drawers; he threw them into a pile on his bed. 'You're never going to get those all into your kit,' Chip said.
'I'm not planning to,' Karl said. 'They're done; I don't need them.' He sat on the bed and leafed through one of the pads, tore out one drawing and another.
'May I have some?' Chip asked.
'Sure,' Karl said, and tossed a pad over to him.
It was mostly Pre-U Museum sketches. Chip took out one of a man in chain mail holding a crossbow to his shoulder, and another of an ape scratching himself.
Karl gathered most of the pads and went off down the aisle toward the chute. Chip put the pad on Karl's bed and picked up another one.
In it were a nude man and woman standing in parkland outside a blank-slabbed city. They were taller than normal, beautiful and strangely dignified. The woman was quite different from the man, not only genitally but also in her longer hair, protrusive breasts, and overall softer convexity. It was a great drawing, but something about it disturbed Chip, he didn't know what.
He turned to other pages, other men and women; the pictures grew surer and stronger, done with fewer and bolder lines. They were the best drawings Karl had ever made, but in each there was that disturbing something, a lack, an imbalance that Chip was at a loss to define.
It hit him with a chill.
They had no bracelets.
He looked through to check, his stomach knotting sick-tight. No bracelets. No bracelets on any of them. And there was no chance of the drawings being unfinished; in the corner of each of them was an A with a circle around it.
He put down the pad and went and sat on his bed; watched as Karl came back and gathered the rest of the pads and, with a smile, carried them off.
There was a dance in the lounge but it was brief and subdued because of Mars. Later Chip went with his girlfriend into her cubicle. 'What's the matter?' she asked.
'Nothing,' he said.
Karl asked him too, in the morning while they were folding their blankets. 'What's the matter, Li?'
'Nothing.'
'Sorry to be leaving?'
'A little.'
'Me too. Here, give me your sheets and I'll chute them.'
'What's his nameber?' Li YB asked.
'Karl WL35S7497,' Chip said.
Li YB jotted it down. 'And what specifically seems to be the trouble?' he asked.
Chip wiped his palms on his thighs. 'He's drawn some pictures of members,' he said.
'Acting aggressively?'
'No, no,' Chip said. 'Just standing and sitting, fucking, playing with children.'
'Well?'
Chip looked at the desktop. 'They don't have bracelets,' he said.
Li YB didn't speak. Chip looked at him; he was looking at Chip. After a moment Li YB said, 'Several pictures?'
'A whole padful.'
'And no bracelets at all.' None.
Li YB breathed in, and then pushed out the breath between his teeth in a series of rapid hisses. He looked at his note pad. 'KWL35S7497,' he said.
Chip nodded.
He tore up the picture of the man with the crossbow, which was aggressive, and tore up the one of the ape too. He took the pieces to the chute and dropped them down.
He put the last few things into his take-along kit—his clippers and mouthpiece and a framed snapshot of his parents and Papa Jan—and pressed it closed.
Karl's girlfriend came by with her kit slung on her shoulder. 'Where's Karl?' she asked. 'At the medicenter.'
'Oh,' she said. 'Tell him I said good-by, will you?'
'Sure.'
They kissed cheeks. 'Good-by,' she said. 'Good-by.'
She went away down the aisle. Some other students, no longer students, went past. They smiled at Chip and said good-by to him.
He looked around the barren cubicle. The picture of the horse was still on the bulletin board. He went to it and looked at it; saw again the rearing stallion, so alive and wild. Why hadn't Karl stayed with the animals in the zoo? Why had he begun to draw living humans?
A feeling formed in Chip, formed and grew; a feeling that he had been wrong to tell Li YB about Karl's drawings, although he knew of course that he had been right. How could it be wrong to help a sick brother? Not to tell would have been wrong, to keep quiet as he had done before, letting Karl go on drawing members without bracelets and getting sicker and sicker. Eventually he might even have been drawing members acting aggressively. Fighting. Of course he had been right. Yet the feeling that he had been wrong stayed and kept growing, grew into guilt, irrationally.
Someone came near, and he whirled, thinking it was Karl coming to thank him. It wasn't; it was someone passing the cubicle, leaving.
But that was what was going to happen: Karl was going to come back from the medicenter and say, 'Thanks for helping me, Li. I was really sick but I'm a whole lot better now,' and he was going to say, 'Don't thank me, brother; thank Uni,' and Karl was going to say, 'No, no,' and insist and shake his hand.
Suddenly he wanted not to be there, not to get Karl's thanks for having helped him; he grabbed his kit and hurried to the aisle—stopped short, uncertainly, and hurried back. He took the picture of the horse from the board, opened his kit on the desk, pushed the drawing in among the pages of a notebook, closed the kit, and went.
He jogged down the downgoing escalators, excusing himself past other members, afraid that Karl might come after him; jogged all the way down to the lowest level, where the rail station was, and got on the long airport line. He stood with his head held still, not looking back.
Finally he came to the scanner. He faced it for a moment, and touched it with his bracelet. Yes, it green- winked.
He hurried through the gate.
Part Two
Coming Alive
Chapter 1
Between July of 153 and Marx of 162, Chip had four assignments: two at research laboratories in Usa; a brief one at the Institute of Genetic Engineering in Ind, where he attended a series of lectures on recent advances in mutation induction; and a five-year assignment at a chemo-synthetics plant in Chi. He was upgraded twice in his classification and by 162 was a genetic taxonomist, second class.
During those years he was outwardly a normal and contented member of the Family. He did his work well,
