Bob said, “It was all an act, wasn’t it, Li—the slowdown last spring, the sleepiness and overtreatedness.”
After a moment Chip nodded.
“Oh, brother,” Bob said. “What have you been doing?”
Chip didn’t say anything.
“Oh, brother,” Bob said, and bent over and switched his telecomp off. He closed its cover and snapped the catches. “Are you going to forgive me?” he asked. He stood the telecomp on end and steadied the handle between the fingers of both hands, trying to get it to stay standing up. “I’ll tell you something funny,” he said. “I have a streak of vanity in me. I do. Correction, I did. I thought I was one of the two or three best advisers in the house. In the house, hate; in the city. Alert observant, sensitive… ‘Comes the rude awakening.’” He had the handle standing, and slapped it down and smiled drily at Chip. “So you’re not the only sick one,” he said, “if that’s any consolation.”
“I’m not sick, Bob,” Chip said. “I’m healthier than I’ve been in my entire life.”
Still smiling, Bob said, “That’s kind of contrary to the evidence, isn’t it?” He picked up the telecomp and stood up.
“You can’t see the evidence,” Chip said. “You’ve been dulled by your treatments.”
Bob beckoned with his head and moved toward the door. “Come on,” he said, “let’s go get you fixed up.”
Chip stayed where he was. Bob opened the door and stopped, looking back.
Chip said, “I’m perfectly healthy.”
Bob held out his hand sympathetically. “Come on, Li,” he said.
After a moment Chip went to him. Bob took his arm and they went out into the hallway. Doors were open and members were about, talking quietly, walking. Four or five were gathered at the bulletin board, reading the day’s notices.
“Bob,” Chip said, “I want you to listen to what I’m going to say to you.”
“Don’t I always listen?” Bob said.
“I want you to try to open your mind,” Chip said. “Because you’re not a stupid member, you’re bright, and you’re good-hearted and you want to help me.”
Mary KK came toward them from the escalators, holding a pack of coveralls with a bar of soap on top of it. She smiled and said, “Hi,” and to Chip, “Where were you?”
“He was in the lounge,” Bob said.
“In the middle of the night?” Mary said.
Chip nodded and Bob said, “Yes,” and they went on to the escalators, Bob keeping his hand lightly on Chip’s arm.
They rode down.
“I know you think your mind is open already,” Chip said, “but will you try to open it even more, to listen and think for a few minutes as if I’m just as healthy as I say I am?”
“All right, Li, I will,” Bob said.
“Bob,” Chip said, “we’re not free. None of us is. Not one member of the Family.”
“How can I listen as if you’re healthy,” Bob said, “when you say something like that? Of course we’re free. We’re free of war and want and hunger, free of crime, violence, aggressiveness, sel—”
“Yes, yes, we’re free of things,” Chip said, “but we’re not free to do things. Don’t you see that, Bob? Being ‘free of really has nothing to do with being free at all.”
Bob frowned. “Being free to do what?” he said.
They stepped off the escalator and started around toward the next one. “To choose our own classifications,” Chip said, “to have children when we want, to go where we want and do what we want, to refuse treatments if we want…”
Bob said nothing.
They stepped onto the next escalator. “Treatments really do dull us, Bob,” Chip said. “I know that from my own experience. There are things in them that ‘make us humble, make us good’—like in the rhyme, you know? I’ve been undertreated for half a year now”—the second chime sounded—“and I’m more awake and alive than I’ve ever been. I think more clearly and feel more deeply. I fuck four or five times a week, would you believe that?”
“No,” Bob said, looking at his telecomp riding on the handrail.
“It’s true,” Chip said. “You’re more sure than ever that I’m sick now, aren’t you. Love of Family, I’m not. There are others like me, thousands, maybe millions. There are islands all over the world, there may be cities on the mainland too”—they were walking around to the next escalator—“where people live in true freedom. I’ve got a list of the islands right here in my pocket. They’re not on maps because Uni doesn’t want us to know about them, because they’re defended against the Family and the people there won’t submit to being treated. Now, you want to help me, don’t you? To really help me?”
They stepped onto the next escalator. Bob looked grievingly at him. “Christ and Wei,” he said, “can you doubt it, brother?”
“All right, then,” Chip said, “this is what I’d like you to do for me: when we get to the treatment room tell Uni that I’m okay, that I fell asleep in the lounge the way I told you. Don’t input anything about my not touching scanners or the way I made up the toothache. Let me get just the treatment I would have got yesterday, all right?”
“And that would be helping you?” Bob said.
“Yes, it would,” Chip said. “I know you don’t think so, but I ask you as my brother and my friend to—to respect what I think and feel. I’ll get away to one of these islands somehow and I won’t harm the Family in any way. What the Family has given me, I’ve given back to it in the work I’ve done, and I didn’t ask for it in the first place, and I had no choice about accepting it.”
They walked around to the next escalator.
“All right,” Bob said when they were riding down, “I listened to you, Li; now you listen to me.” His hand above Chip’s elbow tightened slightly. “You’re very, very sick,” he said, “and it’s entirely my fault and I feel miserable about it. There are no islands that aren’t on maps; and treatments don’t dull us; and if we had the kind of ‘freedom’ you’re thinking about we’d have disorder and overpopulation and want and crime and war. Yes, I’m going to help you, brother. I’m going to tell Uni everything, and you’ll be cured and you’ll thank me.
They walked around to the next escalator and stepped onto it. Third floor—Medicenter, the sign at the bottom said. A red-cross-coveralled member riding toward them on the up escalator smiled and said, “Good morning, Bob.”
Bob nodded to him.
Chip said, “I don’t want to be cured.”
“That’s proof that you need to be,” Bob said. “Relax and trust me, Li. No, why the hate should you? Trust Uni, then; will you do that? Trust the members who programmed Uni.”
After a moment Chip said, “All right, I will.”
“I feel awful,” Bob said, and Chip turned to him and struck away his hand. Bob looked at him, startled, and Chip put both hands at Bob’s back and swept him forward. Turning with the movement, he grasped the handrail—hearing Bob tumble, his telecomp clatter—and climbed out onto the up-moving central incline. It wasn’t moving once he was on it; he crept sideways, clinging with fingers and knees to metal ridges; crept sideways to the up-escalator handrail, caught it, and flung himself over and down into the sharp-staired trench of humming metal. He got quickly to his feet—“Stop him!” Bob shouted below—and ran up the upgoing steps taking two in each stride. The red-crossed member at the top, off the escalator, turned. “What are you—” and Chip took him by the shoulders—elderly wide-eyed member—and swung him aside and pushed him away.