"But I'll need a fresh uniform, at least—"
"Not at all. Whatever you need will be supplied. And in any event, you'll wear white...."
The Investigator had explained. No one was allowed to visit a Freeman Camp in other than the prescribed white coverall. Any other color would attract too much attention, even hostility. The precious right of freedom was an exclusive privilege. Moreover, to move freely—the Investigator chose the word with obvious care—to know what it was like to live as a Freeman, it was essential that Hendley should pass unnoticed. The red sleeve emblem would identify him to official personnel as a visitor, but to most Freemen it would have no significance. Hendley would go into the camp empty-handed as any permanent Freeman would. Even his watch would be left behind. There were no clocks in the land of the free.
"Those of us who work are shackled to the clock," the Investigator said. "The day, the hour, the minute measure our distance from freedom. To be free is to be liberated from the need to recognize time...."
So Hendley had been unable to leave the Morale Center. The manner of refusal was so gentle, so persuasive, so reasonable that not until he was alone that night did he think of his custody in the Center as a form of imprisonment. Even then, with his morning departure imminent, he was unable to relax or to analyze what was happening to him and what it meant.
Now, sitting by himself in the cabin of the copter, he tried to sort out his reflections. They refused to be channeled. Bits and pieces of the previous two days skittered into and out of his consciousness. From the disordered montage one face kept emerging: Ann's. He tried to capture it, to hold it before his mind's eye. It danced from light to shadow, changed, slipped elusively away from him. What was wrong? The brief hours with her under the open sky had made him feel more vividly alive than all the experience of his lifetime. Her disappearance could not change that. Her inexplicable behavior couldn't change it. He would find her again—he had to find her. But now he was unable even to recapture her image. It faded as he reached for it. The spirit of their adventure—its warm intimacy, its sense of escape, its essential newness—was already dimming. Why? Hendley couldn't accept the Investigator's view of her. He hadn't held Ann in his arms. He hadn't felt her tremble. He hadn't seen the mingled joy and pain in her eyes.
Pain, Hendley thought. Why pain?
"Mind if I sit here?"
The strange voice dissolved Hendley's confused reverie. He glanced at a beige uniform clothing a stout figure. His gaze rose to include a fleshy smile and small, bright, eager eyes.
"No, of course not," he said.