“This next class may frighten you, but I don’t want you interrupting it by making any noise,” Kel-Ten said, bringing me back to where I was supposed to be. “Just sit in your corner like a good girl, and it’ll be over before you know it.”
He patted me on the head as I sat down in a room exactly like the last one, then he went to join the other men who were there. They weren’t the same men who had been in the previous class, and when a new instructor in black came in they all spread out along a single, line. That let me see there were fewer of them, at least until three Secs herded in a matching number of men dressed in bright orange coveralls. The newcomers were somehow different from the men already there, thinner and looking less well cared for, shambling rather than walking normally. They were prodded into line opposite Kel-Ten and the others with twenty feet between the two groups, and then the Sees moved back to the now-closed door and the instructor inspected his students from where he stood at the lefthand wall.
“All right, everyone at once,” he said, sounding and looking downright bored. “Let’s start with fear.”
Some of the men in orange had come in looking deathly frightened, but the next instant it wasn’t a matter of just some. I gasped back into my corner when every one of them began screaming, some with eyes stretched wide, some with eyes and fists squeezed closed, all of them sounding as though they’d been pushed off a tall building or were about to be jumped on by a starving carnivore. The instructor let it go on for about ten seconds, and then he shouted, “Defeat!” and the screaming cut off as if someone had thrown a switch. Half of the men in orange collapsed to the floor and one or two covered their heads, the rest just standing where they were with rounded shoulders and heads down low. Their attitudes said it was all over for them, everything was all over, but that was just the emotion they were made to feel. Everything wasn’t all over, it was only just beginning.
After that the instructor had the Primes manipulate their victims one at a time, hopelessness, doubt, bitterness, hate, and even cruelty. Every dark emotion there was was practiced on the men in orange, but Kel-Ten had been right when he said it wouldn’t last long. Even with taking turns the Primes were quickly too tired to go on, and in significantly less than half an hour it was over. The men in orange were sprawled on the floor, most of them twitching from the series of terrible emotions they’d had forced on them in such quick succession, the Secs in charge of them coming away from the door to stand over them. Once again the Primes heading out of the room looked wilted, and as Kel-Ten approached me I could see he wasn’t doing much better.
“Now we get to take a short break,” he said, looking faintly pleased that I was rising to my feet alone. “That one really takes it out of you, even more than all that exercising I did this morning. We’ll use the lounge just a couple of doors away from here.”
He took my hand and led the way back to the door, paying no attention to the way the Secs were prodding at the men in orange to get them to their feet. One of the men was crying openly, sobbing out the pain of what he had just been put through, the sound of hopelessness so heavy in it that everyone listening should have felt the emotion as claws along nerve endings. We came closest to them as we passed through the doorway, and it was then that I became aware of the conviction that the men weren’t normals, but empaths like us. Since it wasn’t likely they were Primes, I shuddered at the sure knowledge that that had to be what became of some of the babies who weren’t-lucky-enough to be born especially gifted.
“Just take it easy, you did fine in there,” Kel-Ten said, dropping my hand in order to put an arm around me. “We do have to have someone to practice on, after all, and there are certain things you can’t aim at an instructor and still expect him to be able to go on instructing. That’s their purpose, to be targets for us, and it really isn’t as bad for them as it looked to you. Come on, the lounge is in here.”
The new doorway off the corridor he urged me through brought us into a room decorated in browns and tans and grays and greens, all deep calm and deep relaxation colors being used and appreciated by the five men already in the lounge. The couches and chairs were very soft leather and the accompanying tables matched, and when Kel-Ten dropped onto a dark brown couch he immediately used the arm server to order himself a drink. It carne fairly quickly and wasn’t all that large, so four swallows later he put aside the empty glass and smiled at me where I sat beside him on the couch.
“Now I’ve got to rest for a while, so you might as well take it easy yourself,” he said, drawing his legs up onto the couch and folding them in front of him. “If any of those jokers tries bothering you while I’m out of it, just remind them how fast I’ll be back—and how well-rested I’ll be. I’ll even be ready to take on your usual temper again. ”
He grinned as he tried chucking me under the chin, grinned wider when I moved my head to avoid it, but he didn’t pursue the matter. He looked close to being totally drained with even the grin appearing forced, and he’d already gone as far as he could. He turned his face from me and took three very deep, very slow breaths, and by the end of the third he was completely under. Deep trance through self-hypnosis, something I’d learned myself a few years earlier, but had never thought to use to return my own strength when I needed it. I actually spent a minute wondering why I hadn’t before the disgust set in, causing me to slump back in amazement at the unbelievable stupidity I seemed capable of. If you know you’ve been conditioned, how can you wonder about the things it never occurred to you to try?
After a couple of minutes of soaking in self-derision, I straightened on the couch and drew my legs up to the left of me. One of the other men in the room had been eyeing me and the way I’d been sitting, his lazy grin aimed at how high that shirt was on my thighs. Not being particularly anxious to encourage trouble I decided I’d better watch what I did a bit more closely, but sometimes trouble doesn’t need encouragement to find you. No more than five minutes after Kel-Ten went under, a shadow fell across me, and there was a white uniform standing directly in front of me. I looked up slowly, somehow knowing who I would see even before my eyes touched him, and the Sec Adjin looked back down at me with a faint grin on his face.
“The people in charge of you think you need a little more body fat, so they sent me with this midafternoon snack for you,” he said, gesturing with the cup and packet he carried before crouching down closer to me. “I happen to think you look fine just the way you are, but we’ll still do it their way. Here, take it and eat it.”
He handed me the cup of meat soup and the packet of crackers, and I couldn’t seem to do anything but take them. My heart was hammering again and my hands felt cold, my insides were turning and my mind had gone numb, all of me overwhelmed by the fear reactions coursing through me. I didn’t know what it was about that null, but just looking at him made me want to run and hide and never come out. His dark eyes stared directly at me, the enjoyment in them showing he knew exactly how frightened I was, and then his right hand rose and slid under the bottom of my shirt to touch the inner part of my right thigh. I closed my eyes for a moment as I fought to keep a lurching whimper inside, and then I hurried to eat the food that had been sent me.
Square food goes down in lumps no matter what its original texture and consistency is, and the soup and crackers more than qualified. I swallowed it all without tasting any of it, desperate to get that null away from me, praying that finishing the snack would accomplish that end. Once again no one knew what he was doing to me, his broad body blocking the view of whatever men were in the room and probably doing the same for any observation or recording devices there might be. His hand held to me as two of his fingers moved in a teasing way, but I was too terrified to find the gesture at all arousing. I took the empty packet and stuffed it into the emptied cup, set it down on the couch to my left, then found that my desperate hope hadn’t been in vain. The null squeezed my thigh one last time before withdrawing his hand, and then took the empty cup and straightened.