"I have nothing to say at the moment about the deeper implications of your life here. It is up to Jonas to set each of you on his or her Work, and tell you what you need to know. Jonas will speak to each of you alone over the next few days. If he thinks you belong here, you will stay; if not, you'll be going back to Arizona.
"In the meantime, let's talk about rules. Our pressures here are very intense, so it shouldn't come as any surprise to find that our regulations have to be tighter. It goes without saying that the same basic ground rules you had in Arizona apply—no drugs or drink, no music or distracting clothes, no personal possessions you're not willing to share, and absolutely no unauthorized jewelry. Beyond that, we have three requirements.
"One: Everybody works. If you're not carrying your weight, you go back.
"Two: No outside contact unless it's absolutely unavoidable, particularly in your first eight weeks here. In Arizona you welcomed outsiders, you came and went, you used the phone and wrote letters home, because you were at an early stage in your Work, where it didn't matter. Here we are higher. Because things are more concentrated, more delicate, outside interference can have terrible consequences. We have wrapped this estate around us to allow us to work undisturbed; none of us can endanger the whole by coming and going without supervision.
"Be aware, too, that the authorities are harassing us—issuing us with writs, plaguing us with financial enquiries, and just plain watching us. Some of you saw the panda car parked in the road, but they're a load more high tech when they want to be. Just assume that they're watching overhead at all times, and keep under cover whenever you can. When you're working in the fields, wear one of the hats we keep in the garden shed so they can't see your face. And never go near the boundaries—they have cameras." Ana found that she was standing with her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She wished Benjamin had not deserted her. She wished she were holding Dulcie. Most of all she wished she knew what the hell was going on. Why, for one thing, was Marc Bennett standing there pontificating? Where was Jonas Seraph? Both Steven and Glen had led her to believe that Jonas was in charge here, and Bennett's words had indicated that Jonas was present. Was he ill, and capable only of limited, individual interaction with the new members of Change?
Whatever the explanation, she did not like this at all. Forty minutes earlier she had been laughing in quiet pleasure at the gamboling lambs and the kittens, and suddenly here she was, listening to a speech about the terrible threats of the outside world that could have come from the mouth of any of a hundred mentally unstable leaders whose names went on to make the headlines. Cameras and spy planes? The abruptness of the change was shocking, as if she'd been dropped into an icy lake. She began to feel dizzy. Bennett went inexorably on.
"And rule three: You're newbies. Assume that anybody here knows more than you, do what they tell you, and you won't get in trouble. Once Jonas has approved you, you're going to work long hours, you won't get much sleep, and the only time you'll sit down is to eat or to meditate. Or in school," he added in afterthought with a glance at Jason. "And God help you if you fall asleep during meditation, because Jonas sure won't."
By this time Dulcie was up in Jason's arms, hiding from her tiredness and confusion and the strange man's big voice. She cringed at his gust of laughter and turned a wary eye on him, but Jason was listening to Bennett with no small interest, and merely patted her absently.
"So," Bennett said. There"re the three main rules: work, apartness, and obedience. If you don't like it, tell us by lunchtime tomorrow, and we'll send you back to Arizona, nothing lost but a return ticket and a couple of days. Look around, talk to people, stay out of sight, and make up your mind. Steven sent you because he thought you needed the greater heat here to help your Transformation. If he was wrong, it's his fault, not yours." The prospect of Steven's being wrong obviously pleased him. "Any questions?"
Questions? Thought Ana. By God, she had questions, but they were hardly the sort Bennett would answer for her. Why hadn't she been warned? Oh yes, she'd been told that there were guns in the Los Angeles branch of Change and that a boy had been killed in Yokohama. But why had Glen neglected to mention the little fact that the English group was an armed camp run by a drill sergeant who saw camera lenses in the birds' nests? Damn you, Glen, she raged, though her face remained stiff and unrevealing.
She held the anger tightly, and fed it with the sight and sound of Marc Bennett and the thought of the flaying she would give Glen when she saw him next, and the anger was a relief and a bulwark against what lay beneath, trying to break through.
For underneath lay dread, the chill, memory-laden fear of the inevitable composed of images: Abby lying wrapped in Aaron's swollen arms on the hard-baked Texas earth; Calvin Vester in Utah, a friendly man who had cooked her breakfast, seen in Rocinante's side mirror with his gun coming up; Martin Cranmer with the Kansas wheatfields stretching out behind him, brutally knocking one of his followers to the ground, laughing. She could almost smell the burnt-steam stink of the ruptured radiator mixed with the hard, hot smell of her own blood; above all she felt the clear sensation of being trapped in a room filled with flammable gas and the only way out involving a lighted match—staying was unthinkable, leaving impossible. It was Texas, driving away from Abby and Aaron, only Texas with the foreknowledge of what her action would lead to.
Bennett ran out of words, nodded brusquely, and left the room, but Ana stood paralyzed and unseeing as the meeting broke up and people began to lead the newcomers and their possessions away. She watched Jason and Dulcie leave without a backward glance, and only gradually became aware of the plump, ordinary, sane-looking forty-year-old woman who was standing patiently in front of her.
"Hello?" The woman's humorous, questioning intonation indicated that she had greeted Ana several times already. This time she saw Ana focus on her, and she smiled. "Hi. I'm Sara. Shall I show you where your room is?"
"Sorry," Ana said. Her mouth felt numb, her voice not her own. She tried a return smile, apparently with success. "I was miles away. That would be good of you, thanks."
Sara picked up one of Ana's two bags and started briskly for the stairway, chattering in an enchanting English drawl about how "disorientated" jet lag left a person, and then about the weather. Ana followed slowly, only half hearing.
Don't overreact, she was telling herself; this is neither Utah nor Texas. You've spent weeks in the Arizona community and seen no signs of problems, and then you come here and take the rude gesture of one antiauthoritarian driver and the speech of a self-important member—not even the group leader—put them together, and build a toppling tower.
Calm down, woman. This is not Texas; this is not Utah. They'll ship you back to Arizona whenever you want, and there are certainly no jugs of poison waiting in the cellar; no one is about to run out with an automatic pistol to stop you from driving away. Just think of it as a brief enlistment with the English army.
The surface of her mind began to clear, so that by the top of the second flight of stairs she was paying attention to what her guide was saying about the recent spate of long, dry summers and the mixed feelings the entire country had about warmth in May.