by John Norman
“The room is lovely,” she responded to the young man. They sat in the two easy chairs, facing one another.
“You have been indoors,” he said, “but perhaps you can tell the difference in the air.”
She nodded. Perhaps it was more highly oxygenated than the air of her first world. Or perhaps, more likely, it was simply not as contaminated, not as fouled and poisoned as the air of her first world. How alive it made her feel. When the world was young, she had thought, it must have been like this; the air must have been like this.
“The food is acceptable?” he inquired.
“Yes,” she said. It was plain, but delicious. It was fresh, not shipped or stored, she supposed, for days or weeks, and frozen and such. For all she knew it had been picked or gathered that morning. Sometimes it was almost as though the dew was still upon it. Too, she doubted that it had been saturated with preservatives, or coated with poisons, to discourage the predations of insects. It did not have the stale, antiseptic reek of alien chemicals. The bread might have been an hour from the oven. She had been given only water to drink, but it had seemed to her water such as might have gushed forth from secret woodland springs in classic groves or might in remote days have been dipped by kilted herdsmen from rushing mountain streams.
“Are you still aware of the difference in the gravity?” he asked.
“No longer,” she said. “I was aware of it at first. Now I am no longer aware of it.”
“Good,” he said, rising from the chair.
“When am I to be returned to Earth?” she asked.
“What were the first words you were taught to say on this world?” he asked.
“‘La kajira’,” she said. “But I was not told what they meant.”
“Say them, clearly,” he said.
“La kajira,” she said. “What do they mean?”
“This is the last time I will visit you in these quarters,” he said. “Your treatment will begin within the hour. Hereafter, as your treatment progresses, it is you who will be brought before me.”
“That seems rather arrogant,” she said.
“Not arrogant,” he said, “— fitting.”
“What is the nature of this treatment?” she inquired.
“You will learn,” he said.
“What is its purpose?” she asked.
“You will learn,” he said.
“How long does the treatment take?” she asked.
“It varies,” he said. “But it will take several days. Such things take time. Indeed, much of the time, while the changes take place, you will be unconscious. It is best that way. I have decided, in your case, incidentally, that we will think of the treatment as consisting of four major phases, and each will be clearly demarcated for you, for your edification and my amusement. To be sure, the division is somewhat arbitrary.”
“I think you are mad!” she said.
“Let us hope the treatment goes well,” he said. “Sometimes it does not.”
She shuddered.
“Look into the mirror, deeply, and well,” he said.
She regarded her image in the mirror.
“It may be the last time you see yourself,” he said.
“I do not understand,” she said.
“It is not necessary that you do,” he said.
“Please stay! Do not leave!” she begged.
She watched him in the mirror.
He went to the door, and called to the man outside. The door opened. When he took his leave, another man entered, one she had not seen before, who wore a green robe. He carried a small case, as of implements.
She turned to face him, frightened.
“Injection position,” he said.
Chapter 6
SHE IS PRESENTED BEFORE THE YOUNG MAN,
FOLLOWING THE FIRST PHASE OF HER TRANSFORMATION
“The female,” said the man, indicating that she should stand within the yellow circle, on the marble floor, in the lofty room, before the curule chair.
Light fell upon her, from a high window.
The young man, in a robe, she had never seen him before in such garb, leaned forward in the curule chair.
Then he leaned back, continuing to regard her.
She was angry.
The curule chair was the only furniture in the room, and it was on a dais. There was no place for her to sit.
He had not, as he had warned her earlier, come to see her, but, rather, it was she who was brought to him.
She had recalled awakening, some days ago, slowly, groggily, on some hard, narrow, tablelike surface. But she had scarcely had time to orient herself, to understand where she was, to understand the white walls, the shelves of instruments and vials, before a dark, heavy, efficient leather hood was thrust over her head, pulled down, fully, and buckled shut, beneath her chin. She then, within the hood, was in utter discomfiting, confusing, helpless darkness. She was then drawn from the tablelike platform, apparently by two men, placed on her feet, and, between them, taken from the room, each grasping an arm. She surmised she was being hurried down a corridor. Abruptly the men halted her, and turned her, rudely, to her right. The hood was then unbuckled, and, as it was jerked away, she was thrust stumbling forward. Behind her, as she sought to keep her balance, hands outstretched, she heard a sound, as of the closing of a gate. She whirled about, and rushed forward, only in an instant to find herself to her dismay grasping heavy, narrowly set bars. She was in a cell.
“I have not been treated well,” she told the young man before whom she stood.
“How do your lessons proceed?” he asked.
“Twice,” she said, “I was denied my evening meal!”
“On the whole,” said he, “I gather that you have been doing well with your lessons.”
“I am not a child!” she said.
“But you must try to do better,” he told her.
When she had assured herself that she was indeed in a cell, and that it was locked, a cell abutting on a dismal, stone-flagged, dark corridor, much like the one she had glimpsed from her room, or apartment, perhaps even the same, she discovered that she was clad differently from what she had been before. Instead of the long, long-sleeved, ankle-length, white gown of fine material, coming high, modestly, about the neck, she now wore a simpler white gown, of less fine material, with half sleeves, and its hem came midway upon her calves. The garment had a rounded neck, which permitted her throat to be seen, in its entirety. Her slippers were gone and she wore instead sandals. She cried out, angrily, and shook the bars, and demanded to be returned to her former quarters, and her earlier finery. The material of the gown she wore was from the wool of the bounding hurt, which is distinguished from the common hurt not only by its gazellelike movements, particularly when startled, but by the quality of its wool. It is raised on this world for its wool. The cell was not really uncomfortable. It was large, and its floor was covered, for the most part, with a woven fiber mat. In it there was a cot, and a stool.
There was also a mirror in the cell, to her right, on the wall, as she would face the cell door.
It was not, however, the sort of mirror with which she was familiar, for it was rather more in the nature of a polished metal surface, set well within the wall. There was no way it could be removed from the wall, at least without tools, or shattered, perhaps to produce fragments of glass.
Since her image was not so instantly and clearly available to her as it would have been in a more familiar sort of mirror, she approached it more closely, puzzled, and peered into it.
She then gave a soft cry of surprise, for she did not immediately recognize her image in the surface.
To be sure, it was she, but she as she had not been for perhaps ten years. The woman who regarded her, wonderingly, from the metal surface might have been in her late forties, not her late fifties.
She put her hand gently to her face. Certain blemishes to which she had reconciled herself were gone. There seemed fewer lines in her face. Her throat seemed smoother to
her. Her entire body felt differently. It seemed somewhat more supple. Certainly the occasional stiffness in the joints was not now afflicting her, not that it always did. It was not so much that her body did not ache, or that she was not in pain, as that she had the odd sense that something might now be different about her, that her body might not now be so likely to hurt her, in that way, as it had in the past. To be sure, that conjecture, that intimation, that timid hope, might, she supposed, prove illusory.
She was not long left to ponder her surprising situation before her lessons began again. This time there were only three young women, and they were not the same as before. Too, whereas they treated her with respect, they did not seem as deferential, or concerned to please, as had been their predecessors. She did not seem to have the same easy familiarity with them as with the others; they did not, for example, seem to see her in the role of a dignified older woman, one entitled to respect in virtue of her years, and weakness. Clearly they did not regard her as obviously superior to them. These new instructrices were less patient with her, too, than had been the others. They were garbed rather like her, in plain white gowns, of similar material and length, except that their gowns were sleeveless. The necks of their gowns were rounded like hers. Given the mid-calf length of their gowns there was not the least difficulty in instantly detecting that their left ankles, too, like hers, were closely encircled with steel rings. Two of them spoke English.
She now began to be instructed in what is known as the First Knowledge, which is that level of understanding common to most individuals on this world, a knowledge of myths, stories, and popular lore. Too, they spoke to her of animals and plants, and their properties, and values and dangers. Pictures, and samples, were often adduced. In the case of certain of the animals she dismissed the accounts and pictures as a portion of the mythical background of the world to which she had earlier been exposed. Such beasts, she was confident, could not exist in reality, serpents nearly a hundred feet in length, six-legged, sinuous, nocturnal predators, gigantic hawklike birds, and such. They also gave her some understanding of the social arrangements common in what were called the “high cities,” in particular, the caste system, and the existence of codes of honor, and such, apparently taken seriously on this world. They did not, incidentally, explain to her one aspect of the social structure, or perhaps better, of the culture, in which she would have been almost certain to have taken a great interest, that condition, or status, which was irremediably hers on this world, that category, so to speak, to which she herself belonged. Perhaps this was because they had received instructions in this matter, or perhaps it was because they thought that she, an obviously intelligent woman, was already aware of such things, her status and condition, and such, or, more simply, what she was, what she, simply, absolutely and categorically, was. But, in fact, at that time, she was not aware of what she was.
“How many words is she learning a day?” the young man asked the attendant, he who had conducted her into his presence.
“One hundred,” said the man.
“Let it be two hundred and fifty,” said the young man.
She gasped, lifting her hand in futile protest.
“Too,” said the young man, “let her grammar be sharpened, for it is allegedly in need of much improvement, and see to it that her phrasings become more felicitous, certainly better than they reportedly are. One does not object to a certain amount of ignorance and fitful illiteracy in such as she, an occasional misuse of words, and such, which can be charming, even amusing, but it is important that she attain a considerably high level of fluency, in order that she may understand, instantly and perfectly, all that is required of her.”
“Do you want her accent improved?” asked the attendant.
“That will come in time,” said the young man. “At the moment her accent is useful. It will instantly serve to mark her out to native speakers.”
She determined to work zealously on her accent. She sensed that it might be in her best interests, for some reason, to conceal her origins. Perhaps there was something about her origins which might make her special on this world, at least to some, and special in a sense in which she might not care to be special. What she did not understand was that there were traces in her own body which would continue to betray her origin, in particular, fillings in the teeth, and an inoculation scar on her upper left arm. Too, of course, there were things which a native of this world would know, which she would not. Shrewdly questioned, her ignorance would soon be apparent. Too, though such things tend to be of no real consequence on this world, there would be, at least in this city, papers on her.
“There is no chair here for me to sit on,” she said to the young man in the curule chair. She said it coldly, in order that he might be shamed, and thus recalled to the simple amenities of courtesy.
“In four days,” he said, to the attendant, “let her treatment be resumed.”
She regarded the young man with fury.
He waved his hand, dismissing her.
The attendant indicated that she should precede him from the room.
Angrily she turned on her heel and strode away. In a few moments the door of her cell again closed behind her. She turned about, and, angrily, grasped, and shook, the bars of her cell.
“The arrogance of him! The arrogance of him!” she thought. Then she went and sat down, determinedly, on the stool.
When the attendant with the cart of food, for there were other cells, too, it seemed, in the corridor, passed her cell he did not stop.
“Feed me!” she had called.
But he had gone his way.
Grasping the bars then she realized that she did not have control over her own food. What she was fed, and, indeed, if she were fed, was no longer up to her, but to others. She had complained about the loss of two meals, as a punishment, presumably, for not doing well in her “lessons.” Now the attendant had simply passed her by.