He went into his three-room dump and switched on the radio at once. He needed the sound of voices and the music. He started to undress in the dark. But the cold and frigid moonlight came in and shone on the bed; it revealed the body lying there. The face looking up at Barlow was his own! His breath thinned. His hands were wet.
It did him a lot more justice than any mirror, or the reflection in a woman's eyes. The half-boyish, half-man face with the thin wiry lips, the blond curling hair and the sun-burned, cynical face. The blue eyes that seemed never quite able to smile. The face on the bed never would; it was dead.
Barlow turned. Part of the shadow in the corner moved. A voice. "D-716."
The 16 meant that this was that number among the hundred possible goals of duty and sacrifice. The D of course meant Death, and Barlow had known since having been given the number years ago what his end would be.
There were many other ways, some worse than dying. Loss of identity by plastic surgery. Barlow's appearance had been thoroughly altered three times. Some had volunteered for the torture and concentration camps of the East. Barlow had done that, too; anything for kicks.
He'd never bothered to indoctrinate himself with the philosophy of the Brotherhood with its seven rituals of self-denial and discipline, its long program of learning the love of humanity, the unity of each with all people and with the Universe.
He had his own philosophy. You were born, and then you died; the rest was just a living job.
You lived as an individual, and not as a cog—if you had the guts for it. You lived for the excitement and the thrill of danger and the maintenance of individuality—if you could. Otherwise you might as well die when you were born—because then the stretch between wasn't worth the price.
That was Barlow's way. Only the manner of dying was important. Everybody had to die. All that the Brotherhood really worked for was the goal of enabling everybody to live as long as possible, and finally to die with dignity and moral integrity. Barlow didn't need their philosophy; basically, that was all he, too, really wanted—maybe.
The man was indistinct in the shadows. An anonymous figure without a name. "The man on the bed has made the supreme sacrifice for the cause."