Restoree Read online

  RESTOREE

  Anne McCaffrey

  A Del Rey® Book

  BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Other Books by Anne McCaffrey

  Was She or Wasn’t She?

  To learn more about other great Ballantine Books . . .

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE ONLY WARNING OF DANGER I had was a disgusting wave of dead sea-creature stench. For a moment, it overwhelmed the humid, baked-pavement smell that permeated the relatively cooler air of Central Park that hot July evening. One minute I was turning off the pathway to the Zoo in search of a spot that might have a breeze from the lake and the next I was fainting with terror.

  I have one other impression of that final second before all horror overcame me: of a huge dirigible-shaped form looming lightless. I remember that only because I thought to myself that someone was going to catch hell for flying so low over the city. Then the black bulk of the thing seemed to compress the stinking air through my skull, robbing me of breath and sanity with its aura of alien terror.

  Of the next long interlude, which I am informed was a period of withdrawal from a reality too disrupting to contemplate, I remember only isolated incoherencies. It is composed of horrifying fragments, do-si-do-ing in a random partnering of all nightmare symbols, tinted with unlikely colors, accompanied by fetid odors, by intense heat and shivering cold and worst of all, nerve-memories of excruciating pain. I remember, and forget as quickly as possible, dismembered pieces of the human body; the pattern of severed blood vessels, sawn bones, the patterns of the fine lines on wrinkled skin. And throat-searing screams. And a voice, dinning into the ears of my mind, repeating with endless, stomach-churning patience, collections of syllables I strained desperately to sort into comprehensible phrases.

  Red, yellow, blue beads rolled, parabolically, evading a needle and its umbilical string. A spoon dipped into a blue bowl, into a red bowl; a spoon dipped into a red bowl, into a blue bowl, until my body was forced into the mold of a spoon and itself was dipped into the bowl, my greatly enlarged mouth the bowl of that spoon. Plaits of human hair swayed toward oddly shaped sheets of pale white leather. The gentle voice with the iron insistence of the dedicated droned on and on until each repetition seemed to trampoline into the gray matter of my mind.

  Then, after eons of this inescapable routine, I began to clutch at snatches seen normally and rationally; a face on a sea of white which stretched limitlessly beyond my blinkered perception. I would be aware of bending over this face. I kept trying to make the face resemble someone I knew: one of the junior account men who invaded the source library of the advertising agency where I worked; one of the anonymous faces on the buses I rode from my 48th Street cold-water flat.

  At other times, I would find a tray of food held in front of me and associate myself as the carrier. This troubled me even more because of all things, I hated serving food. In college I had paid for my board working as a waitress and sometimes a cook in private families, resenting the necessary exigencies of a junior female member of a large family. It seemed to me my earliest recollections were of setting or clearing the table and serving food. But the feeling of the entire scene here had an alien quality to it, despite the fact my coherent vision was limited. The tray and dishes had a different touch and the smell of the food was unfamiliar.

  The next identifiable sensation was that of the warmth of sun on my shoulders and the caress of wind, of green light in my eyes. I heard screams that can only be heard and not described, but they might have been from earlier sections of the nightmare. I had the feeling on my hands of the slippery softness of soapy water. Then the face on the vast expanse of white would reappear. I gradually became aware of an unfailing order in the procedure of my dreams. Face, food, water, sunshine, face, food, water, dark. The repetition was endless and I was passive to it, prompted by the droning voice, no longer gentle, but equally insistent.

  Slowly, not just that face on a sea of white but peripheral details took form and coherency. The face would belong to a man, an ugly man with vacant eyes, black hair, sallow pitted skin. The fact that he bore not one morsel of resemblance to any of my brothers or any of the overbright young men at the agency gave me distinct pleasure. His face was on a pillow which was on a bed of hospital height. And always I was in the position of looking down, not being on a level, with him. Had he been bending over me, I might just have been alarmed that all the tales of rampant white slavery in New York City drilled into me by my provincial parents were indeed true. My first conscious query was why was I not the patient since, obviously, something was very wrong with me.

  The mere sensation of sun warmth gradually expanded to include oddly shaped trees with willowy, waving fronds, and with the feel of the wind was the cool fragrance of floral odors.

  The ground no longer hovered somewhere beyond my comprehension but was suddenly squarely under my feet. I was standing on a walk, bordered with blooms I never remembered seeing before. The trays I carried contained individual colored dishes with foods that smelled appetizingly and I fed them to the face in the sea of white.

  I cannot judge the length of this semiconscious state. I was a passive observer, comparing the anomalies with personal recollections and finding no parallels. I was, however, not the least bit alarmed by all that, which should have alarmed me, as I am normally very curious, in a discreet way.

  I do know that the transition into full consciousness was brutally abrupt. As if the focus of my mind, so long blurred, had suddenly been returned to balance. As if a kaleidoscope had astonishingly settled into a familiar design instead of random, meaningless patterns.

  Out of the jumble, my grateful eyes reviewed an entire panorama of sloping bluish lawns, felicitously set with flowering shrubs and populated by couples strolling casually down the paths. Each woman wore a gown the exact cut and color of the blue one I wore. Each man had a blue tunic and a coat gruesomely reminiscent of a straitjacket. Beyond the bluish swath, lay little cottages of white stone, with wide windows, barred by white columns at narrow regular intervals. Directly in front of my face was a shimmering opacity I recognized, by some agency, as a fence and dangerous to me.

  I was not, however, one of a couple. I was in a group of eight people, strolling the walks, and the other seven were men. Only one, the man directly to my left, wore the strange jacket.

  A voice, issuing from the left side of the man in the jacket, spoke an irritating combination of comprehensible words and jumbled syllables.

  “And so . . . he is as well as can be expected. Certainly his physical appearance has improved. Notice the firm tone to his flesh, the clear color of his complexion.”

  “Then you do have hopes?” asked an urgent, wistful younger voice. Its owner I could see without noticeably turning my head. He was a young man, tall and slender, with a sensitive, pale-gold tired face dominated by deeply circled eyes. He was dressed in a simple but rich fashion. His concerned attention was on the man whose harness controls I now found myself holding.

  “Hopes, yes . . . [another incomprehensible spate of words. It seemed to me I was hearing another language in which I could not yet think] . . . we have had so few successes with this sor
t of. . . . Our skill does not include mental breakdowns . . . the strains and concerns of affairs in your behalf and for his country . . . but you may be sure we are taking the very best care of him until that time. Monsorlit’s . . .”

  This was not the reassurance the young man wanted. He sighed resignedly, placing a gentle hand on my charge’s shoulder. It was the lightest of gestures, but it stopped the man stolidly in his tracks. In the vacuousness of the face, there was no comprehension of the action, no reaction, no sign whatever of intelligence.

  “Harlan, Harlan,” the youth cried in bitter distress, his eyes brimming with tears, “how could this have happened to you?”

  “Come, Sir Ferrill,” commanded a stern voice with no vestige of sympathy in its hardness. “You know that emotional stress can bring about another one of your attacks. You have little enough strength as it is.”

  The speaker fetched round in my sight. Immediately I saw his face, I disliked him. I considered myself scarcely a proper judge in this newly rational state of mind, but the instinct to hate him was as sharp as the fleshy face of the man was bland. His eyes, close together on either side of a large nose, were disturbingly cold, calculating and wary. His full sensuous lips sealed tightly over his teeth and his heavy jaw was implacable. His heavyset figure was ponderous, not just fleshy or muscular but unwieldy.

  “Your solicitude for my health is touching, Gorlot, but I will judge which emotions I can afford,” snapped the young man with such regality the implacable man demurred.

  The youth continued to speak, ignoring this Gorlot.

  “Since that is his condition, I must leave Harlan here,” he said to a corpulent, moon-faced individual who bowed with oily obsequity at each phrase. “But . . . if I am not informed the moment an improvement is noticed . . .” and the youth left the threat in mid-air with the authority of one who is used to complete obedience.

  The unctuous man bowed again to the back of the youth who turned and walked with brisk steps down another path. The smile on the fat man’s face did not indicate obedience to the injunction. Nor did the knowing look this Gorlot exchanged with him. The others in the party walked into my line of vision and followed the youth and Gorlot.

  When they were out of hearing, the fat man turned to me with a sneer and snapped a command, “To the house,” and I, obviously from some well-rehearsed practice in that dim past from which I had so recently emerged, turned myself and my charge around and took a path toward a little cottage among the trees.

  At the door stood an armed attendant, a brutish, coarse-looking person who spoke as we approached but spoke as one who knows he isn’t heard.

  “Back in your cage, most high, noble and exalted Regent.” He threw open the door he had just unlocked. With a brutal shove he pushed my charge into the house. With an equally brutal and obscene caress, he pushed me inside and snapped the door lock.

  The patient lay crumpled over the chair into which he had been pushed. I wondered how I would be able to get him to his feet, for he was tall and big-boned. But, as I put one hand under his arm, he took it as a signal and almost unaided got to his feet. His shins were bleeding slightly, but there was no sign of expression in the vacant eyes.

  “Poor man,” I muttered to myself, “which of us has been the madder?”

  “Take off harness,” blared a voice from the ceiling, startling me breathless. I spotted the grillwork that housed the speaker. “Take off harness,” the voice repeated, slowly, distinctly, as to a child or . . . a childlike mind.

  I did as I was told.

  “Take off harness,” the voice repeated four more times even as I had completed the task. “If I’ve said that once, I’ve said it a million times,” the voice grumbled in a lower and more normal tone.

  “You’d gripe in a priest’s cave, you would,” came a half-muffled reply. “By the Seven Brothers, you won’t find me complaining. This life suits me fine. Plenty of food, nothing much to do except lock doors and . . . unlock any pretty legs I want.”

  “You like that, you Milbait,” was the sneering reply.

  “Ahhh, that’s your main problem in life, Balon, you have to have a struggle to please you. Not me.”

  “Who do you think you are, telling me what my problem is? Monsorlit?” Balon growled. His voice altered again as he issued another command. “Seat patient.”

  I scuffled with the chair, picked it up, half pushing the man into it.

  “Get tray at wall slot. Get tray at wall slot.”

  I located the wall slot and the tray on which were two sets of dishes, one red and one blue.

  “Feed patient blue food. Feed patient blue food.”

  My patient ate with a half-animal intensity, snapping at each bite as the spoon touched his lips, gulping it down half-chewed.

  “Eat red food. Eat red food,” was the next order. “Damned if I care if the dummies eat or not. They give me Milshivers.”

  “You’d care all right if you had to feed all of Gleto’s drugged prizes yourself. Then I’d never hear the end of your blasting. Your trouble is, you don’t know a prime cave when you see it. Me, I like it fine. Those dummies do all our work. This is better pay than patrolling, too. Not that I’d patrol with the half-blown reliners they call squadron leaders these days. And not with a war on Tane. Who wants hand-to-hand combat? And it’s better than running illegals. You can never tell nowadays when Gorlot’s going to have to make more commitments and who wants to end up with a needle? Or tied to the local Mil Rock?”

  “Balon,” shouted a new voice in the background I recognized as Gleto’s. “You’ve been at Lamar again. Leave him alone. Just luck I looked in at him on my way to greet Ferrill. You keep your hands off him.”

  “If you knew what the Milrouser had done to me, you wouldn’t . . .” began the grumbler passionately.

  “I don’t care if he blocked your cave,” Gleto said angrily, “you cut him up once more and you’ll join him.”

  “Eat red food. Eat red food,” Balon snarled into the speaker system.

  There were no more incidental remarks over the speaker that day, but it was a constant source of odd, vulgar dialogues between much the same personnel during the next week.

  Although I never understood their topical references until much later, my understanding of the language increased immensely . . . if limited to a very rough vernacular. I knew there was a war going on between these people and the inhabitants of another planet, Tane. I knew that the army unit, the Patrol, was considered to be run by incompetents and that the casualties were high. That there was a sudden epidemic of insanity that caused the guards no end of secret amusement.

  I had been told by Balon to return the tray after I had eaten the red food. I was then told to be seated in the other chair of the room without any further commands for what seemed a long time. My private meditations were uninterrupted until the green sun had sunk from sight and a twin-moonlit night well darkened.

  As the greening twilight increased to the point of low visibility, I was briefly startled to see the lights in the four corners of the room come on. It was not overly bright for me to assume that a central agency turned on all the functions of the cottage, remotely controlling the order of the days with no need for personal contact. This isolation was merciful to me as I sorted out truth from fancy in newly regained sanity.

  Perhaps, on another day, if I hadn’t heard the coarse interchange, I might have innocently announced my rationality. The wise decision to remain silent was strengthened each day by the grotesque conversations I overheard. It was lucky, too, that there was not a single diversion in that barely furnished room so that my activity, outside of the care of my patient, was restricted to looking out the window or sitting looking at my vacant-eyed companion. Any other industry would have immediately communicated my change to the guard on his random rounds.

  I learned early that the speaker system was two-way. A chance, overloud comment on my part fetched the guard instantly. To him I presented the same vacant stare
that inhabited the face of my charge. He looked at me suspiciously, caressed me in a vulgar fashion that shocked me motionless and departed with a shrug of his shoulders. After that I lived with another dread, that one of them might select me for his pleasure.

  It was a good thing, too, that there was no visual check installed in the cottage or I should have been apprehended the very next morning of my rationality as I stood in front of the window and made my most amazing discovery.

  For the body I inhabited bore few resemblances to the one I distinctly remembered possessing. It was the same height, same chestnut hair, but it was a slim, graceful figure I saw, not my former awkward self. And my skin was a warm golden color. All over. In contour my face was similar, but now my blue eyes stared at, to me, a totally transformed face. My incredulous fingers softly caressed the new, marvelously congruous nose. No longer was I crucified by that horrible hooked monstrosity bequeathed me with hereditary injustice from some New England zealot. This new nose, all golden, fine-grained skin, was straight, short and charming. I stroked it, reveling in the tactile sensation that proved it was really part of me and there was no more of it than I could see in the window reflection. How many, many agonies that horrid nose had given me. How often I had railed at the injustice of parents who produced child after indiscriminate child and had no money to provide more than the basic needs and none to remedy cruel genetic jokes.

  Had they been at least sympathetic, I would not have left home. But they couldn’t even understand why I wanted to save money for plastic surgery. Only Jewish girls felt it necessary to have nose bobs. The fact that I looked Semitic with such a nose didn’t bear on that problem.

  “You are as God made you, Sara, and you’ve much to commend you to any decent self-respecting man.”

  “But nothing to commend myself to me,” I remembered saying, “and I don’t see any decent self-respecting men pounding a path to my door.”

  They couldn’t argue that, certainly, for not even my brothers could be blackmailed or pressured into getting me dates. But they could and did argue against my going to New York although I had a written job offer, a good one with an advertising firm, confirmed and secured.