Restoree Read online

  “Why the library right here in Seaford has offered you a very nice position,” my father had argued.

  “Seaford? I might as well rot in the end of the world,” I had cried. “I’m twenty-one and I’m leaving home. If I cook another meal for anyone, it’ll be for myself and not for six field-hand appetites that don’t know decent food from pigs’ swill.” I had glared at my brothers, busy shoveling food into their mouths. “If I iron anything, it’ll be my own clothing, not shirts and shirts and shirts.”

  “The girl’s ill,” my mother had declared as if this explained my unexpected outburst.

  “All that education,” my father had retorted sourly. He had resented my insistence on college, to the point where I had had to work constantly to support myself: making ends meet only because library majors got state support.

  “I’m not ill. I’m sick, but not of education. I’m sick of Seaford and everyone in it.”

  “But everyone knows you here, hon,” Seth, the brother next oldest to me, said soothingly. He alone came nearest to appreciating my despair. He had needed glasses desperately as a young boy and his now permanently damaged eyes were weak, watering and subject to continual inflammations.

  “And no one wants me,” I had cried from the bitterness of my soul. “At twenty-one, I have never even had a date.”

  “I’m leaving, Mother,” I had repeated quietly and to end conversation had started to clear the table. And I did leave, taking my suitcase from the back porch on my way out the kitchen door to catch the night bus to Wilmington and the train to New York City.

  But now, here on some strange planet, God only knows how many light-years from Seaford, Delaware, I had my new nose. I giggled. If I ever got back home, I could use my savings for a trip to Europe. Only I was abroad already.

  I stroked my nose again and then the smooth, golden-skinned arms where a dark hairy growth had once added to the list of my physical embarrassments.

  Further examination proved that three prominent scars, the rewards of trying to play tomboy to my older brothers, were gone from my body. Of my disfiguring marks, only the double gash on my right instep where I had stepped on a bottle wading remained. But the corns on my toes from shoes too short for growing feet were gone.

  I was utterly delighted, mystified and grateful to, if appalled by, the strange agency that had caused this transformation. I was all my most glowing dreams had once evoked. Not beautiful but pretty, healthy looking with my golden tan (only it wasn’t a tan, I discovered), properly curved—and precious little advantage could I see of it, locked in one room with a mindless idiot.

  The air of danger and despair that hung over the pleasant gardens and bare cottages could not be mistaken. When outsiders walked among us, the guards were tensely alert. The lack of treatments of any kind, the tenor of the conversations I overheard on the loudspeakers, contrasted strangely with the luxurious surroundings and the physical appearance girls and patients were made to maintain. The other women who paraded with their charges were pretty, perfect in their prettiness with almost frightening similarity. Their expressions were only slightly more intelligent than those of their patients. A case of the dolt caring for the idiotic in a moronic paradise.

  I learned the reason for the simple harness that had to be strapped on my man before each promenade in the garden. A small, needled vial containing a tan, viscous fluid was aimed at the right arm through the padding that kept both arms bound to the sides. A jerk on the reins exerted a pressure that drove the needle into the arm.

  I saw one man run berserk, yelling, dragging the girl who, in her stupidity, still clutched the reins. He halted abruptly, screaming in agony, and dropped rigid to the ground. The performance thoroughly frightened me and I regarded the big man I cared for with alarm. I knew of no such precautions should a seizure overtake a patient in the cottage. One night, though, I did hear the sudden crescendo of hysterical laughter, shrieks and a final shrill cry from a neighboring cottage. I did see the limp, bloody figure of a girl carried out. Another pretty, blue-robed woman took her place by the next exercise hour, vacantly parading her glassy-eyed charge. I took to staring at my ugly man at all times, hoping to forestall such an occurrence in my cottage. I knew every line on his face, every pitted scar, every twitch of his muscles. At one point, I started with every deep breath he took.

  My patient received his first professional visit eight days after my recovery. Three men came in; a white-coated technician pushed in a small treatment cart and immediately left; the fat-faced man called Gleto came in and a man whose appearance was an odd contrast to Gleto’s.

  Gleto ordered me to stand in one corner and vacantly I moved after what I considered an appropriate time for moronic comprehension. I stood, however, so that I could see everything that went on and the third man held my attention most.

  He was not tall, just my height, and carried himself stiffly erect. His movements were all as precise as a Scots guardsman, no motion was wasted. His skin seemed to be drawn tightly across his skull and each straight black hair on his head was precisely combed into place. His nose was high-bridged and thin; his lips were thin, his eyes of a nondescript shade were penetrating and intense, set deeply into his skull. There was no expression on his face nor were there any lines that indicated he had ever had any expression. A colder personality I never met nor a more impressive one. In dress, manner, color, motion, speech, he was a machine of efficiency, not a human being.

  He made a rapid and thorough examination of the patient, skimming the first page of the stiff chart on the treatment wagon without missing a word. Looking up, he said:

  “I see no need whatever of increasing the dosage now. The injection every two weeks plus the oral amounts in his food are ample to subdue his personality,” and he implied that his valuable time had been wasted.

  “I’m taking no chances,” Gleto replied accusingly, “and you haven’t been here in two months. You know how powerful Harlan is physically,” and the heavy, fat eyelids flickered with unctuous insolence, “since it took three injections to hold him under the first week.”

  The cold man looked at Gleto. “And you will no doubt recall from whose laboratories cerol originated and who is most familiar with its properties. I am no more eager for his recovery than you. It would interrupt my research at a time when success is a matter of weeks away.” The thin, precise eyebrows raised imperceptibly and the cold man reached for the chart again, flipping over a few rigid sheets before his thin finger jabbed at a notation.

  With no expression he now indicated displeasure.

  “Where is the weekly absorption count? If you are stupid enough to ignore the simple precaution of an absorption count, naturally you are stupid enough to sit quivering with fright that Harlan might recover. I thought I had made the necessity of those checks adequately clear to your technicians.”

  Gleto attempted to pass this off.

  “Do not evade the issue, Gleto,” came the implacable voice. “The absorption count has not been taken for four weeks. One is to be taken immediately and retaken every other week. When I have perfected a simple check, I do not intend to waste time coming here just to remind you to use it.”

  “I don’t have the technicians to . . .”

  “What about that . . . fellow outside?”

  Gleto snorted at the suggestion.

  “I thought so. You’ve spent only enough of your wealth to maintain an outward appearance of efficiency and shiver in your bed at night because your avarice prevents you from hiring sufficient personnel to run this place properly.”

  Gleto looked at him suspiciously and then twisted his lip into a sneer.

  “You don’t fool me, Monsorlit; absorption rates, ha! That’s just an excuse to get more of your dummies off your hands.”

  Monsorlit turned his eyes from the chart he had started to reread to gaze at the fat man. The room became still, broken only by the breathing of the patient, until the sneer left Gleto’s face and he began to shift his bulk r
estlessly.

  “Your assessment of the situation is erroneous and I mistakenly credited you with more medical acumen than you possess. And I correct your term ‘dummy’ to ‘mental defective.’ ” Monsorlit’s voice without changing pitch gave the effect of a shouted disgust for Gleto. “Since your perception is limited by its effect on your cash pouch, I will send, with my compliments, a repossessed technician who can perform this simple but necessary test. He will come each fifth day. I will have one ready for such tasks in four weeks. In the meantime,” Monsorlit took a lancet and ampul and deftly took a blood sample from the ugly man.

  Gleto recovered his poise and affected a knowing smile.

  “Your generosity, indeed,” he scoffed.

  “The technician’s instructions will be limited to Harlan, as he is the only one with whom I am concerned,” Monsorlit continued, taking up a filled syringe, testing it and then plunging it into the patient’s vein. The man’s body became rigid with muscular tension, quivered as if trying to release itself from the grip of the drug and finally relaxed. Sweat beaded his brow and rolled unheeded to the pillow.

  “If he’s here, why can’t he do Trenor’s nine as well,” Gleto insisted angrily.

  Monsorlit stood up, wiped his hands precisely with an antiseptic solution.

  “As I said, my only concern is Harlan. If you wish to hire the services of the technician for the others, you may check with the business director for the rates.”

  Gleto’s face turned an apoplectic purple and he controlled himself with effort.

  “That’s how you market your dummies. Oh, you’re clever, Monsorlit, but one day . . .”

  Monsorlit eyed him dispassionately.

  “One day my techniques will replace this . . . this,” his gesture indicated the gardens and cottages, “unprofessional arrangement. There will be no need for it. Men may come to my hospital, broken in body or mind, and leave whole and sane.”

  Gleto’s little eyes widened with a touch of horror.

  “They aren’t dummies then; you’ve been restoring again. That’s your deal with Gorlot. I thought your safe-from-Milness had taken a tumble.” Gleto laughed derisively now. “How long do you think it’ll be before Council finds out! And gasses you and your vegetables!” Gleto stopped with a sudden thought and gasped, looking at me in terror. “Is this one a restoree? Are all these dummies restorees? Are you unloading the dead-alive on me?” he screeched, advancing on Monsorlit.

  “Does she act like a restoree?” the physician asked calmly. “No, she acts exactly as she is, a moron from my Mental Defectives Clinic, repossessed through shock techniques of enough intelligence to perform the monotonous and routine duties of your establishment just as others from my Clinic pick fruits and vegetables in the farmlands of Motlina and South Cant. Don’t think you’re the only miser to take advantage of this type of limited perception personnel in these times of worker rebellions and rising prices. And don’t think you do me a favor when you use them. The only favor is to your fat self and your fattening purse.” Monsorlit accurately judged the fat man’s capacity for insult and took up another subject.

  “The technician will be sent here for Harlan’s absorption rates and, because of his limited intelligence, will be unable to grasp the necessity for performing any other tests. Trenor will, for all his imperfections, take a jaundiced view toward your neglect of his nine reluctant patients. The decision is up to you and I believe your loss would be the greatest.”

  Monsorlit left the room, motioning to the technician to collect the cart.

  Gleto stared after the precise figure, pouting angrily, and when the technician nervously tipped over several bottles on the table, his fat fist clubbed the man viciously. Satisfied, he hitched his tunic into a more comfortable crease over his shoulders and stalked out. I stood staring in front of me while the cart was wheeled out and for some minutes after the lock snapped into place. The tension of the scene between Gleto and Monsorlit was cold and heavy in the room and I was cold and scared.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE UGLY MAN WHOM THEY called Harlan lay twitching occasionally. I had considered it misfortune enough that he should have fallen over the edge of sanity in the prime of life. Now I knew him to be an unwilling drugged victim of some scheme, my pity was tinged with outraged righteousness. I looked more closely at the face, hoping to find in it some vestige of intelligence I had missed, some reassurance of personality to fit in with the entirely different role in which he was cast.

  His gray eyes, their pupils dilated to the edge of the iris, stared with their customary vacuity at the ceiling. I saw now that the ugly face did have an innate strength and that immobility did not rob his long, heavily boned frame of its look of power. I wondered if a vibrant personality overcame the basic ugliness of features. Perhaps a smile. I fashioned one on the lax lips, but it was too much a mockery for me to judge the spontaneous effect.

  I had noticed during my care of him the scars on his person: the new tissues were smooth, no gaping pulls to indicate stitches, not even on the raggedy gash across one cheek. The tip of one index finger was missing. He was a battered and bedamned fellow.

  As I pitied him, I pitied myself, for my sympathy now tied me to him more effectively than any possible dedication to a mental cripple. I was stung with an impulse to batter down the door and run, run, run away from the fear, the implications of evil, the vulgarity of the guards and the massive frustrating boredom. I wanted to leave all this unfamiliarity, and somehow, although logic indicated I was nowhere near my own world, find my way home.

  After I had settled him for the night, it occurred to me that if he were sane, he could help. And perhaps, he could be made sane. Monsorlit had spoken of doses in his food. If I could withhold his food long enough, he might partially recover, at least enough to help me.

  There was one drawback. If I didn’t feed him, his hunger would betray me. And I would go hungry if I fed him all my food. I decided, in the final analysis, that I had no choice but to try this idea. I certainly didn’t know the planet and he did.

  The next morning I fed him most of my food, and just a little of his own, eating the remainder of mine and some of his to sustain me. I felt strangely disoriented all day and had difficulty in forcing myself to move. The next day this feeling had increased so noticeably that I ate none of his food and gave him none. I got very hungry.

  By the fifth day, I was ravenous and he was so restless during the night I had to block the speaker grill with a pillow. He was hungry, too, and bit savagely at the spoon, so that I gave him even the little I had reserved for myself, eating only enough of the blue food to stop the roaring within me.

  That night, he spoke in his sleep and I lay rigid with terror that the pillow had not sufficiently muffled the sound. Every moment I expected the guard to come striding in.

  During breakfast on the sixth day, his eyes blinked and he tried desperately to focus them. He was struggling so hard, mouthing sounds in an effort to speak, that I was torn between the desire to hear and the necessity of keeping him quiet.

  Such hope as swelled in my heart for his return to sanity was rudely disappointed during our morning walk. He did not seem to grasp my furtive, whispered explanations. His eyes still blinking furiously to focus were as vacuous as ever. At dinner, he ate more normally, chewing with intense concentration. The night was a continual struggle for me, against the sleep I desperately craved, against his moaning which I had to muffle against my shoulder. The next morning, he actually seemed to see me and I smiled encouragingly, hopefully, patting his hand reassuringly. The witlessness had left his expression and he looked at me, deeply puzzled, struggling to form a question when the guard walked in on one of his sporadic visits. Rigid with horror, I stared at the man I had almost rescued, my one chance to leave this horrible place suddenly torn from me as success was so near.

  The guard barely glanced at me. Furiously he jerked his finger at the red bowls and then, shouting a litany of “Blue bowl for the p
atient. Blue bowl for the patient,” he struck me again and again with his whip. I shrieked in pain and fear and cringed back from the flailing whip, trying to climb under the bed, away from the searing lash.

  “This imbecile piece of idiocy is color-blind all of a sudden,” he yelled at the loudspeaker. “Blue bowl for the patient. Blue bowl for the patient,” he shouted, emphasizing his phrases with lashes for me until his rage was spent and I lay weeping, sore and bleeding, half under the bed.

  Gleto arrived in minutes and examined the patient, giving him an injection and watching as I was made to feed Harlan from the blue bowls. Gleto added his blows to my painful back, grinning sadistically at my yelps. I cowered back against the wall as far from him as I could get.

  “What bowl do you feed the patient from?” he demanded, advancing on me. “Red bowl?”

  I shook my head violently.

  “Blue bowl?”

  I nodded violently.

  “Blue bowl, blue bowl, blue, blue, blue,” he roared, punctuating each word with an open-handed slap on whatever part of my twisting body it met.

  “Blue, blue, blue,” I shrieked back, covering my face with my arms and keeping my back to the wall.

  “That’ll take care of her,” Gleto grunted with satisfaction and, to my weeping relief, he and the guard left.

  Although some of the weals on my back and legs were bleeding, a warm soaking in the shower was all the treatment I had. That night, uncomfortable to the point where no position gave me relief or the solace of sleep, I lay awake. Several times, Harlan’s heavy limbs overlapped me and made me cry out involuntarily. The speaker chortled back with delight at my discomfort. I resolved not to give them additional satisfaction and stifled my moans.

  Mulling over my “bravery,” I realized that I had actually escaped very lightly. The guards and Gleto were so secure in their assumption of my idiocy, they never once had questioned a deliberate attempt on my part to feed the prisoner the wrong food. They also assumed that I had made the mistake only once. They had not examined Harlan closely, but the administration of the drug had drawn him back into his witlessness. No technician, though, had come to take an absorption count. I had not yet lost my chance to escape nor to free Harlan from his stupor.