Chip turned. “There was a party,” he said, toeing off his sandals. “Patya’s birthday.”
“It’s all right,” Wei said, jumping, swinging the dumbbells. “I just mentioned it.”
Chip walked onto a mat and began trotting in place. The white thing around Wei’s neck was a band of silk, tightly knotted.
Wei stopped jumping and tossed down the dumbbells and took a towel from one of the parallel bars. “Madhir’s afraid you’re going to be a radical,” he said, smiling.
“He doesn’t know the half of it,” Chip said.
Wei watched him, still smiling, wiping the towel over his big-muscled shoulders and under his arms.
“Do you work out every morning?” Chip asked.
“No, only once or twice a week,” Wei said. “I’m not athletic by nature.” He rubbed the towel behind him.
Chip stopped trotting. “Wei, there’s something I’d like to speak to you about,” he said.
“Yes?” Wei said. “What is it?”
Chip took a step toward him. “When I first came here,” he said, “and we had lunch together—”
“Yes?” Wei said.
Chip cleared his throat and said, “You said that if I wanted to I could have my eye replaced. Rosen said so too.”
“Yes, of course,” Wei said. “Do you want to have it done?”
Chip looked at him uncertainly. “I don’t know, it seems like such—vanity,” he said. “But I’ve always been aware of it—”
“It’s not vanity to correct a flaw,” Wei said. “It’s negligence not to.”
“Can’t I get a lens put on?” Chip said. “A brown lens?”
“Yes, you can,” Wei said, “if you want to cover it and not correct it.”
Chip looked away and then back at him. “All right,” he said, “I’d like to do it, have it done.”
“Good,” Wei said, and smiled. “I’ve had eye changes twice,” he said. “There’s blurriness for a few days, that’s all. Go down to the medicenter this morning. I’ll tell Rosen to do it himself, as soon as possible.”
‘Thank you,” Chip said.
Wei put his towel around his white-banded neck, turned to the parallel bars, and lifted himself straight-armed onto them. “Keep quiet about it,” he said, hand-walking between the bars, “or the children will start pestering you.”
It was done, and he looked in his mirror and both his eyes were brown. He smiled, and stepped back, and stepped close again. He looked at himself from one side and the other, smiling.
When he had dressed he looked again.
Deirdre, in the lounge, said, “It’s a tremendous improvement! You look wonderful! Karl, Gri-gri, look at Chip’s eye!”
Members helped them into heavy green coats, thickly quilted and hooded. They closed them and put on thick green gloves, and a member pulled open the door. The two of them, Wei and Chip, went in.
They walked together along an aisle between steel walls of memory banks, their breath clouding from their nostrils. Wei spoke of the banks’ internal temperature and of the weight and number of them. They turned into a narrower aisle where the steel walls stretched ahead of them convergingly to a faraway crosswalk
“I was in here when I was a child,” Chip said.
“Dover told me,” Wei said.
“It frightened me then,” Chip said. “But it has a kind of—majesty to it; the order and precision…”
Wei nodded, his eyes glinting. “Yes,” he said. “I look for excuses to come in.”
They turned into another cross-aisle, passed a pillar, and turned into another long narrow aisle between back-to-back rows of steel memory banks.
In coveralls again, they looked into a vast railed pit, round and deep, where steel and concrete housings lay, linked by blue arms and sending thicker blue arms branching upward to low brightly glowing ceiling. (“I believe you had a special interest in the refrigerating plants,” Wei said, smiling, and Chip looked uncomfortable.) A steel pillar stood beside the pit; beyond it lay a second railed and blue-armed pit, and another pillar, another pit. The room was enormous, cool and hushed. Transmitting and receiving equipment lined its two long walls, with red pinpoint lights gleaming; members in blue drew out and replaced two-handled vertical panels of speckled black and gold. Four red-dome reactors stood at one end of the room, and beyond them, behind glass, half a dozen programmers sat at a round console reading into microphones, turning pages.
“There you are,” Wei said.
Chip looked around at it all. He shook his head and blew out breath. “Christ and Wei,” he said.
Wei laughed happily.
They stayed a while, walking about, looking, talking with some of the members, and then they left the room and walked through white-tiled corridors. A steel door slid open for them, and they went through and walked together down the carpeted corridor beyond.
5
EARLY IN SEPTEMBER OF 172, a party of seven men and women accompanied by a “shepherd” named Anna set out from the Andaman Islands in Stability Bay to attack and destroy Uni. Announcements of their progress were made in the programmers’ dining room at each mealtime. Two members of the party “failed” in the airport at SEA77120 (head-shakings and sighs of disappointment), and two more the following day in a carport in EUR46209 (head-shakings and sighs of disappointment). On the evening of Thursday, September tenth, the three others—a young man and woman and an older man—came single-file into the main lounge with their hands on their heads, looking angry and frightened. A stocky woman behind them, grinning, pocketed a gun.
The three stared foolishly, and the programmers rose, laughing and applauding, Chip and Deirdre among them. Chip laughed loud, applauded hard. All the programmers laughed loud and applauded hard as the newcomers lowered their hands and turned to one another and to their laughing applauding shepherd.
Wei in gold-trimmed green went to them, smiling, and shook their hands. The programmers hushed one another. Wei touched his collar and said, “From here up, at any rate. From here down…” The programmers laughed and hushed one another. They moved closer, to hear, to congratulate.
After a few minutes the stocky woman slipped out of the crush and left the lounge. She turned to the right and went toward a narrow upgoing escalator. Chip came after her. “Congratulations,” he said.
“Thanks,” the woman said, glancing back at him and smiling tiredly. She was about forty, with dirt on her face and dark rings under her eyes. “When did you come in?” she asked.
“About eight months ago,” Chip said.
“Who with?” The woman stepped onto the escalator.
Chip stepped on behind her. “Dover,” he said.
“Oh,” she said. “Is he still here?”
“No,” Chip said. “He was sent out last month. Your people didn’t come in empty-handed, did they?”
“I wish they had,” the woman said. “My shoulder is killing me. I left the kits by the elevator. I’m going to get them now.” She stepped off the escalator and walked back around it.
Chip went with her. “I’ll give you a hand with them,” he said.
“It’s all right, I’ll pick up one of the boys,” the woman said, turning to the right.
“No, I don’t mind doing it,” Chip said.
They walked down corridor past the glass wall of the pool. The woman looked in and said, “That’s where I’m going to be in fifteen minutes.”
“I’ll join you,” Chip said.
The woman glanced at him. “All right,” she said.
Boroviev and a member came into the corridor toward them. “Anna! Hello!” Boroviev said, his eyes sparkling in his withered face. The member, a girl, smiled at Chip.
“Hello!” the woman said, shaking Boroviev’s hand. “How are you?”