There was no escape.
The warning voice seemed to be coming over a loudspeaker, magnified and distorted. The voice was some distance away when Hendley, lying on the damp ground in the woods, first heard it. As it approached, its droning message was repeated at regular intervals. "Clear the woods!" the voice urged with metallic emphasis. "This is a warning. All persons not engaged in the hunt must vacate the woods. Repeat: Clear the woods...."
Slowly the urgency of the warning penetrated Hendley's despair. Several times he had heard of the hunt, but he'd never learned exactly what it was. Obviously there was danger of some kind involved. He supposed that a prey—he'd heard the word "target" used once—was let loose in the woods. What kind of target? An animal of some sort? Was the danger real, or was it all simply a game with a formidable imitation of reality?
Hendley rose and made his way out of the woods. As he emerged into the open lawn of the park contained by the belt of trees, a group of Freemen—as many women, it seemed in the darkness, as men—were crowding toward the dark labyrinth he had left. "Hey! What were you doing in there?" one of the men called. And another said, with laughter that had an almost hysterical edge, "Lucky you got out when you did! The hunt's starting any minute!"
Hendley stopped to stare at the group. He was tempted to join them in their hunt. Curiosity pulled at him. They seemed an eager, exhilarated group. In the excitement of the chase he might even be able to forget the day's events. He might lose himself.
In anguish he turned away. He was already lost. No artificial pleasure could alter that shattering truth. Nothing could change it.
He walked without aim or purpose. Careless of the menace lurking in deeply shadowed places, he was protected by his very indifference—or perhaps by the distant activity of the hunt. No yelling band of attackers burst upon him. He wandered through the camp, pausing here and there at a bar to gulp down whiskey he neither tasted nor felt. His whole body grew numb, and his thoughts became mercifully fuzzy, with only a small projection of reality poking up through the haze to bring him pain.
At last he came reeling along the street leading to the dwelling unit he had inherited from Nik. Hazily he thought: it is mine now. It is really mine. And mine is his, as if I had never occupied it. With painful perception he realized that the room in which he had lived for so many years in the outer ring of the Architectural Center bore no mark of his personality, no stamp that made it his. Everything in it belonged to the Organization. Everything had been issued—not to a man, but to a number. To a faceless tool which had been taught a limited pattern of activity.
A tall figure loomed in Hendley's way. He stopped, trying to focus his gaze. A strange face, youthful in outline but lined and reddened as if the skin did not react well to the sun's direct rays, smiled at him. "I say there," the man cried cheerfully. "Out having your jolts, eh?"