Arcadian's Asylum (14 page)

“Oh, indeed,” Andower said, starting to slow down.
He also became a little distracted, looking up and down the corridor in which they now stood, as though trying to make a decision. One that, on the face of it, was baffling to Doc as this corridor looked exactly as all the others they had walked through, albeit with doors on both sides, as opposed to windows. They were now well within the interior of one of the buildings. Otherwise, it was anonymous. There were no signs or numbers on the doors to differentiate them. Doc could only assume that Andower was so familiar with this complex—as was his staff—as to need no signposts, which also suggested they had few visitors. Little interference, and no one without an escort.

“And would I be right in assuming—from your attire—that your task in this sector concerns itself with matters biological?” Doc asked, taking advantage of the pause.

“Hmm? Yes, yes, of course,” Andower answered, still a little distracted. It gave him the air of a whitecoat about to conduct a particularly unpleasant experiment. Doc had endured many of those, and seen many such expressions. It took an awful lot of self-control to hold himself back.

“So would I be correct in a further assumption that you conduct experiments in the control of breeding? I have noticed, on our travels, that there is a severe problem with in-breeding and the subsequent diminution of the gene pool. And perhaps dealing with mutation—that, too, is a dreadful legacy of the nukecaust,” he continued, words running faster. He was beginning to babble, and he wanted to keep control. He bit off the end of the sentence, surreptitiously running an eye over
the two sec men to see if they had noticed. They remained impassive.

Andower, for his part, had certainly not taken heed. He had his own concerns. He looked at Doc for a moment blankly, as though lost in thought. Then he smiled beatifically.

“Dr. Tanner, that is only the smallest part of what we do here. I was wondering where I should begin, but I think to truly grasp the extent of our work, there is only one point at which to start. Come with me,” he added, beckoning with a crooked finger.

Doc had the most sickening turn of the stomach at what he felt he was about to see, but was powerless to do anything except follow.

“GUESS WE SHOULD MEBBE get some more rest. There’s nothing we can do, and I figure that Doc should be pretty safe for the moment. Whatever the stupe old bastard has got himself into, there’s little chance Arcadian is going to let him come to any harm yet.”

“Yeah, it’s the ‘yet’ that worries me, Ryan,” Mildred countered.

Ryan grinned. It was a fair point, but right now they could only sit tight. Arcadian’s men were scouring the building, and if they found the old man, there was a next to zero chance they would do anything except handle him with care. Ryan Cawdor had learned to read men pretty well, and he would have bet jack on the baron wanting to keep them sweet for now. When he felt he could put into place whatever plans he might have for them, it would be different. But not yet.

They were gathered in the room that had previously
been occupied by the Doc and Jak. It was too close to sunup to consider going back to their own allotted rooms. Ryan knew that sleep would be an impossibility. But he was keen to keep his people frosty, so that if trouble came they would be up to the task.

“Should stopped him,” Jak said grimly. “Stupe fuck it up for all.”

“Mebbe not,” J.B. mused. “If you had to send someone off to recce, you’d send Doc in this situation.”

“How so?” Jak queried, his brow furrowing. J.B. shrugged. “Everyone can see he’s crazy. If he wanders off and we claim it’s got nothing to do with us, you’d believe that a whole lot more than if it was me, you, Mildred, Ryan or Krysty. Doc could do anything, face it.”

“True enough,” Mildred agreed. “Anyone around him for more than ten minutes can see the old buzzard’s missing something up here.” She tapped her temple. “But they wouldn’t figure he could take in as much as we know he can. Who knows, the old bastard might come back with something useful.”

Ryan nodded. “That’s why I figure he’ll come out of this okay. Still wish he hadn’t done it yet, though.”

Krysty had been listening to them while she stood at the barred and secured window, watching the first rays of the sun pierce the gloom.

“How much trouble can he get himself into?” she asked.

Chapter Ten

Doc felt as though he would vomit.

The room was brilliant white. The walls were freshly painted, as was the ceiling and floor. There was a bed and a chair, both also painted white. The bed had a thin mattress covered in white cloth. On one of the white walls was a screen, also painted white—so much so that, at first, he didn’t notice that it was slightly detached from the area behind. The manner in which the two seemed to sway in and out of focus, running together then apart as his eyes tried to adjust, did little except add to his nausea.

But this wasn’t the major cause of the sickness that welled up in him. On the chair, sitting upright and staring straight ahead of him, was a man. It was hard to determine his age, as his sallow skin hung in folds from his face, and his emaciated arms and legs poked out of the voluminous white gown he wore, making his body shape and condition hard to determine. He was facing the screen, sideways on to the door where Andower and Doc now stood. He didn’t seem to notice their entrance.

Andower ushered Doc into the room, gesturing to the sec men that they remain outside. This would be Doc’s chance to snap the neck of the man who repulsed him
so much, yet where would that get him? Still, the urge was strong as he stared at the seated man, who had still to notice them. Doc could see, now, that his lips were moving rapidly in some wordless litany. His eyes were wide and staring. At first Doc thought that the lids may be restrained in some way, but when the man blinked he realized that it was nothing less than the adrenaline of fear that kept them so wide.

Andower leaned in to Doc, and spoke in a low whisper.

“Some of our work here concerns the behavior of men and women. Children don’t present so much of a problem. They are easily diverted from any erroneous path and put back to the right. But when men and women are older, and have long established patterns of behavior, then—”

“What have you done to him?” Doc asked in a hoarse whisper, trying to keep his voice neutral.

“The procedure, you mean?” Andower asked, oblivious. “Ah, now that’s a most interesting thing. You’ll notice the completely blank canvas upon which the man is laid? Something that is intended to disorient him. This way, he has no idea of time and space, and so becomes more and more isolated and drawn in upon himself. When there is no stimuli to speak of, then the slightest change becomes effective. However, that would be a very long, drawn-out process. Part of our research is to cut down the time involved, and to make the transition from savage to civilized that much quicker.”

“And how, exactly, do you do this?” Doc’s voice trembled slightly, despite himself.

Andower smiled. It was bland, yet Doc felt it like a physical blow.

“Like this, Dr. Tanner. Come…”

He took Doc’s arm and gently guided him toward the wall at the rear of the seated man. Secreted in the white wall was a small panel, about the size of a man’s head. It was so carefully fitted that the line of the panel was only visible as it started to open. Andower displaced it, and then reached in. Over his shoulder, Doc could see that there was a small projector.

“The wiring is in the wall itself,” Andower whispered. “See the cones?” With his free hand he pointed to the far corners of the room. Discreet, white-painted cones melded with the white walls, invisible unless indicated.

Doc opened his mouth to speak, but was cut short by the noise that emanated from the speakers as Andower depressed a switch.

Doc immediately felt his bowels turn to water, and it was all he could do to keep control of himself as the low frequencies hit him like punch. He gasped, and then clapped his hands to his ears as the frequencies shifted up to a high, piercing wail that now assailed his eardrums like the buzzing of angry hornets; hornets with needle-sharp stings they were intent on ramming home. No sooner had he done this than the frequencies shifted again. He didn’t know which part of his body to protect, although he knew his hands were useless no matter which he chose. It was just an instinct.

Andower seemed to be unaffected, although from the fixed grin on his face as he stared at Doc, it was pretty obvious that he was used to the effect, and so braced for it. Doc wondered how long they could stay in the room.

The sound had changed again. Now it was a pulsing,
insistent throb that trawled the midranges of frequencies, hypnotic and swirling, like the images that were moving on the screen. Doc had to tear his eyes away from them, as he felt his will being sapped. They were strange, shifting kaleidoscopes of color—yet what were the colors? The way that they moved seemed to bleed them one into the other until they formed some strange kind of color never seen before.

As Doc tore his eyes away, he could see that Andower was purposely looking at the doorway, averting his gaze. Had he not warned Doc because he wanted him to be hypnotized? Or merely because he wished him to see the effect and trusted in his own sense to look away?

But Doc couldn’t look away completely. He kept glancing back at the man who was seated on the white chair. He was motionless, just as he had been since they had entered the room. Was he taking in anything that was happening to him? Certainly, the sonics had been affecting him. The stench from his vacated bowels, and the pool of urine that gathered at his feet bore testimony to that.

Did this treatment really change his personality? Or did it just wipe it out?

Andower reached into the cavity that housed the projector and flicked the switch. As suddenly as it had started, the noise and the images ceased.

In the sudden glare of the white room, and the almost deafening roar of the silence, where the sound of his own pounding blood filled his ears, Doc felt as though he had been thrown across the room at speed, and an unseen hand had stopped him by thrusting itself into his
solar plexus. The force made him fall to his knees, retching as his stomach sought to empty itself.

He felt Andower’s hand on his back.

“My apologies, Dr. Tanner. I should have warned you of the force of the treatment. Are you all right?”

Doc shrugged off Andower’s hand and pulled himself to his feet, hawking up the last of the bitter taste in his mouth.

“I, sir, will be fine,” Doc said shakily. He pointed at the seated man. “But what about him?”

Andower shrugged. “It’s too early to say, really. Treatment hasn’t been proceeding for long, and there are no conclusive results.”

Doc tottered forward on legs still trembling from the sonic assault and circled the…well, what could he be called? Patient? Victim?

However he should be designated, he was still staring ahead blankly, mouthing silently to himself.

“No conclusions?” Doc queried. “Are you sure?”

The irony was lost on Andower. “Until he chooses to speak to us, it’ll continue to be uncertain. Now, if you’ll follow me,” he continued, leading Doc to the door. And, when they were in the corridor, he murmured to one of the sec men, “Hygiene team for this room. Prompt.”

The sec man nodded and left them, hurrying down the corridor in the opposite direction to that in which Andower now guided Doc.

The time traveler was still unsteady on his feet, and despite his best intentions found himself leaning on Andower for assistance.

“I should have warned you, I know,” the whitecoat
said conversationally, “but I wanted you to experience the full force of our experiment. When it reaches its conclusion, then we’ll have a method through which anyone who is recidivist enough not to see the benefit of our systems will soon be able to see sense.”

Doc, frankly, felt that the poor man they had just left was nothing more than a vegetable. But he held his tongue.

“Now, Dr. Tanner, that has demonstrated to you the psychological side of our work in this sector. The next example you will see is a reasonable demonstration of how far we have come with the physical side of our work.”

Doc felt a wave of panic rise. What foul imagining was this insane man going to show him next? Doc had long since figured Arcadian for a maniac who hid his insanity behind a mask of pseudo-intellectual reasoning. But even he would surely quail at what was happening here?

“Do the other sectors you spoke of operate in such a manner?”

Andower frowned. “I’m not sure I follow you, Doctor.”

“This…” Doc waved his free hand, indicating the building around him. Words were hard as his body tried to recover swiftly from the buffeting it had taken in the previous room.

“You mean, our med facilities? No, none of them have anything like this. Only the required standard for any well-maintained ville. Or what we consider to be well maintained, at least. No, Doctor, we’re unique among the sectors in that we have little to do with them.
Because of the nature of our work, it is necessary that we maintain some isolation.”

“Then the others are not so…radical?”

Andower smiled. Given the nature of the work under discussion, there was something dark and unwholesome about his grin. “Radical…yes, I like that. I suppose we are. Certainly, of all the sectors, we’re the ones who I feel are the most forward thinking. Perhaps I should have explained a little better. Each sector is devoted to a particular set of social ideas, theories and experiments. Arcadian has collected these, and when his father was alive he could only discuss them with those of us who were of a like mind. But we all soon realized that discussion wasn’t enough. So when he became baron, he decided to divide the greater part of the ville into the eight sectors. The central section would continue as before. The other sectors would each be put under the command of a man best suited to the pursuance of the particular branch of social theory that we wished to explore. Thus, we have sectors that have vastly differing ways of exploring how people live together, and how civilization can be brought to them. We also look at selective breeding in different environments. As you suggested earlier yourself, the problem of small genetic pools and mutation are problems that will take some time and experiment to eradicate.”

“How do you keep the sectors apart? And how in the name of the Three Kennedys did he get the people to agree?”

Andower’s smile broadened. “Doctor, you should know yourself that people are easily bought if their comfort is assured. Food and shelter are more than
many have in these lands. And if there were dissenters, they were soon reeducated. As for the separation of the sectors, why, that’s the simple part. The only time they meet is when work details have to be made up of large numbers. Even then they are kept as apart as possible. Each sector is led to believe that theirs is the safest, and to mix would invite nothing but trouble.”

“Each sector except this. Here, your people don’t mix at all,” Doc said flatly.

“No. That wouldn’t be possible, given the nature of our work. But now I think we’re here.”

While they had been talking, and Doc had been struggling to keep up with Andower, they had traversed corridors and climbed stairs so that, by Doc’s reckoning, they were on the top floor of one of the buildings. But the plain and winding corridors, with no windows to provide landmarks, were disorientating, and he had no idea if they had traveled into the heart of a complex, or merely doubled back on themselves several times.

Was this deliberate? To keep him from escape? The grim humor of the situation amused him. He was barely able to stand, let alone make any kind of bid for freedom. No, it was more likely to be nothing more than Andower knowing these corridors intimately, and assuming the same from anyone with him.

Typical arrogant whitecoat.

As if to ram home that the type didn’t buy the farm with skydark, Andower clapped his hands gleefully, and said, “Now, Dr. Tanner, for the most advanced part of our experimentation. You will be impressed, oh, yes, you will be impressed.”

He opened the door in front of which they now stood.
Doc winced involuntarily, expecting the brilliant white of the previous room.

Instead, he was greeted with a darkened room. Subdued, almost opaque light filtered through a heavy shade. It was akin to being in a permanent state of twilight.

“Come, Doctor. There is nothing to be afraid of,” Andower said softly, taking Doc by the arm and leading him into the room. Once again, the sec man stayed outside.

The interior of the room was so gloomy that it took Doc a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the low level of light. Once they had, he was able to see that the walls, ceiling and floor of the particular room were painted in the same muted hessian color as that of the shade, keeping the room cool. There had to be some kind of air-conditioning unit in operation, as the temperature was several degrees lower than that of the corridor.

Pushed over into the corner of the room, at the farthest angle from the door, a bed was visible. In it was a huddled form. Blankets and sheeting covered it up to the neck, and these trembled slightly as the figure beneath shook.

“This is a remarkable result,” Andower said, leading Doc to the bed. Doc held back, some sixth sense telling him to beware. Yet when he looked closely, the man in the bed didn’t have the staring eyes and sagging jaw of the previous room’s occupant. His eyes were open, it was true; but they weren’t staring blankly. Rather, they flickered around, seeming to take in everything. His hair was slicked back from his forehead, and his nose
twitched. He seemed to recognize Andower, and for a moment Doc saw pain and fear cloud his vision. He craned his head back slightly, and then caught sight of Doc.