone had actually dug that far!
The beach was not fenced, but there was a heavy steel net and, beyond that, a persuasive tradition of sharks. The only other break in the wall was the building through which he had entered, and its satellite structures—the clinic, the administration building, the powerhouse. And the sanitation building. It was there that the "scrap-heap" had attracted D.W.H.'s attention. It was near the beach, and a chute led to a barge which, towed to sea, disposed of the left-over parts of the inmates as well as the more ordinary wastes of a community of several hundred.
Ryeland mused thoughtfully over the map. Only the scrap disposal chute looked promising. Yet the writer had not thought of it until after some months and, judging by the increasingly panicked and incoherent quality of his notes, his judgment must by then have begun to deteriorate. Still, it was worth a thought. He said a man could escape that way. Perhaps a man could. . .
If he had a place to escape to.
Ryeland put that thought out of his mind and read industriously in the journal until movements outside the cottages revealed that it was time for the mid-day shape-up.
No Dixie President was called at noon. Only when they were dismissed did Ryeland realize he had been holding his breath almost continuously. Gutnick, the man next to him in line, winked and said: "It gets you that way at first. It keeps on getting you that way too."
Ryeland said only: "What's that?"
Gutnick turned and looked. Down the gravel path two guards were solemnly pushing a wheelchair and a handtruck of appliances. All were connected to the occupant of the wheelchair. There was little left of the man, if it was a man. All of his head was swathed in bandages—if that was his head. Only a little gap showed where the mouth was. The auxiliary handtruck carried a considerable array of pumps and tubing, stainless-steel cylinders and electric equipment.
Gutnick said, "Oh, him." Gutnick could not wave, as both his arms had been needed elsewhere, but he inclined his torso and called: "Hi, Alec. What did you lose this time?"
The bandaged head moved faintly. Nothing else moved on the man. The nearly invisible lips parted to gasp, in words like puffs of smoke. "That you, Gutnick? Just the other kidney, I think."
"You've got plenty left," lied Gutnick cheerfully, and they went in to lunch. Ryeland could not get the basket case out of his mind.