I call a meeting. I allow the word to be dispersed through the corridors and enclaves of the enclosure that I wish to see all in­terested parties in my rooms at a specified time the following evening. I call the meeting by seizing females in the corridors, whispering random, horrid confidences in their ears, speeding them on their way. Even though I have lost the ability to entice, I can still induce them to convey my message.

I do not know how many to expect. Nor do I know if word will leak to the therapists. I make routine preparations in my rooms: the clearing of furniture, the borrowing of certain odd pieces from the dayrooms, the assembly of posted limits for squatting on the floor. I envision a crowd of somewhere between ten and twenty although this may be less. For all I know, no one will come at all. If I have been indeed marked as a traitor, they may see my meeting as merely a trap for other renegades to be discovered and imprisoned. I do not care. I am beyond all common considerations of remorse; I have become a revolutionary, moved free, past the simple burdens of conscience and calculation. To be a revolutionary like Plotar, I now understand, is to disregard all mannerisms and reaction, even one’s own. I bustle through my meeting with my therapist on the following day, paying little attention to the materials we discuss, the words of praise he affixes to me like a medal. At the end of our interview he tells me that a special commendation will be entered in my records for “saving your people.” I thank him absently, my mind and reflexes already foregathered to other issues. No longer am I interested in his approval. “Thank you,” I say distantly, in order not to offend. “I am pleased that the experimentation has turned out so well.” In his chair he quivers slightly, his eyes going to blank. “I mean, that the investigation goes so well.” His features dissolve and I begin to make apologies for my absent air, explain that I have been under a great deal of pressure since the confrontation with Plotar although I am now well over it. “I thank you for the commendations,” I say and he nods blindly, staggers to his feet, tells me that we may terminate the session early today in light of my condition and in deference to my sacrifice. “We’ll go over all of this in more detail tomorrow,” he says kindly and leads me to the door. It occurs to me that he is as anxious for the session to end as was I.

No matter. No matter. I return to my rooms, prepare for the encounter. On the walls I have tacked various freehand portraits provided me by my therapist some time ago, pictures, he says, of our “home planet” which were “confiscated” by the “landing crew” but which as a gesture of favor he is now giving me. They depict pastoral scenes, people who look like us in various peasant circumstances under a pair of suns, one purple, one orange. We come, I am led to understand, from an unusual dual-system planet which alternately circles two stars. Underneath these drawings I place certain sketches of my own and then, as an additional ges­ture of hospitality, I prepare extra coffee and open up a hidden coffer of cigarettes which I distribute variously around the room. I then sit and prepare myself for my guests, so filled with nervous anxiety by this time that I even neglect these notes which, con­sequently, are running somewhat further behind the event than is customary. I must speed through the following portions, accord­ingly, in order to become current. I want them to be no more than twelve hours separate from the events they describe at any given time; only in that fashion can I impart a necessary sense of urgency and, in the bargain, make sure that in their honesty, abruptness, and faithfulness to the recollected (and not forgotten) facts they become the true and final defense of my position.

Shortly before the hour of summoning, the first arrive. They are three sullen females, none of them familiar to me, all of them giving me coy, stricken looks behind their gestures. I am led to understand by these gestures that somehow my reputation has spread beyond this immediate section of the enclosure as a seducer of females, and if those immediately around me are no longer interested, they are. They are also surpassingly ugly in only the way that bottom females in the hierarchy can be. I wave them off with a tilt of the hand, a berserk gleaming of the eyes, and point out that I have other more serious business to discuss this evening. Perhaps some other time. Perhaps they would care to wait for the meeting itself to evolve as I have certain things of interest to say. They shrug. One of them leaves but two of them stay and sit quietly, huddling toward one another, looking at me quizzically. They take my cigarettes and begin to smoke them vigorously, choking in small spasms.

Others arrive, male this time. I do not recognize them al­though the dull shocks of implantation give me their exact spots in the hierarchy. Two hundred, two hundred and four, two hun­dred and fifteen. (The below two-hundreds tend to mix in tight clusters of conterminity.) Perhaps my appeal for a meeting has not lent itself to the higher segments of the population; on the other hand the old hierarchy has been abolished and I remind myself that, whatever my private feelings are, a two hundred and four can be as worthy as a three. Still more come, males and females together this time in a straggling group; then, after a short pause, two more males and we are done. In the waiting interim I become bustling, gratuitous, my eyes doubtless moving beyond the gleam of the berserk to the cunning of the trapped and I beg them for just a few more moments, just a slight additional sam­pling of time to see if certain others who are committed will come. All of them rank lower in the hierarchy than I do, which gives me a feeling of strength and control I would not have believed. Only the female, one hundred and sixty-one, coming latest of all and refusing a seat, standing haughtily by the door, shakes my composure. “I thought it was you, Quir,” she said. “No names were given but I instantly suspected that this would be your ploy. Un­derstand me, I won’t hear a word of it,” and adjusts herself to freeze, staring past me with some contempt at the paintings. Something like a feather tickles the base of my brain frantically and only with effort do I retain my composure. I have the feeling that my relationship with one hundred and sixty-one predates even the ship. Perhaps sensing me think this, she laughs and I turn on her in fury. “There’s no need for that,” I say. “I’ve called you fools together for your own good, not for mine. We’re going to systematize and we’re going to get out of here!”

They turn to me with glaring interest and I realize that, however inadvertently, I have begun my speech, my presentation. Cig­arettes move like moths through the air, they murmur. There are perhaps as many as fifteen to twenty in the room, a better showing than I might have expected. Since it seems that I have begun there is nothing to do but continue.

“Yes,” I say, “I have gathered you here to plan and organize a revolt so that we may escape the enclosure. Not three days ago one whom all of you may know, Plotar, came to these rooms with a similar offer and I dismissed him. His plan was so farfetched, so unsystematized, so doomed to failure that I could not take it se­riously. So I sent him from here and he came to a bad end, just as I predicted for him. But this time we will do it right.”

“You betrayed him,” someone says. I turn toward the voice but cannot find the source. It was not one hundred and sixty-one who, deadly cold, regards me from the doorway, daring my gaze. “You betrayed Plotar,” the voice says again and I pin it to one of the males nearest me. “Now you’ve brought us together with a false plot to find out which of us are vulnerable to such a proposal and you will betray them as well. We know what is going on.”

“That is not true,” I say. Sooner or later this had to emerge; it is best that it do so now, at the beginning, so that my credibility can be established. “I did not betray him. That is a rumor spread by his sympathizers who cannot accept the fact that he betrayed himself. His was a fool’s plan. I have come to seize the initiative from him and to do it right. We can escape the enclosure but we cannot do it by dreams. We must plan and we must be aware of the difficulties.”

“You are a liar,” the male says. “We know that you betrayed him. Everybody does. We came tonight to see if you would have the audacity to deny it.”

“Stop this!” one hundred and sixty-one says unexpectedly. “Leave him alone! Can’t you see that if he has the courage to face us like this he cannot possibly be guilty? Even if you won’t admit that, at least listen to him. We can’t go on like this forever.”

I give one hundred and sixty-one a look of gratitude but her face is averted when I do so and I wind up looking instead at a piece of wall, gray and flecked, the metal of the enclosure burning through. “All right,” I say. “That is the issue, then. To trust me or not. To listen to my plan or not. Those of you who do not trust me can leave now. At least I’m going to offer you hope. We can’t live this way forever.”

Several begin to murmur again but no one moves toward the door. One hundred and sixty-one, with an immensely casual ges­ture, spreads her arms and acts as an informal barricade, the cig­arette dangling from the center of her face. A moment or two, several beats of the internal register pass. “Yes,” I say. “I gather then that you are here to listen and to hear my plan. From this room we can shape a cadre which will carry us forward and out of the enclosure in a measurable period of time. Maybe weeks. Maybe as little as days. If you attend closely.”

“I don’t believe you, Quir,” the male says. “None of us believe you. Talk if you want but there is nothing you can say that will make any difference.” Nevertheless, their faces foregather in the nearness; damp clusters of white pressing in on me.Tellme their eyes say.Tellmehowyoucanbebelieved . “I’m going to tell you,” I say, “I’m going to show you a way out of the enclosure. And you will accept me as your leader and together we will become free again and do to these oppressors what they have done to us.”

Perhaps I have gone too far; perhaps I should not have pushed the issue of my leadership so quickly. I am, after all, only one hundred and fifty-eighth in a demolished hierarchy. On the other hand, I easily outrank almost everyone in the room and am slightly ahead of one hundred and sixty-one. I hold the moment, watch it shimmer between us and then, without further pause, outline to them the plan by which we can reclaim our accustomed position. “Because,” I say to begin, “because those who sent us here, for whatever purposes, surely would not have wanted us penned like pigs to disgorge our knowledge only through the influence of pain. They envisioned something different for us. We must return. We must return and tell them what manner of crea­tures they are dealing with. So that their beneficence will never again be so misplaced and so that we may take just measures to protect ourselves against this barbarous race which is so technologically advanced now, and may soon come to destroy our helpless brothers.”