Chapter VIII: Part 8

For three days Hendley was kept in a bare, windowless room in the Judicial Center. There was a single, one-piece pad of plastifoam on which to lie. The foam was designed so that, intact, it was both resilient and comfortable. It was almost impossible to tear, but even if that could have been managed, the damaged web of foam would then have disintegrated. There was no way it could be used as a weapon, either against others or oneself. Because it breathed, it would not even smother if held over the face. The cell was otherwise empty.

He was taken from the room for periodic questionings, some of them under drugs. Before the trial began he knew that the contents of his brain had been thoroughly scooped out and examined. All would be presented in evidence.

His uniform was taken from him, along with the identity disc which had belonged to the visitor. He wondered if he would be led naked into the courtroom.

On the fourth day he was given a nondescript uniform of a kind he had never seen before, a pale gray in color. He was transferred to another room. Here there was one window. It was covered with unbreakable plastic, but he could look out and, through a speaker imbedded in the plastic, listen to the sounds outside. The room was well above street level, looking out upon the vast underground city.

At first, listening and watching with fascination as the familiar activity of the city swarmed through the streets, he felt a peculiar sense of rightness, a feeling of being back in his own element, his senses lulled by sights and sounds he had always known--the soft artificial sky of the illuminated roof, the rumble of walk and tube and hurrying feet, the babble of talk, the faintly discernible odor of chemically cleansed air--most of all the knowledge of being enclosed, contained within the city's gigantic womb.

But in a short time Hendley began to feel unnerved by the jostling, hurrying crowds, even though he was not physically among them. The noise and confusion made his head ache. The city seemed oppressively close and warm. There was nowhere a patch of cool shade on which the eye could rest. He felt a barrenness in the unending surfaces of stone and glass and plastic and metal, unrelieved by any grass or living plant. He missed the irregularities of landscape, the sense of openness, the unexpected breezes which he had so quickly come to take for granted in the Freeman Camp. He began to feel himself a tiny creature caught in the intricately meshing gears of a huge, impersonal machine buried far underground.

He turned off the speaker, welcoming the silence of his cell, and in the end he did not even look out the window.

The trial began on the fifth day. Wearing his gray uniform, Hendley was led into an antiseptically clean, white amphitheater. As he was taken to his seat in the center of the courtroom, spectators, seated behind glass on the balcony level, ogled him. He was surprised to see a second empty chair beside his own. The surprise turned to shocked dismay when a second gray-clad figure was escorted into the court. He rose, dumfounded, as ABC-331 was seated in the chair next to his.

"What are you doing here?" he exclaimed. "How did they find--" He broke off. They had scoured out his mind. They knew everything. Everything from that first forbidden escapade outside the museum.

"It doesn't matter," Ann said, trying to soothe him. "It's all right. This is the way I want it."

"But they can't--you've done nothing!"

She smiled a little. "Did you think you broke the rule all by yourself that first day?"

"But they wouldn't try you with me for that alone!"

"There's more. You've made a misfit out of me, too." She spoke without regret, with even a suggestion of pride. "I was withdrawn from my--my work. There were complaints that I was--uncooperative. Do you understand, Hendley?"

As the meaning of her words sank in, he felt a rush of emotion, full and swelling in his chest. "So that's why you haven't been in the show!"

"Yes, that's why. Then when I learned about your arrest--it's been on all the news, they're making an issue out of it--I beat them to it before they could come for me. I gave myself up as an accomplice." Hendley started to protest but Ann went on quickly, giving him no chance. "You wouldn't have been caught in the camp by that--that awful man if you hadn't tried to see me. It's because of me you're here at all. Don't you know how important that is yet? I wouldn't want to be anywhere else but with you."

Hendley sank into the chair beside her. He reached out impulsively to grip her hand.

A stern voice intruded. Hendley looked up at the bench facing the two chairs of the accused. "The accused will be silent," a grim-visaged judge said, staring down at them. "This court will now come to order."

As the procedural ritual to open the trial began, Hendley thought of Ann's reference to Nik. His safe refuge under Hendley's identity would have exploded around him. He would certainly have been taken into custody, perhaps returned to the Freeman Camp. Hendley smiled grimly.

Two beige-clad men came forward at the judge's order. One was designated as a pleader for the defense, the other for the prosecution. There was also a bailiff, several guards, and, ranged along one wall, a bank of twelve computers, six in each of two rows. Each was of a different design and manufacture. These, Hendley knew, were the jurors. Such trials were unusual in the Organization, but not unknown, and the system was familiar to him. He guessed that the rarity might account for the crowded spectator gallery.

"They're here because of all the news coverage," Ann whispered, as if she had divined his thoughts. "Not just over you, but over that man whose disc you were wearing. There's been a lot of furor over BAM. They're said to be guilty of sabotage--it's caused all kinds of excitement." She paused. Then, nodding at the jury, she asked, "Why are there twelve of them?"

"It's an old tradition."

"Wouldn't one of them do?"

"Yes. A more sophisticated computer could even make twelve separate sets of calculations, for that matter. But it's traditional--it's always been done that way."

The two pleaders began to present their cases. Each spoke rapidly, without emotion--the emotional factor could not be considered by the computers who would render the verdict, and was, in fact, regarded as inconsistent with absolute justice. The presentation by the prosecution took most of the morning. Its weight of evidence was exhaustive. At noon the court recessed. Hendley was taken back to his cell, where he was given a spare meal. When the trial resumed, it seemed to him that Ann was paler, more drawn than before.

The defense made no attempt to refute the evidence, pointing instead to the instability of morale shared by the two accused, and to the series of events beyond their control which had driven them into infractions of the Organization's rules of order. The defense was palpably weak. A sense of the hopelessness of their case began to weigh upon Hendley.

The defense rested. Two legal computers were brought into the courtroom and hooked up to the jury. Each in turn fed into the twelve jurors all recorded legal precedents which bore upon the case for or against the accused. During this time Hendley could not help staring at the flickering screens of the twelve jurors. He had the strange sensation that they were watching him, examining and judging what they saw.

Ann sat with her head down, her hands clasped in an attitude of resignation. But her face, when she glanced up at him, was calm.

"It's all right," she whispered reassuringly. But he knew that she did not mean they would be acquitted.

At last, after a brief address to the jury by the judge, the twelve computers went into action. A bailiff pushed a button to start them off. Hendley could see excited activity among the spectators in the balcony as they craned their necks to see and talked animatedly among themselves. In the soundproofed courtroom only the calculations of the jury were audible, each computer racing to its decision--clicking, humming, whirring, finally coughing up, each in turn, a strip of white tape. The bailiff ceremoniously collected each strip and handed all twelve to the judge. As he examined them his stern face did not change expression.

"The accused will rise," he intoned. Staring down gravely at Hendley and Ann, he said: "You have been accused of rebellion and sedition against the rules of order of the Organization. The verdict is unanimous--guilty!"

Hendley was surprised to find that he felt no reaction. Too much had happened to him in recent weeks. Or perhaps it was just that he had already accepted the inevitability of the decision.

"It is within the prerogative of this court," the judge said slowly, "to determine the severity of sentence. In the light of the male accused's persistent and determined efforts to defy the Organization's accepted mode of conduct and way of life, the court does not see that leniency would serve any just purpose. As for the female accused, known as ABC-331, it would appear that her emotional relationship with her fellow accused accounts in great part for her actions. Rehabilitation in the Morale Center--"

"No!" Ann cried, leaping to her feet. "We're both guilty!"

The judge frowned severely. "The accused will refrain--"

"But I must! You can't separate us!" She whirled toward Hendley, seizing his arm with desperate fingers. "Don't let them! Hendley, please, I have to be with you!"

"Bailiff!" the judge stormed. There was turmoil in the gallery as the judge pounded his bench with a gavel.

"Stop it!" Hendley spoke to Ann sharply. "They'll make your punishment easy!"

"I don't care about punishment!" she cried. "I don't care about the Organization! I care about us! What kind of life would I have without you now?"

The bailiff reached them. Shoving Hendley aside, he grabbed Ann's arms. Hendley spun the bailiff around, breaking his hold. The courtroom guards converged on the scene. In the brief struggle one of the guards clipped Hendley a glancing blow with a club. Ann was pushed into her chair.

As suddenly as it had begun the scuffle was over. With an effort Hendley brought his anger under control. The bailiff glared at him threateningly, but Hendley ignored him as he resumed his seat and looked anxiously at Ann. Her hand reached out to him in mute appeal. Her cheeks were damp with tears.

He looked up bitterly as the judge began to speak. The eyes that met his showed neither compassion nor understanding. These would be out of place, Hendley thought angrily, in such a court, just as they could not really exist in a world governed by machines.

"It is the judgment of this court," the judge said harshly, "that the names TRH-247 and ABC-331 be erased from all the records of the Organization, that their identity discs be destroyed, and that the accused formerly known by said numbered designations be taken from the city and banished forever into the outer light...."

14

At night, in the second week, they slept wrapped in each other's arms for warmth. The last matches were gone, and a battery had burned out in the electric fire starter. Try as he might, hampered by the stiffness remaining in his left hand as well as by inexperience, Hendley could not create enough spark with stones or dry sticks to fan a flame into life. By then they were both hungry, a deep continuous hunger which seemed to add to the cold's penetration, as if the blanket of flesh covering their bones, already worn thinner, could no longer keep out the chill which spread over the land after the sun went down.

Each day he had tried to put more miles between them and the city. The copter had left them some distance away, but still in sight of the tall, faceless cylinders of the major centers. Viewed across the barren plain, the towers appeared more like dead, naked trees than buildings swarming with human life. Moving always west, away from the hated towers, Hendley kept expecting to see them sink below the horizon, but they remained persistently in view, seeming no further away.

He slept fitfully. Waking in the cold darkness before dawn, he could see the beams of light shooting up from the circular cores of the great cylindrical towers, as if they were giant torches held up to illuminate the sky. Ann shivered in her sleep and tried to hug him more tightly, seeking to warm her body with his. Pity washed through him. Holding her, he felt a growing, spreading ache that was like the cold but deeper, that would not yield to warm rays of the morning sun.

He had brought her to this, and he was failing her.

Once, in the first week, he had trapped a small animal, one of the few species that seemed to be alive on the plain. He had had matches then, had built a fire, and it seemed they had never tasted anything more delicious than the fresh meat they shared in that festive meal. "I think," Ann had said, "Hendley, I think now we are really free. For the first time."

Later that night, lying before the warm glow of the fire, they had made love, and it had been like that first day of discovering each other.

Now they no longer made love. They were both dull with fatigue at the end of each day, even though they rested during the period of brutal midday heat. They were weakened by having had little to eat for days. They had tried various wild plants and even grasses that looked edible. Some were acceptable to their stomachs, some were impossibly bitter, one had made both of them sick. Hunger and thirst had jealously driven out other appetites.

The need for water, Hendley knew, would soon be more urgent even than food. In all this brown, empty land they had found no stream, no spring, no sign of water. They had started out with a two-week supply in the canteens provided them, but in the first days, unused to the weight of the desert sun, they had drunk too generously. It was only near the end of the first week that the necessity for strict rationing became painfully clear. There were mountains to the west, creeping infinitesimally higher each day, and Hendley reasoned that there must be water flowing down from the mountains, but he wondered, the strange new ache piercing to his heart as he held Ann more closely, if they would find it in time.

Really free, he thought. It was true. But this freedom was demanding. They were unprepared for it. Nothing in their lives before had equipped them to cope with it. Everything had always been provided--all the needs of mind and body. The social machine had taken care of its moving parts. Could they manage even to exist cut off from the benevolent machine?

There must have been others banished from the cities. Hendley could not guess how many. Had any of them learned to survive? Where would they have gone? Instinctively toward the mountains, as he had, in search of shelter from the sun and life-giving water? Had they begun to regret their transgressions against the Organization, to wish themselves back in the familiar routine of work and reward, the accepted pursuit of an artificial freedom? Had any of them crawled back to the cities, begging to be taken in?

The last question made Hendley start. A new chill crawled up his spine. Was that part of the punishment--reducing the criminal to abject surrender? Did they expect Hendley and Ann to return to the towers as beggars, shaken by cold and tormented by hunger, ready to accept any terms of rehabilitation?

Angrily he shook his head. There was an insidious weakness in the direction of his thoughts, a half-wish concealed behind the resentment. But the wish was for her, the woman whose body he covered with his own, feeling the bones more sharply outlined, seeing the pinched look of hunger around her mouth....

He waited until the sun's first rays lanced through the concrete fingers projecting along the eastern horizon. Very carefully he eased out of Ann's tight grasp, trying not to wake her. She stirred once, then fell back into the drugged sleep of exhaustion.

For an hour Hendley labored--doggedly, frustrated and tormented by his repeated failures--until at last a puff of smoke drifted from the small pile of powdery leaves and wood pulp he had fashioned. Perspiring in spite of the early morning chill, his face flushed with anxiety, he fanned the first sparks into a steady glow. At length, adding fresh twigs and seeing firm tongues of flame lick around them, he sat back on his heels and luxuriated in a sense of triumph. He had made his first fire.

There was powdered coffee remaining from their meager rations. When he had heated water he carried a cup of the steaming beverage to where Ann lay. He woke her gently.

"We may not have a feast," he said. "But there's hot coffee, and a fire to take away the chill. Come on over closer to it."

Her happy exclamations of surprise and praise amply rewarded all his effort. He felt a slow surge of pride as he watched her crouch close to the fire, warming her hands and face and thin, shivering body. She drank too deeply of the coffee, scalding her tongue, but when she looked up at him, choking and smiling, her drawn face was flushed with color.

There were some things he could do, he thought with renewed determination. There would be other small animals he could trap, perhaps more of them nearer the mountains. There would be a fire each night to give them warmth and to cook their food. He would have to learn to strip the hides of any usefully covered animals so that the hides could be saved and warmer clothes eventually made from them. He would have to learn a lot of things. It would not be easy--but he had made a beginning.

"That was marvelous of you," Ann said, reaching for him with one slender hand, pulling him down beside her.

When he let the fire die later, the sun was well above the horizon and the air was warming.

* * * * *

He felt, at the last, a sense of being cheated.

They had reached the foothills ascending in steps to the great purple vastness of the mountains when Ann collapsed for the first time. Hendley was sure that water could not be far away. The last drop had been squeezed from their canteens two days before. Yet even this conviction of being so close to the desperately needed water did not affect him as much as the tracks on which they had stumbled.

They were human tracks--feet soled in what seemed to suggest smooth leather. The tracks had crossed their path a day before they reached the foothills. They had eagerly followed the apparently purposeful line of the footprints--not a single set of prints, but many, indicating that the trail was frequently used. Their own progress was slow all that day, held back by Ann's weakness. In his excitement over the discovery of the freshly made tracks Hendley had found an untapped core of strength and stamina, and not until Ann stumbled twice late in the afternoon did he become sharply aware of how weak and sick she was.

He had insisted on stopping immediately. Hurriedly he built a fire, before which he made her rest while he scoured the area for fresh roots. From these and the juice squeezed from green plants he made a kind of thick, stringy soup. During the night, in spite of his own deep fatigue, he slept little, watching over Ann anxiously. She kept waking, and what sleep she had was disturbed and restless. He waited several hours after dawn, putting down her objections, before they sat off again.

Early in the afternoon she collapsed. "I'm sorry, Hendley," she kept repeating as he lifted her and carried her into the shade of an outcropping of rock. "I'm sorry."

He brushed her words aside almost brusquely. "What have you to be sorry for? I've been pushing you too hard--I should have realized. I haven't let you rest."

"It's not that. If only I had some water...."

Hating to leave her for long, he made quick forays through the remainder of the afternoon searching for some sign of water. The foothills were greener than the main desert plain--there had to be water not too far away. It must be there!

But, though he ranged farther each time, he found nothing, returning after each trip with a sharper fear.

Night again found him watching over her worriedly, listening to her dry, hacking cough. Her lips were cracked and swollen. He was vaguely surprised to find his own lips split so that one was bleeding.

And on his last scouting trip he had stumbled badly. A low grade had exhausted him. His strength was waning.

They could not live long without water. The human trail they had followed for two days must surely lead to help, to a source of food and water. But time was running out on them. Should he keep following the tracks, or strike out across the foothills, searching for a stream? He didn't know, and the uncertainty plagued him through the long night.

Falling into fitful sleep, he dreamed of a rushing mountain stream, clear and cold, frothing as it boiled over beds of rock, cold and sweet and nourishing...

In the morning Ann seemed stronger. They set off at an easy, careful pace. Hendley helped her when the way was steep, carrying her over the most difficult stretches. They climbed steadily, following the fresh trail. When she could go no farther, he lifted her across his shoulders and went on, laboring.

They made little progress. At noon he had to rest. Because the day was cloudy and cool, with a stiff cutting wind whining through the gullies and bending the grasses that covered the foothills. Hendley searched carefully for a sheltered cove. He knew they had gone almost as far as they could go. Alone he might have struggled on for another day, perhaps more. But he would not leave her to save himself.

After a brief rest he made one more fruitless search for water. Exploring a ravine which looked promising, a slash across the hills once carved by a river but now dry, he was gone longer than he had intended. When he returned, he found Ann sprawled on the ground, only half-conscious.

They were absolutely alone in the vast, empty land. To the east now there was only an endless reach of denuded prairie. The towers of the city were no longer visible. The only sign of human existence other than themselves was the tauntingly recent trail they had been following. What men were these? Where did the tracks lead? How far?

He felt again the sense of being cheated, of a promise made, a hope nurtured, which could not be fulfilled.

Shortly after dusk he heard the buzz of an aircraft overhead, but he could not find it. This remote sign of life quickened no hope. The blind copters droning across the sky carried no one who could, or would, save them.

Ann came out of her delirium to stare at him. Her eyes were large, wide open, unexpectedly lucid. "You must go on without me," she said calmly. "You can make it without me."

He shook his head. "There is nothing without you."

"You could find help--come back for me."

"No, Ann," he said gently. "We have to face it. There is no help. And I won't leave you alone."

She stared at him for a long moment. He saw, peering closely, that her eyes were liquid with tears. "Are you sorry you came?" he asked, not knowing until the words were out what he was saying. "Would you go back?"

She seemed to gather strength for her reply, drawing from a worn, thin body a surprising vigor. Her eyes shone. "Never!" she cried.

He lay beside her on the ground near the fire and folded her into his arms. "Nor I," he said.

When, some time later, the fire began to die, the two figures bundled together before it did not stir. The fire slowly darkened, its orange glow turning to gray ash, and then to black, obscuring the last feeble flicker....

15

Epilogue

_So few of them survived, the hunter reflected. So few lasted long enough to be found. And of those who did, few were able to adapt to the rigors of the new life._

_But the survivors were strong. The tribe was growing stronger all the time, larger and stronger and more skilled. While those in the cities were growing weaker._

_Time, he thought, is on our side._

_For a moment longer he gazed thoughtfully down at the two prone, wasted figures. The branches of a gnarled, twisted tree reached almost over their shelter. Absently, the hunter probed with his hand into one of the low-hanging branches to pluck one of the round fruits concealed among the waxen leaves. With strong white teeth he bit through the outer skin and sucked up the delicious juice. He scraped out all of the nourishing pulp with his teeth. When he had finished he tore the rubbery skin into strips and placed these in a pouch at his waist, except for one piece which he kept in his mouth to chew on._

_Using a blanket, he repeated his earlier smoke signals, alternately smothering and exposing the fire he had raised on the coals of the old one. He worked patiently, whistling softly through his teeth._

_The woman must have been very pretty, he mused._

_The curling puffs of smoke climbed into the bright morning sky and scattered slowly before the wind. After several minutes the hunter desisted._

_From a leather gourd he poured water into a crude, hand-shaped cup. He knelt beside the two strangers and, for the second time since his arrival, forced a little water between their cracked lips. The man was breathing well now, he noted. The woman had been much weaker, her heartbeat almost imperceptible. But with care she would live._

_They had come a long way, he thought. The man, stronger, could have continued. That was important. Love and loyalty were always important. These two would be valuable additions to the tribe. And from them would come another generation, born to freedom, stronger and more adaptable than their parents. It was a pleasure to watch the children cope with the new world so easily, so naturally...._

_While the hunter was still engaged in caring for his two sick charges, the drone of an aircraft wove a thin thread of sound across the bright blue sky. Reaching the drifting smoke signals, the aircraft swung in slow circles, each one lower. It was a crude craft, lightweight and spindly looking, but very maneuverable._

_The hunter glanced up. Banking low above him, the aircraft seemed to balance on one wingtip. From the windowed cabin the pilot waved. The hunter, smiling, returned the salute._

_As the plane veered off toward the flat plain below, where it would be safe to land, the hunter rose. He began to search the area for materials from which to fashion a stretcher. It would take, he reckoned, a half hour for the pilot to reach him, another hour to transport the two strangers down to the aircraft. He set to work._

_The man on the ground stirred and opened his eyes._

* * * * *

RIGID!

LOCKED!

ENSLAVED!

that was our Earth in 2200. East and West had merged at last, so there were no more wars, no more political differences.

Citizens everywhere could concentrate on working off their TAX DEBTS! If you were capable and industrious, you might be able to make freeman status for the last few years of your life.

No one questioned. No one spoke out. No one rebelled until one bright morning Citizen TRH-247 decided not to go to work--and worse than that, became desirous of a girl below his own classification!

Thus he made himself an outcast with the whole world against him and mere survival dependent on his wits, his daring, his strength.

THE SENTINEL STARS--a novel of our world run as the Bureau of Internal Revenue would run it!