Bill understood the implacable logic before him. The logic
that had saved man from himself by smothering his spirit.
The carefully achieved logic of the drugs that had seized upon
the disassociated personality, and engineered it into a smooth-
ly running machine, where there was no unhappiness because
there was no great happiness, where there was no crime ex-
cept failure to take the drugs or cross the alter sex line.
Without drugs, he was capable of fury and he felt it now.
'You should see how foolish these communication codes
look when you are undrugged. This stupid hide-and-seek of
shifting! These two-headed monsters simpering about their ar-
tificial morals and their endless prescriptions! They belong in
all this sick, we should die. . .'
Bill stopped and there was suddenly a ringing silence in the
barren little room.
Finally Major Grey said, 'I think you can see, Bill, that
your desire to live without drugs is incompatible with this
society. It would be impossible for us to maintain in you an
artificial need for the drugs that would be healthy. Only if we
can clearly demonstrate that this aberration is not an inher-
ent part of your personality can we do something medical-
ly or psycho-surgically about it.'
Bill did not at first see the implication in this. When he
did, he thought of Clara rather than of himself, and his
voice was shaken. 'Is it a localized aberration in Clara?'
Major Grey looked at him levelly. 'I have arranged for you
to be with Clara Manz a little while in the morning.' He
stood up and said good night and was gone.
Slowly, as if it hurt him to move, Bill turned off the light
and lay on the cot in the semi-dark. After a while he could
feel his heart begin to take hold and he started feeling bet-
ter. It was as though a man who had thought himself per-
manently expatriated had been told, 'Tomorrow, you walk
just over that hill and you will be home.'
All through the night he lay awake, alternating between
panic and desperate longing in a cycle with which finally he
became familiar. At last, as rusty light of dawn reddened his
silent room, he fell into a troubled sleep.
He started awake in broad daylight. An orderly was at
the door with his breakfast tray. He could not eat, of course.
After the orderly left, he hastily changed to a new hospital
uniform and washed himself. He redid his make-up with a
trembling hand, straightened the bedclothes 'and then he sat
on the edge of the cot.
No one came for him.
The young medicop who had given him the injection that
caught him in shift finally entered, and was standing near
him before Bill was aware of his presence.
