“Can’t you come out of this room and spend some time with me?”
“I see you every day.”
She started to reply, then suddenly turned and left the room. THX sat in the relaxer chair, half-turned to watch her as the door slid shut behind her. With a puzzled frown he got up and followed her out into the hall.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Nothing. Come on, I’ll get your dinner from the cooker.”
“Okay. Let’s eat in the holoroom. The news will be finished soon and the comedy shows start next.”
So she sat in the relaxer chair beside him, watching the flesh-colored mannequins cavorting to taped laughter. He looked rather puzzled when she insisted on sitting in the same chair with him, close enough so that their bodies actually touched.
She’s a strange girl, he thought. He kept trying to concentrate on the holoshow, but his eyes drifted to her as she sat beside him, staring straight ahead at the holopicture but obviously not looking at it, eating slowly, her thoughts… where? What was she thinking?
“LUH…”
She turned to face him. “Yes?”
Shaking his head, “Nothing.” He went back to watching the mannequins.
Control sat in his sculptured foamchair, a thin humorless smile on his lips.
The far wall of his spacious office was a holoscreen. At the moment, it seemed as if there was no wall there at all, and the office appeared to look out on half a dozen horseshoe-shaped observer desks, each ringed with fifty monitoring screens and manned by an observer in skullcap and earphones.
“Well?” he asked one of the observers, through the intercom set into the surface of his synthetic wood desk. “What’s your analysis?”
The holopicture zoomed in on one observer. Each of his fifty screens had the same picture of THX and LUH sitting together; the observer saw them the way a mantis must see its prey.
“She’s trying to seduce him, obviously,” said the observer.
“Obviously,” Control agreed. “But is she aware of what she’s doing or is she acting instinctively? That’s the important question.”
Without turning his head from the screens, the observer answered, “Her pulse rate, neutral activity, EEG, body temperature—they all indicate that she’s excited, but still at the subliminal level. She doesn’t really know what’s going on inside her own glands.”
Control chuckled. “But her body knows. Look at the way she’s rubbing against him. Disgusting.”
“Yes, but she’s not consciously trying to commit the crime. She’s only responding to her own heredity.”
Control muttered something to himself.
“He’s starting to feel it,” the observer noted. “All his indicators are… well, rising.” He grinned, knowing that Control couldn’t see his face.
“I don’t doubt it,” said Control.
“I should warn him,” the observer said.
“No.”
“At least suggest that he take the proper sedation.”
“No!” Control snapped.
“But… I don’t understand. If we allow her to continue like this, then he’ll commit the crime with her.”
“Of course.”
“But it won’t really be his fault,” the observer said.
“No? Whose fault will it be?”
The observer had heard that tone of voice from Control before. It was the last warning sound before an irrevocable trap was sprung.
“I mean to say, sir,” the observer backtracked, “that… well, not every man could maintain his principles under… eh, that kind of treatment.”
Control answered icily, “Either he maintains his principles or he falls. If he falls, it’s his own will, his own volition that caused it.”
The observer shook his head.
“You fail to understand,” Control said, “that LUH 3417, as a natural-born, a product of the sexact, is an atavism, a dangerous anomaly, a living time bomb ticking away in our society. Sooner or later her genetic heritage will make itself felt and she will seduce some otherwise decent citizen into committing the same crime that spawned her.”
“We could arrest her now,” the observer said timidly. “On drug abuse. I saw her flush a whole bottle of pills down the toilet.”
“No, I want to catch her in the sexact. The guiding principle of our society is not vengeance, but self-protection. Criminals commit crimes. You can’t stop them from doing it, you can only delay the inevitable moment when they try to damage society and themseves. No matter what we do, LUH 3417 is intent on destroying herself. We merely have to wait until she takes the ultimate step, and then let society act in the legally prescribed manner.”
“But—the man…”
“If he has criminal instincts, then he will destroy himself, too. There’s no way for us to prevent it. Our society will be healthier, stronger, safer, more stable with such criminals out of the way.”
The observer decided not to answer. Control, as always, was right. No sense arguing.
Control watched THX and LUH on the observer’s multiple screens for a few minutes longer, then pointed a lean finger at the special receptor atop his desk. The holopicture of the observer’s warren disappeared with a silent flash, to be replaced by the solid wall of the office and its stylized portrait of the legendary First Control, with the mysterious clockwork numbers spiraling backward around his puffy, stern face.
Chapter 2
Frowning with concentration, beads of sweat on his face, THX manipulated the waldoes carefully.
This is the touchiest part of it. If the radioactives…
He was standing in front of the leaded window of Assembly Bay 17, hands gloved by the metal manipulators, which felt clammy and slippery to him now. On either side of him, dozens of other men worked straining at identical stations, each identically uniformed in white with close- fitting cap and earphones. He held still for a moment, and inside the lead-shielded assembly bay, his remote mechanical counterpart hands—the waldoes—stopped in mid-motion. They were holding a tiny capsule of radioactives that would activate the chrome robot lying inert beneath the skeletal metal arms of the waldoes.
“What’s the trouble?”
“Assembly Bay 17, are you all right?”
“Answer, 1138.”
“I’m okay,” THX said.
A million voices were buzzing in his earphones, orders, queries, conversations from all over the assembly center. His head throbbed.
“Please keep your trailing edge circuits from touching the floor. Do not present solid circuits for validation.”
“If you have been issued circuit cards with the new D code function, make sure that the pin array is compatible with earlier models.”
“Recycle the step sequencer, 2434. Repeat, recycle step sequencer.”
“Multiphase analysis, please.”
“You’re in the green, station 6. Go ahead.”
Another three hours, THX thought. Three more hours and I’ll be home. And then he added, with LUH. He saw her face, felt the whisper of her breath on his cheek.
Assembly 17, what’s the holdup?”
“Sorry,” he muttered. Keep your mind on your work!
“Grid control, this is assembly central. Bay 17 initiating thermal transfer. Yellow alert.”
“Read you, central. Yellow alert, thermal transfer. Blast and radiation procedures. Go ahead, bay 17.”
In another part of the vast underground center, LUH sat at an observer’s desk, eyes flickering over the fifty screens, fingers touching out an elaborate sonata of electronic responses to people’s needs and fears.
But somehow she felt that the screens were watching her.