Con was too agitated to sit still. She had her former body back and, with it, her restless energy. While she appreciated her renewed vigor, she suspected the motives of the strangers who had restored it. I'm not rescued, she thought as she paced across the sand-covered floor, I'm captured. Captured and caged.
In need of something constructive to do, Con grabbed the jacket and began to brush the sand off the bed. Once the bed was clear, she decided to tackle the floor. She scooped a handful of sand and threw it at the shimmering barrier between the columns. The sand passed through the barrier as if it weren't there. "At least I can clean my pen," said Con. "I don't have to live like an animal, even if I'm treated like one."
Con had cleared sand from only a small portion of the floor when the silvery panel opened. The woman entered, carrying the weapon in one hand and a large grayish pink cube in the other. Con rose slowly and raised her hands above her head. The woman advanced into the room and placed the cube on the corner of the bed. All the while, she kept the weapon trained on Con.
"You may lower your hands and feed yourself," the woman said.
"You don't need to point that at me," said Con. "I'm not a savage." The woman did not lower the weapon. "A savage, I presume, is something that is dangerous?"
"You speak English so well, how can you not know what a savage is?"
"The data for your language came from this facility's verbal control system. It is incomplete and fails to define many of your words."
Con, encouraged that the woman had answered a ques-tion, pressed her for more information. "You said you would tell me about Rick."
"When we are satisfied with your responses."
"I've answered all your questions. Why won't you tell me anything?"
"We are doing what is necessary."
"Can't you tell me if he's all right? At least do that."
"What is the reason for your persistence in this mat-ter?" asked the woman. "Are you mating?" Con was insulted. "How is that your concern?"
"I study Homo sapiens."
" Homo sapiens? Why not say 'people'?" retorted Con.
"As a paleontologist, I prefer precise terms."
"Then you should say you're an 'anthropologist.' That's the correct word."
"No," said the woman evenly, "I used the proper term. I study extinct species. We are Homo perfectus." The woman's matter-of-fact comment belittled Con more than any insult. Con grasped the gulf between them as the word "subhuman," with all its implications, sprang to her mind. Con's assertiveness transformed to unease and, for a moment, she was speechless. When she spoke again, it was in a less confident tone. "Please tell me about Rick."
"You still have not explained the reason for your in-terest."
"It's because . . ."
"Because what?"
"Because we're in love." ?
"That is another term for which I have no definition."
"It's an emotion," said Con. "I guess you could say it has something to do ... to do with mating." The woman looked intrigued, but said, "After more sat-isfactory sessions, we may allow you contact with him."
"Then he's alive?"
"Yes," said the woman. "I will tell you that."
"Thank you," said Con joyfully. "Thank you!"
The woman watched Con's reaction with apparent in-terest, but she did not respond to it. Instead, she pointed to the cube lying on the bed. "There is sufficient nutrition for your accelerated physiology." After saying that, she left the room. Although she did not turn her back on Con, she no longer pointed the weapon at her. Con thought, / guess that's progress.
As soon as the woman departed, Con bubbled over with excitement. "Rick's alive!" she shouted. "He's alive!" She happily danced about the sandy room, then whirled until she dropped dizzily on the bed. She felt hungry and pulled a corner off the cube the woman had left. It had a texture that was a cross between gelatin and cheese and tasted like unsweetened fruit punch. It was not unpleasant, and it was very filling. Con ate only a small portion of the cube before her hunger was satisfied.
She returned to cleaning the room, trying to expend some of her energy. As she worked, she pondered how she could hasten the time when she could see Rick. The woman said I'd see Rick after "more satisfactory ses-sions." The ambiguity of that phrase worried her. Did she mean more sessions as satisfactory as the last one? If that were the case, Con wondered how many more inter-rogations she must endure. Or did she mean the last ses-sion was unsatisfactory? That also seemed plausible. They looked annoyed by the end of the questioning. Con tried to think how she might have provoked them, but she had no idea. It disturbed her that she didn't know. It dis-turbed her even more how she had lost control of her life and how her happiness was dependent on satisfying her captors. 37
THE FAINT WORLD BEYOND THE SWIRLING COLORS DARK-
ened to black, indicating it was night. Con slept and awoke to a routine of confinement that dragged on for days. Her life became one of profound loneliness, marked by bouts of anxiety and long stretches of depressed boredom. There was nothing to do once she cleaned the room and took care of the jacket. Meals consisted of eating from a grayish pink cube that was wordlessly delivered each morning. Filling the empty hours became a trial. She slept as much as possible. She took long baths. She paced for hours, tracing complex patterns through the three rooms that imprisoned her. What made Con's situation particularly hard was her ignorance. She worried about what was happening to Rick. She worried about what would happen to her. The woman provided no further information. She had ceased to come alone, and she was coldly formal in the presence of her companions.
The days passed so slowly that Con came to look forward to her daily interrogations, for, although they were demean-ing, they at least broke the monotony. Also, each session held the promise that she might learn something about Rick. In that hope, she was always disappointed. She was not even given an indication whether the sessions were satisfactory to her captors. They ignored all her inquiries. Indeed, they be-came so irritated when she made them, Con soon thought it was prudent to stop. While Con's interrogators provided her no direct infor-mation, she was able to learn things about them through ob-servation. During one of the early sessions, Con observed that the metallic dots on her captors' foreheads were more than adornments. They were apparently involved in trans-mitting information. One of the men arrived in the middle of the interrogation and both of the others touched their dots to his. Afterward, the man's questions reflected an awareness of all that had proceeded in his absence. That's what the woman meant when she said I had an inaccessible mind, thought Con. No wonder they get impatient asking questions. Once Con was aware of the dot's function, she noticed its use on other occasions. Several times, she witnessed her cap-tors touching various devices to their dots. That led her to speculate they were capable of directly inputting data. Con recalled the woman's statement that her English came from the facility's verbal control system and envisioned her down-loading it through her dot.