Rubberman's Cage

by Joseph Picard

  And their chests. Some of them had more chest than the others, but all of them had more...chest bulk than he'd ever seen.

  Lenth watched them exercise. And watched. When they were done that, they shifted into a different exercise. Their bodies were so interesting! Lenth wondered what they looked like in the showers.

  Lenth's breathing was becoming heavier, and only fear kept him from calling out to them.

  The first clap, Lenth didn't hear. On the second, he turned around to see the local Rubberman standing between him and the door.

  Whoops. He was caught.

  The Rubberman waved Lenth over. At least he didn't attack. Maybe he would have if didn't mean showing the strange men below that there were more than one Rubberman.

  Maybe when Lenth got over there, something bad would happen. No sense in delaying it at this point. He took one more glance down to the fascinating people below and walked to the waiting Rubberman. He silently pointed to the door.

  Lenth looked at him, trying to discern intent. With only body language to go by, Lenth could impose any meaning that he wanted to see. The Rubberman wasn't jittery or moving in harsh bursts. This calm could be friendliness, or it could be anger with confidence.

  Lenth walked past the Rubberman and into the door. The Rubberman followed into the small room and pushed a button to slide the door shut. He leaned over, quickly shedding his gloves and mask, rising up as he pushed back his hood.

  A mane of amber hair cascaded around his gentle but terrified features. “Am I being replaced? Why? And why did they just send you, and not Providers? What's going on?” 'His' voice was like the lumpy men in the exercise room!

  Lenth staggered back and fumbled with his own mask. It was being difficult, so he gave up taking it off before speaking. “You're...you're one of them?”

  “Them? Providers? What do you mean?”

  “No, no!” Lenth pointed at the door. “One of the lumpy-body men!”

  “Women? Lumpy?”

  Still entirely suited up, Lenth used his hands to outline the differences around his own body, drawing the curves that had caught his eye. He then used his arms to squeeze his middle and pushed out his chest.

  The Rubberwoman tilted her head. “Are...you feeling okay?”

  Frustrated, Lenth yanked back his hood, and shoved his mask off with no regard for being graceful about it. “I'm not lumpy like them!” He continued shedding the Rubberman suit and stood before the Rubberwoman, arms spread wide, wearing just his usual outfit.

  The Rubberwoman took one slow step back, craning her neck forward. “I see! You...you're lumpy in the wrong places!” She pointed at Lenth's groin.

  Lenth covered his clothed groin with both hands and looked at Rubberwoman defensively. “It's just fine as it is!”

  “I don't think so!” She squirmed her way out of the rest of her Rubberman suit, stood with feet apart, and pointed at her own groin. “See? That's normal!” She pointed at Lenth's covered groin again. “And that looks swollen or something! If mine ever looked like yours does, I'd be...! I'd be darn worried!”

  Lenth grimaced. “You're...you're just envious.”

  The Rubberwoman shook her head dismissively. “I'm just kidding with you. I know what men are, sheesh. What are you doing here, anyway? Don't you have Subjects to keep an eye on?”

  The conversation was headed in directions that Lenth saw as being problematic, so he changed the topic to his central concern. “I...do you know where people go when they get dead?”

  Rubberwoman tilted her head and squinted a little. “You don't know? Providers take them. Why don't you know that?”

  Stupid. He did know that. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He was in the Providers' area, but his fear of getting caught kept him from asking directly. Think, think, the lumpy pretty man was staring at him. Think. “Yes, but then what? Where do they take them?”

  “How would I know? What does it matter?” The Rubberwoman stared at Lenth with a clenched jaw. Lenth found himself mimicking her almost combative stance. They stared at each other for a while before Rubberwoman broke the silence. “Dead is dead.”

  Yes, yes, dead is dead, and water is water. Why did people keep telling him this? “Fine,” Lenth said. “I'm leaving.” He put his mask and hood back on, and went into the Rubberwoman's bedroom.

  “What are you doing?” She followed behind him.

  “I suppose I need to go talk to the Providers,” Lenth sighed. “I'm leaving!” But the door wasn't much of a door anymore. It looked more like a bevelled wall.

  “This is where I came in!” Lenth said, pawing the edges of the wall.

  Rubberwoman leaned on the doorway. “And?”

  Lenth waved her closer while his other hand traced along an edge. “Look here! This is where it opens! It seals nice and clean, huh? But look, you can see a little...imperfection. On the other side, the handle is right about here.” He mimicked the motion of grabbing the lever.

  Rubberwoman leaned in for a close look. “Huh.” She backed off again. “Oh yeah, I almost forgot about that door.”

  “You forgot about it?” Lenth said. “There's a secret door in your bedroom, and you forgot it?”

  “It's not secret, really. Well, not to me,” she said. Did Phil have such a door? Maybe he never used it. Maybe he wasn't permitted? “I don't leave the Unit often, and I don't use that door. Generally I'm below, taking out product with Providers, and if I feel like it, I'll go out that way while I'm at an open door anyway. Isn't your Unit pretty much the same?”

  “Product?” Lenth asked.

  “Well, whatever you call the stuff your Subjects make.”

  “Oh...right. Those.” It must be the work things. Those lumpy men probably make them too. “Out the same way? Uh...yes, now that I think of it. I just can't see the edge on the door in my room.”

  “Huh. Well, I'll call the Providers and get them to come open this door. We can't leave through the door below without screwing up the schedule for the Subjects, and unless it's an emergency—”

  Lenth jumped a little. “Ah! No, no, don't bother them. I can get out the way I...I have another way.”

  Rubberwoman launched a scrutinous glare towards Lenth. “I thought so. You're really not supposed to be here, are you?”

  Despite the accusation, her voice disarmed Lenth a little, and honesty began to slip out. “I've seen more today than I thought ever existed. I was just looking for my Brother and got distracted.”

  “Brother?” Rubberwoman stepped back slowly. “This...Brother...it's a man, right?”

  Lenth looked stunned. “Until I came in here, everyone I knew was like me. Well, not exactly like me. Different faces and stuff, but same kinds of lumpies. Not like you. And not like those other lumpy men here.”

  “Women.” Rubberwoman said. “A man that's...lumpy, as you say, is called a woman.”

  “What's a woman?” The puzzle pieces rattled into place in Lenth's head, then the light went on. “Woman!” He laughed, pointing at her groin and bust. “You're one of those females! So that would make me a feman!”

  “I...don't think so. Since the word 'WO man' has the alternative of 'man', I'd guess that 'FE male' converts to 'male'.”

  Lenth shrugged. “Whatever.” He looked back to the doorway out toward the rooms of the other lumpy m...er...WOmen. “So...can you help me get out the way I got out of my own area?”

  Rubberwoman backed away a little, looking Lenth up and down. “Hey. You never told me your name.”

  “Lenth,” he said.

  Rubberwoman looked down with a resigned sigh. “Huh. Never heard of a name like that. How did you get it?”

  After a silent pause, attempting to read Rubberwoman's expression, Lenth held out his arms wide. “It comes from 'length', since I...”

  Rubberwoman held up her hand to stop him. “Did you have a name before you got it from your length?”

  “Nope, why?”

  Rubberwoman grimaced and her eyes shifted between Lenth and the pan
el of buttons. “You're...you're not supposed to have that suit, are you? Did you used to live under the grating?”

  The cautious tone that the Rubberwoman took reminded Lenth that this suit once belonged to a real Rubberman. Maybe the one that got attacked by Eyes or Six.

  “Yes,” Lenth said.

  “When you worked, what did you make?”

  “I cleaned a part in big round containers, with different layers of stuff in them.”

  This answer seemed to put the Rubberwoman at ease a little. “How many toes do you have?”

  “Ten.”

  The Rubberwoman nodded towards Lenth's feet. “Let me see.”

  Lenth took the boots and the usual foot coverings that he always wore, and showed off his toes. “I met someone with more. Is he—”

  “Did he give you that suit? Put your shoes back on; you're not him.”

  “Does it matter?” Lenth asked timidly.

  “The Providers want him and his Asian friend. They killed for that suit.”

  “They did what?”

  The Rubberwoman shook her head. “Never mind. I guess you don't know about that kind of thing. How did you get above your grate?”

  “One of my Brothers helped me. He held me on his shoulder while I lifted the grate, and from there…”

  “Okay, okay. But the six-toe, where did you run into him?”

  “I was in the place above my above, and I crawled around for a long time in the dark. Then I saw a light, and he was there with a guy with slightly darker skin, and eyes that always looked kind of closed. They let me have the suit when I said I wanted to go talk to Providers, and when I found some, I kind of got nervous, and ended up here.”

  “Okay.” the Rubberwoman rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Okay, so that's useless. I don't know. You said you wanted to talk to the Providers now?”

  Lenth tightened his lips and nodded. “Yeah. I think that's my next step in finding my missing Brother.”

  Not quite turning her back, the Rubberwoman went over to the panel of buttons. “Missing Brother? Is that why you were talking about death?”

  “About dead? Yes. I miss him. So I want to see him. He became dead pretty suddenly, and it didn't seem pleasant. I hope he's doing okay.”

  The Rubberwoman paused and just shook her head slightly as she pressed a few buttons.

  “What?” Lenth asked as a soft beeping sound came from the button panel.

  “Lenth, that's sweet,” the Rubberwoman said softly.

  The beeping sound continued for a little longer, but eventually was replaced with a voice.

  “Provider.” the voice said.

  “Yes, I have a stray Subject here,” the Rubberwoman said.

  “Are you in danger?” asked the Provider.

  “I don't think so. He actually wants to talk to Providers, and he might have useful information about the killers you warned me about. He isn't one of them, but he has the suit.”

  For a moment there was no reply, only the smallest hiss of the speaker's noise. “We'll be there shortly.”

  And then complete silence.

  Lenth and the Rubberwoman looked at each other expectantly. She gestured to Lenth a little. “You might make a better impression if you're not wearing the suit when they get here.”

  Lenth nodded silently. He found his heart to be pounding a little stronger as he shed the suit.

  The Providers, the people who watched the Rubbermen. All his life they were out there, unknown to him, and now they were coming for him.

  They controlled the man who controlled him and his Brothers. And they had Slim for some reason.

  And now they were coming for him. They made Phil afraid, they made Six and Eyes afraid.

  And now they were coming for him.

  “I have to go up,” Lenth said, trying not to shout. “Help me up the top, out there. Like I did above my grating. I can just go, I need to go!”

  Lenth went to the door that led to the grating and pushed on it in vain. “What button opens it? Come on!”

  The Rubberwoman just sighed. “No. You find a way further up? Then what? Where are you going that the Providers won't be? They're part of everything. You'll be fine. If you didn't kill anyone, you should be fine.”

  Lenth slumped against the door. “Should be.” He slid down to sit, and the Rubberwoman want over to the pile where Lenth dropped the Rubberman suit. She began folding it. “Be polite. Be reasonable. If you run off clawing at closed doors, they're going to treat you accordingly.”

  He pulled his legs under himself to be more comfortable. “You know a lot about them? Fill didn't seem to know a lot. He didn't even know there was more 'up'.”

  “Phil?” the Rubberwoman asked as she stacked the boots and mask on top of the neat pile. “Was that your Manager?”

  “Manager?”

  The Rubberwoman tapped the folded suit. “Manager.”

  “Oh, Right. We just called him Rubberman. Yeah. Fill was nice enough once I finally met him.”

  “What happened to Phil?”

  “When I left, he was fine.”

  “Did Phil help you?”

  “Yeah.”

  The Rubberwoman nodded once slowly. “Hey. Do him a favour. If you can avoid it, don't tell the Providers that he helped you. In fact, don't tell them that you talked to him or anything. Can you tell them that he had no idea you were escaping?”

  He could say that Spots helped him up where Phil had. That Spots had come up above the grating as well. Easy enough. “I think so,” Lenth said, “Why? Would Fill get in trouble?”

  “Almost certainly. Likely, they'd replace him.”

  “Replace? Like they did with my Brother Slim?”

  The Rubberwoman shrugged. “While we're at it, let me get my suit on. If they ask, you just got here, you haven't been outside to my grating, and you never saw me out of my suit. We barely talked, and I called them as soon as I could.” She spoke with an increasing tension that began to scare Lenth.

  “What?” Lenth asked. “Why? Would you get in trouble?”

  With only the mask left to put on, she shrugged again, but her eyes masked her trepidation badly. “Oh, you told me your name. Fair is fair. My name is Karen.”

  “Carin'.” Lenth managed a slight smile. Obviously, her name was based on the word 'caring'. The people she grew up with must have known her to be very kind. “Good to know.”

  With her mask completing it all, the bulky suit made it impossible to determine that she was anything but a Rubberman.

  “Good luck,” She said with warmth that belied the mask’s cold eyes.

  They waited with nothing else to say for a few moments. Shortly, the door inside her bedroom opened. Three Providers emerged, as calmly as if they were heading to daily exercise. They each wore the same baggy yellow suits that he had seen on all Providers. Unlike the ones he had seen before, these Providers wore a helmet of sorts that concealed their heads and faces entirely.

  The front was a large smooth panel that looked as dark as the eyes of a Rubberman mask, and the rest was a floppier material more like the rest of the suits.

  Lenth picked up the neatly folded Rubberman suit and stepped up to the nearest Provider. “All right,” Lenth said with a deep breath, “I'm ready to go.” He turned to the Rubberwoman, sighed, and nodded to her once.

  Chapter Eight

  Eval

  “So. We're not talking, then?” Lenth said to the three masked Providers. The only reply was the continued hum of the elevator. “I know you're people like me.” He shifted his eyes around; at them, at the changing lights above the door, counting back down. “I mean, I assume as much. I guess you could be lumpy people. Uh...that is, females.”

  Lenth heard a tiny stifled laugh from one of them. Feeling a little braver since the mystery of the blackened Rubberman lenses was clarified, and having seen unmasked Providers before, he gathered the little bit of added nerve to push his luck a little. His nerves, and the silence pushed him into opening his mouth
again.

  He stared into the blackened window of the Provider who found his lumpy comment funny, and suggested, “I... I could just check. I could just have a grab and figure it out for myself.”

  His target leaned its head to the side, slowly shaking it.

  “No?” Lenth said. “Maybe later?” He put his hands behind his back innocently and sighed. That was stupid. He suddenly felt lucky to have not been shocked for that.

  Having seen under the masks of Rubbermen and Providers had taken away much of the mystery, and given Lenth a surge of confidence— confidence which began melting away as he realized the basic facts. Yes, they're just people. But does that change anything for this situation?

  Eventually he felt the elevator stop, and the doors spread open into a bland concrete hall, marked with raw little imperfections, and wear of age. One Provider walked out, and the second nudged Lenth to go next. Providers number two and three followed behind.

  This area was much like the place where Lenth had run into the unmasked Providers, except there seemed to be no one else around. The background sounds of activity were missing here. Lenth hadn't noticed it before, but he noticed its absence here. It made the place feel bigger. If he didn't have his escort, he would be tempted to run down a hallway to see how fast he could go.

  Back home, there were no long hallways, and running was always a short trip before having to turn a corner, or jump over a bed.

  After passing several doors, all identical other than a label at eye-level, the front Provider stopped at one and opened it for Lenth. Lenth looked at him, then turned to look at the two Providers behind him. Everyone stood silent for a moment. The front Provider knocked on the doorjamb to get Lenth's attention, then gestured through the doorway. The room inside was not terribly large. It had a chair welded to the floor. It was less solid than any seat he'd seen before, with four thin, separate legs instead of a solid block on one edge like at the work stations. It faced a pane of black glass, like the front of the Providers' hoods, except much, much larger.