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.
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.