One of the men who’d brought her in came back. “You all done, Doc?”
“As much as I can right now. I want you to take her to the recovery area, lie her flat, and find and bring me her robe and put it in there. Make sure there’s nothing in it, of course.”
“Oh, they all been stripped. Kind of a shame, though. You gonna dress her? I mean, she looks—”
“Never mind. There’s enough of that around as it is. We want control, nothing more. When you’ve done that, bring in the male.”
I’ve been here too long, the medic told himself. I’m beginning to care again.
For Eve, it was like coming out of a sweet, motherly embrace back to a colder and harsher consciousness. Still, there was no pain, and perhaps for good reason. She found herself barely able to feel much of anything at all, almost like she’d been bathed in some painkilling lotion that had made her skin dead and nonreceptive.
She was lying on her back on a basic straw mattress, and that was interesting. She tried moving, but nothing at all seemed to work. It was as if she were paralyzed; perfectly awake, but unable to move or even feel much of anything at all.
The thought brought momentary panic. What if they had paralyzed her? It didn’t take much—you learned that in martial arts classes. Naturally, when The Mountain was whole and everything and everybody was on ship’s routine you could use the medical labs there and grow new connections, but down here, like this, it was a particularly frightening idea.
The big men wheeled in another figure, this time a man, and for a moment she was afraid that it was John Robey. She tried to move her head to see, but she simply couldn’t. She was blinking, she was breathing, even swallowing as needed or required, but she could control nothing at all.
They’d put him next to her, so it wasn’t possible to see much beyond his legs and feet. He was a hairy guy, anyway, and appeared to be, well, large if that which was partly glimpsed was what she thought it was. Still, there was no way to even tell when or if he was awake, let alone communicate with him. It was as frustrating as the cave where they’d been chained, although, she had to admit, less painful.
The medic came in after a few minutes and examined each of them professionally and clinically, top to bottom. She was somewhat embarrassed by this but could hardly protest. What good would it have done had she been able to, anyway? This was the man who’d paralyzed them both, wasn’t it?
He finished, stood back, and unclipped a small rod-shaped device from a utility belt and held it like a small portable microphone. He pressed two buttons on the side and then said into it, “Legs up in the air, backs flat against the bed.”
To her complete astonishment, her legs went straight up vertical to her hips and held there.
“Legs together. Yes, that’s right,” he continued. “Now, because I know you know what this means, I want you to use only the legs and do a bicycle movement with both. Slowly, now. Yes, that’s good.”
In both their cases, their legs were going back and forth as if riding some sort of imaginary bicycle or exercise machine. What was amazing to her was that she barely felt it, and had nothing to do with it.
“Excellent. Keep doing that at that rate. Back remaining flat, arms up in the air parallel to the legs. Now close fists. Bring the arms down bending at the elbows until the elbows touch the bed. Good. Now raise the arms up and at the same time open your hands completely and rapidly wiggle all your fingers. Good. Now repeat that action until I tell you to stop.”
It was effortless exercise, but also frightening. Whatever this man told them to do, they had to do! How elaborate it was she couldn’t imagine, but it was a kind of torture she might have imagined a demon to wield. But, of course, demons misused technology better than anyone, didn’t they?
While there was still the overriding numbness, there were twinges here and there in both the arms and the legs, which told her that the pain that created them must really be horrible.
The medic nodded. “You may stop now. Arms down at your sides, hands flat against your sides, legs down in rest.” He did a physical check of both of them again, and seemed satisfied.
In fact, the medic was surprised. They were in far better shape than he’d expected, or than he or most others here would be after this long in those restraints. The Captain might well be able to use them in fairly short order.
What a pity it would be to hand the controller over, though. This kind of thing might be worrisome but it gave such a rush! Power always beat every drug he’d tried.
“Well,” he sighed, “since you’re in such good shape, let’s see how good.” He brought the small tube near his mouth and she could see that he was actually holding down the buttons. Apparently one was her, one was him, and both buttons in operated both of them at once. “Arms vertical, hands forward, fingers closed,” he instructed. “Now, sit up and try and touch your toes.”
The first couple of tries she couldn’t do it; then, with an effort she could feel, she rose up and, with several rocking motions, managed to touch her toes. Since she had nothing to do with the operation, she tried to see if the man was doing it, too. If so, he wasn’t to her stage yet.
She could hear him breathing heavily, and then there was a mighty heave and he managed it, more or less, although he couldn’t keep his fingers on the toes. It was very possible, though, that he couldn’t before they’d done this to him. Different people were assembled in different ways.
“Very well, now arms at rest, pivot to your right on your ass and sit with your legs dangling over the side of the bed.”
She found herself doing it, although it required a little bit of adjustment. She was now facing the young man, who was in fact quite handsomely put together but still sitting with his arms reaching to his toes. He looked familiar, but not anybody of her age or classes and not anyone she’d worked with before.
The medic repeated the instructions but with a turn to the left rather than the right, but she found that they had no effect on her, only on him, as he pivoted and then sat facing her. There was some life, and recognition, in the eyes, but little else. Eye movement was automatic as needed, just like the use of the arms and hands for balance, but it was nothing either could control.
Walking proved more difficult, and the first time she’d been told to try it she’d had to reach out and grab the bed to keep from falling. Still, the medic kept at it, very professionally, until she managed to walk across the room to the wall, turn, and walk back to the bed. Her companion had even more trouble, but managed eventually to get it, too.
She wasn’t a really large woman, and both of these men were unusually tall; her companion in misery must have had twenty centimeters on her, and probably thirty kilos as well. The medic was even slightly taller than the Arm man, but thinner. Still, her level of total helplessness was compounded by standing there feeling dwarfed by the company. She had never felt so totally helpless in her life.