++
She paused in her writing. The claimant was stirring in the next room.
~ ~ ~
— I’M HERE, she said.
— Rana, he said. Rana.
— There is no Rana.
— Rana. Where are you?
The claimant sat up in bed. His face was pallid. The window was wide open and the room was full of the night air. There was so much of it, it rolled back and forth over them. The examiner shut the window, and then they were there in the room again.
— I’m here, she said.
The claimant began to cry.
— In the last week, I didn’t know, he said. I didn’t know. She was sick and she hid it from me. I promise you, if I had known, I would have, I would have…
— Go back to sleep, said the examiner.
She knelt by him on the bed and eased him down into a sleeping position. He reached for her, and clutched at her arm, pulling her to him. She lay for a second against him, and his breathing, at first ragged, grew regular. She came out from under his hand, and left the room.
~ ~ ~
THE EXAMINER sat long into the night thinking. She did not want to make this decision. She would delay it as long as possible. If he were to be processed again…it pained her to think of it. She remembered her first work, with a claimant who had been processed three times. He could hardly speak. She had taught him to take care of himself, and had helped him to learn a simple vocation.
It wasn’t that the process made the brain function less well. It only removed a capacity for action. Each time, a person became less likely to follow an intuition, or take up an idea or a challenge. Those who lost all or nearly all of this impulsiveness, as it was called, a reuse of the word, became the basic workers, the deed-doers in the gentle villages. It was they whom one saw through windows, people who would never go out of themselves, or leave a house unbidden, it was they who stood in simple uniforms, gardening or sweeping in the streets. They were a staple of the gentle villages, a staple, a tool, a mechanism, and its result.
Others, who could be helped with one processing — went on to do what they liked. Such a person could return to regular life, or stay within the system. Some, as she had told the claimant, even became examiners. They never seemed to be bothered by learning the methods — never seemed to guess that those same methods might have been employed to alter their own minds. It is only natural, supposed the examiner. In an extreme case, I suppose, I might have even been…
She shuddered.
It was the nineteenth day. There was scarcely any time left. When the sun rose, the examiner was still sitting where she had been. Her eyes were open, and focused on some point on the wallpaper. But which point it was, even she couldn’t say. Light had stood in the sky for an hour or two when she heard something in the next room, a sort of battering, a crash, and a low moan.
~ ~ ~
— ANDERS!
The bedroom and all its elements were overturned.
He must have lifted the bedframe up and knocked it over. Was he asleep when he did it? The dresser was on its side. The mattress was over him, bent practically in half. He was shaking, curled in the corner under the mattress. She pulled it off of him.
— Anders!
The claimant looked at her strangely, as if she were mad.
— Who are you talking to? he said. Who is Anders? Where am I?
His voice was different — his inflections had changed. He looked at her and it was as if he did not know her at all — as if he had just appeared that moment, from some other place.
The examiner looked at him in horror. Be calm, be calm.
He had cut his hands badly, and the blood was smeared on his face and chest. He looked up at her, and his face was wet. He was crying, but he was angry.
— Anders! she said, I need you to calm down.
— Who are you? Who are you?
He burrowed his head into his arms, pushed himself into the corner, and screwed his eyes shut.
— Anders! Anders!
He did not respond.
The examiner rushed from the room.
~ ~ ~
2
A BRIGHT LIGHT WOKE HIM. Something was shining through the window, and his face felt very hot. He rolled over and slowly looked around. He could scarcely manage it, but he looked around. His eyes failed him and drifted shut. He was curled in a quilt with the sheets in disarray.
The claimant lay in a bed that was set against a wall. A chair had been pulled up next to the bed. A chair had been pulled up, and there was someone in it.
It was an old woman. Her face creased in a smile.
The claimant squinted and struggled to open his eyes and see her.
She leaned her face in close to his, seeming to etch his features into her mind.
His eyes shut and he slumped in the bed.
With a strength that belied her age, she pushed his body into a sleeping posture, and stepped away.
~ ~ ~
IT WAS A GOOD SITUATION, thought the examiner. He appears young and strong. He had woken remarkably soon after the shot — only eighteen hours, if the report was to be believed. The examiner had been at this job long enough to know that not all information was correct.
In fact, she thought, often it is wrong on purpose.
She busied herself making some tea. How should she start with this one?
The usual method? Or another approach? Lately she had been favoring the original way, the first way, although she had made her career with her unusual treatments. This time, she would stick to the original method. No speech until the claimant speaks. It was a measurement of sorts. The examiner believed very fervently in measurement.
She set the teapot down on the table and took a pen and paper off a shelf on the wall.
++
Arrived in Gentlest Village P6.
Received claimant. He appears healthy and ready for treatment.
++
~ ~ ~
THE TWO COULD BE SEEN through any window of the house, sitting together. He would sit in one chair and she would sit in another. They would sit for long hours, practically motionless.
Through another, they might be seen practicing skills. The old woman would mime the donning of clothes, and help him again and again and again to perform the basic tasks. No matter how he tried, the man could not button the buttons of his shirt. He failed again and again. But, if he was failing, the expression of the old woman seemed to say: This, what we are doing, it is the hardest thing in the world. No one has ever done it. No one until you. And now it has fallen to you to try. Let us try. Let us try again.
One could see them practicing the use of the stairwell, a thing to which one clung with both arms, while lowering leg after leg up and down. It was used for getting to and fro — for going from the top of the house to the bottom.