Ryan noted that they complied without rising to either the explicit or implied insult, turning and leaving
without a word. The man had an absolute authority. He clapped the one-eyed man on the shoulder.
“Good to have you here,” he said in the same exuberant tones. “I’m guessing that you mebbe weren’t a hundred percent convinced of this move—I know it’s hard to adjust to what we’re doing here, as it’s unique, right?—but you’ll soon see that we’re onto something.” He extended his other arm so that it encompassed Krysty’s shoulders before continuing. “Listen, you need to freshen up, see where you’re going to be billeted, then I’ll take you on the grand tour and fill you in on where I see you fitting in. One thing—I’d rather you lose those,” he added, inclining his head to indicate their blasters. “We don’t carry weapons in this sector, and we don’t have a sec team like the others. We look after ourselves here, and if we have a problem we use our bare hands to sort it out. That okay with you? Hell, sure it is.”
With which, and without bothering to wait for an answer, he swept them toward the building. Once they were inside, he stopped at a door on the left. Kicking it open, he ushered them through the doorway, only taking his arms away from them when it became impossible for them all to pass through together.
“Tod,” he boomed in the same tone. It was as though, Krysty thought, he had only the one setting. “Hey, Tod,” he boomed again when the man with his back to them didn’t immediately answer.
“Alex, I’m actually busy.” The man sighed, turning to face them. He scanned them quickly, but Krysty caught more than curiosity in the way he looked at her. “These the new ones sent to us by the baron?”
It was a rhetorical question, and Alex treated it as such. He continued as though Tod hadn’t spoken.
“Get those weapons off and give them to Tod, here. He’ll make sure they’re safely filed away.”
“That’s me, the original keeper of the keys,” Tod added humorously, though both Ryan and Krysty were at a loss to the joke.
Figuring that they knew where their weapons would be if they needed to retrieve them, and that they wouldn’t be at a disadvantage if everyone in the ville was unarmed, they handed over their weaponry. For Ryan, he felt almost naked without the Steyr, the SIG-Sauer and the panga. But he kept his scarf, hoping that neither Alex nor Tod would notice how the ends seemed weighted. Krysty unholstered her blaster and handed it over. Alex made to take it from her, but Tod was quicker. His hand brushed against hers as he took possession of the Smith & Wesson, and she could feel the energy coming from him.
Selective breeding programs, Arcadian had called them. She had no wish to be part of any such thing, but she could see that perhaps Tod had other ideas.
While the younger man made a note of the weaponry in a ledger, then filed it away in a cabinet that he locked with a key that came from the top left-hand desk drawer, Alex extended his arms again, as if to gather them in before sweeping them from the room.
“Now then, Tod here is busy, like he said. This sector doesn’t run itself, and I don’t know what I’d do without him—”
“Exactly what you did before I started, Alex. Rely on someone else,” Tod said with that humorous tone
again; except this time, Krysty was sure she detected an edge of malice. She did some filing herself. It could be a useful piece of information.
If the older man had noted that, he made no indication as he led them out into the corridor.
“Now then, let’s not waste time on settling you in. What we do here is develop a population that aims at a peak of physical fitness and development. You’ve traveled, and you know that the major problem with a lot of the land that lies beyond our ville is that it’s physically suspect. Mutations, deformities, weakness, an inability to develop what has been given and make it better. A weakened body leads to a weakened mind, and then the two start to feed off each other, eating into each other so that you’re left with nothing but decay, moral, physical and mental. I’m betting that could sum up what you’ve seen out there. Am I right?”
“I guess you could put it that way,” Ryan answered, weighing his words with care.
“Damn right I’m right,” Alex snapped. “If people are born with weakness in the body, then they can’t help that. But they can be taught that it can be improved upon with mental effort. At the same time, if you get people to that peak, and you take people that have attained that naturally, and you put them together, then you start to develop a strain of humanity that doesn’t have the weakness inherent. That’s what we’re doing here, in essence. Putting together people like that, and also keeping them to their peak, so that the attitude becomes in-bred in them.”
In-bred is right, Krysty thought. Especially if you have a small gene pool to begin with. But seeing as she
suspected that their presence was partly to help prevent that, she held her peace for the moment.
“Now then,” Alex continued in a manner that was beginning to rankle, “let’s show you what we do.”
He took the stairs two or three at a time, seemingly effortlessly, and intended in part to demonstrate his fitness and test theirs. Determined not to be bested, they followed at his pace. He flung open a door and gestured that they look in. Five people—two men, three women—were running on treadmills while a man and a woman in lab coats monitored their speed and distance on dials fitted to the mills, noting the results on clipboards.
“Endurance. Lung capacity. Muscle strength. Now follow me,” he said, before closing the door and running down the corridor and up another flight of stairs.
Krysty and Ryan were at his heels when he stopped and opened another door. Inside, the room was padded on the walls and floor. Four men and two women were engaged in hand-to-hand combat, with seemingly no quarter. Once again, to the side, were a man and a woman in lab coats, making notes on clipboards.
“Reactions, aggression, the desire to win. Speed and efficiency. Survival of the fittest isn’t just brute strength, my friends. Cunning and the ability to think with the lightning speed of your reflexes is also important. But from what I hear, I don’t need to tell you that.”
He slammed the door and was off again, sprinting ahead and up to the top story, Ryan and Krysty close on his heels. Another corridor, another door. But this one truly stopped them in their tracks.
Observed by two men with the obligatory clipboard,
two couples were mating. There was no other word for it. They were coupled with no passion or tenderness, like livestock brought together for the sole purpose of reproduction, watched dispassionately as though by herdsmen. Two hard beds housed the couples. The men were on top, both pumping to a regular rhythm, while the women lay underneath. Occasionally, the right physical connection would cause a gasp or groan, but this wasn’t reflected in the serious and almost bored mien of the women.
One of the men gasped as he reached the point of no return, then waited for a moment before climbing off his partner. The woman made to move, but was stayed by one of the lab-coated men, who put down his clipboard and indicated that she tilt her pelvis, so that she was raised up. He timed her on a stopwatch, then nodded his consent that she lie flat once more. While this had occurred, the other man had also climaxed. His departure was followed by a similar procedure from the other lab-coated observer.
“Every step is taken to ensure a successful coupling,” Alex barked. “A good result is paramount, as you will find out.”
Krysty thought of the expression on Tod’s face and gave an involuntary shudder. They would have to move fast. She had no intention of having to find out.
FOR DOC AND Mildred, there wasn’t even the chance to see the sector headquarters, as they were interrupted in their passage by two women and a man who approached them from a side street.
“Wait,” commanded one of the women, in a voice
that was shrill yet contained a note of authority. The sec guard immediately brought the party to a halt and stood silently while the woman approached and circled. She sniffed the air around them, then stepped back and said over her shoulder, “An interesting proposition? Yes, I think so.”
She beckoned her two companions forward. While she was dressed in black-and-white-check squares that resembled nothing so much as a chess board, her fellow female was in a spiral white on black—or it may have been the other way around—that drew the eyes in and disoriented if looked at for too long. Especially as it rippled when she moved. Doc, for one, found this to be the case, and he had to look away before nausea welled up in his throat.
The two women walked around, sniffing the air, craning their heads between the bodies of the sec party, so that with bizarre pecking motions they appeared to be almost attacking Doc and Mildred, who were trapped in the middle. They said nothing. Mildred glanced at Doc, one eyebrow raised quizzically. He smiled briefly, gave an even briefer shake of the head. Whatever was going on, they had to keep their nerve and their peace for the moment.
The women were an odd sight, in their monochrome-patterned clothes, the checkered woman short and thin, the spiral woman tall and fat. Even their flowing hair conformed, as the fat woman was jet-black, whereas her companion was gray almost to the point of being white.
Then the man, who had been lurking at the threshold of their orbit, stepped in. In contrast to the stark monochrome of his companions, the strawberry-blond
man was dressed in clothes that had been tie-dyed in a variety of clashing colors.
“Fuzebow. Darlang. Kitta-kitta. Bwoow. Nit-nit-nit. Darlap? Darlang.”
“This where they keep the crazies, then?” Mildred asked mildly. “Or is this some kind of test? ’Cause I’m telling you, people, if it is, then it’s kind of tedious.”
“Especially the phonetic poetry. I always thought that was terrible idea, although I must confess I know little about it,” Doc added.
The three bizarrely dressed interlopers stepped back.
“They’re good,” the fat woman said grudgingly. “Whether they can keep it up, it’s for real, or they’re just bluffing is another matter.”
“Even if they’re just using bluff, it still shows a remarkable composure. Did you note the complete lack of surprise when we appeared? I would have expected a flicker of shock,” the man mused. “It is, after all, a usual response. Perhaps, then, we can say that they aren’t good, in the sense that they don’t fit the usual range of responses.”
“There was a look between them,” the thin woman said, addressing the man, but still looking squarely at Doc and Mildred. “So I’d say that they were actually surprised by our appearance—both literally, and in its suddenness—but they have learned to control reactions.”
“To meld the instinct and the rational,” the man said with an inclination of the head. “Have they been sent to the right place, then?”
“We’ll have to see,” the fat woman said with a more decisive tone. She addressed the sec guard, who had
remained impassive throughout. “You can leave us. We’ll take it from here.” Then, as they turned and marched away, she held up a hand to forestall the question that she could see forming on Mildred’s lips. “I know. They didn’t react, so why should your reaction, which was a little different, be remarkable compared to theirs. Simple—the same sec personnel are always deputed to escort newcomers to this sector. They are trained for the purpose, so that they don’t affect the reactions of such as yourself with their own. You see?”
Mildred shrugged. “That answers that, I guess. But it’s far from the only question I have.”
“I’m sure it is,” the thin woman said. “All will become clear to you in time, if you have the wherewithal to comprehend. But that, of course, is part of the reason you are here.”
“Is it?” Mildred said slowly.
“Oh, yes. This sector may resemble almost all the others in the outward appearance of the buildings, but what goes on behind those doors—and indeed, out in the open in some cases—is far from similar.”
“I’m sure,” Mildred said flatly.
Doc, meanwhile, had been studying the terrain around them. Like most of the ville, there were a collection of buildings either intact, repaired or rebuilt in the style of the days before skydark. The sidewalks and roads were empty. No traffic. No people except themselves.
“Do you, perhaps, have some kind of personnel deficiency in this sector?” he asked mildly. “Perhaps a drought of people who may live up to your expectation and needs?”
“Ah,” the fat woman said, nodding, “sarcasm as a defense mechanism. Interesting.”
“Sarcasm? Yes.” Doc shrugged. “Defense? No, I would not say so myself. More a reaction against boredom. Games never much interested me, and you seem to be keen on them. I’d rather know what we are here for. And, of course, why the streets are so empty.”
The blond man stepped across and put an arm around Doc’s shoulders. He ignored the old man’s attempt to shrug it off.
“To take matters in reverse order. The streets are empty as the people who live in this sector are all engaged, either inside or in the play area. As for your first point… Well, Dr. Tanner, I’m afraid you’ll have to get use to games. One of the first things man did was learn to play. Play expresses all the desires and fears of man within safe confines. It allows us all to express ideas and work out dilemmas without harm to one another. It is how we learn, and how we can change.”