The value of what he had found, as he began to perceive it, held him motionless. Here in this small brown book, its cover clinging by threads, were twelve or fifteen pre-U-language pages of which he had an exact translation waiting in his night-table drawer. Thousands of words, of verbs in their bafflingly changing forms; instead of guessing and groping as he had done for his near-useless fragments of Italiano, he could gain a solid footing in this second language in a matter of hours!
He said nothing to the others; slipped the book into his pocket and joined them; filled his pipe as if nothing were out of the ordinary. Le pas-whatever-it-was-avant might not be “The Next Step Forward” after all. But it was, it had to be.
It was; he saw it as soon as he compared the first few sentences. He sat up in his room all that night, carefully reading and comparing, with one finger at the lines in the pre-U language and another at the lines translated. He worked his way two times through the fourteen-page essay, and then began making alphabetical word lists.
The next night he was tired and slept, but the following night, after a visit from Snowflake, he stayed up and worked again.
He began going to the museum on nights between meetings. There he could smoke while he worked, could look for other Français books—Français was the language’s name; the hook below the C was a mystery—and could roam the halls by flashlight. On the third floor he found a map from 1951, artfully patched in several places, where Eur was “Europe,” with the division called “France” where Français had been used, and all its strangely and appealingly named cities: “Paris” and “Nantes” and “Lyon” and “Marseille.”
Still he said nothing to the others. He wanted to confound King with a language fully mastered, and delight Lilac. At meetings he no longer worked at Italiano. One night Lilac asked him about it, and he said, truthfully, that he had given up trying to unravel it. She turned away, looking disappointed, and he was happy, knowing the surprise he was preparing for her.
Saturday nights were wasted, lying by Mary KK, and meeting nights were wasted too; although now, with Hush dead, Leopard sometimes didn’t come, and when he didn’t, Chip stayed on at the museum to straighten up and stayed still later to work.
In three weeks he could read Français rapidly, with only a word here and there that was indecipherable. He found several Français books. He read one whose title, translated, was The Purple Sickle Murders; and another, The Pygmies of the Equatorial Forest; and another, Father Goriot.
He waited until a night when Leopard wasn’t there, and then he told them. King looked as if he had heard bad news. His eyes measured Chip and his face was still and controlled, suddenly older and more gaunt. Lilac looked as if she had been given a longed-for gift. “You’ve read books in it?” she said. Her eyes were wide and shining and her lips stayed parted. But neither one’s reaction could give Chip the pleasure he had looked forward to. He was grave with the weight of what he now knew.
“Three of them,” he said to Lilac. “And I’m halfway through a fourth.”
“That’s marvelous, Chip!” Snowflake said. “What did you keep it a secret for?” And Sparrow said, “I didn’t think it was possible.”
“Congratulations, Chip,” King said, taking out his pipe. “It’s an achievement, even with the help of the essay. You’ve really put me in my place.” He looked at his pipe, working the stem of it to get it straight. “What have you found out so far?” he asked. “Anything interesting?”
Chip looked at him. “Yes,” he said. “A lot of what we’re told is true. There was crime and violence and stupidity and hunger. There was a lock on every door. Flags were important, and the borders of territories. Children waited for their parents to die so they could inherit their money. The waste of labor and material was fantastic.”
He looked at Lilac and smiled consolingly at her; her longed-for gift was breaking. “But with it all,” he said, “members seem to have felt stronger and happier than we do. Going where they wanted, doing what they wanted, ‘earning’ things, ‘owning’ things, choosing, always choosing—it made them somehow more alive than members today.”
King reached for tobacco. “Well that’s pretty much what you expected to find, isn’t it?” he said.
“Yes, pretty much,” Chip said. “And there’s one thing more.”
“What’s that?” Snowflake asked.
Looking at King, Chip said, “Hush didn’t have to die.”
King looked at him. The others did too. “What are you talking about?” King said, his fingers stopped in pipe-filling.
“Don’t you know?” Chip asked him.
“No,” he said. “I don’t understand.”
“What do you mean?” Lilac asked.
“Don’t you know, King?” Chip said.
“No,” King said. “What are—I haven’t the faintest idea of what you’re getting at. How could pre-U books tell you anything about Hush? And why should I be expected to know what it is if they could?”
“Living to the age of sixty-two,” Chip said, “is no marvel of chemistry and breeding and totalcakes. Pygmies of the equatorial forests, whose life was hard even by pre-U standards, lived to be fifty-five and sixty. A member named Goriot lived to seventy-three and nobody thought it was terribly unusual, and that was in the early nineteenth century. Members lived to their eighties, even to their nineties!”
“That’s impossible,” King said. “The body wouldn’t last that long; the heart, the lungs—”
“The book I’m reading now,” Chip said, “is about some members who lived in 1991. One of them has an artificial heart. He gave money to doctors and they put it into him in place of his own.”
“Oh for—” King said. “Are you sure you really understand that Frandaze?”
“Francais,” Chip said. “Yes, I’m positive. Sixty-two isn’t a long life; it’s a relatively short one.”
“But that’s when we die” Sparrow said. “Why do we, if it isn’t—when we have to?”
“We don’t die…” Lilac said, and looked from Chip to King.
“That’s right,” Chip said. “We’re made to die. By Uni. It’s programmed for efficiency, for efficiency first, last, and always. It’s scanned all the data in its memory banks—which aren’t the pretty pink toys you’ve seen if you’ve made the visit; they’re ugly steel monsters—and it’s decided that sixty-two is the optimum dying time, better than sixty-one or sixty-three and better than bothering with artificial hearts. If sixty-two isn’t a new high in longevity that we’re lucky to have reached—and it isn’t, I know it isn’t—then that’s the only answer. Our replacements are trained and waiting, and off we go, a few months early or late so that everything isn’t too suspiciously tidy. Just in case anyone is sick enough to be able to feel suspicion.”
“Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei,” Snowflake said.
“Yes,” Chip said. “Especially Wood and Wei.”
“King?” Lilac said.
“I’m staggered,” King said. “I see now, Chip, why you thought I’d know.” To Snowflake and Sparrow he said, “Chip knows that I’m in chemotherapy.”
“And don’t you know?” Chip said.
“I don’t.”
“Is there or is there not a poison in the treatment units?” Chip asked. “You must know that.”