For me, the lights turned out to be a distraction. They drew my attention when the rate of blinking changed in a way that seemed to be crying to draw my attention, and as soon as I looked up at them the machine took advantage of the fact. It actually required the sound of multiple small clicks before I understood I’d been distracted for a reason, and by then, of course, it was far too late. My wrists were held firmly to the table where they lay to either side of me, my ankles were snugly looped, and a thin strand of the same material loosely circled my throat. I cried out and pulled at the bindings, unable to tell whether I was more frightened or more furious, but the material holding me was designed to resist efforts like mine. It was too soft to cut or cause any other damage, and much too strong to be parted by anything I was likely to be able to do.
Once the mechanism had me the way it wanted me, it went on with what it had obviously been instructed to do. Its very first act was to draw some of my blood, and then, even before the sting of the needle was gone, it began to check my reactions to certain stimuli. Considering what I had been brought there for I shouldn’t have been surprised that my ankles first had to be separated, and I wasn’t surprised. Ravening outrage was more like what I felt, but that didn’t entirely negate the machine’s efforts. I lay there on my back, struggling uselessly against what held me, but could still feel myself reacting faintly to what was being done to me. The sensors or probes or whatever they were felt like fingers, and seemed to have been programmed by someone who knew what he was doing. I hated being touched like that with everything in me, but for some reason that didn’t keep me from reacting to it.
The testing went on for a number of minutes before stopping abruptly, a needle put something into my veins instead of taking something out, and then the bindings withdrew to wherever they had come from. Right after that the colored lights went out, which meant the hood could be raised from the table I lay on. I was about to do it myself when it was done for me, and the woman in the light brown uniform looked down at me with a plastic smile pasted on her face.
“See, I told you it would be easy,” she said, offering my thin cloth smock as though it were a lounging robe being given to someone just stepping out of a bath. “Now it’s behind you, and you don’t have to think about it again. ”
I sat up and got off the table without saying anything, then took the smock without looking at anything else. I preferred the smock to being naked so I put it on, but without the help that had been offered. I’d had enough help from that woman, but at least I’d learned my lesson. From that moment on it wouldn’t matter how compassionate anyone was; trust would be the last thing I gave them.
“Terrilian, I had no choice about doing that to you,” the woman said from behind me, helpless regret heavy in her voice. “It’s part of the processing every female Prime goes through here, and if you’d tried refusing they would have forced you. This way it’s over and done with without the trouble refusing would bring, and without the anxiety you would have suffered. Isn’t it better this way?”
I smoothed the smock closed with a single firm stroke of my hand, but didn’t make any attempt to answer the woman’s question. Lying to me might have made things easier for her, but in my opinion I should have been entitled to choose for myself. If I preferred trouble and anxiety to letting myself be taken advantage of, that was my business.
“Well, you’re certainly healthy enough,” the woman went on when the silence grew too thick for her, the heartiness her voice now carried an excellent match to the smile shed worn. “You’ll find participating in the program no strain at all, and it won’t be long now before you can begin. Part of the injection you were given was a neutralizer meant to shorten the life span of your protection against pregnancy. ”
“And what was the rest of it, friend?” I asked in a growl, turning finally to look directly at the woman. She and I were almost the same size, so our eyes should have had no trouble meeting levelly. “Judging by everything else around here, it should have been the chemical equivalent of that happiness conditioning. What’s the matter, didn’t it work? -Or is it just that it hasn’t worked yet?”
If she flinched at the harsh accusation I threw at her, I couldn’t tell from looking in her eyes. The gaze that should have been level with mine wasn’t, and then she was the one turned away, her shoulders rounded with whatever burdens were hers. Her hand rose to her face, probably covering her mouth for a moment or two, and then it went higher to touch her hair as she straightened.
“The main problem is that you really don’t understand what you’re facing,” she said without turning, her voice slow and very reasonable but also audibly trembling.
“You still believe you can refuse to do what these people want, that you can be stubborn and make trouble for them and do anything you please to obstruct them, and the worst that can happen is that they eliminate you. What you must make yourself believe and understand is that they won’t eliminate you, not under any circumstances, no matter what you do. They will keep you for and in the program, and if I let you believe anything else I’d be hurting you worse than you know. I’m supposed to be here to help people, and I want to help you. You’re the first to come through here like an actual, living being instead of a programmed doll. If helping you means I also have to hurt you- What choice do I have- What else can I do-?”
Her words seemed to die rather than end, and her hand reached out slowly to move over a glowing circle on the wall near her. Her body had the same tremor that her voice had had, but she straightened even more and gained some control of it.
“Once you see more of this place and think about what I’ve told you, you’ll come to understand,” she said, the reassurance she groped toward more for herself than for me. “You’ll know then that I really am your friend, and if you need me you won’t hesitate to come. Ask for Cataran Olden in Medical, and they’ll bring you to me. Don’t forget, Cataran Olden.”
Once again I knew when I was being dismissed, so having the door in the far wall open came as no great surprise. The white uniform was familiar enough, but this time it was being worn by a woman rather than a man. She wasn’t quite the size the men had been, but she wasn’t small and she wore the same nonexpression they had, making her clearly one of the breed. Her blond, untinted hair was very short, and for some reason that struck me as being wrong.
“Please take the Prime to her assigned sector,” Cataran Olden said to the woman in white, handing over some sheets of paper from the folder she held. “She isn’t like the others are when they first come in here, so do please try being patient with her. You will-won’t you?”
The bigger woman smiled very faintly as she took the papers, then crooked a finger in my direction. As I passed Cataran Olden I could see she was still waiting for an answer to her question, not realizing she already had her answer. I walked out of the examination room without looking back, and door was quietly closed behind me.
3
I was expecting another corridor outside of the examining room, but that wasn’t what was there—or at least not like the previous corridors I’d seen. This one was three or more times as wide as the others, and there weren’t simply doors to either side of it. There were also desks here and there along the walls, and some of them had women in smocks like mine seated in chairs beside them, talking to the people behind the desks. There were more women in smocks standing in lines farther back, and most of those looked distracted but very pleased with themselves. Four men in the white uniforms of security watched the large area casually, clearly expecting nothing to happen but nevertheless appearing fairly alert.