“I don’t believe it,” Chip said. “Any of it.”
They told him it was true. “It’s true, Chip.” “Really, it’s the truth.” “It’s true!”
“You’re in genetics,” King said; “isn’t that what genetic engineering is working toward?—removing aggressiveness, controlling the sex drive, building in helpfulness and docility and gratitude? Treatments are doing the job in the meantime, while genetic engineering gets past size and skin color.”
“Treatments help us,” Chip said.
“They help Uni,” the woman across the table said.
“And the Wei-worshippers who programmed Uni,” King said. “But they don’t help us, at least not as much as they hurt us. They make us into machines.”
Chip shook his head, and shook it again.
“Snowflake told us”—it was Hush, speaking in a dry quiet voice that accounted for her name—“that you have abnormal tendencies. Haven’t you ever noticed that they’re stronger just before a treatment and weaker just after one?”
Snowflake said, “I’ll bet you made that picture frame a day or two before a treatment, not a day or two after one.”
He thought for a moment. “I don’t remember,” he said, “but when I was a boy and thought about classifying myself, after treatments it seemed stupid and pre-U, and before treatments it was—exciting.”
“There you are,” King said.
“But it was sick excitement!”
“It was healthy,” King said, and the woman across the table said, “You were alive, you were feeling something. Any feeling is healthier than no feeling at all.”
He thought about the guilt he had kept secret from his advisers since Karl and the Academy. He nodded. “Yes,” he said, “yes, that could be.” He turned his face toward King, toward the woman, toward Leopard and Snowflake, wishing he could open his eyes and see them. “But I don’t understand this,” he said. “You get treatments, don’t you? Then aren’t you—”
“Reduced ones,” Snowflake said.
“Yes, we get treatments,” King said, “but we’ve managed to have them reduced, to have certain components of them reduced, so that we’re a little more than the machines Uni thinks we are.”
“And that’s what we’re offering you,” Snowflake said; “a way to see more and feel more and do more and enjoy more.”
“And to be more unhappy; tell him that too.” It was a new voice, soft but clear, the other young woman. She was across the table and to Chip’s left, close to where King was.
“That isn’t so,” Snowflake said.
“Yes it is,” the clear voice said—a girl’s voice almost; she was no more than twenty, Chip guessed. “There’ll be days when you’ll hate Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei,” she said, “and want to take a torch to Uni. There’ll be days when you’ll want to tear off your bracelet and run to a mountaintop like the old incurables, just to be able to do what you want to do and make your own choices and live your own life.”
“Lilac,” Snowflake said.
“There’ll be days when you’ll hate us,” she said, “for waking you up and making you not a machine. Machines are at home in the universe; people are aliens.”
“Lilac,” Snowflake said, “we’re trying to get Chip to join us; we’re not trying to scare him away.” To Chip she said, “Lilac is really abnormal.”
“There’s truth in what Lilac says,” King said. “I think we all have moments when we wish there were someplace we could go, some settlement or colony where we could be our own masters—”
“Not me,” Snowflake said.
“And since there isn’t such a place,” King said, “yes, we’re sometimes unhappy. Not you, Snowflake; I know. With rare exceptions like Snowflake, being able to feel happiness seems to mean being able to feel unhappiness as well. But as Sparrow said, any feeling is better and healthier than none at all; and the unhappy moments aren’t that frequent, really.”
“They are,” Lilac said.
“Oh, cloth,” Snowflake said. “Let’s stop all this talk about unhappiness.”
“Don’t worry, Snowflake,” the woman across the table, Sparrow, said; “if he gets up and runs you can trip him.”
“Ha, ha, hate, hate,” Snowflake said.
“Snowflake, Sparrow,” King said. “Well, Chip, what’s your answer? Do you want to get your treatments reduced? It’s done by steps; the first one is easy, and if you don’t like the way you feel a month from now, you can go to your adviser and tell him you were infected by a group of very sick members whom you unfortunately can’t identify.”
After a moment Chip said, “All right. What do I do?” His arm was squeezed by Snowflake. “Good,” Hush whispered.
“Just a moment, I’m lighting my pipe,” King said.
“Are you all smoking?” Chip asked. The burning smell was intense, drying and stinging his nostrils.
“Not right now,” Hush said. “Only King, Lilac, and Leopard.”
“We’ve all been doing it though,” Snowflake said. “It’s not a continuous thing; you do it awhile and then stop awhile.”
“Where do you get the tobacco?”
“We grow it,” Leopard said, sounding pleased. “Hush and I. In parkland.”
“In parkland?”
“That’s right,” Leopard said.
“We have two patches,” Hush said, “and last Sunday we found a place for a third.”
“Chip?” King said, and Chip turned toward him and listened. “Basically, step one is just a matter of acting as if you’re being overtreated,” King said; “slowing down at work, at games, at everything—slowing down slightly, not conspicuously. Make a small mistake at your work, and another one a few days later. And don’t do well at sex. The thing to do there is masturbate before you meet your girlfriend; that way you’ll be able to fail convincingly.”
“Masturbate?”
“Oh, fully treated, fully satisfied member,” Snowflake said.
“Bring yourself to an orgasm with your hand,” King said. “And then don’t be too concerned when you don’t have one later. Let your girlfriend tell her adviser; don’t you tell yours. Don’t be too concerned about anything, the mistakes you make, lateness for appointments or whatever; let others do the noticing and reporting.”
“Pretend to doze off during TV,” Sparrow said.
“You’re ten days from your next treatment,” King said. “At your next week’s adviser meeting, if you’ve done what I’ve told you, your adviser will sound you out about your general torpor. Again, no concern on your part. Apathy. If you do the whole thing well, the depressants in your treatment will be slightly reduced, enough so that a month from now you’ll be anxious to hear about step two.”
“It sounds easy enough,” Chip said.
“It is,” Snowflake said, and Leopard said, “We’ve all done it; you can too.”
“There’s one danger,” King said. “Even though your treatment may be slightly weaker than usual, its effects in the first few days will still be strong. You’ll feel a revulsion against what you’ve done and an urge to confess to your adviser and get stronger treatments than ever. There’s no way of telling whether or not you’ll be able to resist the urge. We did, but others haven’t. In the past year we’ve given this talk to two other members; they did the slowdown but then confessed within a day or two after being treated.”