"Why?" Hendley wanted to shout the question, but he wasn't even sure that he had spoken aloud. His throat was tight, his vocal cords paralyzed. Why, why, why? "Why? Is that what you're asking?" Nik's distorted features twisted into an even more grotesque shape. "Because I want out! I'm sick of this prison, sick of freedom, sick of the boring pleasure-pures!" "You're mad!" The words dribbled through Hendley's loose lips. "What's that? Mad? Of course I'm mad! Who wouldn't be after a lifetime in this place? You'll find out. Or maybe you won't. Maybe you'll be one of those who likes it. Stupid fools! You don't know what you have on the outside. To have work! Something to do! Someplace to go! Something with a purpose, a meaning--" No, Hendley wanted to tell him. You don't understand. There is no meaning. It's all a hoax. Nik was laughing. His face floated away. His voice came to Hendley from a great distance. "I won't be seeing you again, old boy. Sorry, you're not making any sense when you try to talk. Can you hear me all right? Just want to say, have fun! It's all yours--the stars and the sun and the pleasures of freedom! If you ever get out, look me up at the Architectural Center. Just ask for TRH-247..." His laughter thinned out like a piece of string. Hendley wanted to reach for it, to get his hands around the thin white throat of laughter. He could not move. He was alone under a vaulting black sky, without stars, without light of any kind. He was drifting through space. Ann! He called her soundlessly in the cavern of his mind. I'll find you. Wait for me! But his last conscious thought was the realization that she could not hear him. She would never know what he had said. 9 As he had done each evening--he had missed only one night, awakening after dark on the day NIK-700 left the Freeman Camp in his place--Hendley sat at a table in the central park, a half-empty glass before him, and watched the sunset. There were clouds above the horizon, and against this billowing canvas the sun painted a dazzling richness of colors--fiery red, gold, lavender, vivid streamers of yellow. Hendley shifted restlessly in his chair. So quiet! he thought impatiently. There had been nothing of interest going on through most of the day. Unmoved by the spectacle on the horizon, he let his gaze wander across the tops of the distant line of trees, indifferently over a green expanse of lawn, to come to rest at a swimming pool near the foot of the slope. A girl was standing by the pool, wearing only the thin white strips affected for bathing. Hendley's eyes lingered on the ripe curves of her body. He wondered if she could be the same girl he had met on his first day in the camp almost a week before, the one who had led him off among the bushes. That chapter had been unfinished. Her Contracted had interrupted them. Hendley thought that he really ought to look her up some day....