"I got a fambly," the man said with soft desperation.
Richards looked at the Free-Vee as if it interested him.
The fellow was quiet for a long time. When the program changed again at seven-thirty, Richards heard him asking the man on his other side about the physical.
It was full dark outside now. Richards wondered if it was still raining. It seemed like a very long evening.
MINUS 095 AND COUNTING
When the R's went through the door under the red arrow and into the examination room it was just a few minutes after nine-thirty. A lot of the initial excitement had worn off, and people were either watching the Free-Vee avidly, with none of their prior dread, or dozing. The man with the noisy chest had a name that began with L and had been called over an hour before. Richards wondered idly if he had been cut.
The examination room was long and tiled, lit with fluorescent tubes. It looked like an assembly line, with bored doctors standing at various stations along the way.
Would any of you like to check my little girl? Richards thought bitterly.
The applicants showed their cads to another camera eye embedded in the wall and were ordered to stop by a row of clotheshooks. A doctor in a long white lab coat walked over to them, clipboard tucked under one arm.
"Strip," he said. "Hang your clothes on the hooks. Remember the number over your hook and give the number to the orderly at the far end. Don't worry about your valuables. Nobody here wants them."
Valuables. That was a hot one, Richards thought, unbuttoning his shirt. He had an empty wallet with a few pictures of Sheila and Cathy, a receipt for a shoe sole he had had replaced at the local cobbler's six months ago, a keyring with no keys on it except for the doorkey, a baby sock that he did not remember putting in there, and the package of Blams he had gotten from the machine.
He was wearing tattered skivvies because Sheila was too stubborn to let him go without, but many of the men were buck under their pants. Soon they all stood stripped and anonymous, penises dangling between their legs like forgotten warclubs. Everyone held his card in one hand. Some shuffled their feet as if the floor were cold, although it was not. The faint, impersonally nostalgic odor of alcohol drifted through.
"Stay in line," the doctor with the clipboard was instructing. "Always show your card. Follow instructions."
The line moved forward. Richards saw there was a cop with each doctor along the way. He dropped his eyes and waited passively.
"Card."
He gave his card over. The first doctor noted the number, then said: "Open your mouth."
Richards opened it. His tongue was depressed.
The next doctor peered into his pupils with a tiny bright light, and then stared in his ears.
The next placed the cold circle of a stethoscope on his chest. "Cough."
Richards coughed. Down the line a man was being hauled away. He needed the money, they couldn't do it, he'd get his lawyer on them.
The doctor moved his stethoscope. "Cough."
Richards coughed. The doctor turned him around and put the stethoscope on his back.
"Take a deep breath and hold it." The stethoscope moved.
"Exhale."
Richards exhaled.
"Move along."
His blood pressure was taken by a grinning doctor with an eyepatch. He was given a short-arm inspection by a bald medico who had several large brown freckles, like liverspots, on his pate. The doctor placed a cool hand between the sac of his scrotum and his upper thigh.
"Cough."
Richards coughed.
"Move along."
His temperature was taken. He was asked to spit in a cup. Halfway, now. Halfway down the hall. Two or three men had already finished up, and an orderly with a pasty face and rabbit teeth was bringing them their clothes in wire baskets. Half a dozen more had been pulled out of the line and shown the stairs.
"Bend over and spread your cheeks."
Richards bent and spread. A finger coated with plastic invaded his rectal channel, explored, retreated.
"Move along."
He stepped into a booth with curtains on three sides, like the old voting booths voting booths had been done away with by computer election eleven years ago and urinated in a blue beaker. The doctor took it and put it in a wire rack.
At the next stop he looked at an eye-chart. "Read," the doctor said.
"E-A, L-D, M, F-S, P, M, Z-K, L, A, C, D-U, S, G, A-"
"That's enough. Move along."
He entered another pseudo voting booth and put earphones over his head. He was told to push the white button when he heard something and the red button when he didn't hear it anymore. The sound was very high and faint-like a dog whistle that had been pitch-lowered into just audible human range. Richards pushed buttons until he was told to stop.