The man smiled slowly. “Time goes by slow here.”
“So I see,” J.B. murmured. “What part of the big experiment do you cover here? I can’t see anything but dimmies and cowards.”
The man chuckled. “They’re slow, sure. We make ’em and keep ’em that way. The cripples, the dimmies, the fat and ugly. The rejects. Those with something wrong. See, ideally they wouldn’t exist. But they do. So we have to work out how to get the best of ’em, which is why we set up a primitive society and see how they work it out for themselves.”
“Doesn’t sound much of an experiment to me.”
“Oh, it is. See, those who do well can mebbe be moved to other sectors, and they also add to our data about how the individual can develop within a constricted society when given autonomy.”
J.B. barked a sardonic laugh. “Big words. Just let ’em do what they want and see what works out for you, right?”
The man shrugged. “Fair assessment.”
“What about the others? The ones who don’t improve?”
“Well, it’s like this. Dr. Andower runs a sector for biological experimentation—”
“Yeah, I know about that butcher,” J.B. interrupted.
The man smiled. This time it was cold, sharklike. “Well, then, you know what he does. Thing is, that kind of work demands subjects. And they have to come from somewhere.”
J.B.’s blood ran cold. “Then why,” he said slowly, “am I in this sector?”
The man inhaled, then shook his head. “You’re no stupe. I didn’t ask for you, but Arcadian has ideas of his own. You can bring a lot to the people here, if they’re receptive. But consider this—you have a defect. Without these—” he flicked a finger at J.B.’s glasses, causing the Armorer to pull back “—you’re at a disadvantage. Andower likes to try to put right nature’s imperfections, and where better to find them than here.”
J.B. looked past the sector leader. The dark-haired woman was rubbing enthusiastically at herself while she looked back at them. The blonde was staring at the dark-haired woman in fascination, her mouth hanging open and drooling. To one side, the older woman was muttering to herself, petting the dog. His gaze came back to the sector leader. The man grinned mirthlessly.
“Yeah. I think you get it, now.”
Chapter Thirteen
The companions knew that Arcadian had aims for them that centered around their absorption into the life of the ville, and their subsuming to his ideals—something that all of them knew was never going to happen. Which left the separated companions with the knowledge that they had to effect escape routes and a means of communication between one another. More than that, they needed to find allies within their sector who could aid them. They didn’t have the time to build trust slowly; they would have to go by instinct.
It was a huge risk, but perhaps not as much as they thought. For it had never really occurred to them that not everyone in the ville fell in with the aims and methods of the baron. Maybe, as much as they were looking for allies, there were those who were looking for them.
AFTER C URTIS, the sector leader who had revealed his name almost as an afterthought, had dismissed J.B. and returned to the two women who had been occupying his time, the old woman with the dog had led him out of the hut.
“This way, show you where you live,” she said blankly, not even looking at him as she walked past, the
mangy dog hobbling in her wake. Yet, despite the air of seedy disgust that she carried with her, she didn’t smell as J.B. thought she might. The Armorer had been prepared to get downwind of her, then found it wasn’t necessary. Though the way in which she walked, almost naked and unconcerned, through the dirt tracks of the sector was a little disconcerting.
Especially as he could see huddles of people gathering, staring, some following at a distance. Then it hit him. They weren’t looking at the woman. Given the way that some of them looked, that shouldn’t have been surprising. No, they were looking at him, muttering about him. Recognized from the group’s initial arrival, and conspicuous by the way in which he had been delivered this time, he was also a newcomer. And he should have realized that communities like this were wary of outsiders.
It took nearly half an hour to arrive at the tumbledown shack where the woman and her canine halted. J.B. thought he recognized the area vaguely as the one on which they had first stumbled. There were sparse woodlands as the huts petered out, and perhaps the maze—tempting right now—just beyond. But then he figured that the whole of this sector was ringed by sparse forest, and without his minisextant he was unable to take an accurate reading. Curtis had relieved him of his weapons and the bag in which he kept the sextant—“You won’t need them here.” Looking back, J.B. wondered just why he had given them up so easily to a man who was himself unarmed. Perhaps there was something in the fact that he thought of the man’s voice as hypnotic? Maybe that was how he ran this sector.
The old woman walked away, leaving J.B. to his thoughts and the shack itself. The windows were nothing more than gaps in the metal sheeting that covered the timber frame, and although there was the running water and facilities that had so bemused them before, there was nothing else other than dust and dirt. How was he supposed to eat? How was food supplied, clothes other than those in which he stood? All these were questions that would, perhaps, only be answered in time. J.B. went into the shack and looked around. Not that there was much to see: a simple two rooms, with no traces of whoever had lived there prior to his allocation.
What was he supposed to do? He felt at a complete loose end. Usually, there was always something on his mind, some task that needed attention. But here? Why was he here? What was expected of him? What was going to happen, and what could he do to prepare for it? It was all nebulous and beyond his grasp.
One thing for sure: there was an atmosphere that he didn’t feel at all comfortable with. As he looked out of one of the raggedly hacked holes that passed for a window, he could see little sign of life. The shacks around seemed empty. It had been like that when he had first arrived, with Ryan and the others, as though these people lived shadow lives. That time it had been because they were keeping out of the way of intruders. This time, there was a more sinister feel in the air.
J.B. moved so that he was standing in the doorway. As if by the act of standing there he had invoked their presence, a crowd of the shambling misfits that populated the sector began to cluster in the paths that led between the empty shacks. They were three or four
deep, and there were four groups of them, two or three abreast. Men, women and children of all ages. There was low muttering that passed between them as they moved slowly forward, converging on the space in front of J.B.’s shack.
The Armorer counted them quickly. About thirty to forty. They weren’t strong, neither were they brave. Not all of them would have the balls to fight. Most, he figured, would be wanting to watch someone else do the fighting. But even so, there could be a dozen or more who would be willing to get physical. That could be a real problem. The Armorer knew that he was stronger than any of them, and that he knew how to fight. It was unlikely that any of them had those skills.
But did he want to fight them? The sheer weight of numbers could defeat him, particularly if he lost his feet. Moreover, he had to live with these people. To inflict damage on them would only draw attention to himself, making it harder to find an escape route.
He walked over the threshold. “Well?” he asked simply. His voice was loud and clear when compared to those that answered him.
“Seen you before—”
“You’re one of them—”
“What you want with us? Why not leave us alone?”
“Curtis don’t put you here for no reason.”
“You not going to be the boss of us—”
Fear. The reek of it clung to his nostrils and made him feel a mixture of revulsion and pity. They were coming for him because they thought he was coming for them. And this was the only way they felt safe.
The Armorer made a decision that he was sure he
was going to regret in the short term. In the long term, though…
The bravest of them began to run toward him, hoping to hit home before he had a chance to launch a counterattack. He just had time to remove his glasses and put them in his pants’ pocket before they reached him. Although it meant that he could see little but a blur, he would be damned if he was going to let his glasses get broken in a scuffle where he was overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers.
A blur of shadow and color on each side, delineated only by the sweat stench of fear—that was all he could register as the first few reached him. Their blows were poorly and inexpertly aimed, their strength nowhere near enough to hurt him, even if they hit home. He was able to duck and weave, avoiding all but the most glancing of blows. They were little more than a distraction. The real problem that his decision not to fight back, but only to offer resistance such that he wouldn’t be hurt, was taken as a sign of weakness by the crowd, and encouraged them to move forward.
Blows began to rain on him from behind, where those who had led the charge were now wheeling around on their own momentum to come back at him from the rear. Those he wasn’t so prepared for, and although there was no one in the crowd who had any real power against such a combat-hardened veteran as the Armorer, still their surprise and cumulative effect was enough to make him stumble forward.
Buoyed by their seeming success, the group began to swarm around him, all of them trying to get in kicks and punches of their own. This worked in his favor, in
as much as the sheer mass of humanity got in one another’s way, many of the blows missing their intended target and falling on others in the crowd. But as they closed and jostled around him, he found himself hemmed in by them, the weight of their numbers pushing him so that, in the dust and confusion, he began to stumble. He had been able to deflect many of the blows, but as the crowd became tight around him, he found that he no longer had the reach. His space had become restricted, and more of the blows were hitting home. They were still weak and ineffective for the most part, but the cumulative effect concerned him.
He began to think that he’d made a poor call. He’d counted on their cowardice, whereas his passive resistance had done nothing but encourage them. He felt even worse—in many ways—when a lucky blow glanced at the back of his ear, stunning him and pitching him forward just enough to stumble over the feet that milled around.
For a moment he thought that he might have shuffled enough to recover his balance, but another leg in his path caught him below the knee, and then he was down. Their voices around and above him crowed in triumph as they milled around, each seeking to get in a blow or kick of his or her own.
Being down and prone was the thing that he had feared. Now he was truly vulnerable, as even if he wanted to fight back, he couldn’t. The blows and kicks began to hurt. His ribs and spine felt bruised and battered. It was still nothing compared to what he had taken in the past, but it was far from an easy ride. In truth, it wasn’t the kicks and punches that could have
done the real damage, but rather that he was now in a position to be trampled into the ground.
And then, as he curled himself into a fetal ball for as much protection as possible, preparing himself for the pain that was to come, it was over. He stayed where he was, tucked in tight, unwilling to expose himself to any blows, in case this was little more than a lull. But as he lay there, he could hear the muttering of voices as the mob dispersed.
Soon, all was quiet, and he carefully uncurled himself. Even through the blur of his unaided vision, he could see that the spaces in front of the hut and the dirt tracks were now empty.
Apart, that was, from the old woman and her dog. She walked up to him, and while the dog sniffed and licked experimentally at J.B.’s arm and face, she took hold of him and helped him to his feet before aiding him back into the tumbledown shack that was now his home.
Then, while the dog curled up and slept, she got water from the faucet and helped him bathe the dust and blood from those few areas that had been cut rather than bruised.
“They’ll leave you now,” she said. “Who you are scares them. They need to make sure you’re not going to be like Curtis, telling them what to do all the time. You did the right thing.”
J.B. took his glasses out of his pants’ pocket. They were intact. He put them on.
“You knew what I was doing?” he asked, suddenly unsure if his judgment of her had been correct. The twinkle he now saw in her eyes made him sure.
“It’s what we do to hide,” she said with the ghost of
a smile. “Doesn’t always pay to be who you are around here. Got me?”
J.B.’s smile was broader. “Yeah. Got you.”
K RYSTY MANAGED to avoid Tod for three days. There had been something about the way he touched her, spoke to her, brushed against her, that had set her senses on alert. It was a simple enough animal thing: he wanted her. Naturally, she didn’t feel that way. She loved and wanted only Ryan. And she didn’t need any distraction at this point: their joint objective was to find a way of communicating with their companions, then getting the hell out of the ville.
It wasn’t going to be easy; that was obvious from the outset. Alex ran a tight sector, and he was completely focused on the objectives of his experiments, which meant that everyone else in the sector was expected to feel and act the same way. Mating, fitness, the pursuit of physical excellence—it was a hard regime that left little time for anything else.
The first two days had been further periods of orientation, with the notion of settling in being little more than a cursory breath taken in their new quarters before they were launched on the programs that ran like a well-oiled machine in this state-within-a-state.
They had been billeted together, a room in a building that housed six other couples. The pairing of male and female was arbitrary. Although each couple shared a room, they weren’t linked in any other way. Sex wasn’t encouraged in the “home” environment, although to describe the sterile dwelling conditions as such was possibly stretching a definition. The rooms in the
building were tidy and empty of anything that had personal connotations. The people of this sector were encouraged to think of themselves as part of a collective, working as a whole for the greater good. As such, there were only the occasional flashes of individual personality that shone through the uniform monotony of work. Even though it was only a few days, and they had seen their new companions at mealtimes and in the morning, it would be fair to say that neither Ryan nor Krysty had been able to tell if they had run across them in the course of the day’s orientations. Names, too, were still a blur.
It had the advantage of them being able to keep some distance and assess the situation, yet at the same time made it hard to find out if there were any potential allies. Everyone they encountered in the sector seemed, on the surface, to be as dedicated to the program as their leader. Any who dissented kept it so well hidden that it would take time to dig it out. Time they didn’t have.
It was intensive: medical examinations from the whitecoats were the first thing on the agenda. Some of it was intrusive, probes and samples from parts of the anatomy that either of them would have committed violence to avoid under other circumstances. Krysty was overly sensitive due to a past experience, but they bore it by focusing on what they could learn from the process. Alex’s whitecoats might have felt they were the ones gathering data, but in truth it was a two-way process. Their fitness was assessed in a series of similarly grueling—albeit in a different manner—tests, overseen by the sector leader himself. Assault courses
and unarmed combat left them sore and tired at the end of the second day.