“Whether or not it turns out to be fun for the women,” I said with a nod, finding myself completely unsurprised.
“The only thing you haven’t mentioned yet is why you need that many Primes. What are they being trained for? ”
“Only the male Primes are being trained, and the reason for that is none of your business,” he said, still as friendly and pleasant as he’d been all along. “Being handed around among the fathers of your future children will be the hardest thing for you to get used to, that and the fact that their wants and desires are far more important than your own. You’ll find that if you don’t defer to them in every way possible they’ll make your life here very unpleasant, but once you learn how to behave you shouldn’t have any trouble. Your records tell me you’ll have time to adjust to the system before you’re ready for your first impregnation, so take advantage of the fact and work hard toward fitting in. You’ll do much better for us if you’re happy here, and we’ll do everything we can to help you.”
“Such thoughtfulness is positively awe-inspiring,” I commented, this time acceding to the urge to cross my legs and not giving a damn about the length of my covering. “Of course, you’ve left out or glossed over a number of rather important points, such as the fact that I’ll probably never be allowed to see the children I produce, or the details on what’s done with the babies who aren’t born as the Primes you’re so eager for. I’m probably supposed to be too anxious to become one of the team to worry about things like that, but I do have what might be considered a pertinent question. What happens if I decide I want nothing to do with your team, and also decide to give as good as I get in the way of misery and unpleasantness? In other words, what if I decide not to be one of your brood mares, and refuse to change my mind?”
“I would seriously recommend against a decision like that,” he said, a faint frown replacing the amusement he’d been enjoying. “Your file shows a penchant for troublemaking, but it also shows a definite aversion to discomfort and pain. Our trainee Primes aren’t the only ones who can make life unpleasant for you here, and you’d do well to remember that. If you try to judge us all by Director Gearing, you’ll find yourself making a very bad mistake. The rest of us are neither incompetent nor helpless. ”
“But you’re going to persist in treating me as though I were both,” I said, glad wed finally gotten to the threats even though my hands were beginning to tremble. “You expect me to start cooperating because you’ve given me no choice, and then expect me to continue because I’ll have gotten used to doing it your way. I can imagine the various things you’re able to do to me and very frankly they frighten me, but not half as much as the thought of waking up one day to find that I’m accepting this-this-travesty you’re perpetrating. I can vaguely remember going along with something similar to this once to keep from being terribly hurt, but I can remember even more strongly how shamed I felt. The pain is more intense but the memory of shame lasts longer, and I really don’t need any more memories like that.”
By that time my voice was almost unsteady enough to match the tremor in my hands, but I’d still managed to say what I had to. The memory I’d spoken of was very distant and hard to touch, but although I couldn’t reach all the details of what had happened where, my reactions had been so strong that they were more than clear. I waited for the man behind the desk to understand I was serious and begin to make arrangements for hurting me the way only civilized people can accomplish, but all he did was make a sound of annoyance and shake his head.
“I can see you’re still too theatrically interested in saving what you consider your virtue to discuss anything rationally,” he said, and there was more annoyance than anger in his voice and eyes. “We’ll get you checked over and settled in, and once you’ve learned our routines we’ll talk again. By then you’ll have learned how undramatic this all is, and that there really is nothing else for you to do but cooperate. We’re not villains here, just practical people doing a practical job, one that you’ll eventually be helping us with. My name is Serdin. If you need to talk to me before I send for you, apply to your sector head for a pass.”
He flicked his finger over a small, lit circle on his desk, and I knew even before the door to his office was opened from outside that I’d been dismissed. One of the two men in white uniforms was waiting calmly for me to get up and go with him, and the man Serdin had already picked up another folder and had begun losing himself in it. I got to my feet slowly, expecting to be confused over what was happening or relieved that I wasn’t about to be hurt, but what I did feel was even more frightened than I’d been a moment earlier. When people mistreat you it isn’t difficult to resist them and their desires, to fight them with all your strength to the very end of it, but what do you do when you throw out your most direct challenge and all they do in return is pat you on the head and send you on your way? You can grit your teeth and swear not to budge an inch, but after a while you find teeth-gritting tiring and not really necessary, and you notice how hard they’re trying to help you, and they really are being very understanding, and they’re not asking for anything all that terrible
The shudder that ran through me was covered by my movement as I left the office, but it chilled my mind enough to keep it awake and alert, which was what I needed. If I let myself forget, even for a moment, what those people were trying to do to me, their brand of “helpful assistance” would infect me and I’d be through. I would not give them what they wanted, no matter how many times they patted me on the head, and that was something I would not be changing my mind about.
I was able to feel brave and dedicated while the two men in white uniforms led me through even more corridors, but when I was deposited in yet another bare anteroom, this one all pale brown, my emotions began fraying around the edges. Rather than staying with me the men had closed the door and left, and once closed in I could no longer see a way of returning to the corridor. This second anteroom had two remaining doors leading out of it, both in the wall I’d faced when I’d first come in, but both stayed closed and quietly unglowing. There were a few pale brown, plain metal chairs standing around the walls, and after five minutes of hovering and waiting for something to happen, I gave up and walked to one of them.
In which I sat and waited. After another year or so had passed, it came to me that waiting rooms had to be even more fiendishly clever in the way of torture devices than a rack, on which at least you had something to do and occupy you. After being left long enough in a waiting room, you find yourself willing to do anything to be allowed to leave it, anything at all. Tell every secret you have? Certainly! Agree to accept physical pain without struggles? No problem! Ask for immediate execution? Of course, of course, only please be sure that it isn’t boring! I can’t take any more of being bored . . . .
I shifted in the hard metal chair for the ten thousandth time, convinced that the wait was all part of their master plan. Why waste time and effort on trying to force people into doing things your way, when you can slide them into it once they’re half asleep from boredom and no longer paying attention? In between shifting I’d been trying to understand why their careful conditioning had broken down, but I’d been too distracted by the waiting to get anywhere. When you’re waiting for something to happen, you can’t really concentrate on anything else; your inner mind is too afraid you’ll miss an opportunity to end the wait, thereby making you wait even longer. And with some waits, you really can’t wait for them to end.
I sat straighter in the chair, realizing I’d just touched something, the very outline of a buried memory. Once, not long ago, I’d been waiting for something to happen, something I’d needed very badly. It was also something I’d been afraid of, but I’d needed it so badly that I hadn’t cared how frightened it made me. I’d lost something, something I couldn’t bear to go on without, and the wait was going to end the pain of the loss for me. I could remember the trembling eagerness with which I’d waited for a particular thing to happen, willed it closer and closer, greeted it as the end to agony—but I couldn’t remember what it was I’d lost. There was a large, square tear in the fabric of memory at that point, which told me with absolute certainty that the information had been conditioned away. You don’t casually forget something like that on your own, not when even the softened memory is able to bring aching . . .