Chapter Four
When Technician Cory got back to his sleeproom, brooding over a strained back and sore knee, and his failure to impress Citizen Zona, it was a moment before he was aware that something was wrong.
The room was empty. Owen was not there.
The feeling of alarm heightened even before Cory understood why, even before his tired brain grasped the significance of bare bunk and empty shelves where Owen’s things had been just two hours before. Without examining these facts Cory began to tremble in fear, as if he had dreaded the outcome of Owen’s fitness test but had concealed the truth from himself as he had tried to hide it from Owen.
Stupidly he called out. “Owen?”
There was only one place he could be, but the tiny washroom was empty, as Cory had known it would be. He stared at the room, as if it might be possible that he had blundered through the wrong door. But his own clothes were in the closet, his own small store of personal effects on the shelves above his familiar bunk.
There was no trace of Owen at all.
Cory had shared this small room with the good-natured exerciser for over three years. After graduation from regular studyschool he had been assigned to this room, sharing it with an older man. A year later the other man left and Owen moved in. He and Cory had been immediate friends—everyone liked Owen, Cory thought now in anguish—and they had spent most of their lives together, not only the sleeping hours but the other eight hours their schedule confined them to the dormitory area, and even many of their exercise and study periods. They had fought and argued, eaten and drunk together, scorned the grayshirts and laughed at the faddists, and dreamed of girls …
Owen could not simply vanish!
Catching the hysterical tone of his fears, Cory pulled himself up with an effort. He was taking a tumble prematurely, fearing the worst. There could be other explanations. A transfer, perhaps, or the requirement of another month of special conditioning. In fact, the latter possibility made a great deal more sense than anything else, when you thought about it.
The Orderly would know. No one could be moved in or out without the Dorm Orderly being informed. He kept the Roster and posted the Daily Schedules, staggering the hours allotted for playtime and sleepytime, so he had to be informed about any reclassification or reassignment. There were simply too many people in any one dorm, and too many hours spent there—eight hours total Confined to Quarters daily for each resident—for the use of facilities or the shifting of residents to be left to happenstance or personal whim.
Without further debate, and the risk of letting his imaginings run wild again, Technician Cory left his sleeproom and hurried along the wide main corridor of the dorm. At the central intersection he jogged left, heading straight for the Orderlyroom. The halls were crowded, as they were at any hour, with the usual backslapping and shouting and physical horseplay over someone’s performance at the last comsesh, or some display of ignorance at the most recent studytime. The faces were all open, grinning, happy, undisturbed, making Cory feel oddly out of place. His frowning anxiety must stand out like a bruise, he thought, painfully reminded of how well Owen had fitted in with all of these fellow exercisers …
Had fitted in. The word was like a blow against a nerve. It went on vibrating in his brain, reviving all his worry and dread, the forebodings that were unthinkable about Owen’s fate—the unaskable, unanswerable questions: Where was Owen now? Where did they all go, the old and the maimed and the tall?
The Orderly was not in his office.
The empty room was a shock, not only because the Orderly seemed always to be on hand, but also because Cory had not thought beyond confronting him with the fact of Owen’s sudden disappearance, acting from a kind of childlike faith that the Orderly, as always, would have an answer, an explanation, a solution.
But even as Cory stood in helpless dismay he heard the reassuring crispness of the Orderly’s voice preceding him around a turn in one of the nearby corridors. “Not to worry,” the Orderly was saying, as if he already spoke to Cory’s anxiety. “We’ll have you straightened out: in a jiffy. Can’t have you getting fat on us, can we?” He chuckled at the grim joke.
A stocky young technician trotted around the corner in the Orderly’s wake, short legs pumping to keep up. He was red-haired and freckled, and his pink-faced embarrassment showed his inability to take the Orderly’s humor in stride. His gaze caught Cory’s and shifted away quickly, as if he were ashamed to have the problem of his excess weight bandied about in public. More than shame, Cory thought. Any youth with the tendency toward overweight grew up with the fact of his pudginess held constantly before him as a threat, like a shadow to fear in the night. The Orderly’s sharp eyes, by contrast, whisked over Cory as if they were picking up dust. The eyes were a clear ice blue, and they missed nothing. Nor did they warm as the Orderly gave Cory one of his curt nods and stepped briskly past him into his office.
Cory followed the two men into the small, efficiently organized office. Without hesitation the Orderly went to a row of built-in file slots and withdrew a sheet of paper. “This is the low calorie fruit flavor diet,” he said. “Two thousand calories a day, in four meals of approximately equal amounts.”
“Uh … two thousand?”
The Orderly’s smile had a touch of satisfaction. He was the kind of man who would never allow himself to gain weight or be late for a comsesh, and had little or no sympathy for anyone who did. “You’ll find that quite adequate, I’m sure. What did you say your weight was up to?”
The youth’s face lost much of its high color. His glance toward Cory now held genuine fear. “Uh … one hundred and eighty pounds.”
The Orderly looked at Cory as if seeking a witness. “I think you may even be underestimating a pound or two, eh? But we’re going to lose them in short order, aren’t we?”
“Yes, sir!”
The overweight technician left hurriedly, and with obvious relief, clutching his new diet. The Orderly’s sharp gaze followed him. It held briefly, then, as if a switch had been thrown, clicked over to Technician Cory, the departed youth properly pigeonholed, marked with a mental tag which would assure an early recheck on the progress of the diet. Cory was suddenly conscious of how many anxieties he had never seriously concerned himself with, how many fears he had escaped by the accidents of size and weight and health.
“Well, Technician Cory? You wished to see me?”
“Uh … yes.” Cory heard himself fumbling, as the other technician had. It was a reaction encouraged by the Orderly’s aggressive and authoritative manner, and Cory half angrily told himself it wouldn’t work on him. “I’m looking for Tech Owen,” he said more sharply. “He’s not in our room, and his things are gone.”
“Yes, that’s quite in order.”
“What do you mean, it’s quite in order? Where is he?”
“That’s not a very sensible question, Technician Cory—”
“I don’t care how sensible it is, I want an answer.”
The Orderly’s superior half-smile faded. “You know perfectly well I can’t answer you.”
“Somebody’s going to!” All of Cory’s fear returned in a rush. The Orderly’s evasiveness was answer enough, but he could not stop himself now. “What’s happened to Owen?”
The Orderly turned his back on Cory and circled his desk. Settling into a swivel chair, he joined the tips of his fingers at the base of his lower lip and looked over them speculatively at Cory. The expression on his smooth face conveyed nothing, but Cory had the surprising impression that his actions, and delay, were in the nature of a retreat.
“Technician Owen,” the Orderly said at last, “went before the Board of Instructors for review. You could hardly be unaware of that.”
“Yes, I know, but—”
“He failed.”
Cory had been expecting these words, but he was not prepared for the shock which shivered through his whole body. He jailed. The blunt statement said so little and so much. Cory flinched from it, but he could not evade its meaning or its finality. It was a death sentence.
“Where is he now?” Cory repeated doggedly.
“He has been removed from this dorm,” the Orderly snapped with growing impatience. “That is all that is of any concern to me—and it should be enough for you.”
“I want to know where Owen is. I want to know what’s happened to him.”
“I don’t know.”
“You mean you won’t tell me!”
“That’s insubordinate!” The Orderly was on his feet, his bland face flushed.
“I don’t care what you call it. They can’t just take him away like that. He couldn’t have failed. He’s a better exerciser than anyone else around here right now, and you know it, even if he does have one arm—”
Cory stopped. The Personnel Specifications were drilled into every citizen from the very first years of studytime. They were clear and absolute, and the fourth law was stated unequivocally: “Physical Handicaps: None.”
And Owen had a shortened arm. Owen was, by definition, a cripple.
“It’s wrong,” Cory mumbled. “It’s all wrong.”
“I understand how you feel,” the Orderly said, relaxing once more into his chair, his tone suggesting that he did not understand at all. “I’ll forget your outburst this time, Technician Cory—”
“Don’t do me any favors.”
“There is no point in hostility,” the Orderly said coldly. “None of this was my decision. I liked Technician Owen—he was an excellent exerciser and a credit to this dorm before his … his accident. But the ruling of the Board of Instructors is final. There is no appeal. That’s the end of it, and you might as well face up to it now—”
“It’s not the end,” Cory answered hotly. “Not for Owen—and not for me.”
“You’re coming very close to violating the General Rules of Conduct,” the Orderly accused him. “If you persist in this foolish way …”
The threat went unfinished, broken off by the banging of the door as Technician Cory slammed out of the office.