by James Gunn
“Why don’t you two go into the study,” Mareen said. “I’m sure you have a lot of catching up to do.” She emphasized the words “catching up,” as if to suggest that they covered a number of possible activities.
Dannie took Kirk’s hand. “Come on, Jim,” she said. “I know where it is.” There was a note of barely suppressed intensity in her voice.
They crossed the hall to the study. Dannie closed the door behind them. It creaked a bit from disuse; few doors were closed on Timshel. She returned to his arms. This time her lips were firm and demanding.
A long moment later she pulled her head back and said, “It’s good to have you close again, Jim. You can’t imagine how much I’ve missed you.”
“You didn’t have to,” Kirk said.
“You’re right,” she said, frowning. “I made a [24] choice.” But as if the thought brought remembered joy, she smiled again. “But when you understand the choice I made, you won’t blame me. And I had faith that one day you would show up here on Timshel—that we would be reunited, that you would make the same choice I made. Remember that silly holograph I gave you. Well, now maybe it won’t seem so silly. ‘—And then forever.’ ”
“That’s what I want to do,” Kirk said. “Understand the choice. But all I get is hints and delays.”
Dannie pulled him down onto the leather sofa. “That’s because the reality is indescribable.”
Kirk put his right arm around her waist. His bracelet clinked against hers. “That reminds me,” Kirk said. “Why are none of the Marouks wearing bracelets?”
“Tandy and Noelle aren’t adults yet,” Dannie said as if that explained everything, “and Mareen and Kemal—well, you’d better let Kemal explain.”
“Always somebody else,” Kirk said. “But surely you can tell me what happened to you and to Wolff. Why didn’t you report?”
“But I did,” Dannie said.
“Once—and then nothing. No explanation. Nothing.”
“As you can see,” Dannie said, “there was nothing to report. Wolff and I are both well and happy.”
“And what about the reason Timshel has cut itself off from the rest of the galaxy, the answer you were sent to discover?”
“Oh, that!” she said, dismissing it with a wave of her hand. “There was no use sending a report that nobody would believe. And if they did believe, the reaction would have been even worse: Timshel would have been swamped by immigrants. Silence was better. And silence, Kemal said, would bring—you.”
“He was right about that, anyway. But try me. I’ll believe you.”
Dannie took a deep breath. “All right, Jim. There’s [25] something here that’s so marvelous it’s better than anything, anywhere.”
“Better than food?”
“Far better,” Dannie said.
“Better than Timshel coffee?”
Dannie smiled.
“Better than being close to the one you love?”
She nodded.
“Better than love itself?” Kirk asked.
“Oh, Jim,” she said. “You ask too many questions.” And she turned to him and pressed her lips once more insistently on his as if this was the prelude to everything Kirk had been asking about. At that moment, however, deep in their embrace, a humming sound started up and filled the air. Dannie drew herself back and looked down at her wrist. The synthetic ruby was pulsing with light.
Dannie whimpered and stood up. She looked around the room until she saw in the corner a leather couch.
“Dannie!” Kirk exclaimed. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said distractedly, walking toward the couch. “Nothing at all. It’s payday.” She lay down on the couch and carefully placed the jewel in her bracelet into a socket built into the side of the couch. It fit exactly.
Almost immediately a rosy light—like the world seen through rose-colored glasses—shone down upon her head from a hidden source in the wall above the couch. Dannie’s body tensed as if in the throes of passion. Her face contorted in ecstasy. The condition lasted for a minute, perhaps two, although it seemed like hours to Kirk, looking on helpless and horrified.
“Dannie!” he said. “Dannie!”
In the throes of whatever had her in its grasp, she seemed deaf and blind to everything except what was happening within. Suddenly her body slumped as if some demon had released its possession of her. Her eyes, which had been squeezed shut, relaxed. Kirk [26] could see that she was breathing as if in deep sleep. He took her shoulder and shook it gently. “Dannie!” he said again.
He tried to pry her arm free from the socket into which the jewel had fit, but it held beyond his strength to remove it.
“Dannie!” he said. This time it was a whimper, but it was not the eager whimper that Dannie had uttered. This was a whimper of despair.
When he flung open the door, Tandy was passing in the hallway. “Tandy!” he said. “Come quickly. There’s something wrong with Dannie.”
He took Tandy’s hand and led her into the room to look at the sleeping beauty. The girl looked down, smiling, unalarmed.
“There’s nothing wrong,” she said. “Dannie had a payday.”
“Payday,” Kirk said. That’s what she said.”
“It always affects people like that. Doesn’t she look happy? She’ll wake up in the morning feeling rested and happy as if she’s had the best night’s sleep ever and a beautiful, beautiful dream. I can hardly wait until I’m sixteen. Then I can get a job and a bracelet and a payday.”
“What is a payday?” Kirk demanded.
“I don’t know exactly,” Tandy said. “But everybody thinks it’s more wonderful than anything. It must be hard to describe, because it’s so wonderful and everybody wants one, and I’m just crazy to find out what it is like.”
That was more words than Kirk had heard from Tandy since he had arrived, and he looked at her as if trying to understand what lay behind the girlish enthusiasm that in his experience had been reserved for adult clothing or personal transportation or relationships with boys. Where’s your father?”
[27] “In the living room,” Tandy said, and smiled back at him as she left the room.
“Payday?” Kirk muttered. He made his way back to the living room, where Marouk was waiting for him, alone.
Marouk looked up from an easy chair beside the fireplace. An expression between weariness and frustration crossed his face. “Now you see what would have been impossible for me to describe.”
“I’ve seen something,” Kirk said, “but I don’t understand it.” He sat down on the sofa opposite Marouk.
“A great deal has happened on Timshel since you were last here. It led eventually to the quarantine and to what you saw Dannie experience.”
“I still can’t believe it. Dannie was a different person.”
“That’s not quite true,” Marouk said. “Nobody can be anything except what they have the capacity to be. What you saw was Dannie, certainly, but it was Dannie experiencing joy.”
“Joy!” Kirk echoed.
Marouk nodded. “Total, unalloyed, perfect joy. Unadulterated pleasure.”
Kirk sat silent, allowing the implications of Marouk’s revelation to work themselves out in his mind.
“Half a dozen years ago a Timshel philosopher named Emanuel De Kreef was arguing that life on Timshel was too easy and that this hedonistic existence was certain to rot people’s moral fiber. There was nothing in the future for Timshel, he said, except slow deterioration.”
“A great many people have said much the same thing over the centuries about one society or another,” Kirk said. “Sometimes with good reason. But Timshel wasn’t like any of them.”
“I agree. We had a good life, but we were engaged [28] with it, not wallowing in it. De Kreef didn’t see it that way, however, and the vehemence that he brought to the denunciation of our way of life was unsurpassed. What Timshel needed, he insisted, was a return to the old virtues. He even urged us to emigrate to another, harsher planet where people would have to
work hard, even struggle for survival.”
“I’ll bet that drew a lot of support.”
“He was hooted off the platform, wherever he spoke. He was turned into a virtual exile on his own planet,” Marouk said. “But that only gave him greater incentive.”
“He perfected the process that I saw Dannie experience,” Kirk guessed.
“That’s right. It happened about two years ago.”
“But how did that meet De Kreef’s goals of returning to the old virtues of hard work and struggle?”
“Joy is available, but you have to earn it,” Marouk said. “If you work hard at the job assigned you, you accumulate points toward a payday. When your points reach the appropriate level—it varies from job to job—the bracelet notifies you and you head for the nearest payday couch.”
Kirk stood up, agitated. “That’s terrifying.”
“We have no crime,” Marouk said. “We don’t even have any sin.”
Kirk dismissed that criterion with a wave of his hand. “Work becomes meaningless—only a means to get a payday. It’s a vicious cycle: work, payday, work, payday—”
“And we’re caught up in it,” Marouk agreed. “On the other hand, it isn’t that much different from the cycle that most people have been trapped in for much of the history of the human species.”
“There’s one major difference,” Kirk said. “People always have had a chance to break the cycle, and the general movement for humanity was an upward spiral. Here no one has any incentive to change. That can’t have been De Kreef’s intention.”
[29] “The Solution may have been too perfect,” Marouk said. “But you have to understand his problem: Timshel was so pleasant that he had to offer people something even better. And he found it—joy without intermediary, a jolt of endorphins without side effects. As a matter of fact, it exercises the body, tones up the system, and improves the circulation.”
“Why the induced sleep?” Kirk asked.
“Imagine what it would be like to awaken to the real world after a taste of heaven. De Kreef worked it out. After a night’s sleep the experience fades into something like a wonderful dream, something the person can look forward to: the next payday. The next promise of paradise.”
“I can see now why Timshel cut itself off from the rest of the galaxy.”
“We’re in a bad situation, Jim,” Marouk said. “And you’re the only one who can help us. That’s why I was planning everything toward bringing you here.”
“I’ve got a million questions,” Kirk said.
Marouk held up a hand. “Later, Jim. I want you to see the situation firsthand. We’ve had too many solutions attempted without calm and thorough investigation. You need to rest, and tomorrow I’ll have Tandy and Noelle take you for a tour of the city.”
Marouk showed him to the guest bedroom in the wing farthest from the living quarters. The room overlooked the ocean below, gently rolling its white-foamed surf onto the beach. When the sliding glass doors were opened, the sound of the ocean waves made a sleepy music for the occupant. Kirk looked down at the ocean moving through the night as it had done for billions of years before humanity came, uncaring about the petty issues of the beings that inhabited its shores and sailed their puny ships upon its surface. He thought he heard the sigh of some alien form of marine life, like a comment on the impermanence of civilization.
[30] He looked up at the night sky, so different from the night sky seen from Earth. The arrangement of the stars were strange, and the stars that did not blink, the other planets visible at this time, were a color other than that with which he was familiar. He could see three small moons, one at the horizon, about the size of his little fingernail, and two scarcely more than pinheads, overhead. He thought of the many night skies he had seen, and the fact that no matter how familiar he had become with one or another none of them would ever look quite right.
By the time he turned from the door, the house had grown silent. He made his way quietly back to the study. He turned on a light and looked down at the woman sleeping on the couch. Her arm had fallen away from the socket that had held the synthetic ruby, and her sleep seemed natural, not induced. He resisted the impulse to wake her, to drag answers from her sleepy lips, to hold her in his arms and feel her warmth against his chest.
At that moment, looking at the woman for whom he had expressed love and devotion, he wasn’t even sure how he felt. Could he love someone who valued an induced experience more than one she came to through her own feelings? Could he even feel the same about someone who left him to find ecstasy in the arms of something mechanical? Did he really know this stranger?
He shook his head and made his way back to his bedroom. He had no business feeling sorry for himself when all Timshel was in jeopardy.
He inspected the bedroom carefully. He could detect no spy circuits, no insidious network of wires, no sockets lurking to suck in his soul. Even so, he lay down gingerly upon the bed, wondering if it had the power to propel him, unwillingly, into paradise. But it simply supported his body comfortably.
He lay there, his thoughts churning, unable to sleep. There were so many questions he had meant to ask, [31] but the revelations that Marouk had laid in front of him had overwhelmed everything else. Why was Wolff on guard in front of Marouk’s villa? Why didn’t Marouk and Mareen wear bracelets? How was payday calculated? How was the electronic stimulus delivered? Where was De Kreef? How could this vicious cycle be broken? Surely it could not be as difficult as Marouk suggested.
But before he could think of anything, he fell asleep.
On the Enterprise, back in warp drive, Spock studied the report from Kirk’s recording device along with McCoy and Uhura. The report was being displayed, by the ship’s computer, on the forward screen in the conference room while the three officers occupied their accustomed spots around the table. The images were multiplied by the facets of the synthetic ruby behind which the lens had been hidden. It was like viewing the world through the eyes of a fly. But with practice the observers had learned to focus on one image to the exclusion of the others. And the voices were clear.
“I can’t believe I saw that,” Uhura said.
“It is truly remarkable,” Spock agreed.
“I mean Dannie being pulled away like that.”
“That is what I meant as well,” Spock said.
Uhura gave him a look of respect for the unexpected ability of his logic to perceive the wrongness of Dannie’s behavior.
“This may be even worse than we suspected,” McCoy said.
“Do you think the light has something to do with the phenomenon?” Spock asked.
“Possibly,” McCoy said. “Or possibly it is a side effect, or even a cosmetic aspect of the process.”
“And what is the process?” Uhura asked.
“De Kreef apparently has found a means of stimulating the pleasure centers of the brain from a [32] distance. I’ve seen it done with electrodes but never from a distance.”
“Pleasure centers?” Uhura asked.
“In the latter part of the twentieth century,” McCoy said, “researchers discovered that the brain possesses places that produce a sensation of pleasure when stimulated.”
“No doubt a way of motivating beings to perform activities beneficial to the organism,” Spock said.
“The researchers discovered that a group of proteins subsequently called endorphins attach themselves to receptors in the brain to produce a feeling of pleasure, of well-being, or to reduce the sensation of pain,” McCoy said.
“I remember now,” Uhura said. “That’s where narcotics get their effects.”
“Certain narcotics, such as the opium-derived variety, imitate the action of endorphins, thus getting the pleasure-enhancing or pain-reducing response without the natural benefit of the endorphins,” McCoy said. “That had always been the appeal of drugs—gratification without effort.”
“But how did they discover something like that?” Uhura asked.
“The initial
discovery,” McCoy said, “came while surgeons were operating on brain-damaged patients and discovered the location of memory and other functions. The pleasure centers were located in experiments on rats.”
“Rats!” Uhura exclaimed.
“Lower forms of life were common experimental subjects in the twentieth century, I believe,” Spock said. “Often they were rats.”
“Scientists performed an experiment in which they placed an electrode in a particular position in the rat’s brain,” McCoy said. “They hooked it up to a pedal that a rat could push with his foot. When it did, the apparatus delivered an electrical stimulus to that [33] portion of the brain.” He paused as if reflecting on the results of the experiment.
“Well,” Uhura asked.
“That’s all the rats did. They pushed that pedal. They didn’t stop for food or drink. Female rats in heat didn’t distract them. They continued to push that pedal, giving themselves a jolt of pleasure every time, until they died of hunger or thirst, or sheer exhaustion.”
“That’s terrible!” Uhura said. “Even for rats.”
“What is even more terrible,” McCoy said, “is its implications for humans if someone has perfected a process that works, at a distance, on people.”
“That is true,” Spock said. “Logically humans may kill themselves off, pushing a similar pedal.”
“And the induced sleep?” Uhura asked.
“Electrical stimulation of a portion of the midbrain can cause instant, total sleep,” McCoy said. “So it may be an application of the pleasure-center device, intended to counteract the pedal-pushing syndrome.”
“That may be the answer,” Spock said, “but it may not be the only answer. What we need to know, before we can act with any certainty, is whether it is possible to project a field or a wave that can replicate what has been done only with an electrode.”
“It’s difficult to see how that could be done,” McCoy said.
“Computer?” Spock said.
“Such a projector is theoretically possible,” the computer replied.
“Scotty and I can work on that,” McCoy said. “But, Spock—”
