The Warrior Victorious

2

The wooden bench I sat on got harder and harder as the time passed, but no one seemed overly concerned about my comfort. I’d been pulled out of the building that housed the director’s office and the room I’d awakened in, thrust into a ground vehicle, then taken for a short ride. At the end of the ride I’d been pulled from the vehicle through the same bright but chilly sunshine I’d seen a few moments earlier, thrust through a door into a building, and walked up a corridor to a particular door. The door led to an anteroom with nothing in it but a wooden bench and another closed door, and I’d been offered a seat by being pushed down onto the bench. The two men in white uniforms stood to either end of the bench, saying nothing to me and not even to each other.

Between the confusion still rattling around in my head and the dull tan and gray of the room I sat in-not to mention the presence of my two silent companions—I was beginning to feel depressed. No, what I really felt was all alone, with no one there to help me or be on my side. All of those people were from the Amalgamation, some probably even from Central, but to them I was nothing but an animal to be experimented with, a prize animal to be sure, but still nothing but a beast. I didn’t want to think about what they were going to do to me, and had been helped in fulfilling that desire by the presence of other thoughts crowding my mind and demanding attention. There were so many things I couldn’t explain or understand or make any sense out of at all—

“All right, go on in there,” the man to my right said suddenly, and I looked up to see that the gray door the room held was now glowing with the message that visitors were welcome—or at least currently permitted. I hesitated only a moment before getting to my feet, but was abruptly aware of the thin garment I wore. The two men who had brought me there were staring at me, I knew that even without looking at them, and to say the idea disturbed me, was like saying I didn’t much want to fall off the roof of a twenty-story building. Once standing, I resisted the urge to try tugging the thin covering lower and went instead to the softly glowing gray door, opening it as if I really belonged there.

Inside there were a larger number of amenities to be found, like thick carpeting, stylish drapes on wide windows, chairs and couches, artwork on the walls, and a desk that actually had papers and folders on it. It was basically the same tan and gray as the anteroom, but enhanced by faint touches of other colors and softened by richer fabrics and mediums. Like the first office I’d seen the desk had a man behind it, but unlike the portly Director Gearing this man really seemed to be working. He wore a uniform rather than a suit, in a gray to match his door, and his tanned, unlined face didn’t seem to go with his very white hair. He glanced up at me as I came in, his light eyes touching me in a distracted sort of way, and then he waved his hand toward the chairs in front of his desk.

“Close the door and sit down,” he said, his voice as distracted as his glance had been. “I’ll be with you as soon as I finish this.”

For something I’d expected to be dramatic and terrorizing, his few words had been a crazy sort of letdown, as though a ravening beast had paused in its bloodthirsty attack to hastily check its pockets. I closed the door as directed and went to the chairs indicated, and actually found myself annoyed that the chair I chose was comfortable. When you’re braced to resist horror, running into the humdrum instead can totally ruin your mood. I began to cross my legs, remembered what I was wearing and decided against it, then simply sat back until the man finished with the folder he was working on and raised his eyes to really look at me for the first time.

“So you’re the Prime Terrilian Reya,” he said, tossing his stylus away before leaning back in his chair. “You caused us trouble when we went to pick you up, and now you’re causing even more. Why couldn’t you have been a good girl and behaved yourself?”

“If the choice had been mine, I still would have done it exactly this way,” I answered, the annoyance I’d been feeling beginning to grow to true anger. “And if you persist in talking to me as though I were a backward child, you’re suddenly going to find all those pieces of paper in the air, most of them flying at your head. You haven’t the right to treat me the way you’ve been doing, and I demand to be released.”

“If you’re not a backward child, you should know you’re wasting your time demanding to be released,” he answered, a faint smile turning his lips. “And if you throw any of these papers at me, you’ll waste a lot more time picking them up again. You’re not the first Prime to break through the conditioning, Terrilian, but usually it doesn’t happen quite this fast. That fool Gearing must have caused it with the itch he wanted scratched, and if he wasn’t so useful I would have had him shipped back to Central a long time ago. It would have been easier for you if you’d gotten used to the routine before the conditioning went, but you’re still going to have to go through with it. All of it. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“No, as a matter of fact I don’t,” I said, suddenly finding his calm, patient attitude more chilling than threats would have been. “I don’t understand anything of what’s going on, and if you’d like the truth I don’t particularly want to know. All I want is out of here, and a chance to go back to things as they were. I’ve worked for the Amalgamation most of my life; is that too much to ask in return?”

“It’s not precisely a matter of too much,” he answered, something of a shrug in his tone. “The simple fact is that the Amalgamation needs to make use of you, and has no choice in that need. They can’t take someone else in your place because it’s a Prime they need, not just anyone off a city street or out of a Neighborhood. And if you stop to look at this reasonably instead of emotionally, you’ll find that you’re getting excited over very, very little. The Amalgamation isn’t asking you to have your arms and legs cut off, Terrilian, all it’s asking you to do is have babies.”

All. I put my hands to the chair arms as he continued to stare at me calmly and reasonably, his own hands unconcernedly crossed on the desk in front of him. I’d expected having it put that baldly to be enough to make me feel any number of things, like disgusted or vastly reluctant or even very much afraid. Surprisingly enough none of those feelings surfaced, but what I did feel quite a bit of was embarrassment.

“You see?” he asked, still the most reasonable of beings. “It isn’t anything vile, or obscene, or even outrageous. It’s simply something that women do, and you’re inarguably a woman. I’ll admit we had you conditioned against wanting children while you were still a working Prime, but that was only to keep you from being contaminated by someone whose blood wasn’t worthy of yours. Here we have many men worthy of you, men like yourself, the best of the breed. I’m afraid that initially the choice of who will have access to you will be theirs and ours rather than yours, but intelligent cooperation will earn you what should be a pleasant and satisfying bonus. Would you like to hear about that?”

He held the question out in front of me as though offering a special sweet, the sort that small children will do just about anything for. I think I would have been really angry if I hadn’t been busy digesting that piece of information about having been conditioned in regard to reproducing, and he took my lack of open hostility for unvoiced and reluctant but active interest.

“You, of course; won’t be carrying a fetus yourself for very long, only until it can be safely transferred to a host mother,” he said, the explanation so matter-of-fact it could have been about accounting procedures. “Your time and genes are much too valuable to be wasted with one-at—a-time offspring, so you’ll actually produce quite a number of babies in the time it normally takes to produce only one. Each child will have a different father, and the results of each pairing will be carefully kept track of for the statistics we need almost as badly as the babies themselves. The chance of a bonus comes in when you realize that after a given number of interrupted pregnancies, the exact number varying with the individual woman involved, your body will need to carry one child to term. If you’ve cooperated with us, when you reach that point you’ll be allowed the choice of who the father of the child will be, even if it’s someone who has already sired a child on you. It will be our gift to you for having helped us so much, and from past experience we know how valuable a gift it will be. Believe me when I say you’ll need and appreciate something like that.”

“Oh, I do believe you,” I said, almost disbelieving, instead, that anything that bizarre could be real. “What I don’t understand is why you’re not using test tubes instead of people, or at the very least artificial insemination. If mass production is what you’re after, that’s the way to get it.”

“I can’t deny that we tried it,” he said, this time smiling wryly. “It would have saved us an enormous amount of trouble if it had worked, but by the second generation we discovered we weren’t getting any Primes at all. There are few enough Primes produced under normal circumstances, but in vitro matings seem to eliminate them completely. We haven’t any idea why that should be, only that it is. That’s the reason all of you is here now, not just your ova.”

“And the reason why you don’t use artificial insemination?” I asked, having my own suspicions as to the reason for their failure. “Did that prove to be just as unproductive?”

“It proved to be undesirable,” he answered, the faint amusement back again. “If the female Primes have to be here in their entirety, so to speak, and the only usable sperm donors are also here in training, why deny them the pleasure of delivering that sperm to its destination themselves? It would be a waste of a good reward opportunity, and would save us very little in the way of time. In other words, there’s no true reason to deny the men their fun.”

“Whether or not it turns out to be fun for the women,” I said with a nod, finding myself completely unsurprised.

“The only thing you haven’t mentioned yet is why you need that many Primes. What are they being trained for? ”

“Only the male Primes are being trained, and the reason for that is none of your business,” he said, still as friendly and pleasant as he’d been all along. “Being handed around among the fathers of your future children will be the hardest thing for you to get used to, that and the fact that their wants and desires are far more important than your own. You’ll find that if you don’t defer to them in every way possible they’ll make your life here very unpleasant, but once you learn how to behave you shouldn’t have any trouble. Your records tell me you’ll have time to adjust to the system before you’re ready for your first impregnation, so take advantage of the fact and work hard toward fitting in. You’ll do much better for us if you’re happy here, and we’ll do everything we can to help you.”

“Such thoughtfulness is positively awe-inspiring,” I commented, this time acceding to the urge to cross my legs and not giving a damn about the length of my covering. “Of course, you’ve left out or glossed over a number of rather important points, such as the fact that I’ll probably never be allowed to see the children I produce, or the details on what’s done with the babies who aren’t born as the Primes you’re so eager for. I’m probably supposed to be too anxious to become one of the team to worry about things like that, but I do have what might be considered a pertinent question. What happens if I decide I want nothing to do with your team, and also decide to give as good as I get in the way of misery and unpleasantness? In other words, what if I decide not to be one of your brood mares, and refuse to change my mind?”

“I would seriously recommend against a decision like that,” he said, a faint frown replacing the amusement he’d been enjoying. “Your file shows a penchant for troublemaking, but it also shows a definite aversion to discomfort and pain. Our trainee Primes aren’t the only ones who can make life unpleasant for you here, and you’d do well to remember that. If you try to judge us all by Director Gearing, you’ll find yourself making a very bad mistake. The rest of us are neither incompetent nor helpless. ”

“But you’re going to persist in treating me as though I were both,” I said, glad wed finally gotten to the threats even though my hands were beginning to tremble. “You expect me to start cooperating because you’ve given me no choice, and then expect me to continue because I’ll have gotten used to doing it your way. I can imagine the various things you’re able to do to me and very frankly they frighten me, but not half as much as the thought of waking up one day to find that I’m accepting this-this-travesty you’re perpetrating. I can vaguely remember going along with something similar to this once to keep from being terribly hurt, but I can remember even more strongly how shamed I felt. The pain is more intense but the memory of shame lasts longer, and I really don’t need any more memories like that.”

By that time my voice was almost unsteady enough to match the tremor in my hands, but I’d still managed to say what I had to. The memory I’d spoken of was very distant and hard to touch, but although I couldn’t reach all the details of what had happened where, my reactions had been so strong that they were more than clear. I waited for the man behind the desk to understand I was serious and begin to make arrangements for hurting me the way only civilized people can accomplish, but all he did was make a sound of annoyance and shake his head.

“I can see you’re still too theatrically interested in saving what you consider your virtue to discuss anything rationally,” he said, and there was more annoyance than anger in his voice and eyes. “We’ll get you checked over and settled in, and once you’ve learned our routines we’ll talk again. By then you’ll have learned how undramatic this all is, and that there really is nothing else for you to do but cooperate. We’re not villains here, just practical people doing a practical job, one that you’ll eventually be helping us with. My name is Serdin. If you need to talk to me before I send for you, apply to your sector head for a pass.”

He flicked his finger over a small, lit circle on his desk, and I knew even before the door to his office was opened from outside that I’d been dismissed. One of the two men in white uniforms was waiting calmly for me to get up and go with him, and the man Serdin had already picked up another folder and had begun losing himself in it. I got to my feet slowly, expecting to be confused over what was happening or relieved that I wasn’t about to be hurt, but what I did feel was even more frightened than I’d been a moment earlier. When people mistreat you it isn’t difficult to resist them and their desires, to fight them with all your strength to the very end of it, but what do you do when you throw out your most direct challenge and all they do in return is pat you on the head and send you on your way? You can grit your teeth and swear not to budge an inch, but after a while you find teeth-gritting tiring and not really necessary, and you notice how hard they’re trying to help you, and they really are being very understanding, and they’re not asking for anything all that terrible

The shudder that ran through me was covered by my movement as I left the office, but it chilled my mind enough to keep it awake and alert, which was what I needed. If I let myself forget, even for a moment, what those people were trying to do to me, their brand of “helpful assistance” would infect me and I’d be through. I would not give them what they wanted, no matter how many times they patted me on the head, and that was something I would not be changing my mind about.

I was able to feel brave and dedicated while the two men in white uniforms led me through even more corridors, but when I was deposited in yet another bare anteroom, this one all pale brown, my emotions began fraying around the edges. Rather than staying with me the men had closed the door and left, and once closed in I could no longer see a way of returning to the corridor. This second anteroom had two remaining doors leading out of it, both in the wall I’d faced when I’d first come in, but both stayed closed and quietly unglowing. There were a few pale brown, plain metal chairs standing around the walls, and after five minutes of hovering and waiting for something to happen, I gave up and walked to one of them.

In which I sat and waited. After another year or so had passed, it came to me that waiting rooms had to be even more fiendishly clever in the way of torture devices than a rack, on which at least you had something to do and occupy you. After being left long enough in a waiting room, you find yourself willing to do anything to be allowed to leave it, anything at all. Tell every secret you have? Certainly! Agree to accept physical pain without struggles? No problem! Ask for immediate execution? Of course, of course, only please be sure that it isn’t boring! I can’t take any more of being bored . . . .

I shifted in the hard metal chair for the ten thousandth time, convinced that the wait was all part of their master plan. Why waste time and effort on trying to force people into doing things your way, when you can slide them into it once they’re half asleep from boredom and no longer paying attention? In between shifting I’d been trying to understand why their careful conditioning had broken down, but I’d been too distracted by the waiting to get anywhere. When you’re waiting for something to happen, you can’t really concentrate on anything else; your inner mind is too afraid you’ll miss an opportunity to end the wait, thereby making you wait even longer. And with some waits, you really can’t wait for them to end.

I sat straighter in the chair, realizing I’d just touched something, the very outline of a buried memory. Once, not long ago, I’d been waiting for something to happen, something I’d needed very badly. It was also something I’d been afraid of, but I’d needed it so badly that I hadn’t cared how frightened it made me. I’d lost something, something I couldn’t bear to go on without, and the wait was going to end the pain of the loss for me. I could remember the trembling eagerness with which I’d waited for a particular thing to happen, willed it closer and closer, greeted it as the end to agony—but I couldn’t remember what it was I’d lost. There was a large, square tear in the fabric of memory at that point, which told me with absolute certainty that the information had been conditioned away. You don’t casually forget something like that on your own, not when even the softened memory is able to bring aching . . .

“I said, you can come in now,” a voice broke into my thoughts, a female voice filled with annoyance. I looked up to see that the left-hand door of the two had been opened, and the woman stood in the doorway. She wore a light brown uniform and had brown hair and eyes, and seemed to have spoken to me once before without my having heard her. She was slender and fairly tall, and without the frown she might have been pretty.

“I suppose you were too busy thinking about the honor you’ve been given to pay attention to anything else,” she added, stepping back to give me room when I rose and walked over to her. “I’ve noticed that that’s usually the case. ”

“Well, it doesn’t happen to be the case with me,” I answered, wondering why she seemed so-distantly angry and accusing. “I told them what to do with their honor, and they smiled and told me to run along and play. If you’re about to add your own excellent advice and assistance, do us both a favor and save it for someone else. ”

I was annoyed that shed interrupted me when I’d been on the track of something important relating to my stolen memories, but she didn’t come back at me the way I thought she would. I could almost see her blinking in surprise, and then she looked at me with more interest and a good deal more concern.

“You’re not being held by the conditioning,” she said in a tone of near-revelation, but not what might be called a happy tone. “I’ve never seen one like you coming through here, and although I thought I’d find a meeting like this satisfying, I’m afraid I’m suddenly more deeply into feeling sorry for you. Why didn’t the conditioning work?”

“We’re all still trying to figure that out,” I responded, moving into the small office shed come out of. “That man Serdin thinks it was because of the way Director Gearing tried to welcome me to this place, and that might even be true. When he put his hand on me I was really repelled, so much so that I fought back. Before I knew what was happening I had won the fight, and the world had suddenly changed from gilded to brassy.”

“I’m not surprised to hear you were repelled by Gearing,” she said, making a face as she moved past me to get back to her small desk. “He-welcomes-every nonfertile Prime brought to the facility, and they do nothing to stop him because they need his stupid arrogance as a protective facade. Maybe this time they’ll at least give him a few regrets.”

Her office was really tiny, with nothing but the desk and a chair for her, and one chair in front of the desk. There were a few plaques scattered around on the walls in place of artwork, but one thing she did have was a full square yard of dot storage, the largest private library I could ever remember seeing. She’d closed the door behind me so, thinking I’d be there at least as long as I’d been in the other two offices, I moved to take her guest chair. She herself had stopped beside the desk instead of sitting down behind it, and when she saw what I was doing she shook her head.

“Don’t bother sitting down,” she said, picking up a folder set into a clipboard. “I usually spend a few minutes adding my congratulations to everyone else’s just to keep the pretense balanced, but this time it’s obviously not necessary. We’ll go straight to the examination and skip the small talk.”

“Examination?” I echoed, not understanding the sudden flash of heavy annoyance I felt at the suggestion. “Why do I have to be examined? And why do they need Gearing as a front for them? I’d like to know what’s really going on here, and why you’re working for them if you’re all that disapproving. If it was me, I’d leave.”

“Really?” she said, raising brows with no true surprise behind the gesture. “Just the way you’re leaving now because you’re unhappy about being here? I didn’t volunteer for this any more than you did, I was assigned to the post by my superiors. Once I learned what was going on I tried telling them I wanted no part of it, but all they did was smile and tell me to get back to work. Does that sound at all familiar to you?”

“Too familiar,” I agreed with a sigh, wondering if there were more than three people on that planet who were free to come and go as they pleased. I was tempted to say she was only being forced to stay, not to cooperate, but I wanted to see first how I did against them before I accused anyone else of improper resistance. “They seem to have a lot of experience ignoring protests. And all that learning you did about what was really going on-It explained everything and answered all your questions?”

“Yes, it certainly did,” she said, a dryness having entered her voice as she stared at me. “Unfortunately, though, it won’t be doing the same for you. I don’t know what they’d do to me if I started spreading around the little details of their plans, but it would undoubtedly be something to teach me the attractions of discretion. Don’t underestimate them at any time, my friend. Their plans are more important to them than you or I as individuals could ever be, and they won’t let anyone stand in their way. My examination room is through here.”

“Here” was a door leading into another, larger room, and the woman entered it without giving me a chance to argue with her. The new room had lots of very modern equipment designed for the most thorough of diagnoses and examinations, and even if I hadn’t been feeling frustrated from all the stone walls I’d been running into I wouldn’t have liked it. It was the sort of place that made me feel as though I’d just come off an assembly line, one of ten thousand others just like me, nothing but a unit to be run through the next process and then sent on my way. There was nothing of the personal in that very clean, light brown room, and once again I felt the ghost of being absolutely and completely alone.

“I’m sure you know that none of this is here to do you harm,” the woman said, and her voice had suddenly become kinder and more compassionate. “Let’s start with a general check, shall we? It will only take a couple of minutes. ”

She was looking at me as though she thought I needed comforting, as though she thought I couldn’t take care of myself. Other people I couldn’t quite remember had thought that about me, but I’d proved to them and everyone how wrong they were. I didn’t need anyone to take care of me, and walking over without a fuss to the table the woman had patted simply proved the point another time.

I had to take off that thin cloth smock before lying on the table, but that didn’t make me any more uncomfortable than I already was. I started wondering if I were already beginning to do what they wanted by not refusing to be examined, but by the time I decided I certainly was, the top of the machine had already been closed over me. As the lights came on I thought I understood just how alert I’d have to be in the future to keep something like that from happening again, but the entire truth of that thought hadn’t yet been brought home to me. The machine began to hum as the examination started, and then I was taught the lesson a bit more thoroughly.

Most physicals aren’t “physical” in the least, in the sense that you aren’t touched during them, not even by sensors. You’re completely scoped and scanned by the machinery all around you, measured and weighed and checked for blockages and stoppages and irregularities and anything that deviates from your particular norm. If something is found the doctor in charge is alerted, and more specific testing is then done. As the woman had said, the general check doesn’t usually take more than a couple of minutes, during which time you just lie there watching the pretty-colored lights blink. Most people know the lights have nothing to do with the exam; they’re there to give you something to look at while you’re waiting.

For me, the lights turned out to be a distraction. They drew my attention when the rate of blinking changed in a way that seemed to be crying to draw my attention, and as soon as I looked up at them the machine took advantage of the fact. It actually required the sound of multiple small clicks before I understood I’d been distracted for a reason, and by then, of course, it was far too late. My wrists were held firmly to the table where they lay to either side of me, my ankles were snugly looped, and a thin strand of the same material loosely circled my throat. I cried out and pulled at the bindings, unable to tell whether I was more frightened or more furious, but the material holding me was designed to resist efforts like mine. It was too soft to cut or cause any other damage, and much too strong to be parted by anything I was likely to be able to do.

Once the mechanism had me the way it wanted me, it went on with what it had obviously been instructed to do. Its very first act was to draw some of my blood, and then, even before the sting of the needle was gone, it began to check my reactions to certain stimuli. Considering what I had been brought there for I shouldn’t have been surprised that my ankles first had to be separated, and I wasn’t surprised. Ravening outrage was more like what I felt, but that didn’t entirely negate the machine’s efforts. I lay there on my back, struggling uselessly against what held me, but could still feel myself reacting faintly to what was being done to me. The sensors or probes or whatever they were felt like fingers, and seemed to have been programmed by someone who knew what he was doing. I hated being touched like that with everything in me, but for some reason that didn’t keep me from reacting to it.

The testing went on for a number of minutes before stopping abruptly, a needle put something into my veins instead of taking something out, and then the bindings withdrew to wherever they had come from. Right after that the colored lights went out, which meant the hood could be raised from the table I lay on. I was about to do it myself when it was done for me, and the woman in the light brown uniform looked down at me with a plastic smile pasted on her face.

“See, I told you it would be easy,” she said, offering my thin cloth smock as though it were a lounging robe being given to someone just stepping out of a bath. “Now it’s behind you, and you don’t have to think about it again. ”

I sat up and got off the table without saying anything, then took the smock without looking at anything else. I preferred the smock to being naked so I put it on, but without the help that had been offered. I’d had enough help from that woman, but at least I’d learned my lesson. From that moment on it wouldn’t matter how compassionate anyone was; trust would be the last thing I gave them.

“Terrilian, I had no choice about doing that to you,” the woman said from behind me, helpless regret heavy in her voice. “It’s part of the processing every female Prime goes through here, and if you’d tried refusing they would have forced you. This way it’s over and done with without the trouble refusing would bring, and without the anxiety you would have suffered. Isn’t it better this way?”

I smoothed the smock closed with a single firm stroke of my hand, but didn’t make any attempt to answer the woman’s question. Lying to me might have made things easier for her, but in my opinion I should have been entitled to choose for myself. If I preferred trouble and anxiety to letting myself be taken advantage of, that was my business.

“Well, you’re certainly healthy enough,” the woman went on when the silence grew too thick for her, the heartiness her voice now carried an excellent match to the smile shed worn. “You’ll find participating in the program no strain at all, and it won’t be long now before you can begin. Part of the injection you were given was a neutralizer meant to shorten the life span of your protection against pregnancy. ”

“And what was the rest of it, friend?” I asked in a growl, turning finally to look directly at the woman. She and I were almost the same size, so our eyes should have had no trouble meeting levelly. “Judging by everything else around here, it should have been the chemical equivalent of that happiness conditioning. What’s the matter, didn’t it work? -Or is it just that it hasn’t worked yet?”

If she flinched at the harsh accusation I threw at her, I couldn’t tell from looking in her eyes. The gaze that should have been level with mine wasn’t, and then she was the one turned away, her shoulders rounded with whatever burdens were hers. Her hand rose to her face, probably covering her mouth for a moment or two, and then it went higher to touch her hair as she straightened.

“The main problem is that you really don’t understand what you’re facing,” she said without turning, her voice slow and very reasonable but also audibly trembling.

“You still believe you can refuse to do what these people want, that you can be stubborn and make trouble for them and do anything you please to obstruct them, and the worst that can happen is that they eliminate you. What you must make yourself believe and understand is that they won’t eliminate you, not under any circumstances, no matter what you do. They will keep you for and in the program, and if I let you believe anything else I’d be hurting you worse than you know. I’m supposed to be here to help people, and I want to help you. You’re the first to come through here like an actual, living being instead of a programmed doll. If helping you means I also have to hurt you- What choice do I have- What else can I do-?”

Her words seemed to die rather than end, and her hand reached out slowly to move over a glowing circle on the wall near her. Her body had the same tremor that her voice had had, but she straightened even more and gained some control of it.

“Once you see more of this place and think about what I’ve told you, you’ll come to understand,” she said, the reassurance she groped toward more for herself than for me. “You’ll know then that I really am your friend, and if you need me you won’t hesitate to come. Ask for Cataran Olden in Medical, and they’ll bring you to me. Don’t forget, Cataran Olden.”

Once again I knew when I was being dismissed, so having the door in the far wall open came as no great surprise. The white uniform was familiar enough, but this time it was being worn by a woman rather than a man. She wasn’t quite the size the men had been, but she wasn’t small and she wore the same nonexpression they had, making her clearly one of the breed. Her blond, untinted hair was very short, and for some reason that struck me as being wrong.

“Please take the Prime to her assigned sector,” Cataran Olden said to the woman in white, handing over some sheets of paper from the folder she held. “She isn’t like the others are when they first come in here, so do please try being patient with her. You will-won’t you?”

The bigger woman smiled very faintly as she took the papers, then crooked a finger in my direction. As I passed Cataran Olden I could see she was still waiting for an answer to her question, not realizing she already had her answer. I walked out of the examination room without looking back, and door was quietly closed behind me.