Anne McCaffrey - Restoree

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Anne McCaffrey - Novel - Restoree

A CORGI BOOK

Originally published in Great Britain by Rapp & Whiting Limited

Corgi Books are published by Transworld Publishers Ltd., 61-63 Uxbridge Road, Baling, London

W5 5SA, in Australia by Transworld Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd., 15-23 Helles Avenue,

Moorebank, NSW 2170, and in New Zealand by Transworld Publishers (N.Z.) Ltd., Cnr. Moselle and

Waipareira Avenues, Henderson, Auckland.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd., Reading, Berks.

To "My Favourite Relative"

G. N. McElroy

All of the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons living or

dead is purely coincidental

CHAPTER ONE

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The only warning of danger I had was a disgusting wave of dead sea-creature stench. For a moment,

it overwhelmed the humid, baked pavement smell that permeated the relatively cooler air of Central Park

that hot July night. One minute I was turning off the pathway to the Zoo in search of a spot that might

have a breeze from the lake and the next I was fainting with terror.

I have one other impression of that final second before all horror overcame me: of a huge

dirigible-shaped form looming lightless. I remember that only because I thought to myself that someone

was going to catch hell for flying so low over the city. Then the black bulk of the thing seemed to

compress the stinking air through my skull, robbing me of breath and sanity with its aura of alien terror.

Of the next long interlude, which I am informed was a period of withdrawal from a reality too

disrupting to contemplate, I remember only isolated incoherencies. It is composed of horrifying

fragments, do-si-do-ing in a random partnering of all nightmare symbols, tinted with unlikely colors,

accompanied by fetid odors, by intense heat and shivering cold and worst of all, nerve-memories of

excruciating pain. I remember, and forget as quickly as possible, dismembered pieces of the human

body; the pattern of severed blood vessels, sawn bones, the patterns of the fine lines on wrinkled skin.

And throat-searing screams. And a voice, dinning into the ears of my mind, repeating with endless,

stomach-churning patience, collections of syllables I strained desperately to sort into comprehensible

phrases.

Red, yellow, blue beads rolled, parabolically, evading a needle and its umbilical string. A spoon

dipped into a blue bowl, into a red bowl; a spoon dipped into a red bowl, into a blue bowl, until my body

was forced into the mold of a spoon and itself was dipped into the bowl, my greatly enlarged mouth the

bowl of that spoon. Plaits of human hair swayed toward oddly shaped sheets of pale white leather. The

gentle voice with the iron insistence of the dedicated droned on and on until each repetition seemed to

trampoline into the gray matter of my mind.

Then, after eons of this inescapable routine, I began to clutch at snatches seen normally and rationally;

a face on a sea of white which stretched limitlessly beyond my blinkered perception. I would be aware of

bending over this face. I kept trying to make the face resemble someone I knew: one of the junior

account men who invaded the source library of the advertising agency where I worked; one of the

anonymous faces on the buses I rode from my 48th Street cold-water flat.

At other times, I would find a tray of food held in front of me and associate myself as the carrier. This

troubled me even more because of all things, I hated serving food. In college I had paid for my board

working as a waitress and sometimes a cook in private families, resenting the necessary exigencies of a

junior female member of a large family. It seemed to me my earliest recollections were of setting or

clearing the table and serving food. But the feeling of the entire scene here had an alien quality to it,

despite the fact my coherent vision was limited. The tray and dishes had a different touch and the smell of

the food was unfamiliar.

The next identifiable sensation was that of the warmth of sun on my shoulders and the caress of wind,

of green light in my eyes. I heard screams that can only be heard and not described, but they might have

been from earlier sections of the nightmare. I had the feeling on my hands of the slippery softness of

soapy water. Then the face on the vast expanse of white would reappear. I gradually became aware of

an unfailing order in the procedure of my dreams. Face, food, water, sunshine, face, food, water, dark.

The repetition was endless and I was passive to it, prompted by the droning voice, no longer gentle, but

equally insistent.

Slowly, not just that face on a sea of white but peripheral details took form and coherency. The face

would belong to a man, an ugly man with vacant eyes, black hair, sallow pitted skin. The fact that he bore

not one morsel of resemblance to any of my brothers or any of the overbright young men at the agency

gave me distinct pleasure. His face was on a pillow which was on a bed of hospital height. And always I

was in the position of looking down, not being on a level, with him. Had he been bending over me, I

might just have been alarmed that all the tales of rampant white slavery in New York City drilled into me

by my provincial parents were indeed true. My first conscious query was why was I not the patient since,

obviously, something was very wrong with me.

The mere sensation of sun warmth gradually expanded to include oddly shaped trees with willowy,

waving fronds, and with the feel of the wind was the cool fragrance of floral odors.

The ground no longer hovered somewhere beyond my comprehension but was suddenly squarely

under my feet. I was standing on a walk, bordered with blooms I never remembered seeing before. The

trays I carried contained individual colored dishes with foods that smelled appetizingly and I fed them to

the face in the sea of white.

I cannot judge the length of this semiconscious state. I was a passive observer, comparing the

anomalies with personal recollections and finding no parallels. I was, however, not the least bit alarmed

by all that, which should have alarmed me, as I am normally very curious, in a discreet way.

I do know that the transition into full consciousness was brutally abrupt. As if the focus of my mind,

so long blurred, had suddenly been returned to balance. As if a kaleidoscope had astonishingly settled

into a familiar design instead of random, meaningless patterns.

Out of the jumble, my grateful eyes reviewed an entire panorama of sloping bluish lawns, felicitously

set with flowering shrubs and populated by couples strolling casually down the paths. Each woman wore

a gown the exact cut and color of the blue one I wore. Each man had a blue tunic and a coat gruesomely

reminiscent of a straitjacket. Beyond the bluish swath, lay little cottages of white stone, with wide

windows, barred by white columns at narrow regular intervals. Directly in front of my face was a

shimmering opacity I recognized, by some agency, as a fence and dangerous to me.

I was not, however, one of a couple. I was in a group of eight people, strolling the walks, and the

other seven were men. Only one, the man directly to my left, wore the strange jacket.

A voice, issuing from the left side of the man in the jacket, spoke an irritating combination of

comprehensible words and jumbled syllables.

'And so… he is as well as can be expected. Certainly his physical appearance has improved. Notice

the firm tone to his flesh, the clear color of his complexion.'

'Then you do have hopes?' asked an urgent, wistful younger voice. Its owner I could see without

noticeably turning my head. He was a young man, tall and slender, with a sensitive, pale-gold tired face

dominated by deeply circled eyes. He was dressed in a simple but rich fashion. His concerned attention

was on the man whose harness controls I now found myself holding.

'Hopes, yes… (another incomprehensible spate of words. It seemed to me I was hearing another

language in which I could not yet think)… we have had so few successes with this sort of… Our skill

does not include mental breakdowns… the strains and concerns of affairs in your behalf and for his

country… but you may be sure we are taking the very best care of him until that time. Monsorlit's…'

This was not the reassurance the young man wanted. He sighed resignedly, placing a gentle hand on

my charge's shoulder. It was the lightest of gestures, but it stopped the man stolidly in his tracks. In the

vacuousness of the face, there was no comprehension of the action, no reaction, no sign whatever of

intelligence.

'Harlan, Harlan,' the youth cried in bitter distress, his eyes brimming with tears, 'how could this have

happened to you?' 'Come, Sir Ferrill,' commanded a stern voice with no vestige of sympathy in its

hardness. 'You know that emotional stress can bring about another one of your attacks. You have little

enough strength as it is.'

The speaker fetched round in my sight. Immediately I saw his face, I disliked him. I considered myself

scarcely a proper judge in this newly rational state of mind, but the instinct to hate him was as sharp as

the fleshy face of the man was bland. His eyes, close together on either side of a large nose, were

disturbingly cold, calculating and wary. His full sensuous lips sealed tightly over his teeth and his heavy

jaw was implacable. His heavyset figure was ponderous, not just fleshy or muscular but unwieldy.

'Your solicitude for my health is touching, Gorlot, but I will judge which emotion I can afford,'

snapped the young man with such regality the implacable man demurred.

The youth continued to speak, ignoring this Gorlot.

'Since that is his condition, I must leave Harlan here,' he said to a corpulent, moon-faced individual

who bowed with oily obsequity at each phrase. 'But… if I am not informed the moment an improvement

is noticed…' and the youth left the threat in mid-air with the authority of one who is used to complete

obedience.

The unctuous man bowed again to the back of the youth who turned and walked with brisk steps

down another path. The smile on the fat man's face did not indicate obedience to the injunction. Nor did

the knowing look this Gorlot exchanged with him. The others in the party walked into my line of vision

and followed the youth and Gorlot.

When they were out of hearing, the fat man turned to me with a sneer and snapped a command, 'To

the house,' and I, obviously from some well-rehearsed practice in that dim past from which I had so

recently emerged, turned myself and my charge around and took a path towards a little cottage among

the trees.

At the door stood an armed attendant, a brutish, coarse-looking person who spoke as we

approached but spoke as one who knows he isn't heard.

'Back in your cage, most high, noble and exalted Regent.' He threw open the door he had just

unlocked. With a brutal shove he pushed my charge into the house. With an equally brutal and obscene

caress, he pushed me inside and snapped the door lock.

The patient lay crumpled over the chair into which he had been pushed. I wondered how I would be

able to get him to his feet, for he was tall and big-boned. But, as I put one hand under his arm, he took it

as a signal and almost unaided got to his feet. His shins were bleeding slightly, but there was no sign of

expression in the vacant eyes.

'Poor man,' I muttered to myself, 'which of us has been the madder?'

'Take off harness,' blared a voice from the ceiling, startling me breathless. I spotted the grillwork that

housed the speaker. 'Take off harness,' the voice repeated, slowly, distinctly, as to a child or… a

childlike mind.

I did as I was told.

'Take off harness,' the voice repeated four more times even as I had completed the task. 'If I've said

that once, I've said it a million times,' the voice grumbled in a lower and more normal tone.

'You'd gripe in a priest's cave, you would,' came a half-muffled reply. 'By the Seven Brothers, you

won't find me complaining. This life suits me fine. Plenty of food, nothing much to do except lock doors

and… unlock any pretty legs I want.'

'You like that, you Milbait,' was the sneering reply.

'Ahhh, that's your main problem in life, Balon, you have to have a struggle to please you. Not me.'

'Who do you think you are, telling me what my problem is? Monsorlit?' Balon growled. His voice

altered again as he issued another command. 'Seat patient.'

I scuffled with the chair, picked it up, half pushing the man into it.

'Get tray at wall slot. Get tray at wall slot.'

I located the wall slot and the tray on which were two sets of dishes, one red and one blue.

'Feed patient blue food. Feed patient blue food.'

My patient ate with a half-animal intensity, snapping at each bite as the spoon touched his lips, gulping

it down half-chewed.

'Eat red food. Eat red food,' was the next order. 'Damned if I care if the dummies eat or not. They

give me Milshivers.'

'You'd care all right if you had to feed all of Gleto's drugged prizes yourself. Then I'd never hear the

end of your blasting. Your trouble is, you don't know a prime cave when you see it. Me, I like it fine.

Those dummies do all our work. This is better pay than patrolling, too. Not that I'd patrol with the

half-blown reliners they call squadron leaders these days. And not with a war on Tane. Who wants

hand-to-hand combat? And it's better than running illegals. You can never tell nowadays when Gorlot's

going to have to make more commitments and who wants to end up with a needle? Or tied to the local

Mil Rock?'

'Balon,' shouted a new voice in the background I recognized as Gleto's. 'You've been at Lamar again.

Leave him alone. Just luck I looked in at him on my way to greet Ferrill. You keep your hands off him.'

'If you knew what the Milrouser had done to me, you wouldn't…' began the grumbler passionately.

'I don't care if he blocked your cave,' Gleto said angrily, 'you cut him up once more and you'll join

him.'

'Eat red food. Eat red food,' Balon snarled in the speaker system.

There were no more incidental remarks over the speaker that day, but it was a constant source of

odd, vulgar dialogues between much the same personnel during the next week.

Although I never understood their topical references until much later, my understanding of the

language increased immensely… if limited to a very rough vernacular. I knew there was a war going on

between these people and the inhabitants of another planet, Tane. I knew that the army unit, the Patrol,

was considered to be run by incompetents and that the casualties were high. That there was a sudden

epidemic of insanity that caused the guards no end of secret amusement.

I had been told by Balon to return the tray after I had eaten the red food. I was then told to be seated

in the other chair of the room without any further commands for what seemed a long time. My private

meditations were uninterrupted until the green sun had sunk from sight and a twin-moonlit night well

darkened.

As the greening twilight increased to the point of low visibility, I was briefly startled to see the lights in

the four corners of the room come on. It was not overly bright for me to assume that a central agency

turned on all the functions of the cottage, remotely controlling the order of the days with no need for

personal contact. This isolation was merciful to me as I sorted out truth from fancy in newly regained

sanity.

Perhaps, on another day, if I hadn't heard the coarse interchange, I might have innocently announced

my rationality. The wise decision to remain silent was strengthened each day by the grotesque

conversations I overheard. It was lucky, too, that there was not a single diversion in that barely furnished

room so that my activity, outside of the care of my patient, was restricted to looking out the window or

sitting looking at my vacant-eyed companion. Any other industry would have immediately communicated

my change to the guard on his random rounds.

I learned early that the speaker system was two-way. A chance, overloud comment on my part

fetched the guard instantly. To him I presented the same vacant stare that inhabited the face of my

charge. He looked at me suspiciously, caressed me in a vulgar fashion that shocked me motionless and

departed with a shrug of his shoulders.

After that I lived with another dread, that one of them might select me for his pleasure.

It was a good thing, too, that there was no visual check installed in the cottage or I should have been

apprehended the very next morning of my rationality as I stood in front of the window and made my most

amazing discovery.

For the body I inhabited bore few resemblances to the one I distinctly remembered possessing. It

was the same height, same chestnut hair, but it was a slim, graceful figure I saw, not my former awkward

self. And my skin was a warm golden color. All over. In contour my face was similar, but now my blue

eyes stared at, to me, a totally transformed face. My incredulous fingers softly caressed the new,

marvelously congruous nose. No longer was I crucified by that horrible hooked monstrosity bequeathed

me with hereditary injustice from some New England zealot. This new nose, all golden, fine-grained skin,

was straight, short and charming. I stroked it, reveling in the tactile sensation that proved it was really part

of me and there was no more of it than I could see in the window reflection. How many, many agonies

that horrid nose had given me. How often I had railed at the injustice of parents who produced child after

indiscriminate child and had no money to provide more than basic needs and none to remedy cruel

genetic jokes.

Had they been at least sympathetic, I would not have left home. But they couldn't even understand

why I wanted to save money for plastic surgery. Only Jewish girls felt it necessary to have nose bobs.

The fact that I looked Semitic with such a nose didn't bear on that problem.

'You are as God made you, Sara, and you've much to commend you to any decent self-respecting

man.'

'But nothing to commend myself to me,' I remembered saying, 'and I don't see any decent

self-respecting men pounding a path to my door.'

They couldn't argue that, certainly, for not even my brothers could be blackmailed or pressured into

getting me dates. But they could and did argue against my going to New York, although I had a written

job offer, a good one with an advertising firm, confirmed and secured.

'Why the library right here in Seaford has offered you a very nice position,' my father had argued.

'Seaford? I might as well rot in the end of the world,' I had cried. 'I'm twenty-one and I'm leaving

home. If I cook another meal for anyone, it'll be for myself and not for six field-hand appetites that don't

know decent food from pigs' swill.' I had glared at my brothers, busy shoveling food into their mouths. 'If

I iron anything, it'll be my own clothing, not shirts and shirts and shirts.'

'The girl's ill,' my mother had declared as if this explained my unexpected outburst.

'All that education,' my father had retorted sourly. He had resented my insistence on college, to the

point where I had had to work constantly to support myself: making ends meet only because library

majors got state support.

'I'm not ill. I'm sick, but not of education. I'm sick of Seaford and everyone in it.'

'But everyone knows you here, hon,' Seth, the brother next oldest to me, said soothingly. He alone

came nearest to appreciating my despair. He had needed glasses desperately as a young boy and his

now permanently damaged eyes were weak, watering and subject to continual inflammations.

'And no one wants me,' I had cried from the bitterness of my soul. 'At twenty-one, I have never even

had a date.'

'I'm leaving, Mother,' I had repeated quietly and to end conversation had started to clear the table.

And I did leave, taking my suitcase from the back porch on my way out the kitchen door to catch the

night bus to Wilmington and the train to New York City.

But now, here on some strange planet, God only knows how many light-years from Seaford,

Delaware, I had my new nose. I giggled. If I ever got back home, I could use my savings for a trip to

Europe. Only I was abroad already.

I stroked my nose again and then the smooth, golden-skinned arms where the dark hairy growth had

once added to the list of my physical embarrassments.

Further examination proved that three prominent scars, the rewards of trying to play tomboy to my

older brothers, were gone from my body. Of my disfiguring marks, only the double gash on my right

instep where I had stepped on a bottle wading remained. But the corns on my toes from shoes too short

for growing feet were gone.

I was utterly delighted, mystified and grateful to, if appalled by, the strange agency that had caused

this transformation. I was all my most glowing dreams had once evoked. Not beautiful but pretty, healthy

looking with my golden tan (only it wasn't a tan, I discovered), properly curved - and precious little

advantage could I see of it, locked in one room with a mindless idiot.

The air of danger and despair that hung over the pleasant gardens and bare cottages could not be

mistaken. When outsiders walked among us, the guards were tensely alert. The lack of treatments of any

kind, the tenor of the conversations I overheard on the loudspeakers, contrasted strangely with the

luxurious surroundings and the physical appearance girls and patients were made to maintain. The other

women who paraded with their charges were pretty, perfect in their prettiness with almost frightening

similarity. Their expressions were only slightly more intelligent than those of their patients. A case of the

dolt caring for the idiotic in a moronic paradise.

I learned the reason for the simple harness that had to be strapped on my man before each

promenade in the garden. A small, needled vial containing a tan, viscous fluid, was aimed at the right arm

through the padding that kept both arms bound to the sides. A jerk on the reins exerted a pressure that

drove the needle into the arm.

I saw one man run berserk, yelling, dragging the girl who, in her stupidity, still clutched the reins. He

halted abruptly, screaming in agony, and dropped rigid to the ground. The performance thoroughly

frightened me and I regarded the big man I cared for with alarm. I knew of no such precautions should a

seizure overtake a patient in the cottage. One night, though, I did hear the sudden crescendo of hysterical

laughter, shrieks and a final shrill cry from a neighboring cottage. I did see the limp, bloody figure of a girl

carried out. Another pretty, blue-robed woman took her place by the next exercise hour, vacantly

parading her glassy-eyed charge. I took to staring at my ugly man at all times, hoping to forestall such an

occurrence in my cottage. I knew every line on his face, every pitted scar, every twitch of his muscles. At

one point, I started with every deep breath he took.

My patient received his first professional visit eight days after my recovery. Three men came in; a

white-coated technician pushed in a small treatment cart and immediately left; the fat-faced man called

Gleto came in and a man whose appearance was an odd contrast to Gleto's.

Gleto ordered me to stand in one corner and vacantly I moved after what I considered an appropriate

time for moronic comprehension. I stood, however, so that I could see everything that went on and the

third man held my attention most.

He was not tall, just my height, and carried himself stiffly erect. His movements were all as precise as

a Scots guardsman, no motion was wasted. His skin seemed to be drawn tightly across his skull and each

straight black hair on his head was precisely combed into place. His nose was high-bridged and thin; his

lips were thin, his eyes of a nondescript shade were penetrating and intense, set deeply into his skull.

There was no expression on his face nor were there any lines that indicated he had ever had any

expression. A colder personality I never met nor a more impressive one. In dress, manner, color, motion,

speech, he was a machine of efficiency, not a human being.

He made a rapid and thorough examination of the patient, skimming the first page of the stiff chart on

the treatment wagon without missing a word. Looking up, he said:

'I see no need whatever of increasing the dosage now. The injection every two weeks plus the oral

amounts in his food are ample to subdue his personality,' and he implied that his valuable time had been

wasted.

'I'm taking no chances,' Gleto replied accusingly, 'and you haven't been here in two months. You

know how powerful Harlan is physically,' and the heavy, fat eyelids flickered with unctuous

insolence,'since it took three injections to hold him under the first week.'

The cold man looked at Gleto. 'And you will no doubt recall from whose laboratories cerol originated

and who is most familiar with its properties. I am no more eager for his recovery than you. It would

interrupt my research at a time when success is a matter of weeks away.' The thin, precise eyebrows

raised imperceptibly and the cold man reached for the chart again, flipping over a few rigid sheets before

his thin finger jabbed at a notation.

With no expression he now indicated displeasure.

'Where is the weekly absorption count? If you are stupid enough to ignore the simple precaution of an

absorption count, naturally you are stupid enough to sit quivering with fright that Harlan might recover. I

thought I had made the necessity of those checks adequately clear to your technicians.'

Gleto attempted to pass this off.

'Do not evade the issue, Gleto,' came the implacable voice. 'The absorption count has not been taken

for four weeks. One is to be taken immediately and retaken every other week. When I have perfected a

simple check, I do not intend to waste time coming here just to remind you to use it.'

'I don't have the technicians to…'

'What about that… fellow outside?'

Gleto snorted at the suggestion.

'I thought so. You've spent only enough of your wealth to maintain an outward appearance of

efficiency and shiver in your bed at night because your avarice prevents you from hiring sufficient

personnel to run this place properly.'

Gleto looked at him suspiciously and then twisted his lip into a sneer.

'You don't fool me, Monsorlit; absorption rates, ha! That's just an excuse to get more of your

dummies off your hands.'

Monsorlit turned his eyes from the chart he had started to reread to gaze at the fat man. The room

became still, broken only by the breathing of the patient, until the sneer left Gleto's face and he began to

shift his bulk restlessly.

'Your assessment of the situation is erroneous and I mistakenly credited you with more medical

acumen than you possess. And I correct your term "dummy" to "mental defective".' Monsorlit's voice

without changing pitch gave the effect of a shouted disgust for Gleto. 'Since your perception is limited by

its effect on your cash pouch, I will send, with my compliments, a repossessed technician who can

perform this simple but necessary test. He will come each fifth day. I will have one ready for such tasks in

four weeks. In the meantime,' Monsorlit took a lancet and ampul and deftly took a blood sample from

the ugly man.

Gleto recovered his poise and affected a knowing smile.

'Your generosity, indeed,' he scoffed.

'The technician's instructions will be limited to Harlan, as he is the only one with whom I am

concerned,' Monsorlit continued, taking up a filled syringe, testing it and then plunging it into the patient's

vein. The man's body became rigid with muscular tension, quivered as if trying to release itself from the

grip of the drug and finally relaxed. Sweat beaded his brow and rolled unheeded to the pillow.

'If he's here, why can't he do Trenor's nine as well?' Gleto insisted angrily.

Monsorlit stood up, wiped his hands precisely with an antiseptic solution.

'As I said, my only concern is Harlan. If you wish to hire the services of the technician for the others,

you may check with the business director for the rates.'

Gleto's face turned an apoplectic purple and he controlled himself with effort.

'That's how you market your dummies. Oh, you're clever, Monsorlit, but one day…'

Monsorlit eyed him dispassionately.

'One day my techniques will replace this… this,' his gesture indicated the gardens and cottages,

'unprofessional arrangement. There will be no need for it. Men may come to my hospital, broken in body

or mind, and leave whole and sane.'

Gleto's little eyes widened with a touch of horror.

'They aren't dummies then; you've been restoring again. That's your deal with Gorlot. I thought your

safe-from-Milness had taken a tumble.' Gleto laughed derisively now. 'How long do you think it'll be

before Council finds out! And gasses you and your vegetables!' Gleto stopped with a sudden thought and

gasped, looking at me in terror. 'Is this one a restoree? Are all these dummies restorees? Are you

unloading the dead-alive on me?' he screeched, advancing on Monsorlit.

'Does she act like a restoree?' the physician asked calmly. 'No, she acts exactly as she is, a moron

from my Mental Defectives Clinic, repossessed through shock techniques of enough intelligence to

perform the monotonous and routine duties of your establishment just as others from my Clinic pick fruits

and vegetables in the farmlands of Motlina and South Cant. Don't think you're the only miser to take

advantage of this type of limited perception personnel in these times of worker rebellions and rising

prices. And don't think you do me a favor when you use them. The only favor is to your fat self and your

fattening purse.' Monsorlit accurately judged the fat man's capacity for insult and took up another subject.

'The technician will be sent here for Harlan's absorption rates and, because of his limited intelligence,

will be unable to grasp the necessity for performing any other tests. Trenor will, for all his imperfections,

take a jaundiced view toward your neglect of his nine reluctant patients. The decision is up to you and I

believe your loss would be the greatest.'

Monsorlit left the room, motioning to the technician to collect the cart.

Gleto stared after the precise figure, pouting angrily, and when the technician nervously tipped over

several bottles on the table, his fat fist clubbed the man viciously.

Satisfied, he hitched his tunic into a more comfortable crease over his shoulders and stalked out. I

stood staring in front of me while the cart was wheeled out and for some minutes after the lock snapped

into place. The tension of the scene between Gleto and Monsorlit was cold and heavy in the room and I

was cold and scared.

CHAPTER TWO

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The ugly man whom they called Harlan lay twitching occasionally. I had considered it misfortune

enough that he should have fallen over the edge of sanity in the prime of life. Now I knew him to be an

unwilling drugged victim of some scheme, my pity was tinged with outraged righteousness. I looked more

closely at the face, hoping to find in it some vestige of intelligence I had missed, some reassurance of

personality to fit in with the entirely different role in which he was cast.

His gray eyes, their pupils dilated to the edge of the iris, stared with their customary vacuity at the

ceiling. I saw now that the ugly face did have an innate strength and that immobility did not rob his long,

heavily boned frame of its look of power. I wondered if a vibrant personality overcame the basic ugliness

of features. Perhaps a smile. I fashioned one on the lax lips, but it was too much a mockery for me to

judge the spontaneous effect.

I had noticed during my care of him the scars on his person: the new tissues were smooth, no gaping

pulls to indicate stitches, not even on the raggedy gash across one cheek. The tip of one index finger was

missing. He was a battered and bedamned fellow.

As I pitied him, I pitied myself, for my sympathy now tied me to him more effectively than any

possible dedication to a mental cripple. I was stung with an impulse to batter down the door and run, run,

run away from the fear, the implications of evil, the vulgarity of the guards and the massive frustrating

boredom. I wanted to leave all his unfamiliarity, and somehow, although logic indicated I was nowhere

near my own world, find my way home.

After I had settled him for the night, it occurred to me that if he were sane, he could help. And

perhaps, he could be made sane. Monsorlit had spoken of doses in his food. If I could withhold his food

long enough, he might partially recover, at least enough to help me.

There was one drawback. If I didn't feed him, his hunger would betray me. And I would go hungry if

I fed him all my food. I decided, in the final analysis, that I had no choice but to try this idea. I certainly

didn't know the planet and he did.

The next morning I fed him most of my food, and just a little of his own, eating the remainder of mine

and some of his to sustain me. I felt strangely disoriented all day and had difficulty in forcing myself to

move. The next day this feeling had increased so noticeably that I ate none of his food and gave him

none. I got very hungry.

By the fifth day, I was ravenous and he was so restless during the night I had to block the speaker

grill with a pillow. He was hungry, too, and bit savagely at the spoon, so that I gave him even the little I

had reserved for myself, eating only enough of the blue food to stop the roaring within me.

That night, he spoke in his sleep and I lay rigid with terror that the pillow had not sufficiently muffled

the sound. Every moment I expected the guard to come striding in.

During breakfast on the sixth day, his eyes blinked and he tried desperately to focus them. He was

struggling so hard, mouthing sounds in an effort to speak, that I was torn between the desire to hear and

the necessity of keeping him quiet.

Such hope as swelled in my heart for his return to sanity was rudely disappointed during our morning

walk. He did not seem to grasp my furtive, whispered explanations. His eyes still blinking furiously to

focus were as vacuous as ever. At dinner, he ate more normally, chewing with intense concentration. The

night was a continual struggle for me, against the sleep I desperately craved, against his moaning which I

had to muffle against my shoulder. The next morning, he actually seemed to see me and I smiled

encouragingly, hopefully, patting his hand reassuringly. The witlessness had left his expression and he

looked at me, deeply puzzled, struggling to form a question when the guard walked in on one of his

sporadic visits. Rigid with horror, I stared at the man I had almost rescued, my one chance to leave this

horrible place suddenly torn from me as success was so near.

The guard barely glanced at me. Furiously he jerked his finger at the red bowls and then, shouting a

litany of 'Blue bowl for the patient. Blue bowl for the patient,' he struck me again and again with his whip.

I shrieked in pain and fear and cringed back from the flailing whip, trying to climb under the bed, away

from the searing lash.

'This imbecile piece of idiocy is color-blind all of a sudden,' he yelled at the loudspeaker. 'Blue bowl

for the patient. Blue bowl for the patient,' he shouted, emphasizing his phrases with lashes for me until his

rage was spent and I lay weeping, sore and bleeding, half under the bed.

Gleto arrived in minutes and examined the patient, giving him an injection and watching as I was made

to feed Harlan from the blue bowl. Gleto added his blows to my painful back, grinning sadistically at my

yelps. I cowered back against the wall as far from him as I could get.

'What bowl do you feed the patient from?' he demanded, advancing on me. 'Red bowl?'

I shook my head violently.

'Blue bowl?'

I nodded violently.

'Blue bowl, blue bowl, blue, blue, blue,' he roared, punctuating each word with an open-handed slap

on whatever part of my twisting body it met.

'Blue, blue, blue,' I shrieked back, covering my face with my arms and keeping my back to the wall.

'That'll take care of her,' Gleto grunted with satisfaction and, to my weeping relief, he and the guard

left.Although some of the weals on my back and legs were bleeding, a warm soaking in the shower was

all the treatment I had. That night, uncomfortable to the point where no position gave me relief or the

solace of sleep, I lay awake. Several times, Harlan's heavy limbs overlapped me and made me cry out

involuntarily. The speaker chortled back with delight at my discomfort. I resolved not to give them

additional satisfaction and stifled my moans.

Mulling over my 'bravery', I realized that I had actually escaped very lightly. The guards and Gleto

were so secure in their assumption of my idiocy, they never once had questioned a deliberate attempt on

my part to feed the prisoner the wrong food. They also assumed that I had made the mistake only once.

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AnneMcCaffrey-Novel-RestoreeACORGIBOOKOriginallypublishedinGreatBritainbyRapp&WhitingLimitedCopyright©1967byAnneMcCaffreyCorgiBooksarepublishedbyTransworldPublishersLtd.,61-63UxbridgeRoad,Baling,LondonW55SA,inAustraliabyTransworldPublishers(Australia)Pty.Ltd.,15-23HellesAvenue,Moorebank,NSW2170,andi...

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Anne McCaffrey - Restoree

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