"In Dachau, when they opened the gas chambers, they’d find a pyramid of human bodies by the door," Shriver told me once. "As the gas started to work, the Jews panicked and climbed over each other, in a futile attempt to escape. That was deliberate. It was designed into the system. The Nazis didn’t just want them dead–they wanted to be able to feel morally superior to their victims afterward."
So I shouldn’t have been there. But I was unlatching the door to my trailer when it suddenly came to me that my purse felt wrong. Light. And I realized that I’d left the bippy in the top drawer of my office desk. I hadn’t even locked it.
My stomach twisted at the thought of somebody else finding the thing. In a panic, I drove back to the camp. It was a twenty-minute drive from the trailer park and by the time I got there, I wasn’t thinking straight. The civ/noncom parking lot was a good quarter-way around the camp from the Tentagon. I thought it would be a simple thing to cut through. So, flashing my DOD/Future History Division ID at the guard as I went through the gate, I did.
Which was how I came to be lost.
There are neighborhoods in the camp. People have a natural tendency to sort themselves out by the nature of their suffering. The twitchers, who were victims of paralogical reprogramming, stay in one part of the camp, and the mods, those with functional normative modifications, stay in another. I found myself wandering through crowds of people who had been "healed" of limbs, ears, and even internal organs–there seemed no sensible pattern. Sometimes our doctors could effect a partial correction. But our primitive surgery was, of course, nothing like that available in their miraculous age.
I’d taken a wrong turn trying to evade an eyeless, noseless woman who kept grabbing at my blouse and demanding money, and gotten all turned around in the process when, without noticing me, Gevorkian went striding purposefully by.
Which was so unexpected that, after an instant’s shock, I up and followed her. It didn’t occur to me not to. There was something strange about the way she held herself, about her expression, her posture. Something unfamiliar.
She didn’t even walk like herself.
The vics had dismantled several tents to make a large open space surrounded by canvas. Propane lights, hung from tall poles, blazed in a ring about it. I saw Gevorkian slip between two canvas sheets and, after a moment’s hesitation, I followed her.
It was a rat fight.
The way a rat fight works, I learned that night, is that first you catch a whole bunch of Norwegian rats. Big mean mothers. Then you get them in a bad mood, probably by not feeding them, but there are any number of other methods that could be used. Anyway, they’re feeling feisty. You put a dozen of them in a big pit you’ve dug in the ground. Then you dump in your contestant. A big guy with a shaven head and his hands tied behind his back. His genitals are bound up in a little bit of cloth, but other than that he’s naked.
Then you let them fight it out. The rats leap and jump and bite and the big guy tries to trample them underfoot or crush them with his knees, his chest, his head–whatever he can bash them with.
The whole thing was lit up bright as day, and all the area around the pit was crammed with vics. Some shouted and urged on one side or the other. Others simply watched intently. The rats squealed. The human fighter bared his teeth in a hideous rictus and fought in silence.
It was the creepiest thing I’d seen in a long time.
Gevorkian watched it coolly, without any particular interest or aversion. After a while it was obvious to me that she was waiting for someone.
Finally that someone arrived. He was a lean man, tall, with keen, hatchet-like features. None of the vics noticed. Their eyes were directed inward, toward the pit. He nodded once to Gevorkian, then backed through the canvas again.
She followed him.
I followed her.
They went to a near-lightless area near the edge of the camp. There was nothing there but trash, the backs of tents, the razor-wire fence, and a gate padlocked for the night.
It was perfectly easy to trail them from a distance. The stranger held himself proudly, chin up, eyes bright. He walked with a sure stride. He was nothing at all like the vics.
It was obvious to me that he was an Owner.
Gevorkian too. When she was with him that inhuman arrogance glowed in her face as well. It was as if a mask had been removed. The fire that burned in his face was reflected in hers.
I crouched low to the ground, in the shadow of a tent, and listened as the stranger said, "Why hasn’t she turned it in?"
"She’s unstable," Gevorkian said. "They all are."
"We don’t dare prompt her. She has to turn it in herself."
"She will. Give her time."
"Time," the man repeated. They both laughed in a way that sounded to me distinctly unpleasant. Then, "She’d better. There’s a lot went into this operation. There’s a lot riding on it."
"She will."
I stood watching as they shook hands and parted ways. Gevorkian turned and disappeared back into the tent city. The stranger opened a radiant door and was gone.
Cause and effect. They’d done ... whatever it was they’d done to that woman’s daughter just so they could plant the bippy with me. They wanted me to turn it in. They wanted our government to have possession of a device that would guarantee obedience. They wanted to give us a good taste of what it was like to be them.
Suddenly I had no doubt at all what I should do. I started out at a determined stride, but inside of nine paces I was running. Vics scurried to get out of my way. If they didn’t move fast enough, I shoved them aside.
I had to get back to the bippy and destroy it.
Which was stupid, stupid, stupid. If I’d kept my head down and walked slowly, I would have been invisible. Invisible and safe. The way I did it, though, cursing and screaming, I made a lot of noise and caused a lot of fuss. Inevitably, I drew attention to myself.
Inevitably, Gevorkian stepped into my path.
I stumbled to a halt.
"Gevorkian," I said feebly. "Linda. I–"
All the lies I was about to utter died in my throat when I saw her face. Her expression. Those eyes. Gevorkian reached for me. I skipped back in utter panic, turned–and fled. Anybody else would have done the same.
It was a nightmare. The crowds slowed me. I stumbled. I had no idea where I was going. And all the time, this monster was right on my heels.
Nobody goes into the camp after dark, unless they have to. But that doesn’t mean that nobody goes in after dark. By sheer good luck, Gevorkian chased me into the one part of the camp that had something that outsiders could find nowhere else–the sex-for-hire district.