The Thrall left in its wake a desperate kind of emptiness as it withdrew, a need for its warmth, satisfaction, and surety of purpose. After a lifetime of fretting over every little detail on hundreds of Amelix projects, there was no greater feeling than the escape the Rat Gods provided by rendering her utterly helpless. Released from their control, the weight of her responsibilities came back to her, and she felt herself start to crumple. She had to please them, to save Alin’s life and to be able to go on forever in Thrall.
“I’m divorcing you, Alin,” she said. “I’m not interested in talking. Please leave.”
“But I don’t understand, ma’am—”
“It is not necessary for you to understand. Go pack your things.”
He did. She sat down again, sobbing. The tears came not because her relationship had just ended, and not because the life she had known, personal and professional, had just been horrifically destroyed. Those facts were insignificant. Even the nuclear detonation in the CBD was unimportant. All that mattered now was that the Rat Gods had breathed outside air. Soon every rat in the world would be exactly like them.
Williams Gypsum Mine
“Hello, Mother,” Sett said. He tried to imagine that the white gypsum walls were absorbing the stench of decay that always surrounded the family’s Brain Trust workers. It worked a little bit, but only as long as he was exhaling. Even breathing through his mouth didn’t help much.
“I didn’t know that you’d been injured and put into trust,” he said. Somewhere deep inside he wanted to cry, and perhaps by doing so, to let his feelings come to equilibrium with his life. It was impossible. When he’d awakened today he had literally been living in a sewer. Since he’d last slept, he had robbed a storeroom in the CBD, killed people while fighting for his life, been beaten and kidnapped by his sister, and seen his group of Subjects portrayed in the news as terrorists whose plot had resulted in the use of nuclear weapons in the CBD. Finally he’d been brought to face his father, who had turned the family business into a mercenary house. All this had happened, all of it, because Sett had stepped outside his station just once, disregarding the values and responsibilities of his social class to do what he thought was right. His comatose mother barely registered in his mind by this point.
“I caused this,” he said. “One nonconformist act, and it all unraveled, for me and everyone close to me. Now we’re all on the outside. We’re actual outlaws. Our family will have to survive through nonconformity from now on.” He leaned in close, whispering. “But here’s a secret, mother: I’m really fucking good at it, now.”
Office of the Amelix Integrations Medical Doctor
Zabeth Chelsea stood naked in the preparatory chamber, staring longingly at the rat perched atop her folded clothes. She was still in Thrall.
Lately it was harder and harder to think in this condition, even when she was directing thoughts to communicate with the rats. She searched her mind for the right words, as if fumbling to find something lost in a dark room.
I can’t speak out loud, because everything transpiring in a Medical Doctor’s office is recorded and becomes the intellectual property of the Medical Doctor. Omitting even trivial information is a crime against the company, because deciding what’s trivial is the same as practicing medicine, but do not worry. I will not mention you.
Please understand that this person I’m to see, the Amelix Integrations Medical Doctor, is incredibly powerful. She will notice if you still have me in Thrall, and anyway, there’s nowhere to put you since I go in naked.
Amelix is my purpose and my connection to infinity. I believe it is yours, as well. We are meant to work together like this. There is no reason to draw the Medical Doctor’s attention to you now. I will not mention you, but I must enter the exam room in complete control of myself.
The rat sat staring at her a while longer. Was it considering what she’d thought at it? Suddenly it released her from Thrall and she fell to her knees, trembling. She struggled to stand and get her breathing back under control.
If the Medical Doctor asked her about this tumble to her knees in the preparatory chamber, Chelsea would have to lie and say it was simple nervousness, brought about by the impending meeting with the most powerful individual in the entire organization. She would have to lie—not merely omit information, but actually lie—to the Amelix Medical Doctor. Could she do it, if it came to that?
She put her palms over her face, her fingertips on her eyebrows. Her breath blew back, steamy against her face.
Soon I’ll be back under Thrall, and it will all feel okay again. For now, I have to do this.
It was all in service of Amelix.
?
“Boy?” the man said.
It was English. After so long underground with so many English speakers, Ernesto could understand some English.
“Boy! Can you hear me?” the man said.
Ernesto let his eyes close again. His mind drifted away. He saw Arrulfo then, standing next to him on the street, smiling. A moment ago Ernesto had been lying in a bed, in pain. Now Arrulfo roughly grabbed the wrist of his uninjured arm, saying something.
“I don’t like to be touched, Arrulfo!” Ernesto said, waking up and moving as if to jerk his wrist away.
“Who do you follow, boy?” the man asked. He paused a moment and then asked, “Was that Spanish?” After another brief silence he turned to someone behind him. “Find me Helper Leesa,” he said.
Ernesto heard a new voice and turned toward it, finding that a short, older woman was shaking his functional left shoulder. There was a bandage tied tightly around his upper right arm. The pain in his arm made his stomach cramp and try to turn inside out. The woman was speaking to him in Spanish, asking him questions. He tried to focus on the words but it was always so hard, concentrating when people talked.
Salvado?
Ernesto looked around the room. It was full of beds, bottles hanging from wires, and tubes. Was he saved? How could he know? How safe would he have to be to be saved? Unsure of the correct answer, he stayed quiet.
When he opened his eyes again the man was gone but the woman was still there. “Hello, there,” she said in Spanish. “What’s your name?”
His arm hurt so much. It was a terrible, horrible pain.
“Do you have a mother or a father?” the woman asked. Ernesto closed his eyes again.
“Hi, there, friend!” a voice said. English again.
Ernesto opened his eyes again. Four children were sitting around his bed, looking into his face, showing their teeth. “What’s your name?” one asked.
Ernesto breathed faster, bending backwards as if pushing himself deeper into the mattress could pop him out the other side and enable him to escape. It was bright here, and loud, and these faces and teeth were coming closer still.
“You’re going to join us at our school!” one said. “You’re going to have such a wonderful time. We’re all going to be great friends!”
“Auggh! Ugh!” Ernesto struggled and thrashed. One of them pushed him down hard against the bed.
“Don’t worry!” someone said. “You’re going to be Saved!”
He remembered something from before, when he’d just arrived here. There had been so much pain, he’d felt dizzy and sick, lonely and confused. But then someone was there, helping him feel better, doing what Dok did.
“Dok!” Ernesto yelled. “Dok! Dok!”
“Excuse me,” a voice said, in English. “He just asked for me. This is a medical issue and you’ll have to clear away from the bed so I can work.”
The faces disappeared and then it was just one woman there. Ernesto was breathing hard, still very frightened. This woman was different than the one who had been speaking Spanish to him before.
She backed away a little bit. He had more space, now.
“It’s okay,” she said. It was English but he knew what it meant. “It’s okay,” she said again.
“Dok,” he said.
“Yes, it’s me again,” s
he said.
An underground tunnel
The Subjects of the Underground Kingdom were skittish and suspicious. Because the Subjects knew Rus had been in the tunnels with Coiner on the day the CBD was nuked, Coiner had gotten him assigned down here on the assumption that he should keep everything as familiar to them as possible. Top Dog had given someone else the street dealer job, and now Rus had the new title of Tunnel Master.
Peering out from this underground storm drain, Rus could see the exact spot where he had blown up the Garbageman. Soon Rus would lead a mission to wipe out some of his followers and capture the clinic.
This was to be the first raid staged from the tunnel system, so Rus was making sure his end of it was perfect. By New Union standards it was a tiny operation, but the stakes were high for him. He had to show Top Dog that the tunnels, and his expertise here, were worth the investment.
The medical clinic here had a reputation for saving lives. Now Rus was watching, trying to figure out the roles of the various people working there. When it was time to raid the clinic, Rus would provide information about which ones were worth capturing and enslaving. The rest would be killed.
12
Federal Administration Building
Agent Daiss and the other Zetas sat stiffly upright in their seats, appearing even more focused and alert than usual as Instructor Samuelson began speaking. For weeks, the nuclear explosion in the CBD had been the predominant news story and foremost cause for public concern. Now that event was fading quickly into the background.
“As you know, Task Force Zeta answers to the highest authority. We exist to serve the dedicated few who advance civilization, protecting them from the increasingly dangerous and frantic masses that do not. As we move forward from the incident inside the CBD, which is our region’s heart of productivity and engine for growth, it is beyond question that we must act aggressively to protect business interests, or else lose civilization entirely. We Zetas have been expecting this kind of crisis for some time.
As Samuelson’s voice had risen, pounding home such core Zeta values as these, another group of true believers may have cheered. Zetas did not cheer.
“More recently, the spike in schizophrenia related to Pandora Powder has alarmed corporates, not only in our own CBD but even at the national and international leadership levels. So far the epidemic has primarily impacted the lowest strata of society, but there are now confirmed cases popping up in the corporate population—and the numbers are increasing at surprising rates. As yet we don’t know a single case of an Accepted succumbing, but even the relatively pure lifestyle of the Accepted may not be able to protect them for long.
“Consequently, companies have begun taking proactive measures. Reconditioning is now mandatory for every worker on Earth, for example.”
Instructor Samuelson smiled proudly out at the Task Force. Daiss sat a little straighter, anticipating what he hoped would come next.
“The time has come, brothers and sisters,” Samuelson said. “The Zones of the world will now be put into quarantine, made effective and enforced by Task Force Zeta.”
The clinic
“How did he do this?” Wanda asked. The emaciated Hispanic boy’s amputated stump of an arm had mostly healed. This time he’d been brought in for a laceration at the back of his head.
“He wasn’t participating, so the school took away his tools and his clock project,” Helper Leesa said. She was Golden, though now skinny and angular like everyone in the Zone. A former Hordesman, Leesa was now a Helper at the school, assigned to mentor Ernesto and act as a translator until he could learn functional English. “His things were put up in a vent, way off the ground, and the ladder was locked in a closet. Ernesto got angry and had a long tantrum. Then he moved a table and climbed on top, trying to retrieve them. His feet slipped off the table’s edge, and he hit his head on the corner as he fell.”
“Hi, Ernesto,” Wanda said, kneeling down beside him and trying, but failing, to make eye contact. “Good to see you again. Can I look at the back of your head?” Slowly she came around behind him and reached gently for the side of his face. The boy screeched and batted at her arms, saying something in Spanish.
Leesa responded to him in a sharp voice. Ernesto squirmed and whined, and then tried to stand. She put her hands on his shoulders and leaned down, repeating what she’d just told him. The boy continued to whimper and writhe, but Leesa was larger and stronger. She held him relatively still in spite of his machinations, firmly repeating the same phrase over and over in Spanish. Eventually the boy wore himself out.
Leesa nodded at Wanda. “You can go ahead now.” Her hands remained on his shoulders but she moved out of the way so Wanda could see.
“What’s the problem?” Wanda asked him.
“He says he doesn’t like people to touch his body, but I reminded him whose body it is, that everything is a gift from the One. It’s the One’s body. He’s just using it. Now it has to be fixed, so he has to be still. It is his duty to the One, to let you fix the body. You can go ahead.” She nodded again.
Wanda bent down to put her face at his eye level but he still didn’t look at her. “Do you remember me, Ernesto? The doc?”
The boy was staring at the floor. “Can you hold your head like this, Ernesto?” She demonstrated, pulling her own chin downward and tilting her head, but he did not imitate her movements. “Please? I only want to look.” His eyes darted this way and that way and his shallow breathing changed to dry sobs.
Wanda backed away from Ernesto and hurried to the storeroom where Helper Bethe, a woman with permanently pursed lips whose gray and black hair matched her blotchy Saved uniform, had moved a counter across the entryway to block access. “And what do you need now, Wanda?” Helper Bethe asked.
“Two plastic sheets, one bed sheet and a blanket or something similar that can absorb a lot of blood. Oh, and I need a flashlight, too.”
“A flashlight? Ooh, I don’t know. What do you need that for?”
These days Wanda had to make a concerted effort to relax her jaw and allow it to move when she spoke, or else her speech sounded far too much like Coach’s angry growl. The constant involuntary clenching of her teeth was a distinct downside to the large doses of bactrostimulants that kept her functioning. The belittling treatment from this stupid woman didn’t make it any easier to release the tension in her facial muscles, but she tried to force a smile. “I have a patient who can’t hold still and I need to inspect a wound. I also need a carbamide solution in a spray bottle.”
“I guess you can use the flashlight but you’ll have to sign it out. It’s our last one, until the One guides our brave Saved fighters to bring us another.” Helper Bethe huffed at Wanda with her hands on her hips. “Don’t give me that look,” she said. “Everyone knows you’re a nonbeliever and a troublemaker. You’ve made it to level three of the training process, which is good, but you have a long way to go. You’ll get what I say you get and be grateful for it.”
All the other “girls” Coach V had left behind had now been trained to level six, which granted them the privilege of getting whatever they asked for, right away, without questions or other interference. The new system was supposed to be for instilling proper respect for those closer to the One, but it basically served as rank.
“Thank you, Helper, and thank the One for his blessing,” Wanda managed.
Helper Bethe presented her with a piece of plastic upon which she’d drawn a picture of the flashlight, which Wanda signed with a thin plastic tube dipped in ink.
Back at the bed, she had Leesa help Ernesto up so that she could spread one of the plastic sheets. With no intervention from anyone since he’d been hurt, the bleeding had been profuse. Using the flashlight, she examined the injury as best she could without touching him, shifting her position to illuminate the right spots as he moved. It was a clean cut, with no foreign material and apparently no damage to the skull. She cautiously sprayed the wound with the carbamide solution, anticipating
a dramatic reaction from him but getting none.
“Tell him to keep his head on this pillow,” she told Leesa. “If we can’t hold a bandage to his head, he can hold his head to a bandage.” She spread the plastic to cover the head end of the bed and then placed the folded blanket on top of it. “Can you lie down on top of this, Ernesto?” She gestured, being careful not to make contact. He stared off at something else. “Look,” she said. “You can sleep. It’s soft.”
Helper Leesa repeated it in Spanish and Wanda gestured again, and slowly the boy lowered his bloody head to the blanket. Wanda noticed as he lay that his forearm had three long, narrow welts. “What’s he been doing?” she asked Leesa.
“Learning.”
His pants were shredded at the bottom. There were welts on his calves, too.
“Did you ever think maybe he’s just not going to learn like other kids do?” Wanda blurted. “He’s obviously different.” She immediately thought better of it but the words were already out.
“Of course we know he’s different. Of course he can’t learn like other kids. But there is nothing more important than what we’re trying to teach him.”
“But you can see he’s terrified. He probably doesn’t understand why he’s being beaten or having his things taken away.”
“I know, the poor little guy. I wish it could be easier on him.”
“It can be easier on him. Just stop hitting him and taking his stuff when he’s not able to be like other kids.”
Helper Leesa’s eyes widened. Wanda was going to be punished. Maybe she’d be dropped back down a level.
“We have no issue with him being different. His amazing talent with machines is clearly a gift of the One. The school’s actions are an attempt to give him the greatest gift anyone can give him: true acceptance of the One into his heart. Nobody’s asking him to learn mathematics or spelling. I wish he weren’t so terrified and confused, but we’ve tried all the easy ways. If we succeed in teaching him, Ernesto will be protected in this life and the next. Compared to that, any temporary discomfort is meaningless.”
The Book of Wanda, Volume Two of the Seventeen Trilogy Page 24