'Yes,' she said. 'As sick as can be. They cover members' eyes and take them someplace, and tell them to slow down and make mistakes and pretend they've lost their interest in sex. They try to make other members as sick as they are. Do you know any such members?'
'No,' Chip said.
'Anna,' the man said, 'I've watched him. There's no reason to think there's anything wrong beyond what showed on the tests.' He turned to Chip and said, 'Very easily corrected; nothing for you to think about.'
The woman shook her head. 'No,' she said. 'No, it doesn't feel right. Please, young brother, you want us to help you, don't you?'
'Nobody told me to make mistakes,' Chip said. 'Why? Why should I?'
The man tapped the report form. 'Look at the enzymologi-cal rundown,' he said to the woman.
'I've looked at it, I've looked at it.'
'He's been badly OT'ed there, there, there, and there. Let's give the data to Uni and get him fixed up again.'
'I want Jesus HL to see him.'
'Why?'
'Because I'm worried.'
'I don't know any sick members,' Chip said. 'If I did I would tell my adviser.'
'Yes,' the woman said, 'and why did you want to see him yesterday morning?'
'Yesterday?' Chip said. 'I thought it was my day. I got mixed up.'
'Please, let's go,' the woman said, standing up holding the clipboard.
They left the office and walked down the hallway outside it. The woman put her arm around Chip's shoulders but she didn't smile. The man dropped behind.
They came to the end of the hallway, where there was a door marked 600A with a brown white-lettered plaque on it: Chief, Chemotherapeutics Division. They went in, to an anteroom where a member sat behind a desk. The woman doctor told her that they wanted to consult Jesus HL about a diagnostic problem, and the member got up and went out through another door.
'A waste of time all around,' the man said.
The woman said, 'Believe me, I hope so.'
There were two chairs in the anteroom, a bare low table, and Wei Addressing the Chemotherdpists. Chip decided that if they made him tell he would try not to mention Snowflake's light skin and Lilac's less-slanted-than- normal eyes.
The member came back and held the door open.
They went into a large office. A gaunt gray-haired member in his fifties—Jesus HL—was seated behind a large untidy desk. He nodded to the doctors as they approached, and looked absently at Chip. He waved a hand toward a chair facing the desk. Chip sat down in it.
The woman doctor handed Jesus HL the clipboard. 'This doesn't feel right to me,' she said. 'I'm afraid he's malingering.'
'Contrary to the enzymological evidence,' the other doctor said.
Jesus HL leaned back in his chair and studied the report form. The doctors stood by the side of the desk, watching him.
Chip tried to look curious but not concerned. He watched Jesus HL for a moment, and then looked at the desk. Papers of all sorts were piled and scattered on it and lay drifted over an old-style telecomp in a scuffed case. A drink container jammed with pens and rulers stood beside a framed snapshot of Jesus HL, younger, smiling in front of Uni's dome.
There were two souvenir paperweights, an unusual square one from CHI61332 and a round one from ARG20400, neither of them on paper.
Jesus HL turned the clipboard end for end and peeled the form down and read the back of it.
'What I would like to do, Jesus,' the woman doctor said, 'is keep him here overnight and run some of the tests again tomorrow.'
'Wasting—' the man said.
'Or better still,' the woman said, louder, 'question him now under TP.'
'Wasting time and supplies,' the man said.
'What are we, doctors or efficiency analyzers?' the woman asked him sharply.
Jesus HL put down the clipboard and looked at Chip. He got up from his chair and came around the side of the desk, the doctors stepping back quickly to let him pass. He came and stood directly in front of Chip's chair, tall and thin, his red-crossed coveralls stained with yellow spots.
He took Chip's hands from the chair arms, turned them over, and looked at the palms, which glistened with sweat.
He let one hand go and held the wrist of the other, his fingers at the pulse. Chip made himself look up, unconcernedly.
Jesus HL looked quizzically at him for a moment and then suspected—no, knew—and smiled his knowledge contemptuously. Chip felt hollow, beaten.
Jesus HL took hold of Chip's chin, bent over, and looked closely at his eyes. 'Open your eyes as wide as you can,' he said. His voice was King's. Chip stared at him.
'That's right,' he said. 'Stare at me as if I've said something shocking.' It was King's voice, unmistakable. Chip's mouth opened. 'Don't speak, please,' King-Jesus HL said, squeezing Chip's jaw painfully. He stared into Chip's eyes, turned his head to one side and then the other, and then released it and stepped back. He went back around the desk and sat down again. He picked up the clipboard, glanced at it, and handed it to the woman doctor, smiling. 'You're mistaken, Anna,' he said. 'You can put your mind at rest. I've seen many members who were malingering; this one isn't. I commend you on your concern, though.' To the man he said, 'She's right, you know, Jesus; we mustn't be efficiency analyzers. The Family can afford a little waste where a member's health is involved. What is the Family, after all, except the sum of its members?'
'Thank you, Jesus,' the woman said, smiling. 'I'm glad I was wrong.'
'Give that data to Uni,' King said, turning and looking at Chip, 'so our brother here can be properly treated from now on.'
'Yes, right away.' The woman beckoned to Chip. He got up from the chair.
They left the office. In the doorway Chip turned. 'Thank you,' he said.
King looked at him from behind his littered desk—only looked, with no smile, no glimmer of friendship. 'Thank Uni,' he said.
Less than a minute after he got back to his room Bob called. 'I just got a report from Medicenter Main,' he said. 'Your treatments have been slightly out of line but from now on they're going to be exactly right.'
'Good,' Chip said.
'This confusion and tiredness you've been feeling will gradually pass away during the next week or so, and then you'll be your old self.'
'I hope so.'
'You will. Listen, do you want me to squeeze you in tomorrow, Li, or shall we just let it go till next Tuesday?'
'Next Tuesday's all right.'
'Fine,' Bob said. He grinned. 'You know what?' he said. 'You look better already.'
'I feel a little better,' Chip said.
Chapter 3
He felt a little better every day, a little more awake and alert, a little more sure that sickness was what he had had and health was what he was growing toward. By Friday—three days after the examination—he felt the way he usually felt on the day before a treatment. But his last treatment was only a week behind him; three weeks and more lay ahead, spacious and unexplored, before the next one. The slowdown had worked; Bob had been fooled
