I fought to be awake. I was dreaming, but I think I must have blushed. I must have blushed in my sleep. "Do it!" she said. "Please do it! For me!" It was the voice that always came, low, intense, seductive, the sound of your hand on silk ... and to a citizen of Northem, a conformist, it was shocking. I was a conformist then; I was still one that morning. I awoke. The glowlight was on, slowly increasing. I was in my living machine in Center Four, where I belonged, and all the familiar things were about me, reality was back, but I was breathing very hard. I lay on the pneumo a while before getting up. I looked at the chroner: 0703 hours, Day 17, Month IX, New Century Three. My morning nuro-tablets had already popped from the tube, and the timer had begun to boil an egg. The egg was there because the realfood allotment had been increased last month. The balance of trade with Southem had just swung a decimal or two our way. I rose finally, stepped to the mirror, switched it to positive and looked at myself. New wrinkles--or maybe just a deepening of the old ones. It was beginning to show; the past two years were leaving traces. I hadn't worried about my appearance when I'd been with the Office of Weapons. There, I'd been able to keep pretty much to myself, doing research on magnetic mechanics as applied to space drive. But other jobs, where you had to be among people, might be different. I needed every possible thing in my favor. Yes, I still hoped for a job, even after two years. I still meant to keep on plugging, making the rounds. I'd go out again today. The timer clicked and my egg was ready. I swallowed the tablets and then took the egg to the table to savor it and make it last. As I leaned forward to sit, the metal tag dangled from my neck, catching the glowlight. My identity tag. Everything came back in a rush--My name. The dream and her voice. And her suggestion. Would I dare? Would I start out this very morning and take the risk, the terrible risk? You remember renumbering. Two years ago. You remember how it was then; how everybody looked forward to his new designation, and how everybody made jokes about the way the letters came out, and how all the records were for a while fouled up beyond recognition. The telecomics kidded renumbering. One went a little too far and they psycho-scanned him and then sent him to Marscol as a dangerous nonconform. If you were disappointed with your new designation, you didn't complain. You didn't want a sudden visit from the Deacons during the night... Four letters then, and in many cases a pronounceable four-letter word. A four-letter word. Yes, you suspect already. You know what a four-letter word can be. Mine
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