screams, each the same as the others, that screamed again from building walls and screamed again from farther in the night. The woman kept on screaming and the walls and the night kept screaming with her.
He waited until the woman and the members leading her had gone into the building, waited longer while the far-off screams lessened to silence, and then he slowly crossed the walkway and went in. He lurched against the admission scanner as if off balance, clicking his bracelet below the plate on metal, and went slowly and normally to an up-gliding escalator. He stepped onto it and rode with his hand on the rail. Somewhere in the building the woman still screamed, but then she stopped.
The second floor was lighted. A member passing in the hallway with a tray of glasses nodded to him. He nodded back.
The third and fourth floors were lighted too, but the escalator to the fifth floor wasn't moving and there was darkness above. He walked up the steps, to the fifth floor and the sixth.
He walked by flashlight down the sixth-floor hallway—quickly now, not slowly—past the doors he had gone through with the two doctors, the woman who had called him 'young brother' and the scar-cheeked man who had watched him.
He walked to the end of the hallway, shining his light on the door marked 600A and Chief, Chemotherapeutics Division.
He went through the anteroom and into King's office. The large desk was neater than before: the scuffed telecomp, a pile of folders, the container of pens—and the two paperweights, the unusual square one and the ordinary round one.
He picked up the round one—ARG20400 was inscribed on it—and held its cool plated-metal weight on his palm for a moment. Then he put it down, next to King's young smiling snapshot at Uni's dome.
He went around behind the desk, opened the center drawer, and searched in it until he found a plastic- coated section roster. He scanned the half column of Jesuses and found Jesus HL09E6290. His classification was 080A; his residence, G35, room 1744.
He paused outside the door for a moment, suddenly realizing that Lilac might be there too, dozing next to King under his outstretched possessing arm. Good! he thought. Let her hear it at first hand! He opened the door, went in, and closed it softly behind him. He aimed his flashlight toward the bed and switched it on.
King was alone, his gray head encircled by his arms.
He was glad and sorry. More glad, though. He would tell her later, come to her triumphantly and tell her all he had found.
He tapped on the light, switched off the flashlight, and put it in his pocket. 'King,' he said.
The head and the pajamaed arms stayed unmoving.
'King,' he said, and went and stood beside the bed. 'Wake up, Jesus HL,' he said.
King rolled onto his back and laid a hand over his eyes. Fingers chinked and an eye squinted between them.
'I want to speak to you,' Chip said.
'What are you doing here?' King asked. 'What time is it?'
Chip glanced at the clock. 'Four-fifty,' he said.
King sat up, palming at his eyes. 'What the hate's going on?' he said. 'What are you doing here?'
Chip got the desk chair and put it near the foot of the bed and sat down. The room was untidy, coveralls caught in the chute, tea stains on the floor.
King coughed into the side of a fist, and coughed again. He kept the fist at his mouth, looking red-eyed at Chip, his hair pressed to his scalp in patches.
Chip said, 'I want to know what it's like on the Falkland Islands.'
King lowered his hand. 'On what islands?' he said.
'Falkland,' Chip said. 'Where you got the tobacco seeds. And the perfume you gave Lilac.'
'I made the perfume,' King said.
'And the tobacco seeds? Did you make them?'
King said, 'Someone gave them to me.'
'In ARG20400?' After a moment King nodded. 'Where did he get them?'
'I don't know.'
'You didn't ask?'
'No,' King said, 'I didn't. Why don't you get back where you're supposed to be? We can talk about this tomorrow night.'
'I'm staying,' Chip said. 'I'm staying here until I hear the truth. I'm due for a treatment at 8:05. If I don't take it on time, everything's going to be finished—me, you, the group. You're not going to be king of anything.'
'You brother-fighter,' King said, 'get out of here.'
'I'm staying,' Chip said.
'I've told you the truth.'
'I don't believe it.'
'Then go fight yourself,' King said, and lay down and turned over onto his stomach.
Chip stayed as he was. He sat looking at King and waiting.
After a few minutes King turned over again and sat up. He threw aside the blanket, swung his legs around, and sat with his bare feet on the floor. He scratched with both hands at his pajamaed thighs. ''Americanueva,'' he said, 'not 'Falkland.' They come ashore and trade. Hairy-faced creatures in cloth and leather.' He looked at Chip. 'Diseased, disgusting savages,' he said, 'who speak in a way that's barely understandable.'
'They exist, they've survived.'
'That's all they've done. Their hands are like wood from working. They steal from one another and go hungry.'
'But they haven't come back to the Family.'
'They'd be better off if they did,' King said. 'They've still got religion going. And alcohol-drinking.'
'How long do they live?' Chip asked.
King said nothing.
'Past sixty-two?' Chip asked.
King's eyes narrowed coldly. 'What's so magnificent about living,' he said, 'that it has to be prolonged indefinitely?
What's so fantastically beautiful about life here or life there that makes sixty-two not enough of it instead of too fighting much? Yes, they live past sixty-two. One of them claimed to be eighty, and looking at him, I believed it. But they die younger too, in their thirties, even in their twenties—from work and filth and defending their 'money.''
'That's only one group of islands,'
' Chip said. 'There are seven others.'
'They'll all be the same,' King said. 'They'll all be the same.'
'How do you know?'
'How can they not be?' King asked. 'Christ and Wei, if I'd thought a halfway-human life was possible I'd have said something!'
'You should have said something anyway,' Chip said. 'There are islands right here in Stability Bay. Leopard and Hush might have got to them and still be living.'
'They'd be dead.'
'Then you should have let them choose where they died,' Chip said. 'You're not Uni.'
He got up and put the chair back by the desk. He looked at the phone screen, reached over the desk, and took the adviser's-nameber card from under the rim of it: Anna SG38P2823.
'You mean you don't know her nameber?' King said. 'What do you do, meet in the dark? Or haven't you worked your way out to her extremities yet?'
Chip put the card into his pocket. 'We don't meet at all,' he said.
'Oh come on,' King said, 'I know what's been going on. What do you think I am, a dead body?'
'Nothing's been going on,' Chip said. 'She came to the museum once and I gave her the word lists for Francais, that's all.'
'I can just imagine,' King said. 'Get out of here, will you? I need my sleep.' He lay back on the bed, put his
