“I…I’m afraid I don’t know…I can’t recall the answer to that, sir.”
One of the women, a brassy redhead with bright cherry-colored lipstick, glared at him as she pressed a large red button on the side of the table. “Another defective,” she said, her voice dripping with contempt. “He needs to be placed with the others.”
A pair of burly, white-clad hospital orderlies were suddenly flanking him, as though the woman had conjured them from thin air. They took his arms in a firm grasp, lifting him between them so that his feet couldn’t touch the ground. Before he could protest, they had whisked him out of the room and into a long, sterile-looking white corridor.
“This way, sir,” said the one on his right. Julian saw that the man’s collar bore stitching in the shape of three letters: DEE.
“We’ve got the perfect place for you,” said the other one. DUMwas stenciled onto his collar.
They came to a stop before a small, open room whose broad entryway crackled with the telltale blue glow of a security force field. Four people stood, sat, or reclined in the chamber. As the orderlies placed Bashir on his feet and set about lowering the force field, one of the figures in the cell, a black-clad, goateed young man, leaped up onto a table. Atop his head was a wide-brimmed top hat. Tucked into the hatband was a large card bearing the inscription IN THIS STYLE 10/6.He regarded Julian in nervous silence, his eyes brimming with suspicion, his body bowstring-taut.
Julian knew he’d seen the hat before, as well as the lettering on the orderlies’collars. He supposed he’d seen both images, and perhaps some of the other oddities he’d encountered here, in the illustrations from some beloved children’s book whose title he could no longer recall.
The man in the hat, however, he recognized immediately.
“So who’s the new plebe, hmmm?” said the goateed man, his words spilling out like rapid-fire projectiles. “This is a private club, hmmm? We’re not accepting pledges at the moment. Try us again in a few months, hmmm?”
“Take it easy, Jack,” said one of the orderlies, standing in the entryway, the force field now down. Turning to address the other three people in the room, he said, “I want you all to meet Jules. You and he will be seeing a lot of each other from now on.”
“I’m notJules,” Bashir said to the orderlies, who did not appear interested in responding. “My name is Julian.”
“Hi,” said a rotund, sixtyish male with a fringe of wild white hair who stood in the center of the room. He was smiling beatifically and holding a bottle whose neck bore a tag emblazoned with the words DRINK ME.
“I’m Patrick,” he said to Bashir. “Don’t mind Jack here. They say he’s antisocial.” Patrick punctuated the last word by turning the first two fingers of both hands into pantomime quotation marks. “But Jack’s not like me. Or Lauren.” He gestured toward a corner divan on which a young, dark-haired woman was sprawled in a languorous pose.
“Charmed,” said the woman, her body’s contours concealed very little by her tight-fitting scarlet jumpsuit. She smiled up at Julian with a predatory glint in her eyes that made Julian blanch. A silver tea service was arranged on a table beside the divan, and she sat up and began filling a quartet of delicate porcelain cups. “Welcome to our little tea party.”
“I don’t belong here,” Julian said to the orderly nearest him, stammering as he groped for the right words. “These people are having…unintended side effects. From…from their genetic, ah, resequencing.”
The orderly smiled condescendingly. “That’s right, Jules. Just as youare. Or have you already forgotten why you’ve come here?”
Then Julian noticed the silent, sandy-haired young woman who sat alone on a straight-backed chair in the opposite corner. Her eyes were vacant, set in a delicately structured face as pale as a classical marble statue. Sarina Douglas,Julian thought, recalling how someone who looked very much like him had once helped her regain the ability to speak and interact with the world. The romance that they had almost shared now seemed dreamlike, as though it were a memory that belonged to someone else.
Sarina abruptly lifted her eyes and looked around the cell. “I wasn’t asleep,” she said, smiling broadly though her voice was hoarse and weak. “I heard every word you fellows were saying.” Then she locked her gaze with Julian’s. “I’m so glad you’ve decided to join us, Jules.”
“Get in, Jules,” said the smiling orderly.
“Now,” said the other one, who was scowling dangerously.
“No,” Julian said. He took a step back.
“You’re one of usnow, Jules,” Lauren said. Jack and Patrick grinned.
“No!”Julian screamed, backing away from the open cell. The two orderlies approached him. Both were scowling now, their thick biceps rippling beneath their short sleeves. The larger and meaner of the two grabbed for him. Julian twisted to the side without thinking, allowing the big man to overbalance himself and plunge hard onto the tile floor.
Before Julian could move farther, the second orderly had clasped him from behind in a bear hug, holding him fast as the first man began to regain his feet. Julian struggled, but simply didn’t have enough power or leverage to break free.
Suddenly, the orderly’s weight shifted, and the big man sank to his knees, releasing his grip. Julian pushed himself free, fell to the floor, and rolled into a crouch.
Jack gave out a long, ululating war whoop, his arms and legs wrapped around the orderly’s back and shoulders. Though the big man struggled to dislodge his rider, the wiry patient held on with the tenacity of a Tiberian bat.
The force field is still down,Julian realized as he regained his feet. The lunatics are out of the asylum.
He pounded away down the corridor at a flat-out run, a tumult of voices falling away behind him, but there was no immediate pursuit. After several minutes of running, the corridor widened into another room. It was a comfortably appointed lounge, where a man and a woman sat side by side on a low sofa, each of them reading silently. And studiously ignoring one another.
They were much younger than the way he remembered them, so much so that he almost failed to recognize them as Richard and Amsha Bashir, his parents. So intent were they on their respective reading material—Father pored over what appeared to be a blueprint of some sort, while Mother studied an old-fashioned hard-cover thriller—that they both failed to notice his entrance. Not at all unusual, really.A bitter smile came to his lips. Some things never change.
“Hello, Mother,” Julian said. “Father.”
Father looked up from his blueprint and offered Julian an uneasy smile. “Ah, there you are, Jules.”
Mother matched Father’s wan smile. “We were beginning to think you were lost.”
Julian said nothing. Iam lost,he thought, until he began recognizing some of the details of the room’s appointments. The corner chair, upholstered in a scaly gray leather made from the hide of some genetically altered beast. A bas-relief on the wall depicting one of the local eight-legged riding animals. Those details had been among the earliest trophies he’d placed in the Hagia Sophia.
I’m in the waiting room. On Adigeon Prime.
“Why have you brought me here again?” Julian said, glaring at his father.
A scowl creased Father’s swarthy features. “Because it’s necessary, Jules.”
“Because I turned out so dumb, you mean.”
Mother adopted a sad, long-suffering expression. “Because we want you to have a chance to lead a happy, fulfilled life, Jules. And once the procedures are done, that’s exactly what you’ll have.”
Julian struggled against his growing confusion. “We already did this once, Father. When I was six.”