Arcadian's Asylum (20 page)

The unarmed combat had also confirmed what Ryan had suspected: the men of the sector viewed him with some disdain and contempt because of his eye. The defect, albeit one from combat rather than congenital, was viewed as a weakness. He had viewed unarmed combat exercises, and had seen the level of ferocity. When it came to his turn, the men went for him with a greater intent, as though willing one another to purge him from their perfect community. He had to fight harder than he would have liked, rendering opponents unconscious to negate their threat. The whitecoats were more than happy, seeing him as a way to push their programs further. All he could see was the resentment his actions would add to the hostility.

Krysty, on the other hand, was welcomed. Her physical perfection seeming to make her fit perfectly. Nothing was said to the people around her of her mutation. The whitecoats kept it quiet for reasons of their own. That suited her for the moment, as it put her in a position where she was more able than Ryan to wander freely. When it came out, as she was sure it had to eventually, then that would be another matter. For now, she was keen to take any advantage given to them.

Thus it was that she was able to wander the streets of the sector after the third day of training and orientation. She had been shown images and old vid clips to determine her sexual orientation and preferences. Ryan had been through a similar process, and she had been appalled by his description of how a whitecoat had prodded his prostrate to produce a sperm sample for fer
tility analysis. It made her own experiences of the day seem mild. Yet she knew that this had just been the fore-taste for what was to come. It wouldn’t be long before they were sent to the coupling chambers. And they’d seen that on their arrival: there was no way she wanted that.

So it was that she made her way from their billet, headed toward the building where she knew their weapons were stored. Her aim wasn’t to take them back, but rather to recce the location to see how easy it would be. To take them now would be to risk discovery. Preparation was everything.

Ryan stayed behind. It was a mutual decision made in light of their respective profiles in the sector. Krysty could move pretty freely, already assumed to be one of the group. Ryan stood out and attracted attention. Krysty could be entering the building for any number of reasons to do with the program; Ryan would always be suspected of something. As a basic insight into the unchanging nature of the human psyche, Krysty would have been too pleased to ironically draw it to the attention of sector chief, Alex, if not for the fact that it would screw their plans completely.

The entrance to the building was, as ever, unguarded. She found it hard to accept that the people of the ville were so well indoctrinated that any form of dissent was unthinkable. There had to be someone, somewhere. Still, it served her well, now. There were few people around as twilight began to fall on the sector, and she was able to enter without notice. Inside, the main corridor was unlighted. There was evidently no timer system on the lights, and only the distant well of light
around the stairs to upper levels bespoke of any habitation. The ground level had the silence of emptiness. Distant sounds, echoing the ghostly nature of the light, betrayed activity on the upper levels. Down here, though, all was quiet.

The door to the room in which she had seen their weapons stored was locked. She allowed herself a little smile. No sec, but they didn’t trust the people that much. It was a fairly flimsy wooden door, inset with frosted glass. Breaking it would be no problem, but would be too conspicuous. The lock was a simple one. There was space between the door itself and the lintel, so if she could just…

Krysty thought about it for a moment, then tried the door to the room opposite. It was unlocked. Obviously nothing of note in there. But it was used for administration, like the room opposite, and in the unlocked drawers of the cabinets containing files and documents from the whitecoats, she found what she wanted. The runners of the drawers housed folders containing the files, each tagged with a numbered card in a yellowed plastic holder. Thanking Gaia for the fact that not all of the predark materials had perished, she slipped the plastic off the folder, carefully unpicked it and split a piece off, leaving the face of the card covered, then replaced it. No one would notice, and if they did would probably think nothing of it.

Crossing back to the locked door and closing the other behind her, she checked that all was still quiet before slipping the plastic into the gap between door and lintel. Carefully rocking the door, she pushed the plastic. It seemed to take forever, but finally she felt it
give under the pressure, slipping around the lock itself and into the bed, pushing the bolt back. She felt the door give with a soft click.

Another quick look around and she slipped into the room, closing the door behind her. She knew where she had seen the weapons stashed, so she started to head for the cabinet.

It was only then that, with a sinking feeling, she realized that she wasn’t alone. She stopped, then turned slowly.

Tod was sitting with his feet up on a desk, silent and unmoving. He remained as still as he said softly, “I wondered how many nights I’d have to wait here. I knew you’d come, though.”

Krysty felt her heart sink.

“So what are you going to do about it?” she said, trying to keep her voice level.

“There are a lot of things I could do about it,” he replied. “Depends on how far you’re prepared to go.”

“Meaning?”

He shrugged. She could see that, but not his face in the gloom of the shuttered room. His tone, however, told her all she needed to know.

“Alex runs this place, but he’s got tunnel vision so bad that he can’t see what happens right next to him. He’s not going to check those weapons. You could take them now, and as long as you could keep them concealed in your room, then no one need ever know.”

“Only you.”

“Only me. As you say.”

Krysty considered that. “Everything comes at a price. What’s yours?”

“Mine?” He paused. It seemed to her that he was weighing every syllable carefully. “I think you know. Alex sticks to the program and makes sure we all do. Coupling and mating are done to a strict rota. Not because we want to, not when we want to, and not with who we want to. Sometimes you yearn for something a little different.”

“I thought as much,” she said coldly. “I could break your neck if you try anything. Before you even had a chance to yell. I’ve watched you. Not like you’ve watched me,” she added meaningly, “but I have. And you’re soft. Not like a lot of the others here.”

He smiled, although she couldn’t see it, only hear it in his voice.

“Soft? Yeah, that’s probably about right. In the way you mean, too. But not just that. There’s more to human experience than just the mechanics. That’s what we do here. Some of us don’t like it, but we just have to go along with it. You’re right. I would. But not try to make you. What would be the point? No, a world where there’s the choice, and mebbe someone like you.”

Krysty frowned. He was rambling like a man on jolt, but unless she was badly mistaken…

“You know about the way this ville is made?”

“I know that the strips between the sectors aren’t defended. We only think they are. All you have to do is avoid the sec, and you can link up with your friends. I can help you to do that. I can make the weapons available to you.”

“And you want what from me in return?”

The air was heavy with her expectation, still and tense. Finally he spoke. “You know what I’d like. But
I’ve seen you look at Ryan like I look at you, and I know it wouldn’t happen unless under duress. And that’s not what I want. Duress is every day here. I’m not alone. You help me and those like me, and I’ll help you and Ryan. All we have to do is be a little… Krysty, do you know what circumspect is?”

She laughed, the relief obvious in her voice. “I should do. We’ve just spent the last ten minutes acting it out.”

FOR MILDRED AND Doc, it was also a matter of three days before the reality of the situation began to bite. In their case, given the mind games that were an integral part of the sector in which they had been housed, the unreality of a situation was very much the norm.

For two days they had been shown the way in which the sector worked—group experiments in psychodynamics and the modification of behavior through group therapy and one-on-one experimentation. For Doc, who had been brought up and then trawled before Freud had come to prominence, and to whom psychobabble was a tongue heard from whitecoats and distrusted for that very reason, it had been merely bizarre to see the way in which those leading the sector conducted their business. But to Mildred, part of whose medical schooling had taken in psychiatric medicine, it was recognizable as a strange parody of what she had learned, as though the information had been partially preserved through the nukecaust and then interpreted in a way that seemed to turn it inside out and examine it from an obtuse angle.

When she had remarked to Doc that the lunatics had
taken over the asylum, she had been joking. Yet now she wasn’t sure that she hadn’t inadvertently hit upon the truth. The people who were, presumably, the whitecoats and leaders of the sector lived and worked side-by-side with those who were the subjects. Who was there to perform Arcadian’s wishes, and who were the performers dancing to the tune they played, was a matter of conjecture. It was only during a musical game, which brought the analogy to her mind, that Mildred realized from their behavior that the fat woman who had been in the party meeting them wasn’t, as she had assumed, one of the sector leaders, but was a subject who was being allowed to act in that role as a way of making her see her own behavior as being disruptive, and thus brought into line. The thin woman and the man were definitely whitecoats, but who was senior was a mystery to her.

The scenario had made her think of a therapist whose theories had grabbed her at medical school, partly because he was an outsider in the field whose work was being hotly disputed. From a conventional early career, she recalled, he had evolved his theories about there being no psychological disorders as such, merely breakdowns in the way that people communicated and interacted. To that end, he had set up a house where the “doctors” and “patients” lived on equal terms. Of course, with boundaries blurred and no conventional structure in place, results weren’t easily defined, and hotly disputed. The music class, where a variety of predark and homemade instruments wailed a cacophony that gradually evolved into a pattern that was certainly not harmonious, but perhaps signaled a
level of behavior modification through cooperation that could be extended beyond the room and into the rest of life, made her realize that this was, at least in part, how they evolved. The way in which the fat woman lost her way, became frustrated, then broke down and cried before being comforted by the others made her see the distinctions.

It was certainly contrary to the way that life was lived outside of the ville. How it would fit with some of the villes they had fought their way out of was something that was hard to contemplate. Unless it was just that this was in isolation, and when applied to other practices in the ville it would gain teeth. She discussed this with Doc.

“Your therapist was certainly taking chances,” Doc mused. “A lunatic may be a lost soul, but is still a loose canon for all that. And I should know. This cannot be all there is.”

“It’s all they’re showing us.” Mildred shrugged. “Maybe they just deal with this tiny detail.”

Doc grinned crookedly. “I sincerely doubt that anyone is that benign these days. Would it not be a working hypothesis to state that, as much as we are observing them, they are using this to observe us? To see how we react, how much we take at face value? Perhaps to assess how much, ah, adjustment we may need?”

“Or to see how open we may be to those practices of theirs that aren’t so harmless?”

Doc nodded. “I am no judge of their judgment, my dear Dr. Wyeth, but I do know myself. And, I pride myself, I know you well enough to make a guess that they will see you are more likely to respond…if not
positively, then perhaps without such vehemence to procedures that may not be so palatable. I think you should beware. I also think we will be separated soon. We must maintain contact when this happens.”

Mildred nodded. “We need to look out for each other as much as for a way out. Don’t worry, Doc, when it comes, we’ll be ready.”

So it was that when the time came upon them during the following morning, both were prepared. The fat woman, now restored in temperament after the breakdown they had witnessed the previous day, came to their quarters with a man Doc didn’t recognize. Lugubrious in a manner that seemed absurd on his short, squat frame he requested that Doc accompany him to take part in a chess tournament. It was time for him to stop spectating and start participating. Mildred started to join him, but was stopped by the fat woman.

“No. It’s perhaps better if you take part in another of our activities.” There was an undertone in her voice that mixed fear with aggression, as though she expected an argument. Thus, she was a little bemused if pleased when Mildred agreed with alacrity. If she and the lugubrious man noticed the brief glance that passed between Doc and Mildred as they parted, then they showed no sign.

Doc and the lugubrious man—who didn’t reveal his name—made small talk as they progressed to the grassed area where the chess tables were gathered. Doc, unsure as to whether he was a whitecoat, was unwilling to talk too much and too deeply in case he give something away. It struck him that it was going to be a tricky situation for Mildred and himself to extract them
selves. Who could they trust, and who could they build alliances with when they were unsure of sides?