The Warrior Victorious

3

I was expecting another corridor outside of the examining room, but that wasn’t what was there—or at least not like the previous corridors I’d seen. This one was three or more times as wide as the others, and there weren’t simply doors to either side of it. There were also desks here and there along the walls, and some of them had women in smocks like mine seated in chairs beside them, talking to the people behind the desks. There were more women in smocks standing in lines farther back, and most of those looked distracted but very pleased with themselves. Four men in the white uniforms of security watched the large area casually, clearly expecting nothing to happen but nevertheless appearing fairly alert.

My own security-guide led me in the direction of the end of the lines and beyond them to a set of guarded doors, then through the doors and past what looked like another guard post. This one was at the end of a normal-type corridor, but one without any doors or desks or anything. We walked the thirty feet to the end of it, stopped in front of yet another door, and after a moment were allowed in through it to the inner sanctum. There seemed to be an awful lot of guards for a bunch of women who mostly appeared to want to be where they were, but maybe the Amalgamation simply wasn’t in the mood to take chances. The far side of the door had its own set of white uniforms, and also a fork in the road. The corridors to either side curved away out of sight, and we took the one to the left.

When we rounded the curve I was able to see another widened area, one that had three desks to the right and a single door of glowing yellow to the left. The door was what I was led up to, and when my guide opened it I saw an older woman seated at a large desk in an office decorated almost as well as Director Gearing’s had been. At first I thought her desk was also almost as empty, but moving closer showed me it was neat rather than unused. She had a number of folders in precise stacks in front of her, and when my guide gave her the papers she was carrying they were placed carefully on top of one of the folders.

“Ah, the Prime Terrilian Reya,” she said, looking up at me with a smile that could have used something to warm it. “I’m pleased to welcome you to our facility, dear, and will do everything possible to make your stay with us a pleasant one. I’m sure you already know how unusual your condition is, and frankly I’m looking forward to having you as a guest. We so rarely get the benefit of an outside opinion regarding our efforts.”

“So I’m a guest,” I said, moving to one of the chairs in front of her desk and sitting in it. “I seem to have noticed an awful lot of guards in this vacation facility. Do you have that many guests trying to refuse your hospitality?”

“Of course not,” she said, and her smile widened just a little, to show she was properly amused at the joke I’d made. “The guards aren’t for the ladies of our facility, they’re for another purpose entirely. The young men are too often visitors to our areas, and it’s on their account that the guards are stationed where they are. Some of them consider it amusing to attempt leaving the complex in ways other than the ones permitted to them, and we really can’t allow that. They’re-too high-spirited-to be allowed out on their own, but boys will be boys and they continue to try.”

“They must be absolutely adorable,” I commented, a mutter the woman didn’t seem to hear. She was too busy reading the papers she’d been given by my guide, and didn’t even look up when another woman wearing a uniform in the same yellow as hers came in and put a cup of something on the desk in front of me. The second woman left as quietly as shed entered, and a minute or so later the older woman looked up again.

“Your medical preparations are complete, so we can get right to seeing you settled in,” she said, sounding as though there had been no lag in our conversation. “It’s nearly lunchtime, so you’ll soon be having your first introduction to the young men. The thing you must keep in mind at all times is that they know exactly how special and important they are, and you are to do nothing that will seem as though you’re challenging them. They challenge each other on a regular basis, you see, as part of their training, so you must be sure not to involve yourself in that. It would be very unwise, and we certainly don’t want their instructors lodging protests, do we?”

Once again I was given that small, cool smile meant to be so companionable and approving, the smile that went so well with the woman’s lean face. Her eyes were dark and her hair a reddish brown worn very short, and her hands were long-fingered and fairly graceful. She hadn’t done a single thing to offend or harm me, but it was all I could do to bear her presence without screaming.

“As a newcomer, you’ll almost certainly find yourself the center of attention, at least for a short time,” the woman went on, folding her hands on the desk as she looked at me. “The fact that you’re also quite attractive will no doubt add to that, and you mustn’t be upset if the men become somewhat-boisterous. It’s simply the way they show approval, and they won’t cause you any true harm. All you need do is go along with whatever they ask of you, and everything will be fine. You’ll find that we’ve helped you out as far as your own interest is concerned, so you needn’t worry that you won’t find an eagerness to match theirs. You . . . ”

“Just a minute,” I interrupted, finally finding a reason to resume my end of the conversation. “What do you mean, you’ve ‘helped me out’? What sort of help are you talking about?”

“My dear girl, you don’t think we’d throw you into a situation like this without help, do you?” she asked in turn, just as unbearably patient as that man Serdin had been. “You’ve been given a stimulant to match your body chemistry, one that will cause arousal in you when the men are present. You’ll find yourself wanting their attention, which is, after all, preferable to being frightened and unsure. As I’m sure you’ve already been told, we’re here to assist you in every way we can. We want you to be happy while you’re with us.”

Happy. In the way that herd animals are kept happy. I sat back in the chair without saying anything one hand rubbing at my forehead, trying to remember the time I’d been given the same sort of selfless help once before. There had been a time, I was as certain as I could be of that, but I couldn’t quite recall the circumstances. All I could remember was a sense of terror and shame, mixed well with the sure knowledge that I was completely alone with no hope of rescue. Just like right then, trapped on a world I’d never even heard of.

“Now, despite the fact that you’ll be distracted, you’ll be expected to eat everything given to you at every meal,” the woman went on, apparently taking my silence for agreement. “In your position you’ll require a carefully balanced diet, and that’s what you’ll be given. That, combined with proper exercise, will bring you to full health and keep you there. I learned from your file that you were fed this morning before being allowed to awaken, but you haven’t yet had anything for midmorning. That broth in front of you should do for now, and as soon as you’ve finished it I’ll have you shown to your assigned place.”

The woman ended her little speech and gave me another of those smiles, her expression showing she was waiting patiently for me to comply. Since there was no real reason for me to refuse, there was no reason for her to expect that I would. Reason was the key, with everyone being as reasonable as possible, and it didn’t matter to anyone how completely and totally unreal it all was to me.

“I don’t want any broth right now,” I said, trying to push back narrowing, invisible walls. “I haven’t done anything to make me hungry or thirsty.”

“You don’t need to be hungry or thirsty, dear,” the woman came back, all ready with her smile and her patience and her reasonable explanation. “What you need is proper nourishment, and we’re here to be sure that you get it. Drink the broth, and then you may go.”

“And then I may go,” I echoed, suddenly remembering very vividly that same attitude in the woman who had run the creche I’d been raised in. I hadn’t particularly cared for the attitude then, and I certainly didn’t like it now. Most especially didn’t like it now.

“I may be your prisoner, but I haven’t been a child in quite a few years,” I said, looking directly at the woman who continued to stare at me. “You will at the very least do me the courtesy of treating me as something other than a mental deficient, or this whole thing will be a lot more unpleasant than it’s naturally destined to be. You have my word on that.”

“Do I indeed?” she said, the smile and the patience still completely untroubled. “So you mean to persist in seeing us all as your enemies, at least for a short while. If you feel that clinging to such an outlook will help you in your adjustment, dear, by all means continue to cling to it. What helps you helps us-as long as you remember the lessons you were taught in childhood. You’re free to rebel as much as you like, as long as you obey all of the really important rules. We don’t want to punish you, but if you give us no choice in the matter we won’t hesitate. Take the broth and drink it.”

Still that same patience and calm, only now I remembered why I disliked them so. Those were the primary emotions I’d been accorded as a child by those in authority around me, the two emotions I’d never quite been able to master and accomplish for myself. I’d been able to force a sort of calm and pretend to patience, but had never really reached through to the real thing. Now that I looked back on it, it almost seemed that I was supposed to fail where those emotions were concerned, to fall short of the place others, better than myself, had reached with ease. I could see the conditioning went back a lot farther than I’d first thought it did, but these—better people-were in for a surprise.

“I’m really not much in the mood to play the game of rebellion,” I said, leaning back in my chair as I regarded the older woman with the true calm I’d learned-some where. “As far as your rules go, you can take them and cut paper dolls out of them if you like. No matter how unreasonable you try to make me believe I’m being, I will not cooperate with my own officially proclaimed ravishment. If you need any other point-blank statements, feel free to ask me for them.”

“I think I’ve had quite enough for now, thank you,” she responded, the new smile measurably cooler but no less sure of itself. “It seems you have forgotten a good deal of your childhood, but the memories are certain to come back rather quickly. Right now you’ll be shown where your place is, and you and I will speak again later. ”

Of all the dismissals I’d had that morning, hers was the most unimpressive—if you discounted the look in her dark eyes. The meeting shed promised for later. was one she was looking forward to, and that fact was supposed to make me uneasy. That I refused to let it make me uneasy was not quite the same as being unaffected, and I didn’t really mind when the woman in the white uniform tapped me on the shoulder. The thought of being elsewhere was an attractive one, if any place on that planet could be thought of as attractive.

Once out of the office we continued on up the corridor to its end, no more than ten feet away from the desk area. My guide pushed through a swinging door and held it for me, then led the way left along a circular balcony area that surrounded a very large, round room. At intervals along the four-foot-high balcony were white-uniformed guards, all keeping a casual eye on the very large room, and the same on the people it contained. More than twenty feet of tall windows let in bright sunshine from behind one section of the balcony, the only illumination the women in the room had. The women were seated on plain, narrow beds, little more than cots, and the cots were arranged so that they covered the entire floor, one practically on top of the next. Even the cots at the outer edge of the big room were standing away from any wall, which meant not one of those women had the least feeling of privacy. I stopped with my hand on the railing to look down at them, wondering where they all could have come from. If they were all Primes there were a lot more than fifty of them, and that was a number out of all proportion to everything I thought I knew.

“Come on, girly, let’s wake up here,” a voice said from behind me arid to my left, a female voice despite its being on the gruff and gravelly side. “You can do all the sightseeing you like later, once I have you where you’re supposed to be.”

I turned to look at the speaker over my shoulder, and found I’d been given away again to someone new. My original guide was gone, and in her place was a tall, burly woman in white, her uniform doing nothing to hide the bulge in her middle. Her hair was a dark, dirty blond and her eyes a very light gray, and her face was somehow more open than the faces of others in the same uniform. She stood beside a small desk that wasn’t far from a ramp leading downward, and in her hand she held a thin rectangle of wood. When she gestured to me I walked over to where she waited, and as a reward had the wooden rectangle pressed to my thin smock on the left side of my chest. There were letters left behind when the rectangle was taken away, but I didn’t have to bother trying to read them upside down.

“Now you’re officially Terry, and your bed number is sixty-five,” the woman said with a grin, obviously amused by my- expression. “Stop looking so sour, it’s better than having it branded on your backside. We haven’t had one starting out wide awake for years now, but I can still remember the trouble she tried giving us. Take my advice and behave yourself, or you won’t find anything but the grief she did. She yelled and screamed and cried and threw tantrums until they finally had to punish her, and then she tried so hard to be good that she looked like a fool. You don’t strike me as someone who wants to look like a fool. Am I wrong?”

“About the fool part, no,” I answered, wondering why this woman, out of all the others, was bothering. “As far as the rest of it goes, I’ve already told everyone in sight, so I might as well let you in on it. I won’t cooperate with the sickness that goes on here, and nothing they can do will change my mind. No screaming and no tantrumsbut no cooperation either.”

“Girly, I admire your guts,” the woman said quietly, sitting down on the edge of her desk to look straight at me. “I don’t think much of your intelligence, but I do admire your guts. Look, I know how you feel about this, because I know how I’d feel if it was me they were trying to turn into a dolly-sow. I’d hate everything and everyone around here, and I’d swear to fight them with the last ounce of strength I had. Since it wouldn’t take me long to find out that they never use drugs on their sows, Iii start to believe I really had a chance of doing it my way. The only thing is-I’d be wrong.”

She was keeping her voice down and the sober tone shed adopted was very impressive, but after hearing the same thing so many times I wasn’t feeling particularly impressed. Shed been searching my face to see how I was taking her advice, but didn’t have to look hard or far for the answer.

“You’re hearing me, but you aren’t listening or believing,” she said, without any anger behind the observation. “They bring you here and tell you you’ll be opening your legs for a bunch of strangers so they can knock you up for the good of the Amalgamation, and that gets you so mad you tell them to try it first on themselves. You might be feeling a little nervous about saying it, but you say it anyway and to hell with them all. You say it and say it to everyone you meet, but maybe you don’t notice that no one gets mad or bothered or starts throwing threats at you. If you do notice you don’t let yourself pay attention, because that’s enough to make you start worrying. If they aren’t worried, it’s a good enough reason for you to be.”

“I don’t happen to see it that way,” I said, finding that her conversation was beginning to make me uncomfortable. “If they haven’t failed yet to get their way, that doesn’t mean they’re invincible, only that no one has discovered the right way to fight them. Since I have nothing more important on my calendar right now, I’ve decided to try my hand at it.”

“And you’re not interested in anyone else’s opinions,” she said with a nod. “You’re the type who has to see for herself if the paint really is still wet, or if it’s raining out the way everyone says it is. That’s not a bad way to be, I’m that way myself more often than not, but- Did it ever occur to you that all they have to do is tie you down to a bed, and then send the parade in your direction? I’m not saying it is what they do, because I’ve never seen it or heard about it happening. The question I want you to think about is why they don’t do that, why they never find it necessary to be that crude. We’ve had more girls through here than I know the number of, but they’ve never once had to do that. If you come up with an answer, I’d be interested in hearing it. I’m Finner, and I’m here on most day shifts. Right now, you go in that direction.”

She gestured toward the ramp, then got off the desk to lead the way, asking nothing more from me in the way of response. I followed without feeling an urge to respond, but not because she had convinced me of anything. They were all really good at talking people out of intentions they didn’t approve of, which might be the reason no one had won against them. It was like having two equal forces of Kabrans facing each other in the field. Everyone knew neither side could win against the other, so most often they didn’t even bother to fight. It would have been a waste of good fighting men to have them go at it anyway, or at least so most people believed. I knew one Kabran who didn’t agree with that, Colonel Garth R’Hem Solohr, and I also knew Garth had tried doing something about it. I knew he had—I’d been there when he had—but what he’d done I couldn’t quite reach

“The sanitary facilities are through those double doors,” the woman Finner said, pointing to a short downramp that led to an access point for the area under the circling balcony. “Nothing but the bare necessities, plus shower stalls. If you want anything better, you have to make your own arrangements.”

“Who do you make arrangements with?” I asked, wondering how long I’d be able to hold out if they tried trading me a bath for my cooperation. For some reason, it seemed so long . . . “Is that woman in yellow I met in charge of that, too?”

“Quatry?” Finner asked, for some reason amused again. “No, Quatry is your section leader, and deals with other sorts of arrangements. The ones you have to talk to about a softer life are the men you’ll be meeting, the Prime trainees you’re here to-get together with. Every one of them has his own apartment, and unless he’s officially paired with one of the girls during her fertile period, he can choose any girl he pleases to spend the night with him. Or, possibly I should say, ‘any girl who pleases him.’ I would have put that a little more delicately, but you’re strong enough to take the facts of life as they come, aren’t you?”

She glanced at me where I walked to her left and a little behind, following through the maze of cots, but I didn’t give her anything to add to her amusement, at least not voluntarily. She seemed to notice and enjoy the faint flush I could feel in my cheeks, but didn’t press the point any harder than she already had.

“And here we are,” she announced after another couple of minutes of walking, stopping beside a cot no different from any of the others in the room. “The number is on a disk hanging at the foot, so you shouldn’t have much trouble finding your way back. If you do happen to get lost, just ask one of the guards around the wall to guide you. If you turn out to be one of those here at lights out, remember that you have to be in bed, not next to it or on your way to it, or in the sanfax thinking about it. Your night-duty guards won’t listen to reasons or excuses about why you aren’t, they’ll just ask the assistant section leader for punishment permission. From what I hear they usually get it, so don’t let the point slip your mind. There’s a box under your bed with a comb and brush in it, and you have just enough time before lunch to make use of them. And maybe even enough time to do a little thinking.”

The look she gave me didn’t have much amusement left in it and then she was gone, threading her way back through the cots toward the balcony ramp wed come down. I turned away before she reached the ramp, looked around at what I’d been brought to, then sank down on the cot with one leg folded under me. There were occasional, very soft conversations going on in different parts of the big room but the women nearest me were too busy seeing to their hair to be distracted by talk. They looked deliriously happy and eager to be on about their business, and the empty cot next to mine seemed more real than they did. Didn’t they know what was being done to them, and didn’t they care even a little? How could they just sit there, prettying themselves up for sanctioned rape. . . ?

I gave it up and lay back on the cot, draping one arm over my eyes to blot out a world I could no longer bear to look at. Of course the rest of them knew what was being done to them, and of course they cared. They knew they were being honored, and they cared so much they would do whatever they had to in order to continue being honored. And out of gratitude as well, let’s not forget about gratitude. I felt so ill it was all I could do to keep from throwing up, but I couldn’t give them the satisfaction of that, I just couldn’t. It would be the first step toward letting them win, and that was one thing I refused to do.

Again one thing. If I hadn’t felt so terrible I would have laughed at myself, constantly listing a dozen different items and then calling them one thing. Maybe it was the first sign that I was going crazy, that I was about to lose all touch with reality and the world around me, and if that was so then I wished it would hurry up. It was just me against what felt like an entire world, and they were all so sure they would win, that I didn’t have the least chance against them. If I went insane I would no longer know what they were doing to me, no longer need to fight a battle that even I was beginning to believe I’d lose. I was so tired, as though I’d already fought a battle like that, and had learned that there were things a good deal worse than losing. What I wanted-what I wanted was

What I wanted was an end to everything, not just the end to struggle that madness would bring but the absolute end of everything. I took my arm down from my eyes but kept them closed, making no effort to chase myself out of the warm, embracing darkness I’d found. The cot I lay on was more comfortable than I’d thought it would be, but it was too narrow and only just long enough. Less privacy than an exotic animal on public display, the bare minimum in sanitary facilities, no personal possessions other than a comb and brush in a box, strict rules and guaranteed punishment for breaking them-everything necessary for encouraging me to find a man whose private apartment I could share, even for a single night at a time. It might have gone quite a way toward working, but instead it had backfired on them and had helped me to find what I really wanted. I had no idea why the conviction was so strong and steady, but what I wanted more than anything was to die.

I stirred just a little on the cot, wondering why that thought didn’t frighten me. It should be frightening to discover that you want nothing more than to die, but I couldn’t find fear anywhere inside me. It was as though I had more of a reason than simply being at that facility, that I had considered the question calmly and objectively and had come to the only conclusion possible. I had no urge to change my mind, not even a mild preference covering a desire to think about it a little longer. All decided, all bottom line, no indication of the least amount of hesitation.

What the hell could possibly have done that?

I stirred on the cot again, annoyance and frustration filling up the spaces left vacant by the absence of fear. It was the stupidest situation I’d come across in a long while, and it was really beginning to make me angry. Those miserable people whose prisoner I was had taken away so much of my memory that I couldn’t remember why I wanted to die! Since I still knew I wanted to die that meant they didn’t know it, otherwise they would have taken it away with the rest. If you stretched a point you could say they were working toward saving my life, but I didn’t seem to want my life saved. And how could I know one way or the other, when I couldn’t remember why I wanted to die in the first place? What right did they have, interfering in things that were none of their business? How did they dare to—

“Hi there, you must be the new one they said was due,” a voice interrupted, coming from somewhere on my right. “I’m Merador Sanglin, but you can call me Mera the way everyone else does.”

I opened my eyes to frown at the voice, and found myself looking at a small, dark, very pretty girl. She was kneeling on the cot that had been empty when I’d gotten there, and she paused in the middle of brushing her hair in order to smile at me. I suppose I must have looked surprised; her smile widened as she raised the brush again.

“That’s right, I’m not any more-‘honored’-than you are,” she said, her dark, lovely eyes twinkling. “I went one day for my weekly physical, floating along as usual, but when the doctor congratulated me on being pregnant, something-twisted loose. They tell me it was the shock of hearing about my first pregnancy, but whatever it was it brought me all the way back down. From then on I’ve been as you see me now.”

“Which is how long?” I couldn’t keep from asking, making no effort to return her smile. It was one thing to be conditioned into cooperating, but to do it voluntarily-!

“About three more pregnancies worth of time,” she answered evenly and calmly, not even insulted enough to stop brushing her hair. “Right now that sounds terrible to you, really low and awful, but you’ll find out it isn’t anything like that. I had a lot of time to think after I broke out, with no one to bother me and no schedule to keep to. Once you’re confirmed pregnant they transfer you back to the outer part of the complex, and they give you your own apartment with entertainment centers and servos and anything else within reason that you ask for. I wasn’t confused any longer and knew I could make a fuss about going along with them again, but the plain truth is I couldn’t think of a reason why I should make a fuss. Once you understand the routine it isn’t difficult being comfortable, so why make trouble when there’s no point to it?”

“If you don’t mind being a brood mare, I suppose there isn’t a point to it,” I agreed, not in the least interested in arguing. “Now, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll take a little nap.”

“You don’t have the time,” she said before I could turn away and close my eyes again, still friendly and outgoing. “It’s too close to lunch. And just what exactly is that supposed to mean, if you don’t mind being a brood mare? Didn’t they teach any history in whatever creche you grew up in’? Didn’t you ever get to look around at everyday life on whatever world you happened to be? Since when have women ever been anything but brood mares? If we’re the only ones physiologically able to carry and give birth to babies, who else are they going to get for the job?”

“Being able to do something isn’t the same as being required to do it,” I countered, sitting up as I was drawn into the argument against my will. “I never asked to be brought here, and I never volunteered to give my all to the Amalgamation. They decided to take it and me, and I have every right to give them all the hell I can in return. They want to force me into something I want no part of, and that they have no right to do!”

“Oh, come off it,” she said with a snort, finally putting the brush aside. “Societies have been doing that to women ever since there have been societies, and before that it was the men doing it on their own. Are you silly enough to believe a woman has to give her permission before she can get pregnant? Do you think every woman married off to a man was married by her own consent? It’s nice to have a man you’re madly in love with to give you children, but how many women have that kind of luck? And have you forgotten what we are? We’re Primes, special women with a special talent. How long do you think it would have been before someone in the government came along to tell us it was our duty to preserve and pass along our genes? That it was time we married and did something to pay for those expensive educations and soft lives we were given for almost nothing? You and I seem to be about the same age. How much longer do you think we would have had?”

Her question was a demand, straightforward and unashamed, but I had no equally straightforward answer. I had occasionally found myself wondering when the Amalgamation would ask something more of me than Mediating, something along the lines of what other empaths had been asked to do. I’d never heard of a Prime being approached, but normal empaths were constantly being urged to pair off, with all sorts of extras thrown their way if they did. But it wasn’t the same thing, not the same at all. E

“If someone had come by and asked, I would at least have had a choice as to who I was going to be involved with,” I pointed out, feeling familiar sourness flowing back in my direction. “I would have had some freedom of say in the matter—and I wouldn’t have produced babies I’d never even get a chance to see, let alone hold. I’m not a machine, I’m a woman, and I won’t let anyone turn me into a machine.”

“No, you’re not a machine, but you’re not a woman either,” she came back, still looking determined. “You’re a Prime, which makes you something else entirely. If you’d paired off with a single man, even one of your choice, what would have happened if you’d suddenly discovered you didn’t like him after all? Nothing, that’s what would have happened, because you’d be stuck with him. And after having the baby of someone you didn’t like grow inside you how long do you think you would have gotten to keep it? How long do other empaths get to keep their children? How long do normals producing talented children get to keep them? At least here you don’t have to go through the hurt of giving up a part of yourself, and you don’t have to worry if you don’t like the partner you’re assigned to. After he’s done his job you don’t have to look at him again, there are enough others around who are pleasant to look at. You have fun during your offtimes, fun during most of your fertile periods, the good life while you’re carrying, and don’t stay pregnant long enough to feel that you’ve lost something once they’ve taken it. Honestly, Terry, what more can you ask for?”

The question was just short of being exasperated, about as far from the rote response of conditioning as you can get, and she knew well enough shed made at least one valid point. Just as she and I had been raised in creches, our children, the children of any other empaths, and the talented children of any normals would be raised the same way. That had not only been a government requirement it was an out—and-out necessity, especially where normals were concerned. When a newborn baby is empathetic, it doesn’t simply cry the way other babies do. It doesn’t yet know how to read emotions, but general broadcasting is something you don’t have to be taught. If you suddenly find yourself feeling very uncomfortable, starving-to-death hungry, or cranky because you’re so tired, you can be fairly certain there’s a baby empath around. If the baby happens to be colicky or delightfully engaged in nursing, there’s no “fairly” about it. You know there’s a baby empath around, and either you take yourself out of its limited range, or see to it that it’s the one taken away while you still have your sanity. Adults experience a wider range of emotions than babies do, but they usually don’t experience them so intensely. A little of that goes a long way, and it takes trained workers to put up with it for any length of time. But I was letting myself be distracted off the track, and it was time to get back on it.

“All you’re doing is rationalizing,” I told the girl Mera, able to see it where she couldn’t. “They talked you into believing you had no chance fighting them, so you rationalized your decision to back down. I’m not interested in their opinions one way or the other, so I don’t have to rationalize anything.”

“Garbage,” she came back with a snort, leaning forward to put her brush back into the box under her cot. “I’m not rationalizing anything, but you haven’t been here long enough to know that. Once you are, you’ll see I’m right. Now listen, when we go into the dining room, I want you to stay right next to me. That way you won’t have to worry about being noticed, which should speed things up a little. Some of the guys don’t want anything but those icky, cooing, clingy types who still believe they’re being honored, but most of them prefer a woman who knows a little something about flirting. They don’t believe what I say any more than I do, but they get a kick out of hearing it and always come back for more. Let me tell you, I haven’t spent a night in this menagerie since they brought me back straight, and with just a little effort you won’t have to either. And in case you’re wondering, you don’t want to spend a night here.”

She gave me a look of solemn assurance, the voice of experience instructing innocence, and all I could do was blink a little. She had enough self-possession for someone twice her size, and I couldn’t ever remember being taken over like that before. After the surprise passed I found I didn’t like it much and was about to say so, but she wasn’t through imparting the store of information shed gathered.

“And don’t let these stupid cover-ups bother you,” she went on, flicking a finger at the smock she wore. “These are just for daytime use, and to be worn to places like Medical and the General Offices. If you get asked to stay in someone’s apartment for the night, they’ll give you one of the dress-up outfits as a reward for your efforts. You may end up having it ripped off you and then you’ll need to come back bare, but that isn’t anything to worry about. The male Sees in the men’s sector won’t ever. put a finger on you, and the Sees in our own areas are all female. I happen to think the male Securities are drugged or conditioned against touching any of us, and not just for our protection. We’re special, and meant only for the guys. I hate to think what they would do to a Sec who tried to touch what was theirs.”

Her shudder wasn’t completely muffled as she shifted to sitting on the cot, and somehow I knew she was right to be upset at the thought. We who were Primes could do terrible things to people, worse than just about anyone knew, so bad I didn’t want anyone to know. That was something else I couldn’t get the details on, something else gone with the rest, but enough was left for me to know better than to comment. Mera began talking again, back to giving me information and advice, but this time I had no interest in listening. I lay down again on my cot, and stared up at the ceiling stretching high above me.

Only a few more minutes went by before a sound suddenly began echoing through the room, a very low, pleasant gonging that awoke eager movement everywhere it touched. Women began putting their brushes and combs away and getting to their feet, and Mera broke off her monologue to lean forward and tap my arm.

“Lunchtime,” she announced, standing up to stretch high. “And since I took care of my exercises this morning, I can spend the time after lunch having fun. Come on, Terry, we don’t want to be last.”

“Since I’m not very hungry, I think I’ll stay right here,” I answered as I looked up at her, making no effort to get off the cot. “You go ahead and have a great time for both of us.”

“Terry, why do you have to be so thick?” she asked in exasperation, putting her fists to her hips. “They’re not going to let you skip lunch, so why bother pretending? If you don’t walk to the dining room alone they’ll drag you, and that’s not the kind of first impression you want to make. Let’s go in now and get something to eat and meet the guys, and just save the defiance for some other time. ”

The suggestion was so reasonable I smiled, but not with anything like real amusement. If I cooperated now to avoid an unnecessary confrontation I could always resist later, but if I went along with that line of thinking I’d find that later was always ahead, never at a place of arrival. I’d cooperated to the point of letting them put me in that zoo of a dormitory room, but that was as far as I was willing to go.

“I’ve always been really bad at saving things,” I said, letting my smile fade. “And what’s that saying about putting things off? It would be a shame to start developing bad habits after living so long without them.”

“People who won’t listen to good advice are dumb,” she pronounced, leaning forward a little to emphasize the opinion. “You’re lucky I like you, or I’d leave you to get into all the trouble you’re looking for. If you’re all that good at fighting you’d better get started now, otherwise we’re about to go in to lunch.”

Just for a moment I didn’t understand what she was talking about, and then the two big women in security white reached my cot and leaned down to take my arms. I struggled and tried to keep from being pulled to my feet, but as far as fighting ability went I didn’t have any. The two women were about as distant as it’s possible to get from the bumbling incompetence of the man Gearing, and each one of them alone weighed more than I did. I was pulled along between them behind a calmly strolling Mera, cursing under my breath, wishing I had learned how to use a sword

You can’t really stiffen when you’ve been straining with all your strength to get loose and you certainly can’t stop short, but I know I made a respectable effort to do both. Where in the name of everything that’s real had that thought about a sword come from? Me, learn how to use a sword? When? How? And even above that, why? What in hell was going on with my mind, and if I knew all those things were there, why couldn’t I remember?

The frustration flared so sharply through me that I barely saw the ramp I was dragged up and the double swinging doors I was hauled through. There was a short, wide corridor beyond the doors and another set of doors at the end of the corridor, and then I was in a room even larger than the dormitory room. The walls had pastel designs with dark-colored accents, the floor was softly carpeted, low, pleasant music was playing, and large, round tables were scattered from one end to the other. As involuntary as my entrance was it took me a moment to notice, but the tables closest to the doors I’d come in by weren’t quite the same as the ones farther away. The nearer ones were just as large but plain, with ordinary-looking chairs circling them in an uninteresting way. The closer I looked at the ones toward the far end of the room, however, the more attractively designed they and their chairs appeared. The tables had brightly colored cloths and rich-looking settings, the chairs were more like overstuffed and contoured armchairs, the carpeting seemed thicker, the . . .

“Well, what do you think of them?” Mera murmured to me over her shoulder, just as though I’d accompanied her willingly and now stood without being held there. “Aren’t they yummy and delicious?”

The “they” she referred to were the men, of course, and I’d been trying very hard not to look at them. They had been filling the room even as we came in, talking and laughing together and strolling casually in our direction, and the women I stood among were so anxious and eager they were practically holding their breath. I could almost feel a hum in the air from their hovering, and I hadn’t missed the fact that none of them were moving toward -any of the tables. It was as though they first needed permission before they could sit and eat, and I hated the thought. I kept my eyes on the inanimate parts of the room or looked down at my feet, making no answer to Mera’s question, but I should have known better than to think that would stop her.

“Oh, I know you’ll be one of the ones they take down to the other end, Terry, I just know it!” she enthused, practically jumping up and down where she stood. “Some of them saw me and started over, but now they’re looking at you, too! They’re our kind, Terry, more so than any other men anywhere, and it’s right that we belong to them. Come on, girl, smile at them!”

Smiling was the last thing I wanted to do right then, most especially after what shed said. I’d never even so much as met a male of my kind, a male Prime, and as a young girl I’d had daydreams about what wonderful things would happen if I ever did. I wanted to know them but I couldn’t even bear the thought of looking at them, of finding them attractive, of enjoying their company, or ultimately shuddering to their touch. I would not do what all the rest of them were doing, would not sell my selfrespect and my body in response to the psychological manipulations of lowlives. What the Amalgamation was doing was wrong, and if I let myself be coaxed into going along with it, I’d be just as dirty as they were.

“And how are you today, Mera?” a male voice said suddenly, almost bringing my eyes up from the floor to the group that had stopped near us. “I’m happy to note you’re looking as tasty as ever. I don’t remember having seen your friend before, but she’s being treated like a hatchling. We were wondering why that is.”

“In a way she is a hatchling,” the girl answered, light laughter and eager attention in her voice. “She only just got here but she’s already broken out, so of course she doesn’t know how silly she’s being. Other hatchlings are frightened and confused, but all she is is stubborn.”

“Then, by all means, let’s bring her along and show her what she’s missing,” another male voice said, heavy amusement in it. “If she still tries being stubborn after that, we’ll have to do something about it.”

The comment caused chuckling in everyone in the group including Mera, and then they were moving away with me being forced along behind them. I was aware of the way others of the women had been claimed and drawn toward the far side of the room, but there were still some left who made their dejected way to the nearer, plainer tables. It was clear there weren’t as many men as there were women, which meant the women were being made to compete with each other for attention. I didn’t know what happened to them if they didn’t get that attention, but it wasn’t likely they escaped the fate of those more popular. Most probably they were left alone to suffer and agonize, which would make them swear to themselves to do better next time.

With jolly thoughts like that for company, I was taken to a table and forced down into a very comfortable chair. The table was more than halfway across the room and was nicely set, but it wasn’t the best of what the room held. The security woman on my left took my hand and pressed my fingers onto a narrow print-plate to the left of my setting, the one on the right bent to slide a padded metal cuff around my ankle which quietly clicked into place against the chair leg, and then the two of them let go of me.

“For future reference, you’re to identify your position in the room at every meal before you do anything else,” the woman on my left said softly, obviously not wanting to interrupt the conversations going on around the table. “The chef has been programmed with a different diet for every woman here, but it has to be told where you are before it can deliver it. We’ll be back for you later, and in the meanwhile you’d be wise to behave yourself.”

They both turned and walked away, leaving me alone in the midst of quite a lot of amusement. Others of the women had been brought to the table by the men, and the whole bunch of them, men and women alike, considered my being locked to the chair the funniest thing they’d seen in a very long time. I. could feel my discomfort over that, burning in my cheeks like a flame, but all I did was sit there, staring down at my hands in my lap.

“Stubborn or not, she’s certainly pretty enough,” observed a voice to my left, a drawling male voice. “And she even knows how to blush. I expect to enjoy myself quite a lot with her, even before she starts to moan and squirm. I think, after this morning, no one can deny I’m entitled to firsts.”

“You don’t have to look for challenges that aren’t there, Jer-Mar,” another male voice said from a different place around the table, a faint hint of petulance to the words. “You’ve placed higher than anyone else on our level, and we know it as well as you do. If you can hold that place for another four days, you’ll be leaving us to move up to the next level. ”

“When, not if,” the man to my left corrected smugly, shifting in his chair. “Once you take that one major step it starts getting easier rather than harder, so much easier you’d have trouble believing it. It was hell dividing that first projection in half, but now I can hold the result for more than thirty seconds before starting to tire. Once they move me up to the next level, who knows what I’ll find I can do.”

“You might even cause Kel-Ten to start worrying,” a third voice said, and this one was chuckling. “If you keep going the way you’ve begun, you won’t only be able to challenge him, you’ll have first dip ahead of him. Which might be more of a favor, or so I hear. The word going around is that he’s bored and making some trouble. ”

“Only a man with something wrong with him could get bored with first dip,” the man to my left, Jer-Mar, said with a very cultured sneer. “When I get firsts on that level, you won’t find me getting bored. And speaking of firsts, sweet thing, your food is on the table in front of you. Eat up fast like a good little thing, and then Jer-Mar will take you to his apartment for a while. No need to let it go until after dinner.”

The man reached over to me and put his finger to my ear, caressing the outer edge before poking abruptly inside. I jerked my head away with a feeling of disgust, but he just laughed, took my face in his hand, and forced me to look over at him. It was something I hadn’t wanted to do for a very specific reason, and as soon as my eyes were on him I knew I’d been right. That woman Quatry, the one who was the leader or whatever, had told me Iii been “helped”—for my first meeting with the men, and she hadn’t been joking. The desire that shivered through my body wasn’t my own idea, and certainly wasn’t being caused by the brown-haired, blue-eyed man who held my face. The arrogance in his stare was that of a grown-up spoiled brat, but I was partially wrong about his not being the cause of the way I felt. His very presence was the cause, that and whatever they’d injected into me, and the flaring anger behind my eyes did only a little against the rising heat lower down.

“Well, well, what pretty green eyes the sweet thing has,” the man drawled with a grin, obviously knowing what he had made happen to me. “I do believe she’s now ready to eat up fast, so Jer-Mar can get to his fun. She really needs him to have his fun, don’t you, sweet thing?”

“Stop talking to me as though I were a worthless pet,” I choked out as I pulled my face from his hand, ignoring the laughter coming from those around the table. “I’m a Prime just the same as you are, and you have no right talking to me as though I weren’t.”

“Oh, stubborn indeed,” the man said with brows raised high, but he was still grinning and enjoying himself. “Yes, sweet thing, you are a Prime, but certainly not the same as I. I am a male and you are a female, and that means you squirm while I make you squirm. We simply aren’t on the same level, you and I, so why waste time discussing it? Being a Prime for you means you get to serve those of us who are the best there are, and that’s as close as you can come to any sort of importance. But just look at how much they’ve given you to eat. Surely that’s an indication of some sort of importance—or maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s just that they think you’re too skinny or undernourished. Let’s take a look and see if they’re right. ”

With no more warning than that his hands came to the front of my smock, and then he pulled it open while his friends roared with laughter. The women were laughing too, even Mera, and I was so furious I couldn’t control myself. Without an instant’s hesitation I slapped that weak-featured, arrogant face with every ounce of strength I had, wishing I could slap it in an entirely other way. He wouldn’t have tried doing that to me if-something-was different, but I still refused to allow it to happen. I was alone—I was alone—but I still wouldn’t let it happen.

It took a moment before I became aware of the dead silence that had fallen at our table, and of the odd pressure that I could feel in what seemed to be the very air around my mind. The man Jer-Mar had jerked back to stare at me with mad-eyed, voiceless fury, his entire body trembling with the rage, and for an instant it seemed as though he were attacking without moving, attacking, attacking . . .

It was ridiculous, of course, because he really hadn’t moved except to pull back, and that’s not the way someone or something attacks. It would have been understandable if I were trembling the way he was, but I found to my surprise that I wasn’t. My hands were steady when I went to reclose my smock, no more than a tingling in the right palm from the slap I’d delivered, and then it came to me that it wasn’t so surprising after all. I hadn’t been threatened by a dangerous man, I’d been pawed by a little boy, and how frightening is that supposed to be? It was closer to being annoying, especially since I was beginning to wish more and more that there were real men around there . . . .

“You have to be out of your mind,” Jer-Mar said at last, bringing my eyes up to see the way he was still breathing hard and glaring hate-daggers into my flesh. “No other female has ever dared touch one of us like that! -How I wish you weren’t protected against me, shut down and safe inside your little shell! I’d show you then what you were stupid enough to challenge, I’d show you.

“Please accept the profuse apologies we offer, Prime Jer-Mar,” a voice said from behind me, and then two security females were to either side of me again, a third woman in a yellow uniform accompanying them. She stopped to my left, near the angry little boy’s chair, and her skin actually seemed pale even in the soft, intimate lighting of the room. “The girl is new and has no idea of your true importance, so we beg you to forgive her. We, ourselves, will punish rather than forgive, and will deliver her back to you later for your pleasure. When you find her sufficiently chastened, we hope you will accept her. ”

I was free of the ankle cuff and chair by then, my arms again in the possession of the two Secs, but I still stood where Jer-Mar could see me. He looked up at my face and then he deliberately smiled, leaning back comfortably in his chair.

“Yes, do return her to me afterward,” he drawled, his narrow chest swelling from all the bowing and scraping he’d been given by the woman in yellow. “I expect to enjoy that quite a lot, possibly even more than the ride I’ll take. Later, sweet thing, definitely later.”

He turned then to talk to one of the other men at the table, and I was taken after the woman in yellow when she gestured to the Sees holding my arms and then hurried off. A last glimpse of the people at the table had shown the men outraged and the women disbelieving, all but Mera. She alone had looked frightened and very upset, but obviously not on her own behalf.

I was taken back to the dormitory room and through it, and from there to the office of the woman Quatry. By then my arms were hurting from the grip the two Sees had on me, but the older woman in the yellow uniform was not in the least concerned with my comfort. She froze me with her stare until I was brought to a stop in front of her desk, and then she folded her hands on top of a neatly placed folder.

“Tell me what she did to the Prime Jer-Mar,” Quatry said to the woman in yellow who had entered with us, talking to her but looking only at me. “I want to hear it all, with her listening.”

“She-she-slapped him,” the woman said after swallowing hard, as though she were reporting a murder and mutilation. “He went so far as to take an interest in her, telling her to eat her food quickly so that she could follow him back to his apartment, and she had the nerve to announce that he couldn’t talk to her like that, that she was a Prime, too! I thought he would be insulted and almost intervened then, but he was gracious enough to laugh off such childish boasting, and tried to show her he still found her attractive. That was when she hit him.”

“I have never in my life heard anything so inexcusable,” Quatry pronounced, her dark eyes glowing with cold fury. “If I hadn’t had you watched closely and carefully, there’s no telling what you might have done next. Is it possible you have anything at all to say for yourself about this insanity, that you can in any way attempt to excuse it?”

“You seem to have chosen the right word when you picked ‘insanity,’” I said, rubbing arms that had been released while trying to adapt to the idea that I was asleep and having a nightmare. “Nothing about this entire situation is sane, not you and not those—those-overgrown children. I am a free woman and a Prime; I will not be spoken to as though I were a bauble of little value, and I certainly won’t be groped and pawed. I was not being done a favor, I was being insulted; and if it ever happens again I’ll do the very same thing. If all of you are crazy here, that doesn’t mean I have to go along with you.”

The woman in yellow had gasped in shock over what I’d said, but Quatry was stronger than that. She simply stared at me for a full frozen minute, then slowly nodded her head.

“I should have seen this sooner, from your earlier behavior,” she said, sounding as though she had found a solution to a puzzling question. “You’re not bright enough to understand the quality of those around you, to see how truly superior to you they are, so you simply reject everything and anything you come across. Those men are trained Primes, trained in a way you could never be and will never be. Through them and the offspring they produce, Central will be made supreme over every other planet in the Amalgamation, not merely the elected leader among equals. Whatever it is they want, that is exactly what you will give them, and that while quietly bearing their children. You, someone who hasn’t even established her percentage level yet, will not even speak to her betters unless spoken to first, and then she will respond properly and politely. Do you understand me, girl? ”

“What I understand is that you would certainly do better in my place than I would,” I said, understanding even more fully the futility of arguing with mindless fanatics. “Why don’t you and I trade places, and then you can kiss the feet of those-marvels-in person?”

“I’ve already had the privilege of being in your place,” she answered, and the ice in her eyes cleared briefly to show pride and pleasure and fierce satisfaction. “I served their sires all the years I was permitted to do so, and some of the present generation have to be my sons. If you weren’t a Prime you would never be allowed near them, and even as a Prime you barely qualify. It’s my job to see to it that you do as you’re told, and believe me, you will do as you’re told. For inexcusable behavior I sentence you to First Punishment, the hardest sentence I’m able to give a first offender. If you should prove to be too thickheaded to learn from that, it will be my pleasure to go on from there. Get her out of my sight.”

The two Sees took my arms again, and I was pulled out after the other woman in yellow who led the way with a grimly satisfied expression on her face. She was younger than the woman Quatry but not what might be considered young, which probably meant she was the same sort of retired servant. I’d had my own ideas as to what was done with female Primes who could no longer give them the babies they wanted, but apparently some were made further use of instead of merely being put quietly to sleep. It took a really sick mind to guard a program with the conditioned aggressiveness of former victims of that program, and I couldn’t decide whether to feel angry or nauseated. Even mass murderers didn’t destroy their victims more than once.

I was distracted with my thoughts for a moment or two after leaving the office, but was brought back to what was going on around me when I noticed I was being taken away from the dormitory doors and up the corridor to the branching. When I’d first been led in it had been up the left-hand fork, but now I was taken past the guard post and to the right. Passing the curve brought to sight three unmarked doors, one to the left, two to the right, and it was into the first of the right-hand doors that I was taken. The room was small and pale yellow, with nothing in it but a padded table and a narrow cabinet against one wall, not enough to be called ominous or to cause unease. The woman in yellow closed the door behind the Sees and me, and the smile she wore finally forced me to consider the question of what they were going to do to me.

“Put her on the table,” the woman in yellow said as she walked to the cabinet, the anticipation in her voice so laced with a sense of justice, you might say, that I began to be aware of a flutter inside me. I hadn’t spent much time thinking about what they would do to me for refusing to cooperate, the refusal itself had seemed much too natural to generate thoughts like that. They were wrong and I was right, and what else was there to consider? I had thought it possible they might kill me, but now I could see they weren’t going to kill me.

The first thing the Secs did was take away my smock, and then I was forced face down onto the padded table. The material of the table was warm and comfortable rather than cold and hard, and my wrists and ankles were closed into soft, gentle bindings rather than unyielding metal. For some reason my heart was beating rather hard by that time, just as though I were being threatened with some barbaric torture, but that was ridiculous. Misguided or not, those were still people of a civilized culture, as far from naked, screaming savages as—

“Hold her thigh,” the woman in yellow directed, and as soon as two strong hands had complied I felt the stinging stab of a needle. Something was injected into me and then the woman went back to the cabinet, returning to the table a moment later with a bottle of clear liquid in one hand and a wad of cotton in the other. The smile she looked down at me with was just short of gleeful, and I discovered I was trying to pull my wrists free from where they were bound below the edges of the table.

“So you have the unmitigated gall to think you were right in what you did,” she said, a definite edge of fanaticism to her voice as she continued to smile that same smile. “You offended a man so far above you that you should have fainted in delight at his even noticing you, and you aren’t even sorry you did it. I think, dear, we now have to search for that sorrow, and when we find it you’re to tell me at once. If it’s deep enough and sincere enough it might get you something of a reprieve, but don’t expect the reprieve to come too quickly. Living with sorrow for a time brings a bad girl regret for having been bad, and you were a very bad girl indeed. You’ll tell me that, too, that you were a bad girl, and then you’ll tell me how sorry you are. Are you ready?”

I had the impression that her question was for me, but one of the Secs took it as a cue. She gathered my hair together and pulled it away from my back, and then the woman in yellow came too close to the table for me to see her where she stood. I heard the sound of a bottle being uncapped and then the slosh of liquid, and a moment later a wet line was being drawn across my back. The line went from left to right before it ended, I heard the slosh of liquid again, and then another wet line was being drawn. My heart had really begun hammering when the first of the liquid had touched me, but the second line was completed and a third started, and I still felt nothing but wet. No pain, nothing but the mildest of discomfort—I didn’t understand what they were doing.

I didn’t understand, that is, until I was completely covered with lines, and then those lines began to dry.