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She hesitated. "First off . . . Well, I kind of got the impression you never
overloaded before. Can that be true?"
He had been asked often by other people and had always declared, "No, I. guess
I'm one of the lucky ones." And had believed his claim to be truthful. He had
seen victims of overload; they hid away, they gibbered when you tried to talk
to them, they screamed and struck out and smashed the furniture. These
occasional bouts of shaking and cramp and cold, aborted in minutes with one
tranquilizer, couldn't be what you'd call overload, not really!
But now he had sensed such violence in his own body, he was aware that from
outside his behavior must have paralleled that of a member of his Toledo
congregation, and his former chief at the Utopia consultancy, and two of his
colleagues at the three-vee college, and . . . Others. Countless others.
Trapped in fight-or-flight mode when there was no way to attain either
solution.
He sighed, setting aside his cup, and drove himself to utter an honest answer.
"Before, drugs have always straightened me in no time. Today well, somehow I
didn't want to think of taking anything . . . if you see what I mean."
"You never sweated it out before? Not even once? Small wonder this is such a
bad attack."
Nettled, he snapped back. "It happens to you all the time, hm? That's why
you're so knowledgeable?"
She shook her head, expression neutral. "No, it never did happen to me. But
I've never taken tranquilizers, either. If I feel like crying myself to sleep,
I do. Or if I feel like cutting classes because it's such a beautiful day, I
do that too. Ina overloaded when I was about five. That was when she and Dad
split up. After that she started riding constant herd on my mental state as
well as her own. But I got this association fixed in my mind between the pills
she took and the way she acted when she broke down
which wasn't pleasant so I always used to pretend I'd swallowed what she
gave me, then spit it out when I was alone. I got very good at hiding tablets
and capsules under my tongue. And I guess it was the sensible thing to do.
Most of my friends have folded up at least once, some of them two or three
times beginning in grade school. And they all seem to be the ones who had uh
special care taken of them by their folks. Care they'll never recover from."
Somehow a solitary fly had escaped the defenses of the kitchen. Sated, heavy
on its wings, it came buzzing in search of a place to rest and digest. As
though a saw blade's teeth were adding an underscore to the words, he felt his
next question stressed by the sound.
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"Do you mean the sort of thing Anti-Trauma does?"
"The sort of thing parents hire Anti-Trauma to do to their helpless kids!"
There was venom in her tone, the first strong feeling he had detected in her.
"But they were far from the first. They're the largest and best-advertised,
but they weren't the pioneers. Ina and I were having a fight last year, and
she said she wished she'd given me that type of treatment. Once upon a time I
quite liked my mother. Now I'm not so sure."
He said with weariness born of his recent tormented self-reappraisal, "I guess
they think they're doing the right and proper thing. They want their kids to
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be able to cope, and it's claimed to be a way of adjusting people to the
modern world."
"That," Kate said, "is Sandy Locke talking. Whoever you are, I now know for
sure that you're not him.
He's a role you've put on. In your heart you know what Anti-Trauma does is
monstrous . . . don't you?"
He hesitated only fractionally before nodding. "Yes. Beyond any hope of
argument, it's evil."
"Thank you for leveling with me at last. I was sure nobody who's been through
what you have could feel otherwise."
"What am I supposed to have been through?"
"Well, in your sleep you moaned about Tarnover, and since everybody knows what
Tarnover is like
"
He jerked as though he had been kicked. "Wait, wait! That can't be true! Most
people don't know
Tarnover exists!"
She shrugged. "Oh, you know what I mean. I've met several of their so-called
graduates. People who could have been individuals but instead have been
standardized filed down straitjacketed!"
"But that's incredible!"
It was her turn to be confused and startled. "What?"
"That you've met all these people from Tarnover."
"No, it's not. UMKC is crawling with them. Turn any wet stone. Oh, I
exaggerate, but there are five or six."
The sensations he had been victim of when he arrived threatened to return. His
mouth dried completely, as though it had been swabbed with cottonwool; his
heart pounded; he instantly wanted to find a bathroom. But he fought back with
all the resources at his command. Steadying his voice was as exhausting as
climbing a mountain.
"So where are they in hiding?"
"Nowhere. Stop by the Behavioral Sciences Lab and Say, Sandy!" She rose
anxiously to her feet.
"You'd better lie down again and talk about this later. Obviously it hasn't
penetrated that you're suffering from shock, just as surely as if you'd walked
away from a veetol crash."
"I do know!" he barked. "But there was someone from Tarnover sitting in with
the G2S selection board, and if they think to make a physical check of this
place . . . They thought of calling you up, didn't they?"
She bit her lip, eyes scanning his face in search of clues that were not to be
found.
"Why are you so afraid?" she ventured. "What did they do to you?"
"It's not so much what they did. It's what they will do if they catch me."
"Because of something you did to them? What?"
"Quit cold after they'd spent thirty million on trying to turn me into the
sort of shivver you were just describing."
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During the next few seconds he was asking himself how he could ever have been
so stupid as to say that. And with surprise so terrific it was almost worse
than what had gone before he then discovered he hadn't been stupid after all.
For she turned and walked to the window to peer out at the street between the
not-completely-closed curtains. She said, "Nobody in sight who looks
suspicious. What's the first thing they'll do if they figure out who you are
deevee your code? I mean the one you've been using at G2S."
"I let that out too?" he said in renewed horror.
"You let a lot out. Must have been stacking up in your head for years. Well?"
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"Uh yes, I guess so."
She checked her watch and compared it with an old-fashioned digital clock that
was among the few ornaments she had not disposed of. "There's a flight to Los
Angeles in ninety minutes. I've used it now and then; it's one that you can
get on without booking. By tonight we could be at "
He put his hands to his head, giddy again. "You're going too fast for me."
"Fast it's got to be. What can you do apart from being a systems rash?
Everything?"
"I . . ." He took an enormous grip on himself. "Yes, or damn nearly."
"Fine. So come on."
He remained irresolute. "Kate, surely you're not going to "
"Forget about school next year, abandon friends and home and mother, and
Bagheera?" Her tone was scathing. "Shit, no. But how are you going to make out
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