The Chromosomal Code, page 8
He grunted.
“Do you think they're really going to let us go where we please?”
He shrugged. “I don't know. Probably; they seem too smart to make such an obvious lie.”
“Did you believe that lecture?”
“Not all of it. I'm not sure what I should believe and what I shouldn't; I suppose we'll just have to wait and see.”
“I suppose so,” she said.
The nearest door opened, and a female voice called, “Next!” When no one moved immediately, a nearby zombie looked around, then pointed to Kathy.
“You next, kid,” he said.
Kathy stood where she was, looking at her mother.
“You go along,” Jenny said. “The doctor will look after you. Charlie will go next, and I'll be right behind him, and after we've all been examined we'll get back together again.”
Kathy still appeared reluctant, but when the zombie reached out for her arm she shook him off and marched through the doorway. Jenny, Charlie, and Starkman watched her go.
The door closed. Starkman tried to think of something to say, to renew the conversation, but nothing came.
After a few moments – a very few moments, Starkman realized, much less time than he would have expected a thorough checkup to take – the door opened again, and Charlie vanished through it.
Jenny followed in her turn, leaving Starkman next to the door and the obviously bored and fidgety zombie. He decided to be the next one in, in hopes of staying near the Saslovs, who were the closest thing to friends he had in the world, or was likely to find.
The door opened, the voice called “Next!”, and Starkman stepped forward.
Chapter Five
The examination room was small, less than three meters on a side. There was a privacy screen to the left, marking off the nearest corner, and a closed door in the center of the far wall. The entire right side of the room was jammed full of machinery, none of which Starkman could identify with any certainty. There was what appeared to be a computer keyboard and display, and at least one device had a pen that graphed something or other onto a moving sheet of paper. Several dials and displays were unlit and motionless.
The only other person in the room was presumably the doctor, a short dark woman in her thirties wearing a spotless white lab coat and with a stethoscope around her neck. Starkman wondered whether doctors still used stethoscopes, or just wore them as a badge of status.
“Hello,” she said, “I'm Dr. Curtis.”
Starkman nodded politely, but said nothing.
Visibly annoyed, the doctor asked, “What's your name?” She waved at the banks of machinery. “We like to keep complete medical records.”
“I'm John Starkman,” he replied.
“Good. Mr. Starkman, this shouldn't take very long; most of what we want to check will be done by analyzing a blood sample. I'll want to take a look at your eyes and ears and throat, and maybe listen to your heart; after that I'll check out any specific complaints you may have, aches or whatever, then take the blood sample and let you go. There are buses out back to take you to the temporary housing. Good enough?”
“Fine,” Starkman said with a shrug.
“Good. Then get over here where I can reach you and where the computer can see, and take off those silly sunglasses. It must be dark outside by now, anyway; you won't need them.”
He had been dreading this moment. He started to protest that he didn't need to have his eyes checked, but changed his mind. It would be undignified to make a fuss, and he was sure that he wasn't going to convince the doctor to change her routine without any explanation. Reluctantly, he removed the glasses and put them in his coat pocket.
The doctor had glanced over at the machinery; when she glanced back and saw his eyes, she froze.
He waited for the inevitable questions about what was wrong with him, but they didn't come; instead, she said, slowly and loudly, “Max, cancel the record of this patient's name; we got it wrong. And please give me complete privacy. There's a personal matter I want to take care of.”
“Yes, doctor,” answered a voice from the bank of machinery.
“Max, I want privacy for us both.”
There was no answer. She cast a suspicious look at the computer display, then turned back to Starkman.
“Look,” she said urgently, “just do what I say without any questions. Put your glasses back on, and keep them on. Don't let anybody see your eyes. Now, I want you to go back into the waiting line, and wait until everybody else has gone through, then come back here, to me. Don't let any other doctor see you. This is important. Don't let anybody see your eyes.”
Starkman was utterly confused. “What about the zombies? They won't let me back in line, will they?” he asked as he restored the sunglasses to their accustomed place.
“You mean the Imperials? They will if I tell them to.”
Starkman wanted to ask further questions, but Dr. Curtis was already dragging him back to the door he had entered through. Before he could decide what to say she had opened it and was gesturing to the nearest of the blue-clad young men.
“Listen, stupid,” she said, “this man's a special case. I want him to come last, so I won't have to rush him, okay?”
The zombie looked puzzled. “He's not supposed to come back this way.”
“Look, it's all right, okay? I told him to, and I'm telling you to let him. I haven't examined him yet; I want him to be last. Understand?”
The man still looked doubtful, but he said, at last, “Well, okay, if you say so.”
“I say so. Next!”
Another captive was shoved forward as Starkman made his way back up the corridor to a quiet corner near the auditorium door.
The crowd in the passageway slowly thinned as, one by one, the captured people were called into the examining room. Starkman hung back, as he had been told, trying to ignore the attention the zombies – or Imperials, as Dr. Curtis called them – were giving him.
Finally the last of the others vanished through a doorway, leaving him alone with two dozen Imperials.
A door opened, and a white-haired man leaned out into the corridor. “Is that it?” he asked.
“There's one more,” one of the zombies said.
“I'm waiting for Dr. Curtis,” Starkman called from his corner.
The doctor turned to look at him. “I can take you now, if you like.”
“That's all right, I'll wait.”
The doctor shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said as he withdrew and closed the door.
A moment later Dr. Curtis's door opened; she leaned out and beckoned to him. He hurried into the examination room; she said as she closed the door, “I was afraid the next batch would arrive before I got to you.”
He said nothing.
“They aren't due for another fifteen minutes, but sometimes Carl rushes his talk. That gives us maybe ten minutes to get out of here.” She crossed to the computer keyboard, punched a button, and spoke into a grille. “Max, I'm through for the night, and the last straggler has gone through; send the buses on without me, I'm going to walk home. Get somebody else in here for the last group if you need to; I've had it. Got that?”
“Yes, doctor,” said the machinery.
“If anyone asks for me, I'm not available, not to be bothered.”
“Yes, doctor.”
“Good. Now, I want you to erase all visual records from today, and then shut off this terminal for the night.”
“Yes, doctor.” There was a faint click.
Curtis crossed to the other door, opened it, and leaned out. Starkman saw that it led into another corridor paralleling the one he had waited in for so long. After looking both ways, and with a final glance back at the computer, Curtis stepped out into the passage and beckoned to Starkman.
“Come on, quickly,” she ordered.
Starkman hesitated. “Why? What're you doing?”
“I'll explain later; right now we've got to hurry. Come on!”
Reluctantly, he obeyed, and the doctor led the way down the corridor, through a door marked authorized personnel only in six languages, and into a small, clean locker room. There she removed her lab coat and flung it aside, then opened and rummaged through one of the lockers.
The coat landed in a heap in a corner. Underneath she wore jeans and a light-tan sweater.
She emerged from the locker with a large handbag and a flashlight, then paused, frowning.
“Is there anything else I need?” she asked.
“How should I know?” Starkman replied.
“I haven't got time. Come on.” Moving quickly, she led the way out another door, down a short passageway, and out into semitropical moonlight.
Seeing the great copper orb in the sky, Starkman wondered what a tropical moon had looked like before the climate changed. Had the lower temperatures affected its appearance?
He didn't know, and it didn't matter.
They were on a sidewalk; a street ran in front of them, along the side of the Welcome Center from the gate of the spaceport and off into the distance in the direction Starkman believed led to the city of Capital. It was lined with street lights that competed with the moon in yellow warmth. On the other side of the roadway from where they stood he could see nothing but forest.
Dr. Curtis marched directly across the street and into the forest.
Starkman followed, hesitantly, and found that she was standing at the end of a path that vanished amidst the trees. It curved back upon itself and ended behind a clump of bushes, so as to be virtually invisible from the sidewalk or most of the road.
Behind him he heard the sound of engines, purring smoothly; he turned back and saw a sleek bus pulling out of a lot behind the Welcome Center onto the road, bound for Capital.
“You were supposed to be on that,” Curtis whispered. “Now come on.” She clicked on the flashlight and led the way into the forest.
The trail wound through the trees and brush in an irregular serpentine, and Dr. Curtis hurried along it with the ease of total familiarity, hardly even using her light. Starkman struggled to keep up, ducking low-hanging branches that loomed black against the moon, missing unexpected turns, and stumbling over roots and rocks that were invisible in the darkness.
He noticed the calling of nightbirds and the sounds of other creatures going about their own business in the forest around him, as if it were seething with life. In Pennsylvania there had been nothing to hear in the night except the wind and the hissing of snow drifting beneath the cold dead stars, and a moon that was as white and harsh as the one above him now was golden and welcoming.
There had once been birds in Pennsylvania, of course, but they had disappeared so gradually, over a period of years, that he had never noted their absence in the years since they vanished for good.
Starkman was so busy watching the path and listening to the animal noises that he didn't see the buildings until just before he emerged from the forest into the clearing that surrounded them.
There were three of them, immense ramshackle structures of plywood and corrugated metal. Each stood three or four stories high, and was easily forty meters on a side, probably more. They were weatherbeaten and, even by moonlight, in obvious disrepair; grass and weeds grew knee high between the strips of pavement that twined around them and led off in various directions. The forest of trees was mirrored in a forest of old lamp standards, but the lights were mostly dark, and the few that still worked at all managed no more than a feeble fluorescent flickering.
There was a sudden loud rumble from off to his left, and Starkman realized that he was still quite close to the landing field, where a ship was lifting off. He could see the glow of bright white lights through the trees, but could make out no detail beyond the mere fact of their presence.
Dr. Curtis paid no attention to the ship or the lights, but led him toward the nearest of the three buildings. A sign over the door, faded from weather and hard to make out clearly in the semi-darkness, said “Welcome” in a dozen languages.
At the threshold Starkman stopped.
“What is this place?” he demanded. “Why did you bring me here?”
Curtis stopped where she was, halfway down a short unlit passage; she turned and said, “Come inside and I'll tell you.”
Starkman took two steps forward into the gloom. “I'm inside,” he announced.
Curtis sighed. “Wouldn't you rather come in and be comfortable?”
“Not until I know where I am and what's going on.”
“You're in the old processing center; it's been abandoned for about two years now, so we're using it as a meeting place.”
“Who's using it? Why was this place abandoned?”
Curtis stared at him for a moment. “Look, I'm tired,” she said at last. “Can't we go inside and sit down to talk?”
“Sit on the floor; I'm not tired.”
Wearily, she did as he suggested, leaning back against one wall and sliding down into a sitting position. Starkman watched silently. He noticed for the first time that light was seeping through into the passage from somewhere inside the building, leaking around the edges of a pair of fire doors and pouring thinly through two small windows in the doors, as if there were lights two rooms away.
She looked up at him. “Tired or not, you might want to get comfortable.”
“I'm fine.”
“Okay. Look, Mr. Starkman, you heard that phony lecture Carl gave, right?”
“I heard the lecture.”
“Did you believe it?”
“Not all of it.”
“Well, I don't know what you believed and what you didn't, but it's all a clever bunch of lies mixed up with half-truths. Some of us realized that, and we've formed an underground organization dedicated to driving these filthy aliens off our planet. Are you interested?”
Cautiously, he replied, “I might be.”
“I brought you here because I thought you could help us.”
“I might. Keep talking.”
“I don't know what else to tell you.”
“You could start by telling me what these buildings were for, and why they've been abandoned when the warm countries are supposed to be hopelessly over-populated.”
“Oh, hell, the world's not that crowded; nobody wants to live next to the landing field and put up with the noise. I suppose they might want to farm the land here eventually, but so far it hasn't been worth the trouble of clearing out what's left of the jungle. It's easier to use the oceans and deserts.”
As if to confirm what she said, Starkman's next question was drowned out by the roar of another ship. When it had passed he repeated, “What were the buildings for?”
“Processing centers, same as the one you came through. They don't need them anywhere this big anymore, since there are only a few of you diehards left to do, so they built the little one and left these to rot. We decided they'd make a handy meeting place.”
“What were they processing? Did they find that many people up north?”
“Who said anything about up north? Mr. Starkman, they put every damn human being they could find through their damn processing. So far as I know, except for the crowd they've got in that lecture hall right now, you're the only human being in Brazil they haven't processed.”
“I don't understand.”
“Look, why don't you sit down?”
Reluctantly, Starkman complied, seating himself on the floor a meter or two away from her.
“That's better. Now, one thing that's mentioned in that lecture Carl gives six times a day is that they have medical records on everybody, right?”
“Right.”
“How do you think they got those records? When they first arrived, before they did anything else, they had these centers built, not just here, but all over the world. Before they started farming deserts or building floating cities or any of that stuff, they built these centers, and they started putting people through them. They heard that lecture, or one like it; you got the updated version for North American survivors. It was originally a lot shorter and simpler, just saying that they were here to save us. Then every person who had sat through the talk got a medical exam, and blood samples were taken and sent aboard the ships. When that was over, everybody got marked so that the government they were setting up could tell who they'd done and who they hadn't.” She held out her right hand. “You can't see it without one of their special readers, but I've got a serial number tattooed on the back of my hand here, and so does everyone else they've processed. At least, everyone who's got a right hand has it there; the rest get it on the forehead. It's part of my job to put it there; they've got it all mechanized so it takes about two seconds and doesn't hurt.” She smiled wryly. “There are a few of the more religious folk who say that all the serial numbers are the same, just three digits – six-sixty-six. I don't think that's true, myself, but maybe it might as well be.”
Starkman sat and considered this for a moment, puzzled. “I don't get it,” he said. “Why are they doing that? What do they get out of it?”
“We don't know. They say they just want to be sure they give everyone a checkup, to prevent any nasty diseases from slipping through undetected.”
“Maybe that's the truth.”
“Maybe it is, but we don't like it, whether that's the truth or not. What it means is that they've got everyone on file, everyone numbered. You can't enter a government office anywhere, for anything, without being checked to see that you've got a number. You can't get a job most places without it. You can't get to their new cities. You can't use their transport systems. That's the wonderful freedom they promised us.”
“But all they do is give a lecture and a checkup, and then you get your number?”
“That's about it, yeah. But don't forget the blood samples. They won't let us mere human doctors analyze them, you know; if we so much as take a type we get fired. They all get sent aboard those damn ships, and if there's anything that needs treatment we get a report – except that actually it's more like a command from on high. They won't tell us anything about the samples, not so much as the Rh factor; that might invade somebody's privacy.”
