Arcadian's Asylum (21 page)

Any further such thoughts were expunged as they arrived to find that a draw was being made. The tournament would be a timed elimination, with two groups of players being pitched against each other to find a final pairing that would contest for the grand prize: a passage back into the first sector of Arcady. Freedom by any other name.

Freedom of sorts, Doc thought. Freedom on Arcadian’s terms. But he let that pass, observing instead the buzz of excitement it caused. He was expected to join in, no doubt, and he attempted to make a display of such. Whether he was successful he very much doubted. He was, however, taken by a similarly false display that came from a woman standing a hundred yards from him. Even through the milling throng, he could see the cynicism and ennui in her eyes. He hoped he would be drawn to play against her. The chance to talk as privately as was possible, across a table while others were engaged in their own matches, was intriguing.

Of course, it wasn’t that simple. They drew other opponents. All Doc could do was to set out to win his matches and hope that she was a good chess player. He doubted she was that bothered about winning, but trusted to a fate that would decree the least willing could snatch the prize.

While Doc set about his task, in another part of the sector, Mildred was coming face-to-face with a practice she thought long gone. A practice that was all the more shocking in its barbarism for being so opposed to what she had seen so far.

The dark side of the sector revealed itself to her as she was taken by the fat woman into a building that was located between two vacant lots. The windows, she noticed, were of opaque glass, all of them closed. And, unlike the other buildings she had passed in the past two days, there was no feeling of life within. Even given the strange air of quiet that pervaded the sector as a whole, there was always the sense—perhaps the faint, almost inaudible sounds of movement within—of life behind the brick.

Not here. The building felt empty. As she approached with the fat woman, who remained silent, Mildred felt an anxiety creep over her. There was no reason she would be taken to an empty building, though sense and the practices of this sector might sometimes seem only distantly related. No, it wasn’t lack of life that her gut sensed; rather, it was the negation of life.

As soon as they crossed the threshold of the building, and the doors closed with a hiss behind them, she realized that the reason for the silence on the outside was that the building was soundproofed. Inside, there was a cacophony of noise, the sudden burst of which made her wince with pain and, perhaps, a quiver of fear. For here were voices raised in screams of agony that went beyond the physical, souls who were truly in torment.

“This is what we want you to see,” the fat woman said, raising her voice and gesturing expansively toward the corridor in front of her. “There are some who do not respond to the behavioral modification we advocate through mutual learning. They are, sadly, beyond the rational. The only way to try to bring them back to that path is by a neurological adjustment.”

“Such as?” Mildred asked slowly, not sure if she wanted to know, but certain that she was about to find out.

“Let us see,” the fat woman intoned, moving off and gesturing for Mildred to follow her. They paused at a number of rooms on the ground and second stories. Each was like a padded cell. From some of these the howling had emanated. Looking through the sliding observation panels, she could see that some of these people were pacing, screaming. Some were scraping at the padding with nails bloodied and to the bone, their faces etched with lines of pain that went deeper than the flesh. Some sat motionless, mouths agape in a long scream. But by far the most terrifying were those who just sat, blank of expression and eye, motionless and silent as though waiting patiently for eternity to claim them.

None of these modifications had been successful. Whatever they were doing in this building, it seemed as pointless and barbarous as the activities of Andower that Doc had spoken of. Mildred was glad that Doc couldn’t see this.

Even more so when she saw how the people in the building had gotten this way. On the top story there were three rooms, doors flung wide, cacophonous to the point of white noise. Static bursts and the loud, low frequency hum of electric generators mixed with screams and laughter. People were strapped to tables in the center of each room, giggling, drooling fools administering electric shock treatment. By the look of the burns on their own heads, the victims and subjects here were also the same. The principle followed through to an il
logical conclusion. The fat woman was mouthing something at her that she couldn’t hear.

She felt herself gagging on the vomit that rose in her gorge, turned away and was glad Doc couldn’t see this.

TANNER WAS DOING just fine. He had beaten his opponents by sheer determination and an application of logic he had thought no longer within him. He had noted that the woman had done the same. If they had met in what was, in effect, the semifinal of the tournament, then all eyes would be upon them, and the audience he craved would be an impossibility.

Fortune smiled upon him. They met in the relatively early stages, with most still occupied in their own matches, or those of their friends.

Seemingly in a bubble of their own silence, they sat opposite each other, the first moves proceeding smoothly. Doc made his move, then sat back and waited until she had made hers, each time studying her intently. She was of medium height, dressed in a loose-fitting tunic and pants of olive-green and black. Her hair was iron-gray, and had a wave that caused her to push it back behind her ear each time she leaned over the board, her bangs sweeping forward over her steel-framed spectacles. Her face was lined, grooves etched into her forehead as she studied the board. These eased off as she sat back after each move. She had once been a handsome woman, but time and the vicissitudes of this sector had taken their toll. The constant psychic strain of not knowing keeper or kept had impressed itself on her; of that he was sure.

Although he gave no sign, Doc knew that she watched
him carefully as he made his moves. She was sizing him up, as much as he was doing the same to her. Who would be the first to crack, and make a move outside the board? Aware that he didn’t wish to waste time unnecessarily, Doc took the plunge as she prepared to move her queen.

“An interesting move,” he began.

“Only if it achieves its aim,” she countered. “That’s the problem. Chance and probability dictate that you have a certain number of options. Somewhere down the line, I have to have judged you enough to have eliminated all but the most likely.”

“Yet you have not had the time to get to know my game, and define how my mind works,” he said with no little deliberation.

“Indeed.” She paused, queen in midair, and looked up. He was aware of a fierce intelligence glittering in those eyes, an intelligence that had been used to masking itself.

“Perhaps some indicators to my personality would be of assistance,” he said softly. “I have always been one to play for the little victory, believing that incremental victories can win a war. I have caution for those pieces I value. And I most admire their ability to move with freedom and impunity.”

“I like the way you play,” she said in a level tone. “I suspected as much. There are some of us who also like this method, but find ourselves constrained by the rules, and by the methods of others. We yearn for a new kind of game, but we perhaps need a thinker outside the board. Someone who can open up possibilities.”

“I pride myself that has always been my forte,” Doc
said. She laid down the queen, and Doc picked up a pawn. He used it as a piece in checkers, claiming three of her pieces and taking them from the board before holding them out to her in the palm of his hand. She took them from him and replaced them on the board.

“There have been those who try to invent new rules for the game,” she said in a discursive tone that did little to hide her meaning. “They make new boards, new areas for playing. But in doing so they cut themselves off from the rest of us. And it’s hard to play the game when you are denied pieces. They can try to borrow, but there are those who like to keep the pieces firmly in the box.”

“I think I have seem such maverick game players,” Doc said carefully, remembering the coldhearts who had attacked them when they crossed the maze. Perhaps not such coldhearts, after all. An—how should he call it?—understandable mistake. Not to be repeated. And it would perhaps be politic not to mention it right now.

“They are few,” she continued, “but there are some fundamentals about the game that they have bequeathed to us. Take the board, for example.” She used her hands, palms out, to proscribe the edges of the marked table. “The edges have nothing to keep the pieces on the board. The invisible wall that we automatically assume doesn’t exist. What really prevents us from stepping off are the watchers who hover over the board, and over adjoining boards. The game could proceed off the board, if only it was when the watchers had their eyes averted.”

“So perhaps what you really need for a different game to be forged is for the watchers to have their attention taken?” Doc suggested.

“It would certainly allow for new rules to be tried,” she stated. “At present, all we have are the promises of being transferred from one board to another. Which is all very well, but we still play by the same rules.”

Their eyes met across the board. Despite her caution, there was a yearning in her eyes. One chance was all they asked, and all they might need.

“Madam, there are those of us who find the attentions of one game a trifle tedious. We like to try a variety, and if possible we like to cause distraction and move the parameters. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that we may tire of these restrictions and seek a fresh game in a very short while.”

“I was hoping that this spirit of quest would be forthcoming,” she murmured guardedly. “In the meantime, games already under way need to come to conclusions. The watchers like to see a definite result, otherwise they become a little restive.”

“Very well, then. Shall we say that I will be forthcoming, and you should await further speculation on rule changes?”

“That sounds good,” she replied simply.

Aware that too long spent without movement on the board could attract attention, they proceeded. The woman allowed Doc to take the game within a few moves, to cover for lost time, and as he carried on to the next opponent, he could see as he looked around between moves that the woman was surreptitiously moving among the growing crowd of those eliminated, pausing occasionally to impart a few words to others. Potential allies? he wondered.

Knowing that it was unlikely that he would be
moved back to the central sector merely because of a chess game, and yet unwilling to seem too keen to lose, he forced himself to concentrate for another two matches, winning them both, before being relieved that he found himself opposite a better—and seemingly more driven—player. He eased up on his game gracefully, allowing the man to win and move forward to his goal. All the while, Doc pondered on what he would tell Mildred, little realizing the horror she had to reveal.

It was only at this point that he was astonished to realize that he didn’t even know the name of their new ally.

IT TOOK J AK a short time to work out what was happening in his sector. People who were considered to work on an instinctual level, and so followed a gut reaction rather than a considered course of action, were seen as somewhere between animals and man. They were put through a series of assault courses that were designed to test specific sets of reactions.

The first one he had been on was a walled-off part of the sector that housed several buildings pockmarked by blasterfire. A number of mannequins were visible, and he knew that there were others hidden from view. He was given an air blaster with marked darts.

“The purpose of this course—” a whitecoat began slowly, as though talking to a child.

“Shoot ones with blasters, not without, as come to life,” Jak finished tersely.

“Very good,” the whitecoat said, looking down his nose in a manner so patronizing it made Jak want to
forget about the mannequins and empty the blaster in the man’s ass.

“Get on with it,” Jak snapped.

The whitecoat was less than pleased by Jak’s attitude, but he disappeared into an adjacent building without a backward glance, leaving Jak at the beginning of the course.

It was straightforward. Three streets, with eighteen visible and hidden mannequins. Some had blasters that fired balls of dye. Some had nothing. Jak had to run hell-for-leather through the course as fast as possible, and make it to the other end free of dye, while shooting those mannequins that were aiming for him and leaving the others.

The upside was that they couldn’t harm him. The downside, perversely, was that without this imminent danger, his instincts were blunted. Yet it was simple for the albino teen. Time slowed for him as the adrenaline pumped, and he saw each mannequin almost in the moment before it turned to him, or slid in front of a window or doorway. His aim was unerring, landing a dart in each mannequin with a blaster while rolling and tumbling to avoid the balls of dye they fired. Some shadow or weight in the way they moved told him which were armed.

His perfect score at the end of the course seemed to almost annoy the whitecoat, which only added to Jak’s pleasure.