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  I was not lucky enough to continue my experiment with Harlan as immediately as I had resolved. A guard was present at every feeding for the next four days. Four longer days I never endured, filled with constant cuffs that added new bruises to barely healed ones and new obscenities to a list my limited experience had never wildly imagined.

  As soon as I was sure they had decided I had learned my lesson, I started again. Nothing could have induced me to acquiesce now. That brief, if interrupted, respite from the drugged food contributed to Harlan’s quicker recovery. By the fourth day, he responded to my insistent urgings for silence. On the fifth day, he spoke for the first time on the morning walk. I saw the deliberate effort he made to keep his voice low. It was difficult for him to enunciate. He had to repeat the simplest phrase with frustrating ineptness.

  “They beat you,” he managed to say finally, his eyes focusing on the bruises on my face and arms. I clutched at him and nearly wept for the unexpected comfort of his first rational words. A deep feeling of gratitude, joy, respect and love flooded me. I had been too long denied a normal society. The bruises abruptly lost their aches and I straightened shoulders I had curved against the tenderness of my back.

  “How long?” he struggled to say, “am I here?”

  “I don’t know. I have no way of telling.”

  The approach of the guard curtailed conversation for a while.

  “Way escape?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You must,” he insisted.

  I steered him toward the menacing opacity of the force screen fence and he nodded imperceptibly in understanding.

  “There has to be a way,” he asserted. “The date?” and I could only shake my head as his look reproached me for my ignorance. He couldn’t know I had never been taught to tell the time of his world nor understand the names of days and months.

  We were herded back to the cottage and the guard, while I shuddered apprehensively, kicked Harlan into the room as he always did. I ducked by as quickly as I could as much to escape the lascivious touch of the guard as to caution Harlan against violence and warn him about the ceiling speaker. He was staring at it as I hurried to him, his lips moving, his eyes snapping as the therapy of anger cleared his mind of the last hold of the drug.

  He examined his jacket with care and discovered the needle and its paralytic fluid. With bare nails we managed to pry it out of the stiff fabric. He held it in his hand thoughtfully for the prize it was, looking speculatively at the door. He grinned suddenly, not at all nicely, and secreted the vial in the belt of his loose tunic.

  I indicated that we would have to sit down, would have to follow the orders of the speaker assiduously, pantomined the pillow over the grillwork and nighttime. He nodded comprehension, sighing with impatience.

  So we sat, facing each other. He looked above my head, deep in thought, his big hands flexing and stroking the arm of the chair as we waited.

  Now his face was alive with the spirit of him, he was no longer an ugly person. His deep-set eyes sparkled and his mobile face showed some of the changes within him his thoughts provoked. Occasionally he would glance at me, curiously, smiling to reassure me. Once or twice, after some thought struck him, he inhaled as if to speak, caught himself and compressed his lips impatiently.

  The arrival of dinner was a very welcome diversion. He reached for the blue bowl and I all but snatched it out of his hands. I hurriedly dumped it in the commode and showed him that it could not be eaten.

  With a quizzical expression he regarded the one small portion of dinner that remained, shrugged his shoulders and divided it in two. Bowing with mock ceremony, he handed me my spoon with a flourish that made me want to laugh. We ate slowly to make our stomachs think they were being fed. I have since looked back on that bizarre first meal with Harlan as one of the happiest moments of my life.

  To have found a friend, again, to be companionable with another human!

  The next day, at lunchtime, we had an awful moment. As Harlan was about to dump the blue bowl with obvious relish, I heard the lock turn. Harlan needed no prompting to assume a stupid expression. I began, slowly, to feed him from the blue bowl. The guard watched this performance, fingering his whip. I trusted he interpreted my trembling as fear of a beating rather than terror at discovery. He left and the lock clicked us into privacy.

  Harlan rose swiftly and, by the simple expedient of thrusting a finger down his throat, expelled the drugged food.

  That first night, lying beside him on our mutual bed after the muffling pillow had been crammed against the grillwork was another of my special memories. I was keenly aware of his warm strength beside me. Before I had had no thoughts at all about the propriety of sleeping next to an inert moron, but a vibrant personality rested beside me now and I was acutely conscious of myself and him.

  Harlan recovered control of his tongue, but he was puzzled at my own still-halting speech and my inability to understand parts of his questions.

  His perplexity made me nervous in a half-fearful way as if by the mere accident of not speaking clearly, I had committed some wrong. Defensively and with some involved explanations of my presence, I managed to make it clear that I knew I came from another solar system. His doubt was so apparent that I sketched the Sun and its planets by fingernail into the bedsheet. It held the impression long enough for him to grasp my meaning.

  Immediately his expression became wary and veiled. He strained to see me clearly in the moonlight and shook his head impatiently at the limitations of that glow. We were lying side by side when he suddenly leaned away from his close inspection. He took my hands in his, stroking my wrists with hard thumbs. He sat up and did the same thing to my ankles, then my hairline. His confusion persisted and, against my soundless protest, he turned back my dress to run light, impersonal fingers over the rest of my body as though I had been someone dead. This reassured whatever worried him. But his body remained tense and his expression was no longer as open and friendly as before.

  He asked me almost too casually how I got here.

  “I don’t know. But you do believe me . . . that I’m not from this world?”

  He shrugged.

  “My sun has nine planets, my world only one moon; my sun is golden, not green,” I persisted urgently. “And the reason I have trouble understanding you is that you speak so fast and use words I don’t know. It isn’t because I’m stupid . . . or insane.”

  His withdrawal made me frantic that I might lose the precious companionship I had so recently won. He must understand me so he would take me with him. I could see he had every intention of escaping as soon as he could. I had no doubts he would succeed or die in the attempt. Death to me was preferable to the alternative of remaining in this ghastly place.

  “I can’t remember how I got here,” I wailed softly. “I just don’t know. I was walking in a park at night on my own planet and something big and black hovered over me. The rest is all mixed up in the most horrible, horrible nightmares.”

  “Describe them,” he demanded in a cold, tight voice that scared me.

  The words rolled out. The weight of the grotesque scenes and experiences, walled up in my subconscious, poured out, as if voicing them would erase the remembered horror and terror. I don’t recall what I did say and what I couldn’t bring myself to say until I realized that I was trembling violently and he was holding me close against him. At first, I thought he was trying to muffle my voice, but then I heard his voice soft with low reassurances and his hands were very gentle.

  “Be quiet now. I do believe you. I do. There’s only one way you could have got here. No, no. I don’t doubt now a thing you’ve said. But that you are sane and . . . well, it’s a miracle.”

  There was incredulous wonder in his tone. He looked at me again, excitedly. The only thing I cared about was that he was no longer withdrawn and cold, and that he did believe me.

  “You know how I got here?”

  “Let’s say,” he demurred candidly, “I know
how you must have got to this solar system. But how you reached Lothar and this place, I can’t even hazard a guess. The only possible explanation . . .”

  “You mean your people have interstellar travel and brought me here as a slave,” I interrupted, thinking with a sudden rush of hope that I would be able to get back to Earth. Though what Earth held for me was too mundane after this experience.

  He hesitated, considering his next words. Then, settling me into a comfortable position against his shoulder, his lips above my ear, he explained.

  “My people didn’t bring you here. I’m reasonably sure of that. We do have interstellar travel, but I cannot believe my race has penetrated to your section of space. Before I took so conveniently ill,” and his voice was sardonic, “no new exploration was contemplated.” He snorted with remembered exasperation. “I am reasonably sure, however, that your planet has been invaded by the curse, and paradoxically, the salvation of our Lothar. We call them the Mil. They’re a race of cellular giants which have had interstellar flight since the beginning of our recorded history, some two thousand years ago. To be precise, they are the beginning of our recorded history. We are, bluntly, their cattle, their fodder. That’s all right, take it easy,” he said reassuringly.

  His similes forced me to admit to myself what I had desperately tried to hide; that the disassembled pieces of anatomy that twisted and turned through my nightmares were horrifyingly like the joints on hooks in a meat market.

  “They have periodically raided this system for centuries. When we finally penetrated one of their depots here on Lothar, [I realized he was using the historic ‘we’] we began the long struggle to free ourselves and our planet of this terrible scourge. We turned their own weapons on them and then had to learn how to use them properly and repair them. Kind of progress in reverse. Now, we have not only been able to keep them off Lothar, but also out of this immediate sector of space. Our losses are still heavy in every encounter, as it is difficult to best an enemy with armaments similar to your own. Our big advantage is our own physical structure. However, rarely do any of our ships and patrolmen fall victims of the Mil.

  “I don’t know how far they range, but I suppose we have forced them to find new sources of supply. Your planet, for one. Easy now. I forget it’s difficult for you to accept such a terrible fate for your people. We’ve lived with it all our lives.”

  “But, if these . . .”

  “Mil, although at one time we called them ‘God,’ ” Harlan remarked, grimly humorous.

  “ . . . these Mil captured me on a raid on Earth, how did I get here? On your planet?”

  Harlan frowned. “I would like to believe that our Patrol intercepted the ship you were on and captured it. But . . .” and he stopped as if he could see the fallacies in the theory and they disturbed him. “It must be way past Eclipse; or is it? If it is, I’ve been here a long time. Haven’t you got any idea of how long you’ve been here?”

  “I can only recall the last few weeks clearly. Yet it seems as if I’ve been here forever. I guess I was in shock or something,” I ended lamely. “I certainly was surprised to find I was a nurse for someone else.”

  “All the more reason to get out of here as soon as possible. My head is clear now and my reflexes feel normal. It’s been like swimming through sand. Still,” and he looked at me speculatively again, shaking his head, “I don’t understand how you managed to remain . . .” he hesitated and supplied another word, “ . . . untouched.”

  “Untouched? Oh, but I don’t look the way I used to,” I assured him, my hand rubbing my nose.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You obviously aren’t a restoree,” he said sharply. I felt tension return to his body and coldness to his voice. “There isn’t a mark on you.”

  “No, that’s just it. There isn’t,” I replied. “I’ve lost three scars,” and I pointed to the areas involved, “and someone took pity on my . . .” my hand touching my nose.

  “Scars? Missing?” he interrupted in a hoarse whisper.

  “Yes,” I prattled on. “I had a long gash on my arm where I got caught on a picket fence . . .” and my voice trailed off as I saw his face. The mixture of horror, distaste, disbelief, anger and, strangely, hatred, stunned me.

  He grabbed my wrists in an angry grip and rubbed them, tracing the junction of hand and arm with fingers that hurt with their prodding. He felt around my ears, pulling my hair back roughly.

  “What’s the matter?” I pleaded, my delight congealing.

  He shook his head, hard, as someone whose neck muscles have contracted spasmodically.

  “I don’t know, Sara. It’s just hard to believe,” he replied enigmatically. “Yet you would not have been able to think things through the way you have if . . . We’ve got to get out of here. We have got to get out!” he said passionately.

  With a fluid stride, he crossed the room and yanked the pillow from the grill. He settled back in the bed, patting my arm reassuringly, as if he realized how worried I was by his reactions.

  It was a long time before sleep came to either of us. I remember feeling his fingers on my wrist again just as I drifted into unconsciousness.

  CHAPTER THREE

  DURING HIS SLEEPLESSNESS, HARLAN HAD made the only plan of escape our mutual limited knowledge of the asylum afforded. To pass the force screen, we must overpower the guard in the cottage by means of the drug vial we had pried from the straitjacket. Harlan would wear the uniform, I would daub myself with blood, Harlan having assured me that the blood would be donated by the guard. We would try to pass out the gate of this section of the asylum as if I had been attacked by my patient. From there on, we must improvise. If it came to sheer strength, the powerfully built Harlan would prevail. However, neither of us could foresee what preparation might have been made for escapes.

  We also had no choice. Each day might bring the arrival of the technician to take Harlan’s absorption rate and we were too sure of the results of that test. I also couldn’t tell when the next intravenous injection would be administered. With it, I would have to start all over again, denying Harlan the drugged food, waiting for his return to sanity.

  Whatever qualms or fears I might have normally entertained were overruled. Harlan’s anxiety and frustration intensified my own desire to be out of this mad place. And, too, not once did Harlan intimate he felt he had a better chance of escaping by himself although I was sure he did. He had included my release in his calculations and brushed aside my one half-hearted attempt at sacrifice.

  Every day Harlan’s recovery had been jeopardized by the random appearances of the guard. This one day, when we were nervously primed for our escape, he was conspicuous by his absence. Harlan had to exert a tremendous control over his impatience and I was constantly forced to remind him during the exercise period to stop charging up the paths, to school his expression into the proper witlessness. He endured these corrections far better than I should have. All in all, by evening both our tempers were frayed by the unrewarded waiting.

  As soon as the lights were out, Harlan, releasing some of his frustration in the action, rammed the pillow against the speaker and began to pace around the room in a frenzied way.

  His pacing grew as unendurable to me as a fingernail scraped across slate.

  “Last night,” I began hesitantly, not knowing what I wanted to say but knowing that any conversation was better than this taut silence, “last night, I told you who I was and how I got here. Who are you besides Harlan and how did you get in here? Who drugged you? Why?”

  He paused in mid-stride, frowning as my questions brought him out of his thoughts. He gave a sort of snort, smiled and, after another moment’s silence, began to talk. He had a pleasant voice when he kept it low, but it had the burr of the military bark and a metallic quality. Gradually, as he talked, he stopped pacing and then sat down, watching me as he spoke with a disconcerting attention.

  “You certainly do deserve some explanations, if only for all the meals you gave up,” he said, gri
pping my shoulder as a gesture of his continued gratitude.

  “Before I came here, I was Regent of this planet for my eldest brother’s son, Ferrill.”

  “I thought the guard had called you Regent, but it didn’t make any sense then.”

  Harlan grimaced. “That guard . . . It’s the custom here on Lothar for the Commander of the Perimeter Patrol to assume the duties of Regent if the heir to the Warlordship is underage when he becomes a candidate.”

  “Why couldn’t you be Warlord if you were brother to the . . .”

  “No, that doesn’t follow,” Harlan replied blandly. “I should say, Fathor was my half-brother. We had the same father, but Fathor’s mother was the first wife and his progeny inherit. Besides, I’ve other plans for my time once Ferrill is of age. Like finding your planet. I like finding new planets. I like exploring.” A boyish grin lit his features. “I’ve had luck in that direction already. Found two new ones, fraternal planets around the star we call Tane, my fourth year on Patrol.”

  I gathered this involved more than just searching a section of space until you found stars with satellites. I murmured proper things, only he frowned.

  “They’ve been more trouble than they’re worth . . . almost,” he continued. “The inhabitants are humanoid, but the gentlest, dumbest people imaginable. They make some of our associates here look like Council members. They’ve got two of the most beautiful planets, crawling with game animals; Lothar doesn’t have too many anymore. Their oceans are full of edible fish; their lands, which the Tanes don’t even bother to cultivate, would support millions of us. They’ve got mineral resources that make the mind swim when you think how many ships, instruments and fuel it means in terms of our fight against the Mil. And those innocent creatures roam from one place to another like pleasant dreamers.”