A side door led to a toilet, shower, and basin, which, I saw, we shared with the room next to us. I say “we” simply because when I looked in the closets, then in the drawers, somebody’s stuff was already in them. The owner didn’t appear to be much bigger than I from the size of the clothes, but I’d have to wait and see.
Although the room monitors were cleverly concealed to blend in with the surroundings, they weren’t hard to locate. The one in the bathroom was in the center of the overhead light, and the one in the main room was almost certainly integrated into the centrally located smoke and fire detector. I wondered idly if they had the closets covered. Though the idea seemed pretty ridiculous they probably did. Ypsir and his TMS apparently had that kind of mind.
I checked the computer terminal for messages but there were none apparent. I didn’t yet have the codes needed to call up the less routine stuff. Since I had received no instructions beyond coming here and waiting, I put my stuff away in an empty drawer and stowed the overnight bag in one of the closets, then went back to the terminal and gave it a good going-over. It was extremely primitive by my standards, but did have the basics, both keyboard and voxcoder for two-way communication. The thing was a combination terminal and telephone, possibly even a picturephone. Considering the obvious technical limitations the Confederacy imposed on the Warden Diamond, this really was a slick piece of home-grown work. After deciding I didn’t have the proper tools to disassemble the frame and see what really made the machine tick, I abandoned it for the time being, walked over to the bed, leaned back, and relaxed in the nice, downy softness. I promptly fell asleep.
I was awakened perhaps two hours later by the sound of the door whooshing back to admit someone. Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor and all that, I remained motionless, curious to see who it might be. My eyes opened wide and I sat straight up when I saw the newcomer. I really hadn’t been prepared for this.
“Oh, hello!” she said, spotting me. “You must be Tarin Bul.”
The girl was very young—I couldn’t really tell how young—quite small and slightly built, hair cropped as short as my own. I was still sitting up in bed, staring, mouth agape, trying to adjust to the fact that she was a she, when she started removing her uniform.
“Hey!” I cried out, feeling very awkward indeed. I was no prude, but societies have rules and the one I came from wasn’t quite this casual.
She stopped, a little puzzled. “What’s the matter?” And she meant it.
“Um—you’re taking off your clothes in front of a perfect stranger.”
The idea struck her as funny. “Oh, you’re supposed to take yours off, too. The Monitor should have told you. I guess somebody’s asleep at the switch today.” She finished removing the last of her clothing, which she folded into a small ball, then opened a drawer, from which she removed a plastic bag, stuffing in the clothes. “Below Supervisor grade it’s not permitted to wear uniforms in your home dorm. Don’t you know that?”
1 shook my head slowly, trying to decide if I was being put on. My wits returning, I realized that what she was telling me made perfect sense from the TMS viewpoint. You couldn’t carry in anything without taking it out of your clothing first, and being totally nude was the ultimate invasion of privacy, somehow. Now, I’d gone nude in mixed company many times, usually on plush resort worlds with seaside villas, and never thought anything of it. But this was a whole different kind of experience, and it took some getting used to.
She held out the bag. “Come on—before the Monitor sees you. Off and in the bag.”
I sighed and decided that it wouldn’t be in character if I caved in too easily. “But—you’re a girl!” I was suddenly very cautious, mentally. The mere fact that I hadn’t been called on such a rule indicated to me that they were observing my behavior and how I acclimated socially. The fact that I was fourteen was some protection, but it wasn’t total. I had to assume that any government capable of putting a superhuman robot in the most secret rooms of Military Systems Command could easily know about the Merton Process and deduce the truth given half a chance. She stood up straight and shook her head at me in wonder. “Are all people Outside so shy and upset by so simple a thing?”
Her question told me two facts straight off, if she was indeed what she seemed. First, she was a native of this world, and, second, I was the first person from “Outside”—that is, outside the Warden Diamond, and maybe even outside of Medusa—she’d ever met. Ordinarily such knowledge would give me some advantage and leeway in slips, but I couldn’t assume that whoever was monitoring me was as inexperienced or naive.
I sighed, gave in, and removed my clothes, tossing them into the common bag. She tied the bag off and left it on the floor. “I’m Ching Lu Kor,” she introduced herself. “Ah—you are Tarin Bul?”
I nodded nervously. “Uh huh.”
She looked me over mock-critically. “You’re not so bad. I always heard people Outside were all soft and flabby, but you look pretty good.”
I shuffled nervously, creating my proper persona as I went. “Uh—I haven’t had a lot of exercise in a while, but I made do.”
She sat down on the corner of the bed opposite mine.
“What’d you do to get sent here? Or shouldn’t I ask that?”
I shrugged and sat back on my bed. “I executed the murderer of my father,” I told her. “Nobody else would.”
She frowned and appeared to be a little taken aback by that. Clearly a crime of that magnitude was hard for someone brought up in a totalitarian world like Medusa to fathom. But clearly she understood the implications of the act, even if it seemed impossible to her. She even seemed impressed. A romantic, I decided.
“Are you hungry?” she asked suddenly, getting away from the subject. “I’m starved—I’ve just come off shift. You’re lucky—no work until 1600 tomorrow.” She jumped up from the bed. “Come on. We have to drop off the laundry anyway. Then you can tell me all about Outside, and I can tell you all about here.”
That seemed a fair trade, but I decided some hesitation was in order. “We go eat—like this?”
She laughed. “You really are hung up, aren’t you? They’ll have a psych on you if you don’t relax a little.” She turned and waved at the room. “Besides, somebody’s always looking at you anyway. What’s the difference?”
She had a point there. I let her pick up the clothes bag and followed her out the door, then stopped. “Hey—what about the cards?”
Obviously I had said something funny again. “You don’t need cards in your own home,” she responded as she headed for the stairs.
She was certainly right about nudity. Old, young, male, female—everyone walked about and sat and talked with no inhibitions at all. Here and there would be people in uniform, either somebody with rank who wanted everybody else to remember it or those still coming in from work or leaving for it. Apparently there were staggered start times for the shifts within the two-hour active period, probably to ease the mass-transit load.
The cafeteria was about half full, with the usual eating-place bustle and unintelligible mass-conversation buzz. There were no menu choices, I found—you went up, punched a button, got a covered tray, then went to a table and sat down. Water and a selection of three beverages at a self-service area in the center of the cafeteria provided the only option.