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white. And you're hurt. I'll make you feel better-you'll see."
"Wait!" Hendley protested weakly.
"Mmmm," the girl said, her mouth seeking his. "I don't know what it is-when I
see a man hurt . . ."
"TLLI TLLI" Someone was calling. A man's voice. "TLL -where are you?"
"Oh, damn!" the girl said.
"TLL?" The voice was coming closer. Hendley's scalp prickled as he recognized
the voice. The muscular blond swimmer, her Contracted! If the man found them
like this, he'd never believe ...
"Where the hell. . . are you in there?"
With a sigh the girl sat up. Hendley tried to rise to his knees, fumbling for
his trunks.
Bushes parted. The tall, broad-shouldered figure of the blond man loomed over
them.
"There you are!" he said. "Didn't you hear me?"
"I heard," the girl said petulantly.
The man gave Hendley a cursory nod. "Come on! I hear a hunt's getting up. Soon
as it's dark."
"A hunting party?" There was a subtle change in the girl's manner and her
voice.
Hendley glanced into the large brown eyes. The glitter he saw there made him
uneasy.
"Hurry up! We'll have to eat and get ready!" The man for the first time looked
directly at
Hendley, who made a halfhearted effort to cover himself with the white mesh
trunks, knowing the gesture was futile. "You did all right in there for a
beginner," the blond swimmer said heartily. "Hope you'll keep showing up.
Always need good players!"
He gave the girl his hand to pull her to her feet. "Just let me get my
uniform," she murmured, casually adjusting the halter of her swimming garment.
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She glanced back at
Hendley and said, with what seemed like regret, "So white . . ."
Then the couple was striding off and the girl was saying, "We haven't had a
good hunt in
so long. Who's the target? Is he playing now?"
Their voices trailed off. Hendley gaped after them. They were Contracted-but
there had been neither jealousy nor disgust in the man's attitude. He had
practically caught
57
Hendley and the girl violating one of the Organization's first rules of order-
and he hadn't cared!
Hendley caught hold of a heavy branch of the nearest bush and dragged himself
erect.
The ways of Freemen were going to take some getting used to, he thought.
Remembering the girl's eyes when she had heard about die hunting party, he
shivered involuntarily. What kind of woman would react so strongly to a man's
pain? And what did they mean by the hunt?
He glanced down at his pale body, unused to the sun, and shivered again. Even
when he emerged from the shade into the warm sunlight, he still felt cold.
* * *
Participation was a compulsive act. Less than an hour after Hendley left the
swimming pool in the central park, once more clad in his visitor's white
uniform, he found himself lingering beside a fence enclosing a series of
tennis courts. A shower, a rest, another whiskey and soda had refreshed him.
Walking had loosened bruised, stiff muscles, although he still limped,
favoring his right knee. Except for the knee and a swollen lip, he felt almost
normal. Ready for action, in fact. Tennis, however, seemed a little too
strenuous, even such indifferent tennis as that being played here. The players
lobbed the ball back and forth listlessly, hardly trying when a shot went out
of reach. Odd. A number of the activities
Hendley had watched were carried on with the same indifference: lawn games, a
bowling match, boating. In the parks and on the streets many Freemen stood
around with vacant expressions. Yet the water polo players had thrown
themselves into their game with a vengeance Hendley could attest to. Some
participants in a football game he'd paused to watch for a while had piled
into each other with an audible crunching impact. Even a group of cyclists
racing around a circular track had competed with real fervor. They weren't
very good riders, for Hendley had witnessed two collisions on a far turn in
the brief time he watched. But they were enthusiastic.
Contact sports, he thought . . .
He walked on. The afternoon was waning, though the sun remained well above the
horizon. How little the Freemen seemed to notice the sunl He never saw any of
them staring up at the sky, while Hendley frequently paused to survey that
awesome immensity. They brushed heedlessly past vivid flowers in bloom,
trampled upon bushes, failed to turn their heads when a bird sang from a tree,
while Hendley found these things fascinating. Perhaps in time you became used
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to them. They might come to seem ordinary. Even the vaulting sky might fail to
make you feel small.
He came to an area of carefully tended lawns broken here and there by patches
of white sand, defined by rough stretches of taller grass and shrubbery. Small
groups of players strolled in the distance, pulling carts or carrying bags
containing slender sticks. Something tugged at Hendley's memory. He had seen
such a place in a miniature display in the Sports
Museum. In the underground cities there was not enough space for such a
layout, but it made a pretty picture in the late afternoon in the spacious
Freeman Camp.
Near one of the familiar beige service buildings a player was setting a small
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white ball on the ground and preparing to strike it with the weighted end of
one of the slender poles.
He was a stocky, vigorous man twice Hendley's age, his skin reddened rather
than tanned by the sun, his thick arms choked with dense gray hair, his head
completely bald. Behind him another player hovered, watching, a tall angular
man of much the same age, with a prominent Adam's apple, knife-edge nose,
remarkably long arms, and an angry scowl.
Calling on an old habit, Hendley attached the nickname Curly to the bald man
with the hairy
arms, and Happy to his scowling companion. Nicknames were easier to remember
than numbers.
Curly glanced up from the white ball as Hendley came near. "Join us?" he
called cheerfully. "It's better with three."
"Humph!" the other grunted.
"I'd like to," Hendley said. The exercise, which seemed mild, would help to
limber abused muscles a little more, easing the soreness in his arms and neck.
He was issued a bag of clubs and three white balls at the service building.
When he joined the other players, Curly was waiting, prepared to hit his ball.
"If you don't know how to play, you can just watch us," Curly said.
Hendley nodded. As Curly faced his ball, Hendley hefted the slender plastic
club with its flat-faced head and tentatively swung it.
"Not until I start my swing!" Curly snapped sharply.
Hendley desisted, not sure what he had done wrong. The Stocky man flexed his
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