"Oh, quite a few things." The young Freeman smiled tolerantly. "There's the weed, for instance."
"The weed?"
"A form of opiate. Habit-forming. Quite deadly in the long run, but some people get hooked on it and have to have it. No one knows how it's smuggled into the camp. Some say it's grown here, but no one has ever found out where. It can be bought—if you have white chips."
"But why?" Hendley exclaimed. "I've heard of addicts outside—but here there are no pressures, no worries, no frustrations. Why would anyone be driven to using drugs? It's incredible!"
"Well, there are other things you can get with chips that aren't so incredible." Nik was obviously amused by Hendley's naive astonishment. "For instance, do you see that blonde girl down there, the one standing beside the fat gambler at the wheel in the third section?"
Hendley peered toward the inner circle indicated. He had no trouble identifying the statuesque blonde Nik was referring to. Like a number of the women in the casino she wore her white coverall zipped open to the waist—a custom not permissible in the outside Organization. Her smooth white skin, surprisingly untanned as if she took care to avoid the sun, and the remarkable ripeness of her exposed figure, enabled her to stand out easily in the crowd. The face that went with her more arresting features was like a robot doll's—flawlessly beautiful, sweetly vacuous. Hendley could not help staring at her. His face began to feel warm.
"Beautiful, isn't she?" Nik said, laughing.
"Very!"
"She belongs to that gambler next to her. They're Contracted. He's a big gambler; what you call a compulsive." Nik's smile was worldly, amused at mankind's overfamiliar decadence. "You may already know that there's a lot of interchanging of partners in the camp, but not with her. She's available, but only at a price. She's one of the things you can buy with white chips."
For a long moment Hendley continued to stare at the tall, lush blonde, so obviously bored, and at the squat, heavy-set gambler, so evidently ignoring her, consumed by his gambling passion to the point where other desires had ceased to exist. Hendley thought of the years the man must have worked before he had at last paid off his tax debt and won his way to freedom. And this finally was all it meant to him. Hendley let his gaze roam over the casino, aware of its peculiar hush, sensing in the intense absorption of the gamblers a spreading, contagious sickness. Oppressed, he turned away.