Glasshouse Part 3

SAM picks up the phone and asks the Gatekeeper to connect him to Mickas household. I linger at the top of the stairs and listen to him, down in the front hall. It sounds like heas trying not to lose his temper. After a couple of cents, he puts the phone down hard and stomps back to the living room. I spend most of the rest of the evening avoiding him, instead worrying myself into a black depression at the possibility that I might have made things worse for Ca.s.s by getting Sam involved.

Points. Collective accountability. Stable couples. Peer pressure. My headas spinning. Itas not that Iam unused to the idea of daily life having rulesa"at least, in peacetimea"but it somehow seems indecent for them to make it so explicit. Societies cohere through tacit understanding, a nod and a wink anda"very occasionallya"a lookup in a legal database. Iam used to learning how things work as I go along and this experience, a headfirst collision with a fully formed set of rules to live oneas life by, has given me a big shock.

I speculate that Iad be able to handle things better if I werenat trapped in a frankly inadequate body. Iam not normally conscious of my own size or strength, and Iam not interested in mesomorphic tinkeringa"but then again, I would never consciously choose to make myself small and frail. Iam borderline malnourished, too. When I go to the bathroom and use the mirror, I can almost see my ribs under a layer of subcutaneous fat. Iam not used to being a waif, and when I get my hands on whoever did this to me . . . Hah, but I wonat be able to do anything to them, will I? aa.s.sholes,a I mutter darkly, then head for the kitchen to see if there are any high-protein options on offer.

Later on, I explore the bas.e.m.e.nt. There are a bunch of machines down here that my tablet says are for household maintenance. I puzzle over the clothes was.h.i.+ng machine. Thereas something very crude and mechanical about it, as if its shape is rigidly fixed. Itas not like a real machine, warm and protean and accommodating to your needs. Itas just a lump of ceramic and metal. It doesnat even answer when I tell it I need to clean my dressa"itas really stupid.

Farther back in the bas.e.m.e.nt thereas something else, a bench with levers attached, for developing upper body muscle ma.s.s the hard way. Iam a bit skeptical, but the tablet says these people had to develop musculature by repeatedly lifting weights and other exercises. I find the manual for the exercise machine and after about a kilosecond I manage to reduce myself to a quivering, sweat-smeared jelly. Itas like some kind of psychological torture, a lesson that rams home just how weak I am.

I stumble upstairs, shower, and collapse into an uneasy sleep, troubled by dreams of drowning and visions of Kay reaching toward me with all her arms outstretched, begging for something I donat understand. Not to mention faint echoes of something terrible, immigrants pus.h.i.+ng and shoving under the gun, begging and screaming to be allowed through the gates of Hel. I startle awake and lie s.h.i.+vering in the darkness for half an hour. Whatas happening to me?

Iam trapped in another universe. Itas true what they say: The past is another polity, but I donat think most people mean it quite like this.

THE next morning, Iam in the kitchen trying to puzzle out the instructions for using the coffeemaker when the phone rings. Thereas a terminal in the hall, so I go there to pick it up, wondering if somethingas wrong. aCall for Sam,a buzzes a flat voice. aCall for Sam.a I stare at the handset for a moment, then look up the stairs. aItas for you!a I yell.

aIam coming.a Sam takes the staircase two steps at a time. I pa.s.s him the handset. aYes?a He listens for a moment. aWhat isa"I donat understand. Can you repeat that? Oh. Yes, yes, I will.a Listening to a conversation on one of these old telephones has an eerie feel. They exist in a strange s.p.a.ce, a half-duplex information realm devoid of privacy.

Sam continues to listen, looking puzzled then annoyed as the instructions continue. Finally, he puts the phone down. aWell!a He says emphatically.

aIam trying to cook the coffee,a I tell him. aCome and tell me about it.a aTheyare sending a taxi. Iave got half an ahouraa"thatas nearly two kilosecs, isnat it?a"to get ready.a aWho are atheya?a I ask. My stomach clenches with anxiety.

aIave been a.s.signed a temporary job,a says Sam. aTheyare picking me up for induction training. Itas to show me how the labor system here works. I may be given a different job later.a aHuh.a I turn back to the coffee machine so he wonat see me frown. If thatas the hydroxide tank, then this must be the venturi nozzle . . . the disa.s.sembled metal bits donat make any more sense to me than they did before I took it to pieces. aWhat am I supposed to do? Are they going to a.s.sign me a labor duty, too?a aI donat think so.a He pauses. aYou can ask for a job, but they donat expect you to. This one, the manual says itas a starting point.a He doesnat look too happy. aWe get paid collectively,a he adds after a few seconds.

aWhat? You mean they make you work, and I get half of it?a aYes.a I shake my head, then screw the machine back together. After a bit I get to the point where itas making gurgling whining noises and dribbling brown liquid. I stare at it, then wonder, Isnat it supposed to make a cup first? Silly me, no a.s.semblers! I hastily rummage through the cupboards until I find a couple of cups and jam one under the nozzle. aStupid, stupid,a I mutter, unsure whether Iam describing myself or the long-dead designers of the machine.

A taxi shows up in due course, and Sam goes off to his work induction training. I wander around the house for a bit, trying to figure out where everything is and what it does. The was.h.i.+ng machine apparently has physical switches you have to set to make it work. It runs on water, and you have to add something called detergent to the clothes, a subst.i.tute for properly designed fabrics. After I read about fabrics in the manual Designed for Living, I feel a bit queasy and resolve to only wear artificial ones. Thereas something deeply disturbing about wearing clothes made from dead animals. Thereas stuff called asilka thatas basically bug vomit, and the idea of it makes my skin crawl.

After a couple of hours I get bored. The house is deeply uncommunicative (if this was a real polity, Iad say it was autistic), and the entertainment resources are primitive, to say the least. I try the telephone, thinking Iall call Ca.s.s and see how sheas doinga"at a guess, Mick will be undergoing work induction, too, just like Sama"but the phone just makes that idiotic bleeping for a minute or so (Iam trying to adjust to the strange time units the ancients used). Maybe sheas asleep, or shopping. Or could she be dead? For a moment I daydream randomly: After Samas call, Mick hit her over the head with the handlebars from an exercise machine and chopped her up in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Or he strangled her while she was asleep . . .

Why am I harboring these gruesome fantasies? Something is very wrong with me. I feel trapped, thatas a large part of it. Iam isolated here, stuck alone in a suburban house while my husband goes to his a.s.signed job. Which is all wrong because whatas really going on is that thereas an a.s.sa.s.sin or a.s.sa.s.sins looking for me because ofa"because of what? Something that happened before my memory surgerya"and Iam isolated, stuck here floundering around in my ignorance.

I need to get out of here.

Ten minutes later Iam standing outside the conservatory, wearing my dress-code-violating boots and trousers and with a bag over my shoulder containing my wallet and an extremely sharp knife I found in the kitchen. Itas absolutely pathetic, especially given the shape of my arm muscles (which feel as if Iave been whacking on them with a hammer), but itas the best I can do right now. With any luck, the a.s.sa.s.sins will be in the same situation, and Iall have time to prepare myself before theyare ready to make their move.

Item number one on the checklist for the well-prepared fugitive: Know your escape routes.

I donat call a taxi. Instead, I walk to the side of the road and look up and down it. The neighborhood is peaceful, if a bit peculiar. Huge deciduous plants grow to either side, and the vegetation gets wild and out of control near the boundaries of the garden a.s.sociated with our house. Hidden invertebrates make creaking, grating noises like malfunctioning machinery. I try to remember the direction the taxi took us in. That way. I turn left and walk along the side of the road, ready to jump out of the way if a taxi appears suddenly.

There are other houses along the road. Theyare about the same size as mine, clumps of rectangular boxes with gla.s.s-fronted openings in frames, sporting oddly tilted upper surfaces. Theyare painted a variety of colors but look drab and faded, like dead husks shed by enormous land-going arthropods. Thereas no sign of life in any of them, and I guess theyare probably just part of the scenery. Iave got no idea where Ca.s.s lives, and I wish I did. I could go and visit her: For all I know sheas in the next house along from me. But I donat know, and directory services are only one of the netlink-mediated facilities that are missing here, and Sam is right about one thinga"the ancients were incredibly territorial. If they can call the public security forces and detain people simply for wearing the wrong clothes in public, what might they do if I went into someone elseas house?

A couple of hundred meters along the road, I come to a rise in the ground. The road continues on the level, descending into a deep trench, finally diving into a dark tunnel in the hillside. Looking up the sides I notice that something isnat quite right about the trees. Gotcha, I think. This must be the edge of a hab module. I can just barely imagine whatas right beneath my feeta"complex machinery locked within a skin of structural diamond, a cylinder kilometers long spinning in the void, orbiting in the icy darkness. Emptiness for a few tens of millions of kilometers, then a brown dwarf star little bigger than a gas giant planet, then tens of trillions of kilometers more to the nearest other star system. Scale is the first enemy.

I walk into the tunnel and see a bend ahead, beyond which it gets very dark. This is disturbinga"I didnat notice it when I was in the back of the taxi, even though my attention was being grabbed by every weird thing I saw. But if thereas a T-gate in here . . . Well, thereas only one way to find out. I keep my right hand in contact with the tunnel wall as it curves round into darkness. I keep walking slowly ahead, and after maybe fifty meters it begins to bend the other way. I pa.s.s another curve, then thereas light from the end of the tunnel, and Iam walking along a road where the buildings to either side are distinctly different in shape and size. Thereas a sign ahead that reads: WELCOME TO THE VILLAGE. (A village is a small community; a downtown is the commercial area of a village. At least, I think thatas how it works.) Iave been doing my reading like a good citizen, and there are several places I need to go shopping, starting with a hardware store. The thing is, it seems to me that because these people couldnat simply order any design patterns they needed out of an a.s.sembler, they had to make things themselves from more primitive components. This means atools,a and itas surprisingly easy to convert a good basic toolkit into an a.r.s.enal of field-expedient weapons. Iam probably safe in here as long as I donat disclose my ident.i.ty, but aprobablya doesnat get you very far when the alternative is lethal, and Iam already lying awake at night worrying about it.

I spend about half an hour in the hardware store, during which time I discover that the operator zombies arenat programmed to stop females buying axes, crowbars, spools of steel wire, arc-welding rigs, subtractive volume renderers, or just about any other tool I can see. The kit I go for costs quite a bit and is bulky and very heavy, but they say theyall deliver and install them in our agarage,a an externally accessible sub-building that I havenat explored yet. I thank them and add some billets of metal feedstock and some lengths of spring steel to the order.

Walking out of the store with a basic workshop on its way over to my house and an axe hidden in a workmanas holster under my coat, I feel a lot better about the outlook for the near-term future. Itas a bright, warm morning: small feathery dinosaurs are issuing territorial calls from the deciduous plants between the buildings, and for the first time since I arrived I am beginning to feel as if Iam in control of my own destiny.

Which is when I run into Jen and Angel, walking arm in arm along the sidewalk toward a rustic-looking building with a sign above the door saying, YE OLDE COFFEE SHOPPE.

aWhy, h.e.l.lo there!a Jen gushes, spreading her arms to drag me into an embrace, while Angel stands back, smiling faintly. I yield to Jenas hug stiffly, hoping she wonat feel the axea"but no such luck. aWhatas that youare wearing? And what have you got under your coat?a she demands.

aIave just been to the hardware store,a I explain, forcing myself to smile politely. aI was buying some tools for Sam for the, the garden, and I didnat have room for them in my bag so Iam carrying them in the shoulder pouch he asked me to get.a The lies flow easily the more I practice them. aHow are you doing?

aOh, weare doing really well!a Jen says expansively, letting go of me.

aWe were just about to stop for a coffee,a says Angel. aWould you like to join us?a aSure,a I say. There doesnat seem to be any polite way to say no. Plus, I havenat had any human contact except Sam for the past hundred kilosecs, and I wouldnat mind a chance to pick their brains. So I follow them into Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe, and we sit down at a booth with s.h.i.+ny red vinyl seats and a bright white polymer-topped table while the waitrons attend to our needs.

aSo how are you settling in?a asks Angel. aWe heard you had some trouble yesterday.a aYes, darling.a Jen smiles brilliantly as she nods. Sheas wearing a bright yellow dress and some kind of hat that vaguely resembles a ballistic shuttlecraft. Sheas applied some kind of paint-powder to her face to exaggerate the color of her lips (red) and eyelashes (black), and something sheas used on her skin has left her smelling like an explosion in a topiary. aI hope youare not going to make a habit of it?a aIam sure she wonat,a Angel chides her. aItas just a natural settling-in mistake. We can all expect to make a few, canat we?a She glances sideways at the waitron: aA double chocolate iced latte made with fair-trade beans and whipped cream, no sugar,a she snaps.

aIall have the same,a I manage to say just as Jen starts rambling about the contents of the price board above the counter, changing her mind three times before she reaches the end of every sentence. I study Angel while Iam about it. Angel is wearing a jacket-and-skirt combinationa"a asuit,a they call it, though it doesnat look like the version permitted to malesa"and while itas darker and drabber than Jenas outfit, sheas got some s.h.i.+ny lumps of metal stuck to her earlobes. I can see itas meant to be jewelry, but it looks painful. aWhatas that on your ears?a I ask.

aTheyare called earrings,a Angel tells me. aThereas a salon up the road thatall pierce your ears, then you can hang different pieces of jewelry from them. Once the hole heals,a she adds, with a slight wince. aTheyare still a little sore.a aHang on, thatas not glued onto your skin or properly installed? They shoved it through your ear rather than rebuilding your ear around it? And itas metal?a aYes,a she says, giving me an odd look. I donat know what to say to that, but luckily I donat have to because Jen finishes ordering her cafe americano and turns back to focus on us.

aIam so pleased we ran into you today, darling!a She leans toward me confidingly. aIave been doing some research, and weare not the only cohort herea"in fact, all six will be meeting at Church tomorrow, and we wouldnat want anyone to let the side down.a aIam sorry?a I ask, taken aback.

aShe means, we need to keep up appearances,a Angel says, with another of those expressive looks that I canat decode.

aI donat understand.a A faint frown wrinkles the skin between Jenas eyebrows. aItas not just about yesterday,a she emphasizes. aEveryoneas ent.i.tled to their little mistakes. But it turns out that in addition to our points being averaged within the cohort, each cohort in the parish gets to talk about what theyave achieved in the preceding week, and the other cohorts rate them on their behavior before voting to add or subtract bonus points.a aItas an iterated prisoneras dilemma scenario, with collective liability,a Angel cuts in, just as one of the operator zombies twiddles a k.n.o.b on a polished metal tank behind the bar that makes a noise like a pressure leak. aVery elegant experimental design, if you ask me.a aItas ana"a Oh s.h.i.+t. I nod, guardedly, unsure how much I can reveal: aI think I see.a aYes.a Angel nods. aWeare going to have to defend your behavior yesterday, and the other groups can add points or subtract them depending on whether they think we deserve it and on whether they think weall hold a grudge when itas their turn in the ring.a aThatas really devious!a aYes.a Angel again.

Jen smiles. aWhich is why, darling, youare not going to show up the side by violating the dress code, and youall be suitably remorseful about whatever the silly incident yesterday was abouta"no, I donat want to know all the sordid detailsa"and weall do our bit by backing you up and trying to bury the whole matter as deeply as we can under a pile of every other cohortas sins. Wonat we?a She glances at Angel. aWeare the new group, we can expect to be picked on. Itas going to be bad enough with Ca.s.s, as it is.a aWhatas wrong with Ca.s.s?a I ask.

aSheas not settling in,a says Jen.

Angel looks as if sheas about to open her mouth, but Jen waves her hand dismissively. aIf youave been getting any silly phone calls from her, just ignore them. Sheas only doing it to get attention, and sheall stop soon enough.a I stare at Jen. aShe told me Mickas threatening to hurt her,a I say. The zombie delivers the first of our coffee cups.

aSo?a Jen stares right back at me, and thereas a cold core of steel behind her expression: aWhat business of ours is it? Whatas between a wife and her husband is private, as long as it doesnat threaten to drag our points down or get our whole cohort in trouble. Apart from the other thing, of course.a aWhat othera"a Angel cuts in. aYou get social points for f.u.c.king,a she says, her voice self-consciously neutral. Again, she gives me that odd look. aI thought youad have figured it out by now.a aFor s.e.x?a I must sound faintly scandalized, or shocked or something, because Jenas face relaxes into a mask of amus.e.m.e.nt.

aOnly with your husband, darling.a She sips her coffee and looks at me calculatingly. aThatas something else weave noticed. I donat want to hurry you or anything, but . . .a aWho I f.u.c.k is none of your business,a I say flatly. My coffee arrives, but right now Iam not feeling thirsty. My mouth tastes as dry and acrid as if Iave just chewed half a kilogram of raw caffeine. aIall dress up for the Church meeting and say Iall be good and do whatever else you want me to do in public. And Iall try not to cost you any points. But.a I tap the table in front of Jenas coffee cup, insultingly close. aYou will not, ever, tell me whom I may a.s.sociate with or what I will do with my chosen a.s.sociates. Or with whom I have s.e.x.a The silence grows icicles. I take an unwisely large gulp of hot coffee and burn the roof of my mouth. aDo I make myself clear?a aQuite clear, darling.a Jenas eyes glitter like splinters of frozen malice.

I make myself smile. aNow, shall we find something civilized to talk about while we drink our coffee and eat our pastries?a aI think that would be a good idea,a says Angel. She looks slightly shaken. aAfter lunch, how about we buy you something suitable to wear to Church?a She asks me. aJust in case. Meanwhile, I was wondering if youave used your was.h.i.+ng machine yet? It has some interesting features . . .a And sheas off into an exploration of techniques for gaining points in the womenas world, generated by game theory and policed by mutual scorefile surveillance.

BY the end of our lunch, I think Iave got a handle on them. Angel means well but is too calculatedly fearful for her own good. Sheas afraid of stepping out of line, unwilling to jeopardize her score, and worried about what people will think of her. This combination makes her an easy target for Jen, who is flamboyant and aggressively extroverted on the outside, but uses it to conceal an insecure need for approval, which leads her to bully people until they give it to her. Sheas as ruthless as anyone I can recall meeting since my memory surgery, and Iave met some hardcases around the clinic. The surgeon-confessors tend to attract such. (Whatas even more disturbing is that I have faint ghost-recollections of knowing similar people before, but with no details attached. Who they were or what they meant to me has sunk into the abyss where memories go when their owners no longer need them.) The two of them, working by unspoken a.s.sent, appoint themselves as my personal shopping a.s.sistants for the afternoon. Theyare not crude about it, but theyare very persistent and make no real attempt to conceal their desire to modify my behavior along lines compatible with their enhanced scorefiles.

After coffee and cakes (for which Angel pays), they escort me to a series of establishments. In the first of these I am subjected to the attentions of a hairstylist. Angel sits with me and chats interminably about kitchen appliances while Jen goes off somewhere to do something of her own, and the zombie immobilizes me and applies a fearsome array of knives, combs, chemical reagents, and compact machine tools to my head. Once I get out of the chair, I have to admit that my hairas differenta"itas still long, but itas several shades lighter, and whenever I turn my head it moves like a solid lump of foamed plastic.

aPerhaps we should get you some clothing for tomorrow,a Jen says, smiling broadly. Itas phrased as a suggestion, but the way she says it makes it an order. They lead me through a series of boutiques, where I am induced to present my credit card. She insists that I try on the costume, and while Iam showing her how it looks, Angel gets the store zombies to parcel up my stuff. I end up looking like one of them, the ladies who lunch. aWeare getting there,a Jen says, something almost like approval on her face. aYou need a makeover, though.a aA what?a They just laugh at me. Probably just as well; if they told me in advance, Iad try to escape. And, as I keep reminding myself (with an increasing sense of dread), Iall have nearly a hundred tendaysa"three yearsa"in which to regret any mistakes I make today.

THE lights are turning red and sinking toward the tunnel at the edge of the world when the taxi weare crammed into stops outside my house, and the door opens. aGo on,a says Angel, pus.h.i.+ng my bag at me, ago and surprise him. Heall have had a long day and will need cheering up.a I realize sheas using the generic hea"they donat care who he is, all they care about is the fact that heas my husband, and we can earn them points.

aOkay, Iam going, Iam going,a I say, hara.s.sed. I take the bag, and as I turn, something bites me on the leg. aHey!a I look round but the taxi is already pulling away. as.h.i.+t,a I mumble. My leg throbs. I reach down and feel something lumpy stuck in it. I pull it out. Itas some sort of lozenge with a needle coming out of one end. as.h.i.+t.a I stumble up the path in the new shoes they insisted I buya"the heels are steeper and less comfortable than the first paira"and in through the door. I dump the bags and head for the living room, where the TV is on. Sam is lying in front of it, his eyes closed and his tie loosened, and I feel a stab of compa.s.sion for him. The injection point on my leg aches, a cold reminder.

aSam. Wake up!a I shake his shoulder. aI need your help!a aWhua"a He opens his eyes and looks at me. aReeve?a His pupils dilate visibly. I probably smell weirda"Jen and Angel tried half the contents of a scent bar on me, for no reason I can fathom.

aHelp.a I sit down next to him and hike up my skirt to show him the mark on my thigh. aLook.a I hold up the ampoule where he can see it. aThey got me. What in seven shades of s.h.i.+t is that stuff?a My crotch is unnaturally sensitive and I feel slightly dizzy, worryingly relaxed and unstressed in view of whatas just happened.

aItasa"a He blinks. aI donat know. Who did this to you?a aJen and Angel. They dropped me off from a taxi and I think Angel got me with this thing as I left.a I lick my lips. Iam feeling distinctly odd. aWhat do you think? Poison?a aMaybe not,a he says, staring at me. Then he picks up his tablet and pokes at it. aThere,a he says, holding it for me. aMust be their idea of fun.a I thrust my hands between my thighs and clamp them together, my eyes blurring as I read. My crotch is tingling. aItas aa"huh!a Fury washes over me. aThe b.i.t.c.hes!a Sam shakes his head. aIave had a really tiring day, but it sounds like youave had an exciting one. Coming home dressed like aa"and your friends, spiking you for s.e.xual arousal.a He raises an eyebrow. aWhy did they do that, do you suppose?a Sam can remain a.n.a.lytical and composed in the most trying situations. I wish I had half his grace under pressure.

aIa"a I force myself to move my hands. ab.i.t.c.hes.a aWhatas going on, Reeve? Is the peer pressure really that compelling?a He sounds concerned, sympathetic.

aYes.a I grit my teeth. Heas sitting too close to me, but I donat want to risk moving. The drug is. .h.i.tting me hard in warm, tingly waves, and Iam afraid of leaving a damp patch on the sofa. aItas the social points. We knew the points were shared with our cohort, but there are extra compulsion mechanisms we didnat know about. Jen and Angel told me about them, but I didnat . . . s.h.i.+t. And then you can score points for . . . other activities.a aWhat other activities?a he asks gently.

aUse your imagination!a I gasp, and bolt for the bathroom.

SAM knocks on the bathroom door once, tentatively, as Iam lying in the bottom of the shower cubicle in a daze of l.u.s.t, letting waves of hot water sluice over me like a tropical storma"Since when do I know what a tropical storm on Urth felt like?a"and trying to feel clean. Part of me wants to invite him in, but I manage to bite my lip and stay silent. I guess I can cross Jen and Angel off my list of possible a.s.sa.s.sins, but I find myself fantasizing in the shower, fantasizing about getting them alone and the myriad revenges Iall take. I know these are just fantasiesa"you canat kill somebody more than once in this place, and once youave killed them, theyare out of reacha"but something in me wants to make them hurt, and not just because theyave destroyed any chance of my ever having honest s.e.x with this curiously introverted, thoughtful, bear of a husband Iave acquired. So I work my arms to exhaustion on the weight machine down in the bas.e.m.e.nt, then go to bed alone and uneasy.

Sunday dawns bright and hot. I reluctantly put on the dress Jen and Angel made me buy and go to meet Sam downstairs. I have no pockets, donat know if Iam allowed to carry a bag, and I feel very unsafe without even a utility knife. Samas wearing a black suit, white s.h.i.+rt, black tie. Very monochrome. He looks solid, but going by his face he feels as unsure of himself as I am. aReady?a I ask.

He nods. aIall call the taxi.a The Parish Church is a big stone building some distance away from where we live. Thereas a tower at one end, as sharp and axisymmetrical as a relativistic impactor (if wars.h.i.+ps were made of stone and had holes drilled in their dorsal end with huge parabolic chimes hanging inside). The bells are ringing loudly, and the car park is filling with taxis and males and females dressed in period costume as we arrive. I see a few faces I know, Jenas among them. But I find I donat recognize most of the people in the crowd as we wait outside, and I hang on to Samas arm for fear of losing him.

Internally, the Church contains of a single room, with a platform at one end and rows of benches carved from dead trees facing it. Thereas an altar on the platform, with a long naked blade lying atop it beside a large gold chalice. We file in and sit down. As soft music plays, a procession walks up the aisle from the rear of the building. There are three males, physically aged but not yet senescent, wearing distinctive robes covered in metallic thread. They climb the platform and take up set positions. Then the one at the front and right begins to speak, and I realize with a start that heas Major-Doctor Fiore.

aDear congregants, we are gathered here today to remember those who have gone before us. Frozen faces carved in stone, the frozen faces of mult.i.tudes.a He pauses, and everyone around us repeats his words back to him, a low rumbling echo that seems to go on and on forever.

Fiore continues to recite gibberish in portentous tones at an increasing pace. Every sentence or two he stops, and the congregation repeats his words back to him. I hope itas gibberisha"some of it is not only baffling but vaguely menacing, references to being judged after our deaths, punishment for sins, rewards for obedience. I glance sideways but quickly realize everybody else is watching him. I mouth the words but feel deeply uneasy about it. Some folks seem to be getting worked up, shouting the responses.

Next, a zombie in an alcove strikes up a turgid melody on some sort of primitive music machine, and Fiore tells us to turn the paper books in front of us to a set page. People begin singing the words there, and clapping in time, and they donat make any sense either. The name aChristiana features in it repeatedly, but not in any context I understand. And the message of the sing-along is distinctly sinister, all about submission and conformity and reward feedback loops. Itas as if Iave got some sort of deep-rooted reflex that refuses to let me absorb propaganda uncritically: I end up reading the book with a frown on my face.

After half an hour or so, Fiore signals the zombie to stop playing. aDearly beloved,a he says, his tone unctuous and confiding. He leans forward on the lectern, searching our faces. aDearly beloved.a I add my own sarcastic mental commentary to the proceedingsa"Too dear for you to afford, I footnote him. aToday I would like you all to extend a warm welcome to our newest members, cohort six. We are a loving Church, and it behooves usaa"He actually used the word abehooves,a he actually said that!a"ato gather them to our breast and welcome them fully into our family.a He smiles ecstatically and clutches the lectern as if a zombie catamite hidden behind it is sucking his c.o.c.k. aPlease welcome our newest members, Chris, El, Sam, Fer, and Mick, and their wives Jen, Angel, Reeve, Alice, and Ca.s.s.a Everyone around mea"except Sam, who looks as confused as I feela"suddenly starts smacking their hands together in front of them. Itas some kind of welcoming ritual, I guess, and the noise is surprisingly loud. Sam catches my eye and begins to clap, tentatively, but then Fiore holds up a hand and everybody stops.

aMy children,a he says, gazing down at us fondly, aour new brethren have only been here for three days. In that time, they have had much to learn and see and do, and some of them have made mistakes. To err is human, and to forgive is also human. It is ours to forgive and to pardon. To pardon, for example, Mrs. Alice Sheldon of number six, for her difficulty with plumbing. Or to Mrs. Reeve Brown of number six, for her unfortunate public display of nudity the other day. Or toa"a Heas drowned out by laughter. I look round and see that suddenly people are laughing at me and pointing. I feel a rush of embarra.s.sment and anger. How dare he do this? But itas intimidating, too. There must be fifty people here, and some of them are staring as if theyare trying to figure out what I look like without any clothes on. If I was me, if I was in my own self-selected body, Iad call him out on the spota"but Iam not. In the sick pit of my stomach I realize that theyare never going to forget that Iave been singled out, and that this makes me a target. After all, thatas how peer pressure works, isnat it? Thatas what this is about. The experimenters canat expect to generate a workable dark ages society in just three years by dumping a bunch of convalescents in orthohuman bodies into the polity and letting them wander around. They need a social mechanism to make us require conformity of one other, and the best way to do that is to provide a mechanism to make us punish our own deviantsa"

aa"Or to forgive Ca.s.s, for her tendency to oversleep. Such as today, when she seems to have forgotten to come to Church.a Theyare not looking at me anymore, but theyare muttering, and thereas a dark undercurrent of disapproval at work. I catch Samas eye, and he looks frightened. He reaches out sideways, and I grab his hand and cling to it as if Iam drowning.

aI urge you all to give your sympathies to Mick, her husband, who has to support such a slothful wife, and to help her out when next you see her.a And now I can follow everybodyas gaze to Mick. Heas short and wiry and has a big, sharp nose and dark, brooding eyes. He looks angry and defensive, for good reason. The bruising weight of a five-point infraction has left me feeling weak in the knees and frightened, and now heas getting it as a proxy for his wifeas failure to get up in the morninga"

Failure to get up in the morning? I feel like yelling at Fiore: Itas an excuse, idiot, an excuse for not being seen in public!

Fiore moves on to discuss other people, other cohorts, stuff thatas meaningless to me right now. My netlink comes up, insisting I vote on whether to add or subtract points to each of the other cohorts, with a list of sins and achievements tallied against each name. I donat vote for any of them. In the end our own cohort gets dumped on unanimously by the voters of the five older ones. We all lose a couple of points, signaled by the tolling of a sullen iron bell hanging in an archway near the back of the Church. Fiore signals the zombie to strike up the organ and leads us in another meaningless song, then itas the end of the service. But I canat run away and hide just yet because the auto-da-f is followed by a social reception in honor of the new cohort, so we can smile brittle smiles and eat canaps under the magnolia trees while they politely sneer at us.

There are tables laid out in the ornamental garden called a graveyard that backs onto the Church. Theyare covered with white cloths and stacked with gla.s.ses of wine. Weare led outside and left to fend for ourselves. Taxis donat run on Sunday during Church services. I find myself standing stiffly with my back as close to the churchyard wall as I can get, clutching a winegla.s.s with one hand and Sam with the other. My shoes are pinching, and my face feels set in a permanent grimace.

aReeve! And Sam!a Itas Jen, dragging along Angel and their husbands, Chris and El, in her undertow. She looks a little less ebullient than she was yesterday, and I can guess why.

aWe didnat do so well,a El grunts. He spares me a lingering glance that hits me like a punch in the guts. Itas really creepy. I know exactly what heas thinking, just not why heas thinking it. Is it because he thinks I cost him his points or because heas trying to imagine me with no clothes on?

aWe could have done worse,a says Jen, her words clipped and harsh-sounding. Sheas strangling her handbag in a death grip.

aOn the outside.a I take a deep breath. aIad challenge Fiore if he made a crack like that at me in public.a aBut youare not on the outside, darling,a Jen points out. She smiles at Sam. aIs she like this at home, or only when sheas got an audience?a I am close, very close, to throwing the contents of my winegla.s.s in her face and demanding satisfaction just to see if sheall crack, but my b.u.t.terfly mind sees a distraction sneaking furtively past behind hera"itas Mick. So instead of doing something stupid I do something downright foolhardy and march right over to him.

ah.e.l.lo, Mick,a I say brightly.

He jumps and glares at me. Heas tense, wound up like a spring, positively fizzing. aYes? What do you want?a he demands.

aOh, nothing.a I smile and inspect his face. aI just wanted to sympathize with you, having a wife who doesnat get up in the morning for Church. Thatas downright inconvenient. Will I see her here next week?a aYes,a he grates. Heas holding his hands stiffly by his sides, and theyare clenched into fists.

aOh, good! How marvelous. Listen, you donat mind me visiting to see her this afternoon, do you? Weave got a lot to talk about, and I thought sheada"a aNo.a He glares at me. aYouare not seeing the b.i.t.c.h. Not today, ora"whenever. Go away. Wh.o.r.e.a Iam not sure what the word means, but I get the general picture. aOkay, Iam going,a I say tensely. If Iad had a few more days with the bench press and the weights, things might be difficult: But not right now. Not yet.

I turn and walk back over to Sam. He doesnat say anything when I lean against him, which is just as well because I donat trust myself to be tactful, especially not while weare in public, and I canat escape. My heartas pounding, and I feel sick with suppressed anger and shame. Ca.s.s is being treated as a virtual prisoner by her husband. Iam being publicly ridiculed and making enemies just for trying to maintain my sense of ident.i.ty. This whole polity is rigged to try to make us betray our friends . . . but somewhere out there, people are looking for me with murder in mind. And if I donat keep a low profile, sooner or later theyall find me.

6.

Sword.

AFTER Church we go home. Sam doesnat have to work on Sunday, so he watches television. I go and explore the garage. Itas a flimsy structure off to one side of the house, with a big pair of doors in front. Thereas a workbench, and the hardware shop zombies have already installed all the stuff I bought yesterday. I spend a while tinkering with the drill press and reading the manual for the arc-welding apparatus. Then I go and work out on the exercise device in the bas.e.m.e.nt, grimly pretending that itas a torture machine for transferring physical stress to the bones of a human victim and that Jenas on the receiving end of it. After Iave squished her into a b.l.o.o.d.y lump the size of a shopping bag, I feel drained but happier and ready to tackle difficult tasks. So I go looking for Sam.

Heas in the living room, staring blankly at the TV screen with the volume turned off. I sit down next to him, and he barely notices. aWhatas wrong?a I ask.

aIama"a He shakes his head, mute and miserable.

I reach for his hand but he pulls it away. aIs it me?a I ask.

aNo.a I reach for his hand again, grab it, and hang on. He doesnat pull away this time, but he seems to be tense.

aWhat is it, then?a For a while I think he isnat going to say anything, but then, just as Iam about to try again, he sighs. aItas me.a aItasa"what?a aMe. I shouldnat be here.a aWhat?a I look around. aIn the living room?a aNo, in this polity,a he says. Now I get it, itas not angera"itas depression. When heas down, Sam clams up and wallows in it instead of taking it out on his surroundings.

aExplain. Try and convince me.a I shuffle closer to him, keeping hold of his hand. aPretend Iam one of the experimenters, and youare looking to justify an early termination, okay?a aIama"a He looks at me oddly. aWeare not supposed to talk about who we were before the experiment. It doesnat aid enculturation, and itas probably going to get in the way.a aBut Ia"a I stop. aOkay, how about you tell me,a I say slowly. aI wonat tell anyone.a I look him in the eye. aWeare supposed to be a monadic couple. There arenat any negative-sum game plays between couples in this society, are there?a aI donat know.a He sniffs. aYou might talk.a aWho to?a aYour friend Ca.s.s.a aBulls.h.i.+t!a I punch him lightly on the arm. aLook, if I promise I wonat tell?a He looks at me thoughtfully. aPromise.a aOkay, I promise.a I pause. aSo whatas wrong?a His shoulders are hunched. aIave just come out of memory surgery,a he says slowly. aI think thatas where Fiore and Yourdon and their crowd found most of us, by the way. A redaction clinic must be a great place to find experimental subjects wh.o.a.re healthy but whoave forgotten everything they knew. People whoave come adrift from the patterns of life, and who have minimal social connections. People with active close ties donat go in for memory surgery, do they?a aNot often, I donat think,a I say, vaguely disturbed by a recollection of military officers briefing me: trouble in another life, urgent plotting against an evil contingency.

aNot unless theyare trying to hide something from themselves.a I manage to fake up an amused laugh for him. aI donat think thatas very likely. Do you?a aIad . . . well. Iam pretty narrowly channeled emotionally. Narrow, but deep. I had a family. And it all went wrong, for reasons I canat deal with now, reasons I could have done something about, maybe. Or maybe not. Whatever, thatas the bare outline of what I remember. The rest is all third-person sketching, reconstructed memory implants to replace whatever it meant to me. Because, Iam not exaggerating, it burned me out. If I hadnat undergone memory redaction, Iad probably have become suicidal. I have a tendency toward reactive depression, and Iad just lost everything that meant anything to me.a I hold his hand, not daring to move, suddenly wondering what kind of emotional time bomb I casually selected over the cheese and wine table half a week ago.

After about a minute, he sighs again. aItas over. Theyare in the past, and I donat remember it too clearly. I didnat have the full surgery, just enough to add a layer of fuzz so that I could build a new life for myself.a He looks at me. aDo you know?a Know what? I think, feeling panicky. Then I understand what heas asking.

aI had memory surgery, too,a I say slowly, abut it wasnat for the first time. And it was thorough. Iavea"a I swallow. aI had to read an autobiography I wrote for myself.a And did I lie when I was writing it? Did that other me tell the truth, or was he spinning a pretty tapestry of lies for the stranger he was due to become in the future? aIt said I was mated once, long-term. Three partners, six children, it lasted over a gigasec.a I feel shaky as I consider the next part. aI donat remember their faces. Any of them.a In truth I donat remember any of it. It might as well have happened to someone else. According to my autobiography it did. The whole thing ended more than four gigasecs agoa"over a hundred and twenty yearsa"and I went through my first memory reset early in the aftermath, and a much more thorough one recently. For more than thirty years those three mates and six children meant more to me than, well, anything. But all they are today is background color to the narrative of my life, like dry briefing doc.u.ments setting up a prefabricated history for a sleeper agent about to be injected into a foreign polity.

Sam holds my hand. aI had surgery to deal with the pain,a he says. aAnd I came out of surgery, and I found I probably didnat need it in the first place. Pain is a stimulus, a signal that the organism needs to take some kind of evasive action, isnat it? I donat mean the chronic pain caused by nerve damage, but ordinary pain. And emotional pain. You need to do something about it, not avoid it. Afterward, it was distant, but I felt empty. Only half-human. And I wasnat sure who I was, either.a I stroke his hand. aWas it the dissociative psychopathology?a I ask. aOr something deeper?a aDeeper.a He sounds absent. aI had such a void that Ia"well, I made the mistake of falling in love again. Too soon, with somebody who was brilliant and fast and witty and probably completely crazy. And they asked me about the experiment while I was miserable, trying to figure out whether I really was in love or was just fooling myself. We discussed the experiment, but I donat think they were too keen on the idea. And in the end it all got too much for me: I signed up, backed myself up, and woke up in here.a He looks at me unhappily. aI made a mistake.a aWhat?a I stare at him, not sure what to make of this.

aItas not that I donat like s.e.x,a he says apologetically, abut Iam in love with someone else. And Iam not going to see them untila"a He shakes his head. aWell, there it is. You must think Iam a real idiot.a aNo.a What I think is, I really have to rescue Ca.s.s, Kay, from that sc.u.msucker whoas got her locked up. aI donat think youare an idiot, Sam,a I hear myself telling him. I lean sideways and kiss him on the cheek in friendly intimacy. He starts, but he doesnat try to push me away. aI just wish we werenat this messed up.a aMe too,a he says sadly. aMe too.a I lean against him for a while, words seeming redundant at this point. Then, because Iam becoming uncomfortably aware of his body, I get up and head back out to the garage. Thereas still daylight, and Iave got an idea or two in my head that Iad like to work on. If it turns out I have to rescue Kay from Mick and heas violent, I want to be properly equipped.

ON Monday Sam goes to work. And the next day, and the one after thata"every day of every week, except Sunday. Heas being trained as a legal secretary, which sounds a lot more interesting than it is, although heas getting a handle on the laws and customs of the ancientsa"some big legal databases survived the dark ages almost untouched, and City Hall has to process a lot of paperwork. One result is that he wears the same dark suits every day, except at home, where it turns out to be okay for him to wear jeans and open-necked s.h.i.+rts.

I begin to get used to him leaving most days, and settle into a routine. I get up in the morning and make coffee for us both. After Sam heads for work I go down to the cellar and work out until Iam covered in sweat and my arms are creaking. Then I have another coffee, go outside, and run the length of the road between the two tunnels several timesa"at first I make it six lengths, as itas half a kilometer, but I begin to increase it after Tuesday. When Iam staggering with near exhaustion, I go back home and have a shower, another cup of coffee, and either put on something respectable if Iam heading downtown or something disrespectable if Iam going to work in the garage.

There are other unpleasantnesses, of course. About two weeks into our residence, I wake up in the middle of the night with an unpleasant belly cramp. The next morning Iam disgusted to discover that Iam bleeding. Iad heard of menstruation, of course, but I hadnat expected the YFH-Polity designers to be crazy enough to reintroduce it. Most other female mammals simply reabsorb their endometria, why should dark ages humans have to be different? I clean up after myself as well as I can, then find Iam still leaking. Itas a miserable time, but when I break down and phone Angel to ask if thereas any way of stopping it, she just suggests I go to the drugstore and look for feminine hygiene supplies.

Supplies come from the stores in the downtown zone. I get to shop a couple of times a week. Food comes in prepacked meal containers or as raw ingredients, but Iam a lousy cook and a slow learner so I tend to avoid the latter. This week I pull my routine forwarda"like, urgentlya"because feminine hygiene means the drugstore, where they sell pads to wear inside your underwear. The whole business is revolting. Whatas going to happen next? Are they going to inflict leprosy on us? I grit my teeth and resolve to buy more underwear. And pain medication, which comes in small bitter-tasting disks that you have to swallow and which donat work very well.

Clothing Iave more or less sorted out. Iave taken to asking Angel or sometimes Alice to choose stuff for my public appearances. This insures me against making a wrong choice and getting on anyoneas s.h.i.+t-list. Jen points out that Iave got lousy fas.h.i.+on taste, an accusation that might actually carry some weight if there were enough of us in this snow globe of a universe to actually have fas.h.i.+ons, rather than simply being on the receiving end of a fragmentary historical clothing database thatas advancing through the old-style 1950s at a rate of one planetary year per two tendays.

Other supplies . . . I haunt the hardware shop. Sam probably thinks Iam spending all the money heas earning on makeovers and hairdos or something, but the truth is, Iam looking to my survival. If and when the a.s.sa.s.sins find me, Iam determined theyare going to have a fight on their hands. I donat think heas even looked in the garage once since we moved in. If he had, head probably have noticed the drill press, welding kit, and the bits of metal and wood and nails and glue and the workbench. And the textbooks: The Crossbow, Medieval and Modern, Military and Sporting, Its Construction History and Management. Itas funny whatas survived.

Currently Iam reading a big fat volume called The Swordsmithas a.s.sistant. Thereas method in my madness. While thereas no obvious way I can get my hands on a blaster or other modern weaponry, and Iam not suicidal enough to play with explosives inside a pressurized hab without knowing its physical topology, it occurs to me that you can still raise an awful lot of mayhem with the toys you can build in a dark age machine shop. My main headache with the crossbow, in fact, is going to be knowing the axis of rotation in each sector, so that I can correct my aim for Coriolis force. Which is where the plumb bob and the laser distance meter come in.