They wandered farther up the hillside as he became sturdier. One day in the summer when he was five, they remained in the woods far several hours, Molly pointing out the ferns and liverworts to him, drawing his attention to the way the sunlight changed the colors of the delicate green leaves, deepened the rich greens to nearly black.

“Time,” she said finally.

He shook his head. “Let’s climb to the top and look at the whole world.”

“Next time,” she said. “We’ll bring our lunch and climb all the way up. Next time.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

They walked back down slowly, stopping often to examine a rock, a new plant, the bark of an ancient tree, whatever caught his interest. At the edge of the woods they paused and looked about carefully before leaving the shelter of the trees. Then they ran to the kitchen door hand in hand and, laughing, tried to get through together.

“You’re getting too big,” Molly cried, and allowed him to enter first.

Mark stopped abruptly, yanked on her hand, and turned to run. One of the Barry brothers stepped from the dining room into the kitchen, and another closed the door to the outside and stood behind them. The other three entered the kitchen silently and stared in disbelief at the boy.

Finally one of them spoke. “Ben’s?”

Molly nodded. Her hand clutched Mark’s in a grip that must have hurt him. He stood close to her and looked at the brothers fearfully.

“When?” the brother asked.

“Five years ago, in January.”

The spokesman sighed heavily. “You’ll have to come with us, Molly. The boy too.”

She shook her head and felt weak with terror. “No! Leave us alone. We’re not hurting anyone! Leave us alone!”

“It’s the law,” the brother said harshly. “You know it as well as we do.”

“You promised!”

“The agreement we made didn’t cover this.” He took a step closer to her. Mark tore his hand free from her grasp and flew at the doctor.

“Leave my mother alone! Go away! Don’t you hurt my mother!”

Someone caught Molly’s arms and held her, and another of them caught Mark and lifted him as he kicked and lashed out furiously, screaming all the while.

“Don’t hurt him!” Molly cried, and struggled to free herself. She hardly felt the pinprick of the injection. Dimly she heard one last scream of anguish from Mark, and then there was nothing.

Chapter 18

Molly blinked and shut her eyes against the glare of a silver frost that covered everything. She stood still and tried to remember where she was, who she was, anything. When she opened her eyes again, the blinding glare still dazzled her. She felt as if she had awakened after a long, nightmare-haunted dream that was becoming more and more dim as she tried to recapture it. Someone nudged her.

“You’ll freeze out here,” someone said close by. Molly turned to look at the woman, a stranger. “Come on, get inside,” the woman said louder. Then she leaned forward and looked at Molly closely. “Oh, you’re back, aren’t you?”

She took Molly by the arm and guided her inside a warm building. Other women looked up idly and then bent down over their sewing again. Some of them were obviously pregnant. Some of them were dull-eyed, vacant-looking, doing nothing.

The woman helping Molly took her to a chair and stood by her side long enough to say, “Just sit still for a while. You’ll start remembering in a little bit.” Then she left and took her place at one of the machines and began stitching.

Molly looked at the floor and waited for memories to return, and for a long time there was nothing but the terror of nightmare remembered in emotions, not in details.

They had strapped her to a table, many times, she thought, and they had done things to her that she could not recall. There had been another time when some of the women had held her down and done things to her. She shuddered violently and closed her eyes. The memory receded. Mark, she thought suddenly, very clearly. Mark! She jumped up and looked about wildly. The woman who had befriended her hurried over and caught her arm.

“Look, Molly, they’ll put you under again if you make trouble. Understand? Just sit still until our break, and I’ll talk to you then.”

“Where is Mark?” Molly whispered.

The woman glanced about and said in an undertone, “He’s all right. Now sit down! Here comes a nurse.”

Molly sat down again and stared at the floor until the nurse glanced about the room and left once more. Mark was all right. There was ice on the ground. Winter. He was six, then. She remembered nothing of the late summer, the fall. What had they done to her?

The hours until the break passed painfully slowly. Occasionally one or another of the women would look at her and there was awareness, not the incurious glances that had been given her before. The word was spreading that she was back, and they were watching her, perhaps to see what she would do now, perhaps to welcome her, perhaps for some reason she couldn’t guess. She looked at the floor. Her hands were clenched, her nails digging into her palms. She relaxed them. They had taken her to a hospital room, but not the usual hospital, one in the breeder’s quarters. They had examined her thoroughly. She remembered injections, answering questions, pills . . . It was too blurred. Her hands had clenched again.

“Molly, come on. We’ll have tea and I’ll tell you what I can.”

“Who are you?”

“Sondra. Come on.”

She should have known, Molly thought, following Sondra. She remembered suddenly the ceremony given for Sondra, who was only three or four years older than she. She had been nine or ten, she thought.

The tea was a pale yellow drink she couldn’t identify. After one sip she put it down and looked across the lounge toward the uncovered window. “What month is this?”

“January.” Sondra finished her tea and leaned forward and said in a low voice, “Listen, Molly, they’ve taken you off the drugs and they’ll be watching you for the next few weeks to see how you behave. If you cause trouble, they’ll put you on something again. You’ve been conditioned. Just don’t fight it, and you’ll be all right.”

Molly felt she could understand only half of what Sondra was saying to her. Again she looked about the lounge; in here the chairs were comfortable and there were tables at convenient intervals. Women were in clusters of threes and fours, chatting, now and then glancing at her. Some of them smiled, one winked. There were thirty women in the room, she thought in disbelief. Thirty breeders!

“Am I pregnant?” she asked suddenly, and pressed her hands against her stomach.

“I don’t think so. If you are, it’s still awfully early, but I doubt it. They tried every month since you’ve been here and it didn’t take before. I doubt it took the last time either.”

Molly sagged against her chair and closed her eyes hard. That’s what they had done to her on the table. She felt tears form and roll down her cheeks and was not able to stop them. Then Sondra’s arm was about her shoulders, and she held her tightly.

“It hits all of us like that, Molly. It’s the separation, the being alone for the first time. You don’t get used to it, but you learn to live with it and it doesn’t hurt so much after a while.”

Molly shook her head, unable as yet to speak. No, she thought distinctly, it was not the separation, it was the humiliation of being treated like an object, of being drugged and then used, forced to cooperate in that procedure unquestioningly.

“We have to go back now,” Sondra said. “You won’t have to do anything for another day or two, long enough to collect your thoughts, get used to everything all over again.”

“Sondra, wait. You said Mark is all right? Where is he?”

“He’s in school with the others. They won’t hurt him or anything. They’re very good to all the children. You remember that, don’t you?”