by J F Bone
It didn’t take too long to find Annalee’s location. She had been sent to Rehabilitation Camp Number Twelve. Ballerd sighed. Numbers One through Ten were for the two and three dose treatments, the insane, the degenerates, the psychopaths, and a few whom the Central Committee figured were too dangerous to retain any segment of their personality, yet were too valuable to execute. Marriner was there—being reeducated into a conforming Unionist, as were most of the other bigwigs of the Old Government who had escaped the wave of executions that followed the Union’s success. Ballerd shrugged. There was nothing he wanted from those. His business was with Annalee.
Camp Twelve was a pleasant enough place, located close to the equator. Except for the electronic fence and force dome surrounding the cluster of buildings, it looked like the military post it had once been. Ballerd’s helicopter came down on the stage on top of the administration building and the force field formed above it with a sharp, crackling noise as the technicians who had lowered it in response to the IFF signal from the ’copter restored the cover that could keep out virtually anything except fourth order radiation. Small particles and air could seep through the complex lattice-work of electromagnetic force; but any substance larger than a grain of sand was violently repelled, or caught between different forces in the lattice and literally torn apart.
A pair of Security troopers saluted as he descended from the craft, and escorted him to the Camp Superintendent’s office.
“Glad to meet you, Brother Ballerd,” the Superintendent said. “I’m Miles Graham, in charge of this station.”
Ballerd smiled and shook Graham’s outstretched hand.
“And what can I do for you, Brother Ballerd?” Graham said.
“You have an inmate here, a woman called Annalee Kane. I want her.”
“You have the authority, I suppose. You know, of course, that I cannot release an inmate without Security approval—not even to a member of the Central Committee.”
“Will this do?” Ballerd said, producing Varden’s authorization.
Graham’s eyes widened. His narrow face tightened as he looked at Ballerd. “Naturally,” he said, “but we’ll have to check.”
“Absolutely. You would be negligent if you did not.”
Graham relaxed. He touched a button on his desk and handed the authorization to a secretary who soft-footed into the room. “Check this,” he said, and turned back to Ballerd. “I’ll have to have more than the inmate’s old name if you wish to find her. There are nearly three hundred women in this camp, and we have no idea what their names were before they came here. Fact is, if it weren’t for their ID numbers we wouldn’t be able to tell one from another. You see, when we get them they have already gone through basic processing.”
“What is that?”
Graham grinned. “You’ve never seen an inmate, have you?”
“No.”
“Well, after judgment they are sent to one of the Research Medical Centers. Here they are processed for our camps while they’re still in primary shock. They get a new face, and are plastiformed into one of ten basic types.”
“Eh?”
“It’s a new process. Essentially it is simple. By changing the shape of the bone structure by electrophoretic translocation of calcium and protein, and altering the location of subcutaneous fat deposits, an individual can be literally remade. They call it plastiforming. The process is still experimental and there is an occasional failure. But on the whole it works very well. However, the plastiform matrices are complicated and the changes cannot be too great, and so there are ten basic types of male and female bodies which conform to the population mean.” Graham grinned. “We can’t do anything with six footers or midgets but, as for the rest—well—maybe I should show you.”
He touched a stud on his desk and a wall screen filling one side of the room flickered into life. It showed the face of a building which flicked off and was replaced by a downward angle view of a grassy yard. About a hundred inmates were performing a rythmic series of calisthenics under the watchful eyes of a dozen female guards dressed in short blue smocks. The guards kept them well in line.
Ballerd gasped! Not because the inmates were naked, for nudity was common enough on Vishnu’s beaches, but because everyone was precisely the same as the next. The scanner picture swept down on the group as Graham spoke into a microphone. “Suspend exercise,” he said. “Prepare for. inspection.” He opened the microphone switch and smiled at Ballerd. “We do this occasionally just to let them know we’re checking on them. The guards, you see, are merely inmates whose profiles show capacity for leadership. If we didn’t show them our fist occasionally they might get ideas.”
Ballerd kept looking at the screen. The two lines of naked bodies were drawn to rigid attention, and in front of them the ten guards stood in a rigid line. The scanner swept down and the picture moved slowly down the line past rigid body after identical body, face after identical face under its neat crown of hair drawn smoothly back to a knot at the back of the head. Outside of slight variations in the color of the eyes, and the color and length of their hair, the women were identical—except for a small blue number tattooed on their left hip.
The guards, equally motionless, stood with their hands grasping the hems of their uniform which they drew upward and forward to expose hip and thigh and show their tattooed numbers.
“Inspection completed,” Graham said into the microphone. “Resume.” He watched as the double line and the blue smocked guards again swung into motion. Then he turned off the screen.
“Good heavens!” the exclamation jumped involuntarily from Ballerd’s lips. “No wonder you need more than a name!”
“They’re all Type Two here—height five feet eight inches, asthenic. You see they are graded and encamped by physical type. Keeps things uniform and simplifies physical facilities and supply.”
“Efficient,” Ballerd said, “but which one is Annalee?” The secretary reappeared, and Ballerd noted without surprise that she was another inmate. “The authorization is genuine, sir,” she said.
“Fine,” said Graham. “Now to find your party. Do you have any more data?”
“A Security dosier and fingerprint facsimiles,” Ballerd said. “Are those enough?”
“Plenty—the fingerprints are not changed. Give me the card.”
Ballerd passed it over and Graham handed it to the secretary. “Have this inmate report to me at once.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ll find that she has no true memory of any events of the past after her tenth or twelfth year,” he said. “Otherwise she’s normal. Of course, she has memories filling in the gap, but they’re synthetic—given at the Research Center. You’ll find that she remembers living through the crash of ’98 and being sold to a labor contractor by her starving parents and was worked as a field hand until she nearly died, and was rescued from incineration by the Revolutionaries. This, and a long time in the hospital before she came here, is part of her memory rehabilitation. She may or may not be grateful, but she will be obedient. That I’ll guarantee. The mental set she has acquired makes that much mandatory. I can’t speak for her education up to the last true year she remembers, but from there on until she arrived here it is nil.”
“Hmm. Not bad. You reeducate them and they’re turned back into society. But how do you explain their identical appearance?”
“That was done by the labor contractors—the beasts!” Graham said with a grin. “We try to teach them to forget it, and distribute them widely enough after retraining to keep them pretty well apart. It works. The girls don’t like this uniformity and tend to keep away from each other.”
Ballerd chuckled. “Like wearing the same hat?”
“Exactly.”
“You lads don’t miss a bet, do you?”
“Frankly, sir, we can’t afford to. With manpower on our necks and a whole new order to create, we simply can’t waste a thing. I hope you have good use for this inmate.”
“Don�
��t worry. If I can’t get what I want from her, I’ll give her back to you. If I can, it’ll be good use.”
The secretary came back followed by a guard and an inmate, and laid two cards on Graham’s desk.
“Number 14027 reporting as ordered,” the guard said.
“You may return to your unit,” Graham answered.
“Thank you, sir. Glory to the Union.”
“Glory to the Union,” Graham replied.
“Your name is?” Ballard asked the woman.
“I’m sorry, sir, it is not allowed.” She looked at him and a slow wave of color swept across her face and neck. The nipples of her breasts tightened and a delicate muscle tremor swept across her stomach and thighs.
“But it is now,” Graham said, and to Ballerd, “Don’t worry, sir. This is a normal reaction. Plastiforming apparently has some other effects besides altering shape. That’s why we have separate camps for the sexes.
“Annalee—Annalee Kane—I think,” she said slowly. It’s been twenty years since I used that name—before they brought me and gave me this number and put me to work picking taref buds. But I think it’s Annalee—I’m sure it is.” Her body quivered and her breath came faster.
“Her prints check,” Graham said, looking up from the cards.
“That’s enough,” said Ballerd. “Get her some clothes, and I’ll be off. And thank you for your help.”
“Don’t mention it,” Graham said easily. “Anything for Brother Varden.”
“I’ll mention it when I see him,” Ballerd said.
“Am I to go with you, sir?” Annalee asked.
“Yes,” Ballerd said. “I’m taking charge of you.”
“That will be nice,” she murmured and then pressed her lips tightly together. An expression of blended eagerness and revulsion crossed her face.
What had happened to Annalee was all to the good physically. They had cut an inch off her height, and her new face was far more attractive than the old. The leanness of her body was replaced with adequate, almost opulent, curves that were visible even through the shapeless smock covering her body. All in all she was considerably more attractive as a woman. A neat dish. But that wasn’t her sole interest to Ballerd. It would remain after he had explored behind the facade, but right now he was more interested in what she knew rather than how she felt.
She sat quietly beside him as they sped back toward Varden City, her eyes flat and introspective. Suddenly she spoke. “Thanks for lifting me out of that hole, Ernst, I probably could have done the stretch all right. Might have made head guard in a few months, but I never could have gotten out soon enough. I would have gone crazy in there. This body they gave me has something wrong with its glands. I keep thinking about men. Perhaps it is because I wasn’t erased like the others. But some of the others had it almost as bad as I.
Ballerd froze.
“Oh don’t get so excited, Ernst. I recognized you almost immediately. Tissuemold can change you even better than plastiform. It can give you an artificial limp. But it can’t change the color of your eyes or hide an iris mark. You have two little brown flecks like tiny leaves on your right iris. I noted them in school in our tactics short course, and when I found out I couldn’t handle this fire I sent for you. I’d know you anywhere.”
Ballerd felt numbness creep up his legs. “All right, so you’re a fireman—I hope. But you’d have to be or that brain-burn would have wiped you clean, superficially at least. You have a damper. And so far that’s exclusive Bureau property.”
She nodded. “You would have known eventually,” she said, “but your conditioning and the circumstances made it sooner rather than later. You had to protect me, you know. And you had to jerk me out if you could. I assumed, of course, that you’d pick a prototype who could be of help. But I was really surprised when I found you among the Jurors.
“But why—?”
“I was no real use. Although my prototype was a strong Unionist, Varden has no faith in women. He’d have sacked me sooner or later. I couldn’t reach him. So you had to take my place. That’s why I let myself get rapped on that malfeasance charge. Didn’t you think it was pretty obvious?”
“Yes, in a sense, but I thought you were a stupid amateur who got caught. You camouflaged perfectly.” Annalee nodded, smiling. “But how did you know I’d only order erasure—and for that matter, how did you know I’d be a Juror?”
“The first part of that question is easy. It was the only logical solution. You were conditioned against doing me harm and you knew, subconsciously, I had a damper. As for the second, you were on the jury list and it was the logical way to draw Varden’s attention. If you hadn’t managed to make the grade, I would have defended myself, and I had a perfectly good defense. In fact, it was good enough to put Suzuke in a pickle. But you would have been replaced. If you couldn’t have taken advantage of the opportunity, you wouldn’t have been right for this job. By the same token I couldn’t help you. You had to handle this alone. Varden would have no confidence in a man who had to lean on someone else to get the job done. You had to get his confidence. Incidentally, you haven’t done so well there. By now you should be working out of manpower. What’s the matter?”
“What did you do with your files?”
“You mean to tell me you couldn’t figure out a blind filing system? Skip every three-files, inserts, sentences, words. They’re numbered serially by accessions. Good heaven’s, man, that’s the simplest method in the Galaxy!”
“I didn’t expect it,” Ballerd muttered. “And, besides, Varden’s pushing. He’s got some fat scheme up his sleeve to get more manpower. That’s one commodity in short supply here.”
She nodded. “It has been in short supply for me, too. Especially recently,” she said.
“Get your mind down to earth,” Ballerd said. “You’ve made it easier than I expected, but you’ve left me a problem. What am I to do with you? I was planning to psych you, but that’s unnecessary now.”
“I have a suggestion about what you can do,” Annalee said. “You go ahead as you’ve planned. I won’t crack. And when you’ve finally established to their satisfaction that I know nothing, perhaps you can find a place for me.”
Ballerd chuckled. “That’s a good idea. If it works we can work together on this case. You’ll apparently be a mess when I’m through with you and no sort of material for rehabilitation. I’m sure I can keep you on my personal staff as a housekeeper or something like that. I think Varden’ll be agreeable if it comes to a question.” He grinned and then broke off abruptly as his wrist-watch buzzed and the stressed crystal of the dial turned a faint yellow. Someone below had turned a scanner on them. Ballerd silently thanked the forethought of the Bureau which had provided this detector as part of his equipment.
Annalee’s face which had begun to glow suddenly turned wooden. Ballerd’s became flinty and impassive, as they sat quietly. They could do nothing else. Not with a probe on them. Security was investigating incoming aircraft for some reason known only to Varden and Suzuke.
Presently the buzzing stopped. “No more talk,” Ballerd said. “Play it straight from now on.”
She nodded imperceptibly.
His wristwatch buzzed again as he dropped his hand on his wrist and pressed the cutoff stud.
Despite the fact that the Union controlled everything on Vishnu, getting adequate labor at the proper place at the proper time was a job that would tax the patience of a saint. There was perpetually too much to do, and too little with which to do it. Despite technology and automation the shortage of workers was acute. Colonial societies always lacked manpower. And since most human colonies were products of the Exodus there was a mental set against high population densities and expanding birthrates. The consequences were too familiar. Some of the older colonies weren’t so badly crippled, but Vishnu was relatively young—less than three centuries old—and men were still alive who remembered the bad old days.
It was easier now that he had Annalee’s files, but it w
as far from a simple job. And Varden was taking an inordinate interest in manpower. And Annalee was taking an inordinate interest in him. Not that he disliked it. But it did complicate things to have a fellow agent for a mistress. She knew the hazards of this business, and tried to protect him. She fussed over him, gave him unnecessary advice, and generally muddled his thinking while trying to protect him. It was a ghastly mixture of pleasure and discomfort that he disliked even as he enjoyed.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Ballerd said to Varden for the hundredth time. “There simply aren’t enough people available to do what you wish. I realize that the Yarvid Delta Project is necessary, but to make ten thousand labor units available I’d have to rob the Navy. They simply don’t exist in the civil population.”
“You can’t rob the Navy,” Varden said flatly.
Ballerd shrugged. “I know,” he said, “But what can I do? I can’t take men from other departments and there’s almost nothing left in the manpower pool. The rehabilitees are a drop in the bucket, the children are too young, and the students are necessary for the future. What’s left?”
Varden shrugged his shoulders. “That’s your problem,” he said.
“No sir, it’s yours.”
“What?”
“As I’ve said, we have nothing available, but it can be obtained.”
“How? Where?”
“On Krishna, or Thoth, the other two planets in this sector.”
“Are you advocating conquest?”
“If necessary. But we could try to hire labor from them first.”
“We’ve tried. No dice.”
“We need manpower,” Ballerd said. “Both of those worlds have good-sized populations, and both are inferior to us technically and economically.”
Varden smiled. “Well, your thought is not new. But the governments of Krishna and Thoth are singularly selfish. They won’t let us have the men.” Varden’s smile became a grin. “So what do we do?”
“So they want to keep what they can’t use—so we take it.”
