by James Axler
Outside, the pairs once again came together in a group as they were herded back toward their respective quarters. The purpose in treating them as animals was obvious: the disorientation of the experiment added to this pack treatment to test their self-esteem. Nasty, Doc thought, but understandable from the point of the view of the sector leaders. Also a big mistake, as they couldn’t have realized that this would give Doc and Mildred the chance they needed to make contact.
“I see why you would wish to play to different rules,” Doc murmured, edging close to the woman in the midst of the pack.
She looked around carefully before answering. “Indeed. Your grasp of the rule changes this morning was good, and gratefully received.”
“My pleasure,” Doc said softly. “Perhaps a discussion on drawing up a new game could proceed?”
“Later. We know where you are. Wait for us tonight.”
“Very good,” Doc agreed before putting distance between them, murmuring a few words to others in the group that were of no consequence but would put any observer off the scent, before relaying the message to Mildred.
“Another sleepless night,” she said wryly. “Time was that I’d say it’d tell on me. Those were the days.”
“Weren’t they just,” Doc replied.
They passed the rest of the day in expectation of what was to come. It was hard not to let their impatience show, but as it was impossible in that sector to determine the shepherds from the sheep, it was imperative to go about their business with no sign of anticipation. For Mildred, a series of psychological tests with colors and shapes was rendered more dull than she could have imagined. The only thing keeping her attention focused was to wonder if any of the other eight people undertaking the experiment with her were likely to be on their side come the night.
Doc, on the other hand, was happy to let his mind wander as he had to take part in a bizarre experiment involving the dissection of a chilled frog, followed by an identical dissection on one that was living. Until he heard the piercing and weirdly human scream of the agonized amphibian, he had no idea that frogs could vocalize in such a manner. Beyond sadism, he couldn’t see how the experiment could prove anything. Testing the reactions of those involved was surely rendered false by the fact that those present wouldn’t wish to show signs of weakness under such a situation and would so maintain a front, no matter how artificial. The double-think of this sector could, if he considered it too much, drive him to despair and a permanent craziness.
But no: to focus on the night, and the creation of an escape route, was more than enough to distract him.
Both Mildred and Doc, therefore, were relieved when they were able to return to their quarters for the night. Nonetheless, the wait for their contact’s arrival was seemingly endless.
Eventually, in the dark watches, when all was silent, they could hear the faint scrabbling of someone climbing the wall. Mildred opened the window to allow entry to whoever was outside. The gray-haired woman climbed through, followed by a portly man with a growing bald patch around a fringe of black hair, and ripped pants. He was blowing heavily.
“We can’t go on meeting like this,” he panted by way of greeting.
“This is the first time,” Doc said, bemused.
“Joke,” the man puffed, leaning on his flexed knees and taking a deep breath before extending a hand. “Hamilton Dupree, at your service. Cloris here told me that you wanted to see us.”
Doc looked at the gray-haired woman, glad he now knew her name as he would never have guessed it given all the time in the world.
Mildred liked the man’s attitude. She was sick of wasting time. She didn’t realize that would soon change. “Guess you know who we are,” she began, “so let’s cut the crap and get to it.”
While they listened, she told them about Jak’s visit, and the knowledge they now had about travel between sectors. “If we can make arrangements with our friends in other sectors, then we can get the hell out. But we could do it a lot better if you were with us.”
“On the other hand, if you did it alone then we wouldn’t get in the shit if you failed,” Cloris pointed out.
“So what do you gain by that?” Mildred asked, puzzled.
“Nothing. And I’m not saying that we don’t wish to gain. But we’ve been here all along,” Cloris said with a shrug.
“You have to take into account a few things,” Hamilton added ruefully. “In the first place, I could make an argument that we’ve been in this sector so long that we’ve become used to the way things are, and our will and desire has been sapped. And there might be something in that. But the truth, I fear, is that we’re more than a little cowardly. We’re not fighters. No one here is. We have no weapons.”
“There is no sec here, and no one is armed,” Mildred said flatly. “What’s the problem?”
“There are men with blasters in the other sectors,” Hamilton replied. “That’s what worries us. Cowards, you see. Afraid of pain.”
“What about the pain of today, and the pain of being in constant bondage?” Doc said mildly. “Is that not as bad?”
“While you know you can still stay alive, you can mebbe put up with a little pain,” Cloris answered. “Putting it plainly, those of us who find support and comfort in banding together and mebbe pretending we’re rebels by breaking bounds need reassurance that we’re not going to go the whole way and end up with nothing but the farm to show for it.”
“There are no definites. I could lie to you, but I won’t,” Mildred replied. “But I’ll tell you something. If we do this, then the whole ville is going to explode whether you like it or not. Jak’s ready, and he’s contacting the others. It’ll happen, as simple as that. Question is, do we do it alone, or do we have support?”
There was a silence. Finally, Hamilton said, “It doesn’t look like there’ll be much choice. The onslaught of the inevitable, so to speak.” He looked at Cloris and shrugged. “And mebbe that’s just what we need.”
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Fifteen
Jak spent the next night traversing the sectors. He moved swiftly, and took proscribed routes. It was simple to work out the best way to avoid the vid cams as they were usually mounted in much the same way, no matter where they were positioned in the ville. The sec patrols also planned and executed their routes in much the same way. Schweiz was a lazy sec chief. From the beginning, the albino teen had scented that he was a man who liked posturing more than actually doing any work. The ease with which he was able to slip past the man’s personnel proved this. The paths they took were well-worn. Why those in each sector who dissented hadn’t been able to rise up was another factor that Jak couldn’t figure.
If these thoughts had been running through the mind of Mildred or Doc, they would have reasoned that an oppressed people used to be commanded with an iron fist would lack the necessary steel to make that first move. But this was Jak. If you told him such a thing, his pragmatic hunter’s nature would tell him simply that you can only go on so long before rising for freedom.
As he scouted the sectors, he didn’t stop to make contact with Ryan, Krysty and J.B. That could come later. For now, he wanted to get a feel for the ville as a whole.
What he found—something that would be useful in the near future, he thought—was that there was a greater traffic between sectors than either Schweiz or Arcadian would have thought possible. Keeping to the shadows, there were men and women moving between sectors for reasons that were possibly as personal as those of the man who had first described this route to him. Jak figured that if you could just get these people to carry messages and perhaps weapons…
It was a nice idea, but one that he knew was doomed. Those who traveled between the wires considered this revolt enough. Maybe—just maybe—that was what the baron wanted. While they had this, which they considered rebellion enough, then they wouldn’t go further. The real rebels, those who truly wanted to fight, would make for the outside. Perhaps they were the only hope? Jak didn�
��t share Ryan and Krysty’s knowledge of the rebels, but he could make the leap between the group they had initially encountered and a rebel force.
Which, in his reckoning, meant that it was down to himself and his friends. No one else could be trusted. No matter what Doc or Mildred might think.
All this went through his mind as he mechanically made his way through the day, completing an assault course that was followed by a bout of aversion therapy. All those on the course were led from the completion point to a small, one-story building where they were strapped into a series of chairs, under the watchful eye of an armed sec. Jak noted that most of the men with him were unarmed. But he still had the Colt Python and his knives. The temptation to fight back when they took him and secured the straps was strong. The psychology was basic: he was outnumbered, and resistance would only result in his chilling. To what end? Maybe that was how the ville as a whole was kept down.
This was what he had to fight. And the knowledge of this kept him stoic as the aversion therapy began. Vid images of the course they had just traversed were flashed on a screen in front of them. Their reactions were just as they had been as they avoided the mines, blasters and mannequins that had been flung in their path. Even though they were seated, they still tried to move in automatic response. Except that now their natural reactions were greeted with a jolting charge of electricity that shot white-hot pain through limbs and paralyzed the brain. Responses were therefore muted the further along the course the vid images played. But still nature dictated that they try to respond. Still the jolting charge shot through them, causing muscles to spasm and control of bladder and bowels to be lost.
Jak felt his vision cloud with explosions of violent color as his neurons were shorted out. Yet still he clung to the thoughts in his head, that he had to keep himself fit and alert enough for that night’s incursion into the outer sector. While those around him yelled and screamed in pain, subsiding to low moans as the course progressed, Jak bit on his tongue until he could taste blood, using this as a focus.
Then, almost with an anticlimax, the vid stopped. they had reached the end of the course. The aftershock of the pain still coursed through him as he tried to look at the men around him. His vision was fogged by pain, and it swam in and out of focus. He felt, rather than saw, the sec men move among them, taking off the electrodes and replacing them with pads of some other kind. And then, before he had a chance to work it out, the vid began again. This time, at each juncture where a shock had been delivered—and he gave an involuntary start—there was nothing. It took several such junctures before he realized that the replacement pads were registering his new reactions for the benefit of the coldheart whitecoats Pulaski and Foxx.
Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, they were released from the experiment. The sun above showed him that it was now late afternoon. As the sec escorted the pained and exhausted men back to their quarters, Jak could only hope that he would be fit enough for his necessary after-dark excursion. Rest came as a blissful relief. He thankfully sank into the embrace of black oblivion, the raw skin and blistering nerve endings no opposition to the fatigue that overwhelmed him.
He awoke with a start, sitting bolt upright and shaking the fogged sleep from his brain. He was still sore from the electric shock therapy, but it hadn’t managed to impair his mental functions. He didn’t know much about electricity on the brain, but he had seen the condition of some of those who had sat with him, and he considered himself lucky.
Maybe now was the time to capitalize on that luck. He rose and went to the window, staring out over the night. In the distance he could see the lights of the central sector. As the only part of the ville that functioned in any way like a regular ville, it was still lit up. Distant sounds of people at play came to him across the dark emptiness, and he wondered for a moment if anyone else here had ever heard them and felt so isolated from real life.
But there was no time for that, now. If he and his companions were to get anything approaching real life back for themselves, then he had to move. The outer sector was his goal. He needed to find J.B., Ryan and Krysty. And he needed to contact any others like those they had fought on the way in. A hell of a task for one night, but time was at a premium.
Jak left the building and skirted the vid and sec in a way that was fast becoming routine to him. Still, despite that he stayed triple red, wary that the experiments of the daytime may affect his nighttime judgment.
He made swift progress to the outer sector. But once there, he was unsure of how to proceed. Encircling the ville as it did, it presented a vast area to cover. He would have to be content with as much as possible for now, then carry on his search on subsequent nights, should it prove fruitless.
Like many other sectors of Arcady, this one rose and set with the sun. It was quiet, but far from silent. As Jake wove his way through the shanties and huts, he could hear breathing, muttering, and the sounds of some indulging in carnal activity. But there was nothing he recognized as the Armorer. They had spent so long on the road that he could even determine J.B.’s breathing pattern when he was asleep.
However, something did catch his ear. The murmured undertone of a man’s voice, coming from one of the larger huts. It was accompanied by giggling that rose and fell under and above his voice, making words hard to determine. There was something about his tone, though…
Jak ventured closer, and as he drew near he could hear the man telling the giggling women what he wanted them to do. His voice held power, and the confidence of one who was used to wielding such power. A light showed slit-clear under the doorway and from the edges of the covered windows. The smell of wood ash, mingled with sweat and lust, carried on the night breeze.
Jak crept up on the building. Stealth was hardly necessary. From the sounds within, you could have let off a gren next to the hut and they wouldn’t have noticed. There was just enough space for Jak to put an eye to the gap and be able to make out what was happening within. The smoky atmosphere drifting through the gap made his eye smart; he had to keep looking away, blinking.
Inside, there was a man sitting on a rush chair, naked and idly fingering a massive erection. He was ordering two chubby women to perform sex acts on each other, playing with himself while he watched. Their giggles increased with the stimulation they gave each other, but were sometimes stifled when breast or thigh was thrust into a mouth. Jak took no erotic pleasure from this, but concluded from the display of power that the man was probably the sector leader, or a close ally. His vision strayed to the rest of the room: cabinets and a desk that seemed out of place with the animal skulls piled in on corner only reinforced this view.
But most of all his attention was taken by the old woman who sat naked against a wall, cross-legged with a hairless dog sleeping across her knees. She, too, seemed to giggle stupidly, particularly when the man looked over to her. Yet when he turned away, her face changed: unmistakably, contempt swept over her.
Part of the reason for this became clear when the man called her over. With a reluctance that he had to have been either arrogant or a stupe to miss, she got to her feet and walked across, kneeling in front of him, following his instructions.
He sat back, no longer interested in the two fat woman. He sighed, pushing the old woman away from him with his foot so that she slumped backward.
“You can go now, and take that mangy hound with you,” he said in a weary voice. Without a word, she picked herself up and clicked her fingers, the dog trotting to her. She made for the door with what Jak could see was an undue haste. He was about to pull back into the shadows when the man’s next words made him stop suddenly.
“Tell Dix I want to see him tomorrow.”
“Why ask me?” the woman questioned, barely keeping the edge of contempt in her voice under control.
The man smiled, but there was no humor in it. Just malice.
“I know you’re thick with him. Nothing escapes me here. Just tell him. There are plans for him.”
Th
e woman nodded and left without a word, the dog at her heels. Jak kept back in the shadows, but started to follow her. His mind raced: the Armorer. It was the stroke of fortune he needed. The look on her face as she pulled the door shut, before the darkness swallowed her up, told Jak that the man’s arrogance was misplaced. It was a look that told the albino teen that there was plenty that went on without the sector leader’s knowledge.
But the mention of plans for the Armorer held a warning note. Jak might have found him just in time.
He set off in pursuit of the old woman. Maybe she wasn’t as old as she looked. She was fast, now, and just maybe the hard weight of experience had aged her prematurely. Jak thought of Doc, and how young he was compared to how he looked. She moved like Doc, and the expression on her face had reminded him of the old man: there was an intelligence that chose to hide behind the veneer of madness or simplicity. He only hoped that her cunning worked as much to his favor as it did with Doc.
She kept looking over her shoulder. It was as though she could sense that he was behind her, but couldn’t locate him, no matter how hard she tried. Jak was good. To even sense he was there showed how sharp she could be. And her attempts to shake him were annoying. He felt like he was winding around every part of the sector, doubling back on himself, and wasting precious time. He was on the verge on throwing all caution and revealing himself, hoping she would trust him, when such a decision was suddenly unnecessary. She arrived at a shanty where she stopped, looking around carefully before knocking on the wooden door that hung loosely in the ill-fitting frame. The dog sniffed idly at her heels, unheeding of the quick glances she darted around. Jak hung back in shadow, still and silent, barely breathing.
The door of the shanty opened. The inside was shrouded in darkness, and as the woman muttered something so low that it was inaudible even to Jak, it seemed that there was a patch of dark that moved, beckoning her in. A last lingering look around, and she went in, the dog at her heels and the door closing softly.
