Finally he was close enough for a few of them to run out to him.
“What stopped you?”
“How cold was it?”
THX said nothing, simply kept walking. SEN was standing by the edge of the nearest bed, legs straddled like an emperor surveying his domain.
“Wait,” he said. “Let me talk to him. I know how to handle these things.”
THX walked right past him, toward his own bed.
PTO eyed him narrowly, “You have nothing to fear… you’re safe again.”
DWY went to SEN and clutched at his arm. “Ask him about the air. He sounds out of breath.”
SEN nodded and went to THX’s bed. Sitting beside him, SEN said, “We have to face the facts… you know? We have come down to practical reality. I’m a practical man. Forget the personal side of things.”
Hovering behind SEN, DWY nodded eagerly. THX, bone-tired, so tired his hunger had gone, wordlessly stretched out on the bed.
“I think he’s deficient,” DWY snapped.
Annoyed, SEN snapped back, “Why don’t you go find something else to do?”
“Why doesn’t he speak? Can’t he hear?” DWY edged away from the bed. “I don’t think he knows.”
THX closed his eyes and tried to sleep. But he felt SEN still sitting alongside him. He heard PTO droning a history lesson at CAM. His legs ached, his head was buzzing.
“I want to help you,” SEN said, so low it was almost a whisper. “You can help me. Here, take some food.”
THX looked at him. SEN was holding out one of the food cubes that he had been hoarding. THX frowned at him.
“You understand,” SEN went on, “we’re all in this together. You want to leave. You’re not like the rest of them. What did you see out there?”
THX turned his head away.
“As soon as you give me a detailed description of the barrier, I can begin delegating responsibility. I’ll see to it that we all get out of here safely.”
The barrier, THX thought. The only barrier is your own blindness. Then LUH’s face filled his memory and he added bitterly, And mine.
Suddenly there was a loud yell, scuffling, shouting and cursing. THX looked over his shoulder and saw DWY and CAM fighting on the floor near the bed where TWA lay. They banged into the bed, jarring TWA so hard that he nearly fell on top of them. Swearing angrily, he swung his legs down over them, stood up, and pulled the boy away from DWY.
“He took my food!” CAM yelled, struggling to get past TWA. “He stole it!”
DWY was holding a single brown cube. It was cracked and its edges rubbed raw. Crumbs from it were scattered on the floor around them.
TWA turned toward DWY. “Well?” he asked, menacingly, as he released his hold on CAM.
“I… I thought it was mine,” DWY said lamely. “I couldn’t tell.”
SEN shook his head and said to THX, “Look at them… it’s pitiful. They’ve even begun to go into my module and look for things. My things. It’s all for them anyway… it’s all for their own good… After all my saving… starving…” He shook his head like a disappointed savior.
With a loud sigh, he added, “You can’t really blame them, though, can you? But we’ve got to find something to give them motivation. Mold them into a working team.”
Words, THX thought. Meaningless, stupid words. He just talks to hear himself sound important.
“Information is the key,” SEN was saying to him. “We must concentrate on gaining information. You’re with me now, I know. I have a contract.”
Amazingly, he took a piece of paper from the pocket of his blouse. “Here.” He proffered it to THX. “All it says is that you’re with me. We can only make it together. We must convince the others.”
THX wanted to laugh at him, but he was too serious to laugh at.
SEN’s hand, holding the paper toward THX, was trembling. Abruptly, he took the paper back, stuffed it in his pocket again.
“Well,” he said, with a forced smile, “later then.”
Chapter 15
A chrome robot took IMM. It grabbed for the collar of her blouse, as usual, but the torn garment came off in its hands. She stood there sullenly, the scar jagged across her tight, firm breasts. For a ludicrous instant, THX thought the robot was going to walk off with the empty blouse. But then it dropped the blouse and took IMM by the arm. She went, eyes still smoking as she looked back at them all for the last time.
THX slept. When the musical tone started and the blue light flashed, he reached into the dispenser bin under his mattress and ate the food cubes that had arrived there. Ate all of them, left none for SEN. Sometimes there were two or three, usually only one. Several times the tone and light came, but the bin remained empty. It never works the same way twice. Do they do that to relieve our boredom? Or their own?
DWY took to sharpening a spoon by scraping it against the edge of his bed module. Where he got the spoon, he refused to tell. But he kept sharpening it, a little each day. The rest of the time he talked about how he was going to fight his way to freedom. With a sharpened spoon. Against chrome robots.
Immediately after one of their meals, SEN began giving a speech. He stood in the middle of the little cluster of beds and raised his voice:
“Without most of us realizing it, a ‘new alignment’ has been formed, and it is an exciting, healthy development… This alignment is already a new majority; it will affect the future of us all. We need a new unity, but not a unity that discourages dissent. We need dissent.” He pointed straight at PTO to make his meaning absolutely clear.
When everyone had turned to PTO, SEN added, “But we need creative dissent. Our voices are not joined in any harmonious chorus, but the differences are differences of emphasis, not of fundamentals.”
I’ve heard this before, THX realized. It was on tape, an ancient political speech… He’s memorized it word for word!
“Now, the new alignment’s greatest need,” SEN continued, “is to communicate with all its elements, rather than march along in parallel lines that never converge. Tomorrow as we focus on the new movement more clearly, we will gain a new unity.”
“What was that?” PTO said.
“Look!” shouted CAM.
They all turned to see where he was pointing. A police robot was bringing in a new prisoner. But this one was as small as a child, dangling feet off the ground in the policeman’s grip.
“A child!”
“No, a shelldweller.”
It was horribly ugly. Hairy, long matted hair all over its head and face. Stumpy twisted arms and legs. Teeth flashing in the midst of all that filthy hair. Even its clothing looked like hair or hide of some long-extinct animal. Its eyes were sunken and dark.
The policeman dropped the freak unceremoniously on the floor. Stamping his pole three tunes, it announced:
“A nondescript: designation 643-1399284.”
SEN stared at it, goggle-eyed. For once his smug self-assurance seemed shattered.
PTO was explaining to young CAM, “A shelldweller. They live in the superstructure, the outer shell. Deformed, you see. Rather unique; there have only been two others here before. They smell, don’t they?” The old man seemed quite proud of his knowledge.
TWA cautiously edged toward it. The shelldweller bared its teeth at him and growled. But TWA slowly stepped closer, closer—and then he kicked it. The shelldweller screeched and jumped back, then hopped with lightning speed away from TWA. It jumped up into DWY’s lap.