He drank some more of the whiskey and turned to the people sitting near him: three men and a woman, all immigrants. They were talking about furniture. He listened for a few minutes, drinking, and moved away.
Lilac was sitting next to the beak-nosed native woman—Julia. They were smoking and talking, or rather Julia was talking and Lilac was listening.
He went to the table and poured more whiskey into his glass. He lit a cigarette.
A man named Lars introduced himself. He ran a school for immigrant children there in New Madrid. He had been brought to Liberty as a child, and had been there for forty-two years.
Ashi came, holding Lilac by the hand. “Chip, come see my studio,” he said.
He led them from the room into the passage walled with paintings. “Do you know who you were speaking to?” he asked Lilac.
“Julia?” she said.
“Julia Costanza,” he said. “She’s the General’s cousin. Despises him. She was one of the founders of Immigrants’ Assistance.”
His studio was large and brilliantly lighted. A half-finished painting of a native woman holding a kitten stood on an easel; on another easel stood a canvas painted with slabs of blue and green. Other paintings stood against the walls: slabs of brown and orange, blue and purple, purple and black, orange and red.
He explained what he was trying to do, pointing out balances, and opposing thrusts, and subtle shadings of color.
Chip looked away and drank his whiskey.
“Listen, you steelies!” he said, loudly enough so they all could hear him. “Stop talking about furniture for a minute and listen! You know what we’ve got to do? Fight Uni! I’m not being rude, I mean it literally. Fight Uni! Because it’s Uni who’s to blame—for everything! For lunkies, who’re what they are because they don’t have enough food, or space, or connection with any outside world; and for dummies, who’re what they are because they’re LPK’ed that way and tranquilized that way; and for us, who’re what we are because Uni put us here to get rid of us! It’s Uni who’s to blame—it’s frozen the world so there’s no more change—and we’ve got to fight it! We’ve got to get up off our stupid beaten behinds and FIGHT IT!”
Ashi, smiling, slapped at his cheek. “Hey, brother,” he said, “you’ve had a little too much, you know that? Hey, Chip, you hear me?”
Of course he’d had too much; of course, of course, of course. But it hadn’t dulled him, it had freed him. It had opened up everything that had been closed inside him for months and months. Whiskey was good! Whiskey was marvelous!
He stopped Ashi’s slapping hand and held it. “I’m okay, Ashi,” he said. “I know what I’m talking about.” To the others, sitting and swaying and smiling, he said, “We can’t just give up and accept things, adjust ourselves to this prison! Ashi, you used to draw members without bracelets, and they were so beautiful! And now you’re painting color, slabs of color!”
They were trying to get him to sit down, Ashi on one side of him and Lilac on the other, Lilac looking anxious and embarrassed. “You too, love,” he said. “You’re accepting, adjusting.” He let them seat him, because standing hadn’t been easy and sitting was better, more comfortable and sprawly. “We’ve got to fight, not adjust,” he said. “Fight, fight, fight. We’ve got to fight,” he said to the gray-eyed beardless man sitting next to him.
“By God, you’re right!” the man said. “I’m with you all the way! Fight Uni! What’ll we do? Go over in boats and take the Army along for good measure? But maybe the sea is monitored by satellite and doctors’ll be waiting with clouds of LPK. I’ve got a better idea; we’ll get a plane—I hear there’s one on the island that actually flies—and we’ll—”
“Don’t tease him, Bob,” someone said. “He just came over.”
“That’s obvious,” the man said, getting up.
“There’s a way to do it,” Chip said. “There has to be. There’s a way to do it.” He thought about the sea and the island in the middle of it, but he couldn’t think as clearly as he wanted. Lilac sat where the man had been and took his hand. “We’ve got to fight,” he said to her.
“I know, I know,” she said, looking at him sadly.
Ashi came and put a warm cup to his lips. “It’s coffee,” he said. “Drink it.”
It was very hot and strong; he swallowed a mouthful, then pushed the cup away. “The copper complex,” he said. “On ’91766. The copper must get ashore. There must be boats or barges; we could—”
“It’s been done before,” Ashi said.
Chip looked at him, thinking he was tricking him, making fun of him in some way, like the gray-eyed beardless man.
“Everything you’re saying,” Ashi said, “everything you’re thinking—‘fight Uni’—it’s been said before and thought before. And tried before. A dozen times.” He put the cup to Chip’s lips. “Take some more,” he said.
Chip pushed the cup away, staring at him, and shook his head. “It’s not true,” he said.
“It is, brother. Come on, take a—”
“It isn’t!” he said.
“It is,” a woman said across the room. “It’s true.”
Julia. It was Julia, General’s-cousin-Julia, sitting erect and alone in her black dress with her little gold cross.
“Every five or six years,” she said, “a group of people like you—sometimes only two or three, sometimes as many as ten—sets out to destroy UniComp. They go in boats, in submarines that they spend years building; they go on board the barges you just mentioned. They take guns, explosives, gas masks, gas bombs, gadgets; they have plans that they’re sure will work. They never come back. I financed the last two parties and am supporting the families of men who were in them, so I speak with authority. I hope you’re sober enough to understand, and to spare yourself useless anguish. Accepting and adjusting is all that’s possible. Be grateful for what you have: a lovely wife, a child on the way, and a small amount of freedom that we hope in time will grow larger. I might add that in no circumstances whatsoever will I finance another such party. I am not as rich as certain people think I am.”
Chip sat looking at her. She looked back at him with small black eyes above her pale beak of nose.
“They never come back, Chip,” Ashi said.
Chip looked at him.
“Maybe they get to shore,” Ashi said; “maybe they get to ’001. Maybe they even get into the dome. But that’s as far as they get, because they’re gone, every one of them. And Uni is still working.”
Chip looked at Julia. She said, “Men and women exactly like you. As far back as I can remember.”
He looked at Lilac, holding his hand. She squeezed it, looking compassionately at him.
He looked at Ashi, who held the cup of coffee toward him.
He blocked the cup and shook his head. “No, I don’t want coffee,” he said.
He sat motionless, with sudden sweat on his forehead, and then he leaned forward and began vomiting.