THX opened his eyes and saw that PTO was standing beside his bed.
“You’re frightened, aren’t you?” the old man asked quietly. “Just as frightened as the boy the policeman brought in.”
THX said nothing.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, PTO smiled warmly and continued, “You’re frightened that at any moment you’ll be taken away, to be consumed, to have your organs used for other people’s bodies. I know, I’ve felt the same way. I couldn’t eat. I still have trouble sometimes… sometimes it’s difficult to keep one’s balance. Even at my age.”
He looked up, scanned the little group of them, then said, “But how is this place different from anywhere else? We all die sooner or later. None of us knows when it will come, or how. At least, here our death serves the masses. Your heart will help someone to live. Your eyes can give sight to a blind man.”
LUH’s eyes in someone else’s head. Her hands, her voice… our baby… What are they doing to her? To them?
“I know how you feel,” PTO was saying gently. “Why, when I first came here—oh, ages ago—I was intent on escaping. But… escape to where? That’s the problem. You see—there is no other place.”
THX looked up at him. There is no other place! The enormity of it began to sink into his consciousness. There is no other place. Everyplace in the vast city is a prison. Everyplace.
“No place at all,” PTO continued. “The city is more or less like this, isn’t it? And where else can you go? The superstructure, up above? It’s radioactive from all the power units that’ve been there for so long. No one there except monsters. Yes, actual monsters… mutations, horrible creatures, all twisted and insane from the radiations.”
The old man made a helpless gesture. “And beyond that is the outside. Poisonous. Air too foul to breathe, sulfurous rains, germs and filth. The water is undrinkable and the whole place smells of corruption. Do you know the legend about the outside?”
“I know, I know…” It was DWY, anxious to join the conversation—or monologue.
“Men used to live outside, up on the actual surface, where there was cold and extreme heat and something called snow—like powder that fell down on them from the overhead.”
PTO nodded benignly. “Yes. Once men lived in the open, in a paradise. Oh, there was heat and cold, but OMM provided everything that men needed to deal with it and survive. Men lived in splendor and never had to work. Everyone was happy, and there was no need of medicines or sedations, for no one ever got sick or even tired.”
“But someone ruined everything,” DWY put in, his eyes glittering.
“Yes,” said PTO. “Some men were not content with OMM’s paradise. They wanted more—they wanted to breed their own children, to populate the world without control, without planning.”
DWY said, “OMM’s Law was: Increase and multiply only within the limits of society’s plan. But some people wanted to forget the plan and increase at random.”
THX’s head was beginning to throb. Stop it, he demanded silently. Stop it!
“Well, you can see what happened. With uncontrolled breeding, the outside world eventually became overcrowded, and filthy. Pollution and sickness and starvation were everywhere. Thanks to a few far-sighted, saintly men, the underground cities were built…”
“And men have lived in them safely and cleanly ever since.”
“And those up on the outside have long since died in their own filth,” PTO said with great finality.
“And good riddance to them!” DWY added.
“So you see,” PTO concluded, “this is the best place to be. We’re safe and warm and comfortable. Don’t be afraid. There’s no other place to go to.”
The pounding of a police robot’s pole on the floor startled the three of them. THX hadn’t noticed the robot approaching.
“OUE 6662,” announced the robot. A blank-faced middle-aged man stood there, seemingly in a trance.
The robot left him there, circled the cluster of beds, and reached for the wiry little man who had once attacked IMM. He slapped at the robot’s extended hand, pushed into its chest and the robot toppled backward and fell with a hollow metallic thud. Laughing hysterically, the man jumped up and down on the robot’s face. The chrome, which looked so solid, gave way like a fender crumpling. With a triumphant shriek, the little man ran off into the distance.
They all watched him getting smaller and smaller against the featureless white expanse. Then he screamed horribly and disappeared altogether. THX turned back and looked at PTO, who was shaking his head sadly.
“Violence,” he said, like a physician identifying a fatal disease. “Violence.”
Just after the next food arrived, with its musical tone and blue flash of light, two more robots came to take their battered colleague away.
It’s all insane, THX knew. They’re killing us in our minds, because they want to save our organs for themselves.
Don’t let them do it to you, he heard LUH’s voice urging him. Be strong. You can win over them.
He ached when he thought of her. LUH. Where is she? How can I find her?
PTO was walking slowly around the bed modules with the teen-aged boy, CAM 5254, beside him.
“Yes, your point is well taken, my boy,” the old man was saying, “but it lacks the balance that a broader and deeper range of experience can lend it. When I first arrived here, I saw things as perhaps you do now. I was confused about my predicament…”
THX shook his head. Nothing ever changes here. New people come and old ones go but nothing changes.
PTO and CAM circled the modules and came back within hearing range:
“Listen to the mumblings of an old man and bank those flames of violence with earnest inquiry and honest observation…”
From his own bed, SEN broke in, “Mumblings!”
PTO stopped in midsentence. SEN wagged a finger at CAM.
“Do you know,” he shouted, “how many times we’ve had to listen to that speech?”
The boy, confused, looked from SEN to PTO and back again.
“Do you have any idea,” SEN demanded, rising from his bed, “how many times… we’ve had to listen to that identical speech? He thinks everyone’s as blind as he is!”
PTO tried to smile but his face wouldn’t do it. He almost looked angry.
“You know what you are?” SEN snapped at him. “You make me sick. If we all thought like you…”
IMM screamed from across the cluster of beds, a single sharp howl of terror. Everyone turned to her. She was sitting alone, no one within ten meters of her.
SEN dismissed her with a wave of his hand. “You know what I want?” he said to the rest of the group. “Ideas… One idea. One idea could get us out of here if it was the right idea. You know what I mean?”
His eyes wide with fervor, SEN called out, “Not a bunch of facts! Who even knows if they’re facts? He probably makes them up in his sleep. The time has come to act!”
THX sat on the edge of his bed. His stomach felt fluttery.
“We’ve just got to be sure it’s the right idea,” SEN went on. “But we’ll find it. We’ll know it when we see it. I’ll know it when I see it. Clear and straight and forward and plain as the nose on your face.”
The new inmate, OUE, suddenly stepped up to SEN and punched him directly on the nose. SEN staggered back painfully, holding his nose. OUE walked away laughing.
PTO turned back to CAM as if nothing had happened. “In the years to come you will be grateful for what may now seem like senseless sacrifices. With a passion such as yours…”
SEN, more intense than ever, rushed over to them and shook his fist in PTO’s face. “Sooner or later you’ll be taken away and destroyed like the others.”
“Not destroyed,” PTO corrected calmly. “Consumed. And so will you be.”
THX stood up. His knees felt weak. He began to slowly walk away from his bed, slowly, slowly.
He heard PTO saying, “Of course it is true that no one really knows what happens when one is taken away, history tells us that, but it is idle to speculate about it. SEN has destroyed himself with worry many times over. LOO 3122, who was taken away long before you arrived, believed that he was going to a wonderful place where he would be supremely happy…”
His voice was getting fainter, THX kept walking. He was well away from the beds now, walking steadily. Away.
A chrome police robot passed him, heading in the ther direction, toward the beds. The policeman didn’t even seem to notice THX. After a while, far in the distance, he heard one of the inmates shouting:
“No… not me… take her… no, no!”
THX kept walking.