The interview with the senior adviser, a young woman, went well, Chip thought, but nothing else did. He was afraid to tense his muscles before the metabolic examination because of the doctor watching him, and he forgot about looking above the objective in the depth-perception test until it was too late.
“Too bad you’re missing a day’s work,” the watching doctor said.
“I’ll make it up,” he said, and realized as he said it that it was a mistake. He should have said It’s all for the best or Will I be here all day? or simply a dull overtreated Yes.
At midday he was given a glass of bitter white liquid to drink instead of a totalcake and then there were more tests and examinations. The woman doctor went away for half an hour but not the man.
Around three o’clock they seemed to be finished and went into a small office. The man sat down behind the desk and Chip sat opposite him. The woman said, “Excuse me, I’ll be back in two seconds.” She smiled at Chip and went out.
The man studied the report form for a minute or two, running a fingertip back and forth along his scar, and then he looked at the clock and put down the clipboard. “I’ll go get her,” he said, and got up and went out, closing the door partway.
Chip sat still and sniffed and looked at the clipboard. He leaned over, twisted his head, read on the report form the words cholinesterase absorption factor, unamplified, and sat back in his chair again. Had he looked too long?—he wasn’t sure. He rubbed his thumb and examined it, then looked at the room’s pictures, Marx Writing and Wood Presenting the Unification Treaty.
They came back in. The woman doctor sat down behind the desk and the man sat in a chair near her side. The woman looked at Chip. She wasn’t smiling. She looked worried.
“Young brother,” she said, “I’m worried about you. I think you’ve been trying to fool us.”
Chip looked at her. “Fool you?” he said.
“There are sick members in this town,” she said; “do you know that?”
He shook his head.
“Yes,” she said. “As sick as can be. They cover members’ eyes and take them someplace, and tell them to slow down and make mistakes and pretend they’ve lost their interest in sex. They try to make other members as sick as they are. Do you know any such members?”
“No,” Chip said.
“Anna,” the man said, “I’ve watched him. There’s no reason to think there’s anything wrong beyond what showed on the tests.” He turned to Chip and said, “Very easily corrected; nothing for you to think about.”
The woman shook her head. “No,” she said. “No, it doesn’t feel right. Please, young brother, you want us to help you, don’t you?”
“Nobody told me to make mistakes,” Chip said. “Why? Why should I?”
The man tapped the report form. “Look at the enzymological rundown,” he said to the woman.
“I’ve looked at it, I’ve looked at it.”
“He’s been badly OT’ed there, there, there, and there. Let’s give the data to Uni and get him fixed up again.”
“I want Jesus HL to see him.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m worried.”
“I don’t know any sick members,” Chip said. “If I did I would tell my adviser.”
“Yes,” the woman said, “and why did you want to see him yesterday morning?”
“Yesterday?” Chip said. “I thought it was my day. I got mixed up.”
“Please, let’s go,” the woman said, standing up holding the clipboard.
They left the office and walked down the hallway outside it. The woman put her arm around Chip’s shoulders but she didn’t smile. The man dropped behind.
They came to the end of the hallway, where there was a door marked 600A with a brown white-lettered plaque on it: Chief, Chemotherapeutics Division. They went in, to an anteroom where a member sat behind a desk. The woman doctor told her that they wanted to consult Jesus HL about a diagnostic problem, and the member got up and went out through another door.
“A waste of time all around,” the man said.
The woman said, “Believe me, I hope so.”
There were two chairs in the anteroom, a bare low table, and Wei Addressing the Chemotherapists. Chip decided that if they made him tell he would try not to mention Snowflake’s light skin and Lilac’s less-slanted-than-normal eyes.
The member came back and held the door open.
They went into a large office. A gaunt gray-haired member in his fifties—Jesus HL—was seated behind a large untidy desk. He nodded to the doctors as they approached, and looked absently at Chip. He waved a hand toward a chair facing the desk. Chip sat down in it.
The woman doctor handed Jesus HL the clipboard. “This doesn’t feel right to me,” she said. “I’m afraid he’s malingering.”
“Contrary to the enzymological evidence,” the other doctor said.
Jesus HL leaned back in his chair and studied the report form. The doctors stood by the side of the desk, watching him. Chip tried to look curious but not concerned. He watched Jesus HL for a moment, and then looked at the desk. Papers of all sorts were piled and scattered on it and lay drifted over an old-style telecomp in a scuffed case. A drink container jammed with pens and rulers stood beside a framed snapshot of Jesus HL, younger, smiling in front of Uni’s dome. There were two souvenir paperweights, an unusual square one from CHI61332 and a round one from ARG20400, neither of them on paper.
Jesus HL turned the clipboard end for end and peeled the form down and read the back of it.
“What I would like to do, Jesus,” the woman doctor said, “is keep him here overnight and run some of the tests again tomorrow.”
“Wasting—” the man said.
“Or better still,” the woman said, louder, “question him now under TP.”
“Wasting time and supplies,” the man said.
“What are we, doctors or efficiency analyzers?” the woman asked him sharply.
Jesus HL put down the clipboard and looked at Chip. He got up from his chair and came around the side of the desk, the doctors stepping back quickly to let him pass. He came and stood directly in front of Chip’s chair, tall and thin, his red-crossed coveralls stained with yellow spots.
He took Chip’s hands from the chair arms, turned them over, and looked at the palms, which glistened with sweat.
He let one hand go and held the wrist of the other, his fingers at the pulse. Chip made himself look up, unconcernedly. Jesus HL looked quizzically at him for a moment and then suspected—no, knew—and smiled his knowledge contemptuously. Chip felt hollow, beaten.
Jesus HL took hold of Chip’s chin, bent over, and looked closely at his eyes. “Open your eyes as wide as you can,” he said. His voice was King’s. Chip stared at him.