They not ill. They feel fine, Matt signed. Feel good. His hips moved involuntarily as
he remembered how good the females back at the tower had felt. He wanted that feeling again. But as Melody still would not let him go.
"Matt," she persisted "those females in the tower were getting medicine too, just like you, weren't they." Yes, and they feel fine, Matt answered.
"This is getting us nowhere," Saul broke in. "If youre thinking of letting him couple with Lucy, you two, Rhoda and I will have to ask you to leave."
"We never would have come here if we'd known you had a female sim," Ken said. They glared at each other. Hoping he was forgotten, Matt started toward the back of the housed again.
"Wait!" Melody said. Resentful y, he turned back. He was tired of her trying to tell him things that obviously weren't so. What she said, though, did not look to have anything to do with his lust for Lucy: "You remember that I'm Henry Quick's great-great-granddaughter, don't you, Matt?" He nodded. That was one reason, and a big one, why Hal gone along when she and Ken and Dee came bursting into his room in the tower. No one connected with Henry Quick a could mean harm to a sim. He was sure of that.
"Then please believe me, in Henry Quick's name, when I tel you that you shouldn't couple with Lucy, or with other female sim out here," Melody said earnestly. "Please, Matt."
He looked away from her. He did not think She Was lying. He wished he did. Not understand, he signed.
She sighed. "I know, Matt. Will you do as I ask anyhow Yes, he signed, giving up with more than a twinged regret, this Lucy was quite a desirable female. Handjobs al right he asked.
"Is that sarcasm
Saul asked “Hush," Melody said. "Of course not." she turned back to Matt. "Yes, of course using your hand is all right.... You Wil go into another room first."
Matt went, thinking grumpily that people from outside the towers, even if they were related to Henry Quick, explained about every little thing. Then he thought of Lucy again, and the heat of that thought drove from his mind any worries about people.
That evening, Dixon sat up on the guest-room bed he shared with Melody. "Poor miserable bastard," he said as he peeled off the rubber he was wearing. "I wonder if I if should have offered him one of these."
"That never occurred to me." Melody sat languor afterward was not her style. She looked again. “Do you think he could have used one."
Dixon had been half joking, or more than half he gave it some serious thought, and regretfully shook his head. "I doubt it. I massacred a fair number of them learning how, and
I suspect he wouldn't care if he tore one putting it on. Sims aren't careful over details like that."
"No, they aren't," Melody admitted, adding, "A lot of people aren't, either."
"I suppose not, " Dixon said. "But if a man didn't like a rubber, he probably wouldn't take it off halfway through and go on without it.
I'm afraid Matt might. That's the other reason I didn't think I ought to try to give him one."
"I'II tell you why I like rubbers." Melody waited for Dixon to let out a questioning grunt. Then she said, "Because with them, you have to go clean up."
"Harumph" in almost high dudgeon, he did just that.
When he carne back to the bed, Melody was wearing a tshirt and a serious expression. "Ken, why did you get into the sim justice movement in the first place?" -"What brought that on?" he asked, blinking, as he sat down beside her.
I don't know." Rather to his relief, she did not meet his eyes.
But she did go on even so: "I suppose it's just that seem to keep emphasizing the ways sims are different from people, and less than people, not the ways we're the same."
"Melody, they are different from us," he said, as gentle as he could.
Her mouth went wide and thin, a sure dam sign. All the same, he continued, "No matter how much you want justice for sims, that doesn't mean you'll ever see one elected censor, or even see one learn to read.
I've known people, not you," he added hastily, "who sometimes seem to Forget that."
"I don't think you answered me. Everything you sounds as though it ought to put you on the other side. Now she did look at him, in the same way she might at a roach on her salad plate
"Oh, for heaven's sake," he said in some exasperation "Doesn't my being here count for anything? Look, as far as I can see, we have a responsibility to sims, just because aren't as smart as we are and can't stand against us wit] people on their side. That's always been true, I suppose it's especially true now that we have machines to drudge us instead of sims. We don't need to exploit them al and we shouldn't.
All rights Do I pass? Can we go to sleep.
She seemed taken aback at his vehemence, and needed as moment to col ect herself and nod. "All right," she said as he and turned out the light.
"Good." He lay down beside her. His outbursts startled him a little, too. He thought about what he'd said. He believed all of it. That was not the problem.
The problem, he eventually realized, was that he not given Melody al his reasons. One of them was the hope of being just where he was now, in bed with her.
Would he have worked for Sims' justice without hope? He looked inside himself and decided he would appeased his conscience and let him slide toward sleep. More time on the road was coming tomorrow.
Doris dumped the morning's pile of mail on Dr. Howard’s desk, then went back to her own station outside. Howard went quickly through the stack, dividing it he had to deal with now, things that could wait, and things that could go straight into the trash. The wastebasket gave a resounding metal ic clunk as he got rid of the stack.
An insta-picture of a sim fel out of an envelope as he opened it.
Swearing, the doctor pulled out the that accompanied the photo. The lead line shouted, MATT IS STILL FREE, Howard jabbed the intercom button with his thumb. Doris came on, he growled, "Fetch me Coleman. I just got another one."
"Yes, Dr. Howard."
While he waited for the security chief to get there, he read through the sheet. It was much like the others that had to the DRC, and the copies that had gone to televietlets and papers all across the Federated Commonwealth. Whoever had Matt knew how to keep reminding the country about it.
Some of the phrases were ones he had seen before “no longer a victim of experimentation,"
"freed from certain death in the laboratory." Howard's lips quirked sourly. That last was an out-and-out lie. He knew it, and he expected that the people who had stolen knew it too. He hoped they did.
The intercom buzzed. Coleman came in without waiting to go through the formalities; he and Howard had been seeing a lot of each other lately.
Coleman was in his forties with red hair going white at the temples.
His movments were quick and jerky, as if he had abundant energy seeking some kind, any kind, of outlet.
He fairly snatched the picture and sheet out of Howard's hands then made a grab for the envelope still sitting on the is desk. "Posted in Philadelphia," he noted, adding Iater, "Different printer from the one for the text.
“Probably came to somebody who sent it on to us. Makes it hard to trace."
“Impossible' would seem a better word," Howard said he hoped to get a rise out of the security officer, he was disappointed. All Coleman did was nod. "Nothing we do with it," he said gloomily. "I'll pass it on to Terminus greencoats, but no reason to think they'll anymore on it than on any of the others."
"Meanwhile, of course, all the commentators and reFers in the country go right on giving it to us," Howard growled.
"Nothing I can do about that," Coleman said. "Long as these folks care to, they'll feed the newsies whatever they want. "
"Oh, get the hell out of here," the doctor shouted at him. Unruffled, Coleman took the photo, the sheet of paper, the envelope and left. The door closed softly behind him Howard stared down at his hands, ashamed of his an outburst. Matt had been gone more than a month now, .