Bill stopped and there was suddenly a ringing silence in the barren little room.
Finally Major Grey said, "I think you can see, Bill, that your desire to live without drugs is incompatable with this society. It would be impossible for us to maintain in you an artificial need for the drugs that would be healthy. Only if we can clearly demonstrate that this aberration is not an inherent part of your personality can we do something medically or psycho-surgically about it."
Bill did not at first see the implication in this. When he did, he thought of Clara rather than of himself, and his voice was shaken. "Is it a localized aberration in Clara?"
Major Grey looked at him levelly. "I have arranged for you to be with Clara Manz a little while in the morning." He stood up and said good night and was gone.
Slowly, as if it hurt him to move, Bill turned off the light and lay on the cot in the semi-dark. After a while he could feel his heart begin to take hold and he started feeling better. It was as though a man who had thought himself permanently expatriated had been told, "Tomorrow, you walk just over that hill and you will be home."
All through the night he lay awake, alternating between panic and desperate longing in a cycle with which finally he became familiar. At last, as a rusty light of dawn reddened his silent room, he fell into a troubled sleep.
He started awake in broad daylight. An orderly was at the door with his breakfast tray. He could not eat, of course. After the orderly left, he hastily changed to a new hospital uniform and washed himself. He redid his makeup with a trembling hand, straightened the bedclothes and then he sat on the edge of the cot.
No one came for him.
The young medicop who had given him the injection that caught him in shift finally entered, and was standing near him before Bill was aware of his presence.
"Good morning, Mr. Walden. How are you feeling?"