by Ben Bova
“They’re going to kill me, aren’t they? Destroy me?”
Without slacking pace, the robot answered in the voice of OMM, “It’s all right. I am with you. Blessings of the State. Blessings of the masses. You will be consumed, and in consumption there is expiation for your wrongs. Transgression is atoned for. Consumption is economically and ethically efficient. Be glad of your chance to cleanse your soul by serving the masses. Meditate and be happy.”
THX stopped dead. “Be happy? When they’re going to kill me?”
The robot walked on a few paces before noticing that its prisoner was no longer keeping pace beside it. It turned slowly, fixed its electro-optical eyes on THX and advanced toward him. The pole lowered and pointed straight at his face.
“Keep moving,” the robot said, in a policeman’s voice, not OMM’s.
THX glared at the robot. It took another step toward him, and the pole weaved slowly in front of THX’s eyes. Stay alive, said a silent voice in his mind. Stay alive.
THX let his head slump forward a little, and the pole moved away from him The robot turned and resumed walking; THX followed, head still down.
After what seemed like hours he saw a speck of color, a solid shape, far far off in the distance. The robot was walking toward it. THX moved up alongside the policeman, straining his eyes for a better look at whatever it was.
It was a group of people, clustered around what looked like oblong boxes. As they got nearer, THX recognized that the boxes were actually bunks, set atop blue plastic structures that seemed to have drawers and doors in them, under the sleeping mattress. Ten bed modules, nine people—all dressed in rumpled white pajamas.
THX realized the tenth bed-module was for him.
The robot advanced as far as the edge of the little group, pounded his pole on the floor, and announced simply:
“THX 1138.”
The people—one of them was a woman-looked at him for a moment from where they stood or sat or lay. Then they turned away. All but one—SEN 5241.
THX recognized him as the police robot walked off, pacing the moments with his firm, steady tread. SEN smiled quizzically at THX, then made his way around one of the bed modules toward him.
SEN said quietly, “I know you turned me in.”
THX said nothing.
With a shrug and an aimless gesture that took in the tiny universe of beds and people, SEN added, “I’m doing quite well here, anyway.”
THX looked at the others. One was obviously blind, sitting on the edge of his bed module staring at the world with blank eyes. Near him sat an old man with a kindly face, talking to a pimply youngster. The woman was sitting alone, she seemed to be sulking about something. Or maybe she’s mentally defective, THX thought, looking harder into her burning, hate/fear haunted eyes. Off to one side of the cluster was a giant of a man who was clearly insane: he giggled and jibbered, drool spilling down his chin, huge apelike hands clapping clumsily over something no one else could see.
With a shudder, THX realized that these would be his companions for the rest of his life.
“I’m setting some things up,” SEN was babbling on, “but it’s not easy… a very difficult balance.”
He took THX by the arm and led him to an empty blue bed module. “Here, this is yours.” THX sank down onto the mattress. It was spongy, almost comfortable.
SEN sat down beside him, keeping his voice low while his eyes darted around as if searching for danger. “Let’s get some things straight right from the start. It’s going to take some time for you to see my over-all plan, so until then, stay out of things that you don’t understand, all right? You’d just be making it more difficult for me… It’s the least you can do. Right?”
We’re trapped in this hell and he’s making plans? THX wanted to scream.
“What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you answer me? Don’t be like that…”
The old man with the kind face, a wrinkled, withered face with watery blue eyes and sunken cheeks, came up and bent close to THX.
“It’s all right,” he said. “You’re safe now. You’re with friends, comrade. My name is PTO 0340.”
THX turned away from him. PTO shrugged, glanced at SEN, then shuffled away shaking his head.
SEN whispered to THX, “You’re a stupid man.” Then, still smiling amiably and watching to see who was watching him, SEN got up and went to his own bed module.
THX sat immobile on his bed. One of the younger prisoners was doing sitting-up exercises on the floor next to his module. The retarded woman was sitting huddled on her bed, in a trance, mumbling incoherently. THX saw now that her clothes were torn in many places. A thin, delicate-looking man knelt on the floor, well away from the beds, painting huge lopsided red designs on the smooth, bare floor.
The big man, the idiot, was bouncing up and down on the edge of his bed, chuckling insanely and uttering aft ear-shattering whoop every few minutes.
And SEN was sitting on his own bed, counting stacks of food cubes that he had amassed. Part of his plan, THX thought disgustedly. Without a word, he stretched ouf on his own bunk and went to sleep.
Time lost all meaning. THX slept and ate, listened to the other inmates, watched them carry out their lives around the ten blue bed modules. Food arrived in their receptor bins when a musical tone sounded and a blue light flashed. SEN always managed to get at least one extra food cube from somebody. Many of them came from THX, who had no more hunger.
Several times THX awoke from sleep with a start, and found the idiot giant, TRG 3442, staring at him.
Through it all, THX did not speak. Words were completely useless, inadequate, meaningless. The others talked, though. They talked without end.
PTO and SEN argued over invisible points of logic all the time. Often DWY 1519, a thin, nervous man, stood between them and kept the discussion going when otherwise it would have wound down.
“Why are they holding us here?” PTO once asked, rhetorically. “Why don’t they destroy us right away? Economically, it’s not sound at all. Very much unlike…”
SEN broke hi, with a patient smile, “I’ve said many times before, and I suppose I’ll have to repeat it again for your…”
“Economically…” DWY began.
But PTO kept right on, “It is incalculably more destructive for you to believe you are about to be destroyed than if you actually were destroyed. We’ve got many residents on the verge of hysteria. It’s got to stop.”
“What are you talking about?” demanded SEN. “When did you sleep last? Do you know what your trouble is? You’re blind. You’ve been here so long you can’t see what is happening. We must unite.” He clenched his hand. “We need unity. We need action. We have come to a time when we must…”
“Unite!” DWY said.
SEN turned toward him, beckoned to him, and DWY bent his ear close to SEN. “Listen,” SEN told him, “why don’t you go over and give a hand to TWA? He’s really much more interesting than either of us.”
DWY straightened up, his face at first surprised, then depressed by his erstwhile leader’s rejection. He slowly backed away, then turned and went toward TWA, the blind man, who was pacing between the beds, hands extended outward like an insect’s antennae.
PTO watched the younger man leave them, his face a study of grandfatherly concern. Then, turning back to SEN, he plunged back into the debate:
“Grasping the essential nature of our situation here is not an act of intuition, but a subtle process of the intellect. Intuition is the state of mind most susceptible to fear and terror, intellect the most removed.”
THX watched them from his bed. SEN looked exasperated, the old man seemed to be enjoying himself.
SEN was saying, “I have always sensed qualities in people that set them apart, qualities of personality and sensibility, qualities that become doubly valuable when the individual is placed in an environment of stress such as the one we are in now.”
PTO: “If anything is to be learned, it must be learned in an atmo
sphere of clarity and precision, free from the debilitating and enervating intrusions of irrationality.”
Propping himself up on his elbows, THX began to realize, They’re not debating. They’re having two separate monologues!
“From the first moment I met you,” SEN went on, “I sensed a deep-going quality that would be meaningful to you and to the rest of us… But at the same time, I was disturbed because I could not identify exactly what that quality was.”
“Intuition may seem more tempting because it is inherently more dramatic,” said PTO.
“I can see now that for some reason, perhaps you don’t even know this yourself…”
“Intuition does not force the mind…”
“Now, I don’t believe for a moment…”
As they talked, THX slowly became aware that TRG was staring at him. He turned and looked straight at the maniac, who stood not far from his bed, towering like a grinning mountain. TRG giggled and wiped spittle from his chin with the back of his hand. THX stared at him, unable to turn away.
“You always manage to avoid the issue,” PTO was saying, his voice rising. “What’s wrong with our present condition? We’re comfortable and we have plenty of food. I feel absolutely no threat because there is no threat. Why incite trouble? You should examine your emotions. It is senseless…”
A scream shattered the moment.
TRG jerked backward a step and turned his head to see where the scream came from. THX twisted on his bed to look in the same direction.
One of the men was huddled over IMM with his hand over her mouth. Her blouse had been pulled down off her shoulders, revealing small breasts that were crossed by a livid scar. TRG started toward the man, who released IMM and scuttled away backwards, stumbling in his haste. The girl pulled the blouse up and held it tightly around herself. TRG stopped in front of her, but she wouldn’t look up at him, just sat there on her bed, holding herself and rocking back and forth silently.
THX lay back on his bed, his head aching horribly. PTO and SEN resumed their talking, as if nothing had happened. They talked on. And on. And on.
The food chime sounded. THX ignored it. He tried to sleep but only found himself staring into the endless white void overhead, bright without glare, endless and imprisoning.
He heard the heavy tread of a robot policeman, and then the triple thump of his pole beating the floor.
“CAM 5254,” said the police robot.
THX turned and saw a boy of fourteen or so standing there, looking bewildered and very afraid.
TRG bumbled up to the boy, looked him up and down, and began laughing. The boy was visibly trembling. The chrome robot stepped between them and grasped the idiot by the scruff of his neck. TRG seemed to collapse like a rag doll. The robot walked off with the silent TRG, dwindling into the distance.
Of course, THX thought as he watched them disappear, only ten people can occupy ten modules. For every new one they bring in, one must go.
Chapter 12
For LUH it was different.
She sat alone in a completely dark compartment, too small to stand in. She could only sit with her knees up under her chin. She lost track of time. At first she couldn’t sleep, she was too terrified to even close her eyes. Then came hunger and finally exhaustion. She slept.
Hunger woke her. She felt weak, cramped. Her back ached horribly. Her arms and legs were tingling from lack of blood circulation.
A sound.
No, it was only the scrabbling of her own feet against the metal floor of the cell.
Destroyed. They were going to destroy her. She remembered the defense counsel, his flushed face, his slightly embarrassed expression when the Pontifex said, “Destroyed.”
The counsel had shrugged. “I did the best I could,” he had said.
Just like that. The best he could. Her life was going to be ended. It embarrassed him.
It was a sound. From outside. Shuffling… footsteps. A muffled voice. A laugh.
Suddenly light streamed down on her from overhead. Her eyes squinted and watered involuntarily.
“Come on now,” a man’s voice called down to her. “Don’t be bashful.”
She looked up, still squinting. She could barely make out his bulky outline against the unaccustomed light.
“Here, reach up. Don’t make me do all the work.”
Obediently she reached up, and a pair of strong hands grasped her arms and pulled her up out of the cell. It looked like a narrow hallway. The floor was studded with small, square hatches. Hers was the only open one.
“This way.”
The man gestured with one hand and nudged her shoulder in the direction he was pointing. She walked slowly, stumblingly, her legs aflame suddenly from the long cramped idleness.
She tripped on one of the hatch edges and nearly fell. But his strong arm circled her waist and held her up.
“That feel better?”
He was big, a tall thickset man with heavy features and stumpy teeth with spaces between them. He was grinning at her now, his face close enough for her to smell his breath.
“Th… thank you…”
He laughed and held her as they walked down the length of the hallway. He pushed a door open and LUH saw a small room, white and lit glarelessly from ceiling panels. No furniture except a single straight-backed chair in the middle of the room. No doors other than the one they came through.
“Sit,” the man commanded.
She went slowly to the chair and sat in it. It felt hard and cold. It faced away from the door.
Turning back toward him, she asked, “What… what’s going to happen?”
“You’ll see.”
Shaking inside, LUH sat there. She concentrated on trying to look unafraid. She forced herself to sit quietly, to keep her head erect and not turn around. But her hands, gripping the chair’s arms, were trembling.
She stared straight ahead. There was a viewscreen on the wall, she noticed for the first time.
Destroyed! The word kept ringing in her mind. When? How? Would it be here, in this room? Was he the executioner?
The door clicked open. Involuntarily, she turned in the chair and saw a second man step in—tall, hard-looking. Eyes directly on her.
She turned away from them and stared back at the viewscreen.
“That’s her?” asked the newcomer.
The first man must have nodded.
“Okay.”
The door opened again. Footsteps, and then the sound of the door closing. Then nothing. Biting her lips, LUH sat there unmoving. No sound at all except her own breathing, her own pulse hammering in her ears.
When she couldn’t stand it any more, she turned around again. The room was empty. She was alone.
She didn’t know whether to remain sitting there or not. She started to get up, but the door opened again and the men came back in, wheeling a holocamera on its dolly. Behind them were three robot policemen.
They set up the camera while she sat, terrified, watching them.
“Okay, we’re ready.”
The first man came up to her and gently pulled her by the arm out of the chair. “You won’t need this any more, pretty.” He grinned again and her knees almost gave way under her.
The sudden realization was like a flame in her innards. The holoshows he watched… the girl wasn’t a mannequin!
“Camera set?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, pretty, here’s your big chance in show business.”
LUH wanted to faint, to run, to scream. But she couldn’t move. She couldn’t make a sound.
The three robots circled around her. They each had chrome nightsticks in the belts of their uniforms. She felt, rather than saw, the cameramen grinning.
One of the robots grabbed her arms from behind her. She whimpered as another ripped her blouse open. They pulled the blouse off her shoulders, then tore off her pants and slippers. She stood there, naked, cowering, wanting to be dead.
“It’s all right, pretty. Don’t
be afraid,” one of the cameramen said.
She turned toward the voice, and a robot slapped her in the face. Hard. She tasted blood. Her eyes stung and watered.
Then the beating began.
Control was reviewing data, coldly watching the results of the day’s work: economic indices, accident reports, arrests, awards, new production highs, consumption curves, graphs, charts, tables of numbers and cryptic symbols raced across his viewscreen wall faster than most eyes could follow.
He nodded as the data sped by.
The amber light on his desk communicator began flashing. He touched the BUSY indicator, but the light persisted.
Something important. Not red-alert, but someone had an urgent desire to speak to him.
It had better be truly urgent, he told himself as he interrupted the data flow.
A Mercicontrol doctor’s face appeared on the screen, much larger than life, frowning with professional concern.
“Sir, I’m terribly sorry to interrupt you…”
“Don’t waste my time,” Control snapped testily. “What is it? Speak.”
“I just received a laboratory report on a condemned felon, sir. Apparently the report was misfiled and it didn’t get to this station until…”
Huffing with impatience, Control said, “What is it?”
“The prisoner 3417, prefix LUN… no, sorry, it’s LUH. She was sentenced to be destroyed… sexact, drug evasion, natural-born…”
“Yes?”
“Well, sir, the laboratory report indicates that… well… she’s, um, pregnant, sir.” The doctor pronounced the repugnant word softly.
Control leaned back in his sculptured chair. “You’re certain of this?”
“Yes sir. No doubt about it. The fetus is at a very early stage, of course… but it’s definite.”
“Very well,” said Control. “Place the report in the proper file.”
“Yes sir. I… uh, I thought you’d want to know firsthand, sir.”
