Sharon Green - Terrillian 5 - Warrior Victorious

The Warrior Victorious

By Sharon Green

Chapter 1

The room was extremely clean, but also suffered from other sorts of extremes.

For one thing, it was small and very bare and had no windows or closets or

furniture except for the narrow bed-

For one thing. I stopped pacing and sat on the edge of the high bed, putting a

hand to my head. Ever since Id awakened in that tiny cell of a room my mind

had been acting strangely, flying in all directions trying to get a grip on

the reality Iii been dropped into from somewhere. At least I thought it was

reality, but I wouldn't have bet anything valuable on the possibility. I'd

never seen a room like that before, with nothing in it but a bed, stark white

ceiling and walls, and a warmly resilient matching white floor. Even the bed

frame was rounded and very soft, made of something other than metal, and there

had to be a door somewhere even if I couldn't find it. The light was

artificial and came from nowhere and everywhere, letting me see the thin

white-garment-Id awakened in. The thing had a round neck and sleeves that

almost reached my elbows, but didn't go down any farther than the middle of my

thighs. It closed with a full-length frontal tab and didn't quite show my

otherwise naked body through its thin fabric, but I didn't feel cold in it.

The room was more than warm enough, no drafts and not stuffy and-

"Okay, enough of that," I told myself aloud, the faintest touch of annoyance

easing the terrible fear that had gripped me as soon as I'd opened my eyes.

"You don't know where you are or what's happening, but you should remember

what went on before you reached this point. Start with that, and see if you

can work your way up to the present."

I took a deep breath, realizing I'd given myself good advice, but bringing

back the past might not prove to be done as easily as said. It somehow didn't

feel as clear to me as it should have, and until then I'd been afraid to touch

the fabric of it, half anticipating an immediate crumbling if I did. Right

then I understood I really had no other choice than to try, so I lay down

across the narrow bed and made the effort.

I had no trouble remembering I was Terrilian Reya, a Prime of the Centran

Amalgamation who usually lived on Central. It had been quite some time since

I'd been on Central, I knew that as well, which meant I must have been

elsewhere Mediating for the Amalgamation. Being a Prime Xenomediator meant I

traveled a lot, and I'd been doing it for a fair amount of years. Since the

assignment was obviously over I must have been returned to Central, and that

meant I was also turned off

Turned off. I lay very still as that thought came to me, a thought I couldn't

remember ever having had before, but one I knew beyond doubt was true. I

was-turned off-from the way I was supposed to be, all my abilities taken away,

but once I'd been returned to Central without that having been done. I knew I

had, could almost remember the time, could almost feel how unhappy I'd been

even though almost no one else had known. It had been a special reward, a

reward for having done particularly well, a reward for having accomplished

I strained to remember, my body stiff as though the effort were a physical

one, but I couldn't reach through. My hand closed on a fold of the very clean

bed linen that refused to come free of the bed, the resulting fist trying to

act as an anchor, but it was simply no good. The memory I was after seemed

locked behind a door, and scratching frantically at the door with my

fingernails wasn't doing anything to open it. I needed the key, and that was

one thing I didn't have.

"One thing," I muttered with a snort, finding that the faint trace of

annoyance was growing toward a better supply. I was missing a bell of a lot

more than one thing, and I had the sudden conviction that my memory lapse

wasn't anything other than induced. I could also remember having thoughts

about conditioning, and who I'd been conditioned by. Those who ran Central and

the Amalgamation wanted to make sure they had a tight grip on the empaths who

worked for them, so they'd-

Empaths. This time I sat up slowly, knowing that that was what l was. An

empath. Someone who could read the emotions of others and also soothe or

intensify those emotions, and even pass them on from one person to the next. I

was very important to the people of the Amalgamation, I'd worked long and hard

for them, and now I was about to be given the highest reward possible. I

didn't yet know what that would be, but I would know soon and would be

extremely grateful and delighted.

I was so shocked I couldn't even curse, and without my wanting it to the fear

flared again all along my backbone. The memory I'd just found was crystal

clear, no effort of any sort needed to reach it, and that could mean only one

thing: I was supposed to reach it, and also to believe it. It had been put in

my mind with the same conditioning that had covered what someone didn't want

me to remember, a body of knowledge that would conceivably do him or them

harm. But who could I possibly be a danger to, that they would go to such

lengths to confuse and restrain me?

"They did a really good job on you, didn't they?" I muttered to myself, the

annoyance beginning to return in the company of disgust. If it was the

wonderful Amalgamation I was going to be all that grateful to, who else could

possibly be responsible? I still didn't know why they considered me dangerous,

but that was really a very minor point. A much more major one was that I

shouldn't have known what they were up to, but somehow I did. Maybe that's why

I was dangerous to them, because their conditioning was beginning not to work

on me, and I was able to see behind the imposed facade to get a hint of the

truth. Once I got all of it, the game would be over.

But that couldn't be it. I folded my legs under me and leaned my forearms on

my knees, immediately seeing how wrong that was. If they'd known their

conditioning wasn't working properly they wouldn't have tried using it again,

not with any hope of success. And they did expect it to be a success, the very

simplicity of my brand-new conviction told me that. There was nothing in it

that suggested any possibility of resistance or nonacceptance, nothing that

commanded obedience which might not be forthcoming. I was supposed to believe

without question everything I'd been told, even the part that wasn't

completely accurate. I was an empath, all right, but empaths were able to do

much more than the few trifling things listed in the suggestion. Or, at least,

I could . . . .

I straightened as another thought came to me, one that went quite a distance

toward clearing up some of the confusion. I'd noticed in the first place that

my memories weren't complete because of the half-memories remaining, ones that

dangled without support. I'd also become aware of the conviction because it

wasn't entirely true, just the way you'd notice on a chilly night a blanket

that covered you only from the knees down. It was there but not complete,

present but not right. It wasn't enough to keep you warm, not enough to make

you believe nothing was missing. If the entire blanket had been taken you

might not have known anything was gone, but with the small bit you still

had-as though whoever had taken the rest of the blanket wasn't aware of the

lower part-

Didn't know it was there, and therefore hadn't taken it! The realization

wasn't anything like triumph, but it was enough to give me more than a dash of

hope. The ones in charge of conditioning me hadn't known I wasn't turned off

on my last visit home, so they hadn't suppressed the memory of the time. They

also obviously didn't know I was able to do more than they thought I could, or

the conviction/suggestion would have been complete enough for me to be able to

accept it. All I had to do was figure out what I could remember, make a list

of the blanks, and try to use the list to batter down the door to memory.

"Oh, is that all you have to do?" I muttered, unfolding my legs so that I

could let myself fall back flat onto the bed. Since I knew I hadn't been

turned off on my last visit back to Central as a reward but couldn't remember

what the reward was for, that and where I'd been since were two heavy

candidates for the list. With those for starters I should have been nicely on

the way to remembering it all, but all I could find in my path was the thick

frustration of a dead end. The memories hadn't simply slipped my mind, they'd

been conditioned away, and it was going to take more than finding empty spaces

to bring them back.

"So you are finally back among the living," a voice said suddenly, a female

voice that sounded more arrogant than interested, more imposed upon than

concerned. "I don't want a thousand questions from you, and I certainly won't

allow any crying fits. You'll be told why you're here in due course, and until

then you're to behave yourself. And don't bother putting on any airs, either.

You'll find I couldn't possibly be less impressed with you."

I sat up and turned my head toward the spot the voice was coming from, finally

discovering where the door to that room was hidden. Part of the right-hand

wall had slid back to show something of a corridor beyond, and the woman who

had spoken to me stood directly in the middle of what was now a doorway. She

was my height or possibly a bit smaller, had dark hair tinted with orange, and

wore an expensive Alderanean day suit and short boots of a matching orange.

The makeup on her face was impeccably done, a thick peach with orangy

highlights and black emphasis lines, but I found myself almost as repelled by

that as by her attitude. It was hate at first sight between us, but somehow

that didn't bother me as much as it once would have.

"Of course you could be less impressed with me," I answered, swinging my legs

over the side of the bed and getting to my bare feet. "You could be as

impressed with me as I am with you. If a thousand questions are too many for

you to handle, how about just one: where am IT'

"I told you your questions would be answered later," she came back, a graceful

frown denting her makeup, something like faintly outraged shock in her dark

eyes. "And don't you dare try taking that tone with me, not unless you want to

find yourself in more trouble than you can imagine. I happen to be very

important around here, and no one talks to me that way."

"If you don't even know where we are, how important can you be?" I countered,

moving closer to where she stood. She was shorter than I, by two or three

inches, and for some reason that felt very, very strange.

"Of course I know where we are," she retorted with a snort, raising her head

in a superior sort of way. "We're on New Dawn, and

Her mouth closed again with a snap furious annoyance twisting her face, the

darkening of her skin obvious even under all that makeup. By trying to show

how important she was shed told me something she wasn't supposed to have not

that it did me any particular good. I'd never heard of a planet named New

Dawn, and had no idea what it had to do with Central or the Amalgamation.

"So, we have one who thinks she's really smart," the woman said with a good

deal of fury in her sneer, her right hand closed into a fist, her eyes

smoldering. "We'll see how much good being smart does you once you're

transferred out of here to the main complex. I know all about you, you-Prime,

and once you're with the others you'll spend most of your time trying to

attract the attention you'll need. If you don't attract it you'll spend your

time crying, just the way the other oh-so-smart ones do. Just wait, you'll get

yours."

"Others?" I said, beginning to get really confused again. "What others are you

talking about? What is going on here?"

"I thought I told you not to bother me with questions," she replied with a

smug, vindictive look, then took a step back, out into the corridor partially

visible behind her. "The director has time for you now, and maybe he'll feel

like telling you things. If you behave yourself and ask him nicely. Or maybe

not, after I tell him how I feel about it. Probably not, since he usually

listens to me, but you'll see that for yourself. Come along right now, you've

wasted enough of my time."

She took her self-satisfied smirk up the corridor to the left, apparently not

caring whether I followed or not. I had the oddest feeling I'd been treated

that way before, by another woman in another place who had expected me to

follow just because she told me to, and the memory wasn't one I enjoyed. I

looked down at myself and the-thing-I was wearing, compared it to what the

woman had on, and the odd feeling hadn't changed. The situations weren't the

same, only somewhat alike, but were enough like one another that I walked out

into the corridor filled with a very unusual, unexpected anger.

My new surroundings weren't much like the room I'd awakened in; the corridor

was a very pale green instead of white, and there were no beds in sight. Aside

from those things, however, there was a distinct similarity in that there were

still no windows and artificial light lit our way. The woman led me past quite

a few closed and silent doors, her pace rather slow where she walked about ten

or fifteen feet ahead of me, but she wasn't taking it easy for my benefit.

Someone seemed to have taught her that one must undulate when one walked, even

though undulation doubled the time it took you to get somewhere. Due to that I

was able to close the lead she'd started with, so that I was only just behind

her when she got to a blank wall at the end of the corridor. She paused to

touch her fingers to the wall on her right at about midbody height, the

movement indicating a combination of sorts rather than print identification,

and then, when the wall slid aside to make a doorway, walked on through. She

knew well enough that I was behind her, but still couldn't be bothered with

acknowledging the fact.

The other side of the doorway brought a considerable change in my

surroundings, all of it plush and luxurious. The resilient floor changed to

thick carpeting, the walls now shimmered with tasteful, shifting color, works

of art hung in the midst of the shimmering, and starbursts lit the tessellated

ceiling with purely decorative light. True daylight came in from the window

wall on the right that was designed to match the ceiling, but most of its

squares were closed to top-of-head height. I would have enjoyed opening one of

the large squares and looking out, but my guide was moving off to the left,

toward a door of gently glowing red. To the right of that door and about

thirty feet away was a second door of pink, but the glow of that one had been

turned off. In common usage that meant the red door was closed on someone who

was in and available to visitors, but whoever belonged to the pink door was

gone off somewhere. It would have taken a lot of really deep thought to figure

out who belonged to the door, but the woman I followed didn't give me the two

or three seconds necessary for consideration of the matter. She walked to the

red door, stroked her hand through the air in front of it, then stepped

forward to enter the room beyond.

"Director Gearing, I have the newest one," she began with a sniff of distaste,

standing a few steps into the room with her hand on the oblong extrusion of

the door dial. "She's really quite impossible, and should be sent to the main

complex immediately for strict reorientation. She actually had the nerve to

insult me!"

"Now, now, Resson, you know our guests are upset when they first get here," a

man's voice came, and I stepped past the woman to see him where he was just

rising from behind a large, ornate desk that held nothing whatsoever. Even the

woman I'd followed was taller than he, and she and I together might have made

up most of his weight. He wore a conservative, well-tailored leisure suit of

red with hints of gray, and despite the air conditioning of the room his

round, pudgy face was sweating. It was also wearing a look of upper-class

condescension, the superiority in his dark eyes turning his smooth smile into

an outright lie. His brown hair was thinning quite a bit, but that didn't stop

him from brushing at it with a swollen hand as he came to a stop beside the

desk to stare at me.

"She wasn't upset, Director Gearing, she was rude!" the woman insisted with

sullen belligerence, sending a glare of hatred in my direction. "She tried to

treat me like an Eject, and I want her punished for it!"

"Calm yourself, Resson, I'll see to the matter personally," the man Gearing

assured her in firm tones of authority, his tongue wetting his lips as he

looked at me. "I have the situation well in hand, so you may leave us now. "

The woman Resson couldn't have missed his reaction to the sight of me, and she

didn't miss it. What she did more than that, however, was resent it, and her

frustrated anger quickly found the outlet it wanted so badly. Without

realizing it I'd stopped in a place that kept her from closing the door and

leaving the way shed been ordered to do, and rather than asking me to move she

chose a more satisfying method of accomplishing the same end. Her hand hit the

middle of my back, shoving me forward, the blow so hard that I nearly went

down on my face. I caught my balance with a couple of quick running steps then

turned furiously to face her, the anger I'd been feeling suddenly boiling up

and over. If the woman had been smart she would have left as soon as she'd

accomplished her revenge, but shed already proven that smart wasn't a word in

her vocabulary. She was standing there smirking when I first turned toward

her, but the smirk lasted only until I reached her. Without thinking about it

I put my own hands to her shoulders and pushed, hard enough to send her flying

backward and down to that plush carpeting wed crossed so recently. She

screamed in shock and fear until she hit the floor, then sat there making

appalled noises of utter disbelief.

"Here now, here now, we'll have no more of that!" the man Gearing said with

outraged sternness, waddling forward to break up a confrontation that was

already done. "Young woman, you take yourself over to my desk right now, and

Resson, you get off that floor. As soon as I'm through with the Prime, we'll

have a long talk about your inexcusable behavior. I don't intend seeing

anything like this ever again."

With that he closed the door on the woman who was still sprawled on the

carpeting, and waddled back behind his desk to sit again. I'd been looking

around in the moment or two I had until then, and had noticed that despite the

richness of the furnishings and decorations in the office, the only chair it

held was the one that now held the director. I was just coming to the

conclusion that their hospitality toward their "guests" was the least bit on

the lean side, when Gearing cleared his throat.

"Now then, young woman, I believe a word or two with you is in order," he

said, his voice and eyes still deliberately stern. "I have seldom seen such

disgraceful behavior, and I certainly have no intentions of seeing it again.

When you and I are through here you will apologize to Resson, asking her to

excuse your barbaric behavior. Is that clearly understood?"

"If I apologize to her, she'll only do the same thing to someone else at

another time," I answered, wondering why the man was so dense that he couldn't

see that. "Since I was able to stop her it was my job to do it, to protect

others who might not be able to do the same thing. She doesn't deserve an

apology, so she won't be getting one."

"My dear Prime, it happens to be my place to remonstrate with and discipline

my underlings," he came back with a rumble of incensed anger, a heavy air of

territorial protection about him. "If one of them offers you affront you

report it to me, and then I take care of the matter. I am in charge here, and

no one else has the authority to do the same."

"But that just means that anyone who enjoys tormenting people has only to stay

out of your way in order to continue with the practice," I pointed out, trying

to be reasonable and show him how wrong he was. "On the other hand, if they

try it with someone who bounces them on their head for their trouble, they'll

probably hesitate the next time before doing the same thing. They won't know,

you see, if they'll be bounced again, so that will make them cautious-not to

mention help to keep innocent people safe. Don't you want your-guests-here to

be safe?"

He opened and closed his mouth a few times, looking like a fish trying to

learn how to breathe air, and then he ended the fumbling by snapping his lips

closed with a frown.

"Where in the world could you have picked up such outlandish ideas?" he

demanded, close to total outrage. "I've never heard such barbaric nonsense,

and I'll listen to no more of it. All you need remember is that I am in

charge, and our future association will be an extremely pleasant one. Now

then, let's get on to the reason you were summoned to my office."

"Is our conversation going to be so short that it isn't worth sitting down

for?" I interrupted to ask, giving up on trying to teach him anything. He was

obviously too concerned with privilege to understand right and responsibility,

but I wondered fleetingly just where I had gotten such ideas. As soon as I had

a moment, I would have to think about that. "What I mean, Director, is that if

it is going to be that short, why are you sitting?"

"I am sitting, my dear, because I am director," he answered in very careful

and overly sweet tones, back to giving me that condescending smile. "If you

consider the matter carefully, you'll find it's quite proper for you to be

standing there before me, waiting for great honor to be bestowed on you. Honor

must be balanced with humility, you know, and so it shall be. The arrogance of

a Prime must be left behind as you travel the road to meaningful immortality."

By the time he was through speaking, the words were echoing in my head rather

than simply being picked up by my ears, and I was definitely feeling dizzy. I

put a hand up to the echo, having no understanding as to why it was happening,

having no idea how to make it stop. What he'd said-leaving arrogance behind

and being suitably humble-humble and grateful-yes, that was the way it had to

be. It was so obvious I was surprised I hadn't seen it sooner, and I suddenly

couldn't wait to be given my honor.

"Yes, of course you're right," I answered, looking up at him with a smile that

felt as shy as I did. "I'm sorry, Director Gearing, I must have forgotten that

for a moment. Did you say-immortality?"

"I most certainly did," he agreed with a broader, warmer smile, the

expansiveness of his generosity coming through clearly as he sat back in his

chair. "What lesser thing might be given to one who has served the

Amalgamation so well, a Prime of your quality and caliber? You've earned

immortality, my dear, and that is what you will have."

"Oh, I can't possibly be worthy of that great an honor," I protested, needing

to speak the truth I felt, feeling the blush in my cheeks as my fingers

twisted together. "Really, Director Gearing, it's too much . . . "

"Nonsense, my dear, and do call me Johnston for the moment," he came back, a

sleek smoothness coating his assurance, his eyes heavy-lidded. "I have the

pleasure to inform you that you've been chosen as one of those few who are

permitted to pass on your qualities and abilities to those who will come after

you, those who will attempt to equal your service to the Amalgamation. We

bestow this honor with glad pleasure, but also ask that you accept it as

another of the many indications you've given of loyalty and dedication and

selflessness. Will you accept the honor in such a way, with eagerness and

gladness?"

"Eagerness and gladness, yes," I breathed, my hand to my head again as the

words echoed a second time, the privilege so great that it made me dizzy. "I

can't believe that I've been chosen for this, Johnston, I just can't, but I'll

do everything in my power to be worthy of it. What must I do?"

"Quite simply, Terrilian, you must be a woman," he said, his expression now

sober as he rose again and came around the desk to take my hand. "In the main

complex we have quite a large number of male Primes, and it will be your duty

to interest as many of them as possible in you. Without them you won't be able

to fulfill your destiny, you know, but there are other female Primes already

there, already attempting to fulfill their own destinies. You must be more

attractive than they are, more beautiful and desirable to the only men who can

help you achieve immortality. You must do everything and anything to attract

and please them, but then, you don't have to be told that, do you? You already

know that and mean to succeed, don't you?"

My head swam for a third time, but although I agreed with just about

everything that had been said to me, some parts of it confused me more than

others. People had always been told that there weren't many male Primes, so

how could that complex have quite a large number of them? I wanted to ask

where they could have come from, but the director was stroking my hand and

then he raised it to his lips.

"It's my personal opinion that you'll have very little trouble being

attractive, my dear," he said in a husky voice, my hand still held in both of

his. "I know you're somewhat unsure of yourself, however, so I'm prepared to

assist you even further. Although I have almost no spare time in my very busy

schedule, I'm going to take some anyway just to find out how pleased the men

will be with you. No, no, you needn't thank me, it can easily be considered

part of my job, and you do deserve help with the honor you've been given. Just

come this way."

He led me by the hand he held to the wall to the left of his desk, where he

pressed a small recess which caused the wall to slide noiselessly back. Behind

it was an area with low lighting, soft music, faintly perfumed air-and a very

wide square of a couch draped with silk. The couch had no back to it, only

seat flanked by armrests, and the man's left arm went around my waist as he

urged me forward toward it. At first everything felt as right and proper as it

had all along, nothing out of the ordinary except that I was about to be done

a rather large favor, but then we crossed the threshold into the small, cozy

room-and the director's right hand came to squeeze my breast through the thin

material that covered it-and something inside me screamed that he had no

right-that I couldn't let him-that I damned well wouldn't let him and then I

was pulling away and shoving at him, slapping and scratching-

When the dizziness and confusion finally receded to a point where I could look

around me with some measure of sanity again, I was sitting on the carpeting of

the director's office, my back against a wall that was staying solidly closed.

Low, moaning sounds were coming from the desk to my left, and I turned my head

to see Gearing in his chair, what must have been a mirror raised up from the

side of the desk. He was staring into the mirror as he dabbed at long,

bleeding scratches on his cheek with a wet cloth, and the eye toward me was

blackened and almost closed. I could see that the battle in my mind hadn't

been the only one I'd fought, and for a moment I was confused all over again.

The struggle I'd put up didn't seem all that strange, but the results of my

efforts didn't feel in any way familiar.

"Oh, I should have known you'd be one of those, I should have known," Gearing

moaned, talking to me without taking his eyes from the mirror. "After what you

did to Resson I should have called security immediately, but instead I relied

on the conditioning holding. Now that you've broken out of it you think you've

won something, but what you've really done is lost. You'll still serve the

program just as you're meant to, but without the comfort of believing you're

being honored. And I'm glad you'll be suffering, do you hear me? I'll come and

visit where they have you, and I'll laugh!"

He ended his outburst with another moan instead of a laugh, but it didn't make

that much of a difference. I put my hand up to my head as I leaned back

against the wall, shivering on the inside at how close I'd come to doing and

believing exactly what they'd wanted. Even after I'd found part of the

conditioning myself, I'd still fallen prey to the rest of it without a murmur.

I'd been so terribly eager to accept that "honor," so willing to do everything

I could! The second time I shivered on the outside, but not only at what had

almost been done to me. They were still going to try doing things to me, and

when they did I'd have no fantasies to hide behind. I'd have to face it

knowing exactly what was happening, and that was the part that made me

tremble. I'd have to find the courage to be strong, and I didn't know if I

could.

A moment later the door to the office opened, but instead of it being the

woman Resson, two big men walked in. They both had dark hair and eyes and were

dressed in identical white uniforms, but the part that made me wish I could

get closer to the wall was the expression on their faces. Or, more accurately,

the lack of expression. Totally uncaring is too weak a descriptive phrase, but

when they saw the director they actually smiled.

"You called for security men, Director Gearing?" one of them said, his tone

showing very little in the way of respect for a superior. He and the other

were silently laughing at Gearing, and the way the fat man stiffened showed he

knew it.

"Get her out of here," he said, still looking at nothing but the mirror,

briefly waving one pudgy hand in my general direction. "Tell them she's broken

through the conditioning, but that isn't to exempt her from the program. Take

her to the main complex, and don't bring her back until she has to be here. By

then there won't be any fight left in her."

The eyes of the two men came to me, still filled with faint amusement, and

then it was they who came to me, reaching down to pull me to my feet. I tried

to resist but they weren't Gearing, and then I was going through the door, on

my way to what was called the main complex.

Chapter 2

The wooden bench I sat on got harder and harder as the time passed, but no one

seemed overly concerned about my comfort. I'd been pulled out of the building

that housed the director's office and the room I'd awakened in, thrust into a

ground vehicle, then taken for a short ride. At the end of the ride I'd been

pulled from the vehicle through the same bright but chilly sunshine I'd seen a

few moments earlier, thrust through a door into a building, and walked up a

corridor to a particular door. The door led to an anteroom with nothing in it

but a wooden bench and another closed door, and I'd been offered a seat by

being pushed down onto the bench. The two men in white uniforms stood to

either end of the bench, saying nothing to me and not even to each other.

Between the confusion still rattling around in my head and the dull tan and

gray of the room I sat in-not to mention the presence of my two silent

companions-I was beginning to feel depressed. No, what I really felt was all

alone, with no one there to help me or be on my side. All of those people were

from the Amalgamation, some probably even from Central, but to them I was

nothing but an animal to be experimented with, a prize animal to be sure, but

still nothing but a beast. I didn't want to think about what they were going

to do to me, and had been helped in fulfilling that desire by the presence of

other thoughts crowding my mind and demanding attention. There were so many

things I couldn't explain or understand or make any sense out of at all-

"All right, go on in there," the man to my right said suddenly, and I looked

up to see that the gray door the room held was now glowing with the message

that visitors were welcome---or at least currently permitted. I hesitated only

a moment before getting to my feet, but was abruptly aware of the thin garment

I wore. The two men who had brought me there were staring at me, I knew that

even without looking at them, and to say the idea disturbed me, was like

saying I didn't much want to fall off the roof of a twenty-story building.

Once standing, I resisted the urge to try tugging the thin covering lower and

went instead to the softly glowing gray door, opening it as if I really

belonged there.

Inside there were a larger number of amenities to be found, like thick

carpeting, stylish drapes on wide windows, chairs and couches, artwork on the

walls, and a desk that actually had papers and folders on it. It was basically

the same tan and gray as the anteroom, but enhanced by faint touches of other

colors and softened by richer fabrics and mediums. Like the first office I'd

seen the desk had a man behind it, but unlike the portly Director Gearing this

man really seemed to be working. He wore a uniform rather than a suit, in a

gray to match his door, and his tanned, unlined face didn't seem to go with

his very white hair. He glanced up at me as I came in, his light eyes touching

me in a distracted sort of way, and then he waved his hand toward the chairs

in front of his desk.

"Close the door and sit down," he said, his voice as distracted as his glance

had been. "I'll be with you as soon as I finish this."

For something I'd expected to be dramatic and terrorizing, his few words had

been a crazy sort of letdown, as though a ravening beast had paused in its

bloodthirsty attack to hastily check its pockets. I closed the door as

directed and went to the chairs indicated, and actually found myself annoyed

that the chair I chose was comfortable. When you're braced to resist horror,

running into the humdrum instead can totally ruin your mood. I began to cross

my legs, remembered what I was wearing and decided against it, then simply sat

back until the man finished with the folder he was working on and raised his

eyes to really look at me for the first time.

"So you're the Prime Terrilian Reya," he said, tossing his stylus away before

leaning back in his chair. "You caused us trouble when we went to pick you up,

and now you're causing even more. Why couldn't you have been a good girl and

behaved yourself?"

"If the choice had been mine, I still would have done it exactly this way," 1

answered, the annoyance I'd been feeling beginning to grow to true anger. "And

if you persist in talking to me as though I were a backward child, you're

suddenly going to find all those pieces of paper in the air, most of them

flying at your head. You haven't the right to treat me the way you've been

doing, and I demand to be released."

"If you're not a backward child, you should know you're wasting your time

demanding to be released," he answered, a faint smile turning his lips. "And

if you throw any of these papers at me, you'll waste a lot more time picking

them up again. You're not the first Prime to break through the conditioning,

Terrilian, but usually it doesn't happen quite this fast. That fool Gearing

must have caused it with the itch he wanted scratched, and if he wasn't so

useful I would have had him shipped back to Central a long time ago. It would

have been easier for you if you'd gotten used to the routine before the

conditioning went, but you're still going to have to go through with it. All

of it. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"No, as a matter of fact I don't," I said, suddenly finding his calm, patient

attitude more chilling than threats would have been. "I don't understand

anything of what's going on, and if you'd like the truth I don't particularly

want to know. All I want is out of here, and a chance to go back to things as

they were. I've worked for the Amalgamation most of my life; is that too much

to ask in return?"

"It's not precisely a matter of too much," he answered, something of a shrug

in his tone. "The simple fact is that the Amalgamation needs to make use of

you, and has no choice in that need. They can't take someone else in your

place because it's a Prime they need, not just anyone off a city street or out

of a Neighborhood. And if you stop to look at this reasonably instead of

emotionally, you'll find that you're getting excited over very, very little.

The Amalgamation isn't asking you to have your arms and legs cut off,

Terrilian, all it's asking you to do is have babies."

All. I put my hands to the chair arms as he continued to stare at me calmly

and reasonably, his own hands unconcernedly crossed on the desk in front of

him. I'd expected having it put that baldly to be enough to make me feel any

number of things, like disgusted or vastly reluctant or even very much afraid.

Surprisingly enough none of those feelings surfaced, but what I did feel quite

a bit of was embarrassment.

"You see?" he asked, still the most reasonable of beings. "It isn't anything

Sharon Green - Terrillian 5 - Warrior Victorious

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