Chapter 1

“I need something stronger.”

The observer frowned at his viewscreen picture. It was badly distorted. He could hardly make out the man’s face.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing… nothing really. I just feel… I need something stronger.”

There were fifty viewscreens on the observer’s panel; all of them clamoring for attention. His head throbbed painfully. He said to this one:

“If you have a problem, don’t hesitate to ask for assistance. Call 348-853.” And get off my back…

“Yes… Thank you, I’ll be all right. I’ll be all right,” said THX 1138.

He stood in front of the medicine cabinet and somehow knew that the observer was no longer paying attention to him. He took two pills from the nearest bottle and returned the bottle to the cabinet.

Popping the two pills into his mouth, THX 1138 made his way back to the hologram room. He curled up in the deep soft relaxer chair. He was dressed as always in loose-fitting white pajamas. His head, like everyone’s, was shaved. He curled into a fetal position, thumb in mouth, eyes glazed, and watched.

Watched the three policemen beating the old man. Listened to the soft whistle of the long chrome nightsticks that ended in the solid thunk! of flesh being pounded, blood vessels bursting, skin ripping, bones shattering. The old man was still alive; he gave a sighing grunt with each impact.

THX 1138 watched the policemen beat the old man, and felt the soothing glow of the pills taking effect. Somewhere he heard a female voice saying:

“For more rapid results use your new D code on your Mercicontrol card. Thank you.”

He nodded and kept watching. The room was dimly lit in a sullen red glow that came from the walls. But the holopicture was bright and sharp. THX could see that the policemen were chrome, like their clubs. Robots. But the old man was real. He moaned. He bled.

The door to the holoroom opened. THX ignored it.

“THX?”

“No… later…”

“But…”

He pulled tighter together, knees under chin.

She stood at the door and stared at him for a long empty moment With every thud of the nightsticks she winced. Slowly, she closed the door.

Her name—in the style of the underground society—was LUH 3417. She was twenty years old, slim and very lovely except for a barely noticeable small red “S” branded on her left cheek. Her shaved head gave her face a child-like, innocent appearance.

She stood in the little hallway outside the holoroom, under the flat glareless light of the overhead panels, wearing the standard white pajamas that everyone wore. It was a good apartment, three functional immaculate white rooms. And the holoroom. Down on the lowest level of the city, closest to the warmth of the Earth’s core, safe and protected.

Protected from what? LUH wondered.

With a worried frown she walked the four steps from the holoroom’s door to the sanitary. It was a gleaming chrome cubbyhole, with showerstall, depilatory mask, sink and medicine cabinet.

She stood in front of the cabinet, staring into its mirror. She didn’t notice her expressive eyes, or the curve of her cheek. Only the “S.” It was quite small now. Baby-sized. Will they give me another one when I turn twenty-one?

She opened the medicine cabinet, then hesitated.

“What’s wrong?” asked a male observer’s voice.

Impulsively, she took the bottle of pills that THX had used a few minutes earlier. “Never mind,” she said to the unseen observer. “I’ll… I’ll replace these later.” She slammed, the cabinet door shut.

She shook out a fistful of pills, put them to her lips, and held her hand frozen there for a frightening instant. Then she reached down and tossed the pills into the toilet. She shook the whole bottle’s contents into the toilet and flushed all the pills down.

Ajter all, she thought to herself, how can they know? How can they find out? The medicines don’t work as well on natural-borns anyway.

For a moment she felt elated, almost happy, with a delicious twinge of guilt (the pills are for your own good, child). Then she left the sanitary and walked past the holoroom door again. She could still hear the thudding. But now there was a soft moaning sound, a crooning. Not from the old man in the holopicture. She knew that sound. It was THX.

Her elation vanished. She knew what he was doing.

Slowly, silently, reluctantly, LUH cracked open the door of the holoroom just wide enough to see THX. He was breathing hard, moaning softly, eyes fixed on the picture, body jerking spasmodically. LUH looked up at the picture. They were beating a naked girl now. She was silently begging them, but they kept on beating her. One of the chrome policemen hauled her up by the wrists to a kneeling position and the others kicked her abdomen, her ribs. All in slow- motion. Her breasts bounced with each blow. A chrome fist smashed into her face, spewing blood.

THX was masturbating. A smooth white plastic receptacle set into the chair caught his flow and ducted it off. Keep the apartment spotless. Save the sperm for the state.

LUH shut the door, her hands shaking. Why did it bother her so? Her own holopicture stimuli were so different… why did she want—

She realized she was crying. If anyone saw that! With an effort that made her shudder, she pulled herself under control. LUH went into the kitchen. She had to do something, busy herself. She touched the menu stud on the wall, and holopictures of acceptable meals flicked by in eyeblink succession where the cooker screen was. She touched the button again when she saw THX’s favorite meal. It was all synthetics, of course, but the protein was done up to look like real meat. The wall button flashed blue, acknowledging her order.

Nodding to herself, LUH waited for the sound of the pre-packaged meal to arrive in the cooker. When it came, she stepped to the cooker and opened the door, bending over slightly, to look inside and make certain it was what she had ordered.

It wasn’t. She must have been too slow with the selector button; or maybe the system was just fouled up again. Too late now, there was no way to return the food. It had to be consumed.

She let the cooker door snap shut and pressed the middle of three buttons alongside it. The button glowed red. The meal would be ready in five minutes.

LUH turned back toward the holoroom. For a moment she hesitated, then took a deep breath and started for THX.

He was sitting up now. A smooth-voiced newscaster was sitting across the room where the beatings had been going on.

“… in the constant striving for perfection in the AIA PB 848’s that have been built this year.

“Five felons have been caught fleeing Rehabilitation Center DD 2. All five had been undergoing treatment for drug offenses. Two of the felons were the products of the sexact, the other three…”

“What?” LUH asked involuntarily.

The holopicture flashed blindingly for an instant, then the newscaster repeated:

“Two of the felons were products of the sexact, the other three are from Reproclinic 19. The quintet escaped from Compound 545 and were destroyed upon recapture. Reports indicate…”

She touched THX’s shoulder. “I started dinner for you.”

“I’m not hungry,” he said.

The newscaster’s voice automatically dropped to subliminal level when they spoke. He sat there, smiling amiably, mouthing the day’s events.

“Well, it’s fixed. Come on out and eat it.”

“I don’t want to.”

Impatiently, LUH said, “It’s just going to go to waste if you don’t eat it. Come on…”

He turned and looked up at her. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Can’t you come out of this room and spend some time with me?”

“I see you every day.”

She started to reply, then suddenly turned and left the room. THX sat in the relaxer chair, half-turned to watch her as the door slid shut behind her. With a puzzled frown he got up and followed her out into the hall.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Nothing. Come on, I’ll get your dinner from the cooker.”

“Okay. Let’s eat in the holoroom. The news will be finished soon and the comedy shows start next.”

So she sat in the relaxer chair beside him, watching the flesh-colored mannequins cavorting to taped laughter. He looked rather puzzled when she insisted on sitting in the same chair with him, close enough so that their bodies actually touched.

She’s a strange girl, he thought. He kept trying to concentrate on the holoshow, but his eyes drifted to her as she sat beside him, staring straight ahead at the holopicture but obviously not looking at it, eating slowly, her thoughts… where? What was she thinking?

“LUH…”

She turned to face him. “Yes?”

Shaking his head, “Nothing.” He went back to watching the mannequins.

Control sat in his sculptured foamchair, a thin humorless smile on his lips.

The far wall of his spacious office was a holoscreen. At the moment, it seemed as if there was no wall there at all, and the office appeared to look out on half a dozen horseshoe-shaped observer desks, each ringed with fifty monitoring screens and manned by an observer in skullcap and earphones.

“Well?” he asked one of the observers, through the intercom set into the surface of his synthetic wood desk. “What’s your analysis?”

The holopicture zoomed in on one observer. Each of his fifty screens had the same picture of THX and LUH sitting together; the observer saw them the way a mantis must see its prey.

“She’s trying to seduce him, obviously,” said the observer.

“Obviously,” Control agreed. “But is she aware of what she’s doing or is she acting instinctively? That’s the important question.”

Without turning his head from the screens, the observer answered, “Her pulse rate, neutral activity, EEG, body temperature—they all indicate that she’s excited, but still at the subliminal level. She doesn’t really know what’s going on inside her own glands.”

Control chuckled. “But her body knows. Look at the way she’s rubbing against him. Disgusting.”

“Yes, but she’s not consciously trying to commit the crime. She’s only responding to her own heredity.”

Control muttered something to himself.

“He’s starting to feel it,” the observer noted. “All his indicators are… well, rising.” He grinned, knowing that Control couldn’t see his face.

“I don’t doubt it,” said Control.

“I should warn him,” the observer said.

“No.”

“At least suggest that he take the proper sedation.”

“No!” Control snapped.

“But… I don’t understand. If we allow her to continue like this, then he’ll commit the crime with her.”

“Of course.”

“But it won’t really be his fault,” the observer said.

“No? Whose fault will it be?”

The observer had heard that tone of voice from Control before. It was the last warning sound before an irrevocable trap was sprung.

“I mean to say, sir,” the observer backtracked, “that… well, not every man could maintain his principles under… eh, that kind of treatment.”

Control answered icily, “Either he maintains his principles or he falls. If he falls, it’s his own will, his own volition that caused it.”

The observer shook his head.

“You fail to understand,” Control said, “that LUH 3417, as a natural-born, a product of the sexact, is an atavism, a dangerous anomaly, a living time bomb ticking away in our society. Sooner or later her genetic heritage will make itself felt and she will seduce some otherwise decent citizen into committing the same crime that spawned her.”

“We could arrest her now,” the observer said timidly. “On drug abuse. I saw her flush a whole bottle of pills down the toilet.”

“No, I want to catch her in the sexact. The guiding principle of our society is not vengeance, but self-protection. Criminals commit crimes. You can’t stop them from doing it, you can only delay the inevitable moment when they try to damage society and themseves. No matter what we do, LUH 3417 is intent on destroying herself. We merely have to wait until she takes the ultimate step, and then let society act in the legally prescribed manner.”

“But—the man…”

“If he has criminal instincts, then he will destroy himself, too. There’s no way for us to prevent it. Our society will be healthier, stronger, safer, more stable with such criminals out of the way.”

The observer decided not to answer. Control, as always, was right. No sense arguing.

Control watched THX and LUH on the observer’s multiple screens for a few minutes longer, then pointed a lean finger at the special receptor atop his desk. The holopicture of the observer’s warren disappeared with a silent flash, to be replaced by the solid wall of the office and its stylized portrait of the legendary First Control, with the mysterious clockwork numbers spiraling backward around his puffy, stern face.