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George searched every floor of the building, but found nothing except exhibit rooms. Time passed, and still he did not find what he had come for. More and more women crowded in to see the exhibits. Several times he found new-comers examining him oddly; he found he had to avoid the crowds.

Eventually he went down steps into the basement, though a door marked “Keep Out.” The door was neither locked nor guarded, but there was a remote chance it might lead to the production center for the compound. In the basement George found a mechanical operation underway; at first he took it for another cosmetic exhibit. Conveyor belts delivered barrels of flavoring syrup, alcohol and a widely advertised liquid vitamin compound. Machines sliced open the containers, dumping the contents into huge vats, from which pipes emptied the mixture into passing rows of bottles.

The bottles: suddenly George recognized them and the truth dawned on him, sickeningly. Here was the manufacturing center for the compound–but it might just as well have been a barn in Connecticut or a store window in Manhattan. No man was enslaved by the compound, for the compound did not exist. He was imprisoned by his own sense of guilt, his own fear of being different. George remembered his own fear and guilt: he knew how much a man could be driven to make himself conform to what he thought other men were like.

His revenge was as foolish as the sham he wanted to destroy. He should have reasoned that out long ago; he should have realized it was impossible to have immunity to an addictive drug. But, no, George believed what he saw on the television programs. He was victimized as much as any man had ever been.

He turned blindly toward the stairway, and from the shadows in the hall the Morals Squad closed in around him. With a final gesture of defiance, he ripped off the stolen dress and the absurd hat, and stood waiting for the blast from their guns. An old woman, wearing the shoulder insignia of a Top Director, pushed through the squad and faced him, a revolver in her hand. She was neither angry nor disturbed. Her voice, when she spoke, was filled with pity. Pity! That was the final indignity.

“Now you know the truth,” she said. “A few men always have to try it; and we usually let them see this room and find out for themselves before–before we close the case.”

Tensely he demanded, “Just how much longer do you think–“

“We can get away with this? As long as men are human beings. It’s easier to make yourself believe a lie if you think everyone else believes it, than to believe a truth you’ve found out on your own. All of us want more than anything else to be like other people. Women have created a world for you with television programs; you grow up observing nothing else; you make yourself fit into the pattern. Only a few independent-minded characters have the courage to accept their own immunity; most of them end up here, trying to do something noble for the rest of mankind. But you have one satisfaction, for what it’s worth: you’ve been true to yourself.”

True to yourself. George found a strange comfort in the words, and his fear was gone. He squared his shoulders and faced the mouth of her gun. True to yourself : that was something worth dying for.

He saw a flicker of emotion in the old woman’s eyes. Admiration? He couldn’t be sure. For at the moment a shot rang out from the end of the corridor; and the Top Director fell back, nursing a hand suddenly bright with blood.

“Let him go.” It was Jenny’s voice. She was sheltered by a partly open door at the foot of the stairway.

“Don’t be a fool,” the old woman replied. “He’s seen too much.”