Eric nodded. “How soon do I get out of here?”
The Major laughed. “Well, we didn’t expect your decision for another half hour. It will take that long to get ready. But I took the liberty of sending for your entire family. Your sisters are very anxious to see you. I’ll send them in now, and that will help pass the time.”
“All right. Thank you.”
As Nicole stood up and the door opened, Eric stepped back and bowed slightly, then lifted his hand in salute. “Well, Nicky,” he said with mock solemnity, “here’s to a great partnership.”
Chapter 11
Becky shot through the door first, with Lori close on her heels, and they nearly bowled Eric over as they leaped into his outstretched arms. He swung them both around once, like sacks of flour under each arm, then dumped them on the bed, making them squeal with delight. In two quick steps he was to Stephanie and swung her off the floor too.
“Eric,” she laughed, “put me down.” He did, but only so he could encircle his mother with his other arm and squeeze them both.
“Hello, son,” Madeline Lloyd said with a huskiness in her voice. “Travis told us the news about your release. That’s wonderful.”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
Stephanie spoke up. “Travis said you’ll be trained for four weeks, and then you’ll get leave. We’ll be anxious to see you.”
He nodded, then turned and squatted down. “So what have my two favorite young ladies been up to?”
The girls came to him and put their arms around his neck, one sitting on each knee. “Oh, Ricky,” Lori said, “it’s so neat here. We went to the park yesterday, and they have swings—real swings, not just ropes and boards—and a slide, and teeter-totters, and a merry-go-round.” Her face wrinkled up with joy. “It’s so neat!”
“I got dizzy on the merry-go-round,” Becky said, holding her head and rolling her eyes around.
“Oh you did, did you?” Eric laughed.
“Yeah, and guess what, Ricky.” Her eyes were like two luminous brown saucers.
“What?”
“You can get ice cream here any time you want. Even in summer.”
“Really?” he said, giving her a look of serious doubt.
“Yes, real ice cream.”
Lori leaped off his knee and opened the blue metal door in the wall. “Oh look, Becky, Ricky has his own bathroom. And a shower too.” Becky jumped off his knee and followed her sister.
Eric stood up and turned to his mother. “Do they know about their implantation?”
“Yes, I’ve tried to explain it to them. I thought I’d better.”
“And?”
She looked down and bit her lower lip. “Yesterday, Becky jumped off the teeter-totter and let Lori clunk on the ground pretty hard. She flashed out at Becky, like any normal child would, and one second later she was writhing on the ground in pain.”
“Tell him about last night,” Stephanie said quietly, noting the fury in Eric’s eyes.
Madeline took a deep breath, then sighed. “About midnight, Lori woke up vomiting. At first I thought it was something she had eaten. But as nearly as we can figure, she had a dream about Billy Maddox. He was teasing her, as he usually did at school. In her dream she got so angry, she hit him.”
Eric stared at her. “You mean that even a dream can set this thing off?”
“Yes, if it’s real enough.”
“I can’t believe it.” He nearly turned to glare at the mirror, then caught himself.
“Becky!” Madeline had turned and was looking past Eric. “What are you doing?”
Becky had pushed the stool up to the washbasin and was looking at the things on the shelf above it. “What’s up here, Ricky?”
“That’s just my shaving stuff. Get down before that stool tips over.”
“What’s this?” She waved a brightly colored object.
Eric looked more closely, puzzled for a moment. “Oh, that’s a candy bar from my dinner tray last night.”
Becky jumped down, waving the bar. “Can I have it, Ricky? Can I?”
Eric started to nod, but before he could say yes, Lori’s hand snaked out and snatched the bar. “No, I get it.”
Becky’s reaction was as swift as Lori’s hand. “Give me that!” she yelped, and, doubling up her fists, she pounced on Lori’s back. But even as she lit, she gasped, her body contorted wildly for one second, and she collapsed into a crumpled heap on the floor.
“Becky!”
Eric wasn’t sure if his mother or Stephanie had screamed, but he beat both of them to the still form on the floor. He scooped her up, her legs, arms, and head dangling limply.
“Becky!” Madeline cupped the small head in her hands and lifted one eyelid with her thumb, but the eye was rolled clear back in the socket. She took the limp body from Eric’s arms. “Get help, Eric. Quick!”
But even as Eric turned, the door whisked open and Travis darted into the room. “Bring her here,” he commanded, shouldering Eric aside. “Stephanie! Lori! You come too. Let’s go!”
As they hurried out, he straight-armed Eric back into the room. “You’ve got to stay here. We’ll let you know as soon as we find out what’s wrong.”
Too stunned to resist, Eric stared at the door as it slid closed again.
“Eric?” It was Nicole’s voice. He half turned to the mirror.
“I’ll go down to the infirmary and find out how she is. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” The speaker crackled softly as she clicked off the mike.
It was nearly half an hour later before Nicole slipped into the observation room. The soft pop of the speaker jerked Eric around from his erratic pacing in the cell.
“Nicole?”
“Yes, it’s me,” she answered, still breathing hard from her swift pace back from the infirmary. “She’s fine, Eric. Everything’s okay.”
His shoulders sagged visibly as the air whooshed out of him in a great sigh of relief. “What happened?”
“They aren’t sure, but the doctor thinks the implantation may have been programmed too high.”
“What?”
“She’s small for her age. The stimulation triggered by her anger should have given her only a light dose of pain. Instead it was strong enough to knock her unconscious.”
“And if it had been slightly higher than that?” His voice was low and caused a shiver to run up Nicole’s spine.
“But it wasn’t. She’s fine now.”
“She could have been killed, couldn’t she?”
“Eric, she is fine. Stop torturing yourself.”
“I want to see her.”
“You can’t right now.”
“I want to see her now!” His face was murderous, and again she felt a sudden sweep of fear.
“That’s impossible. They’ve taken her back to the hospital for surgery to correct the—” She broke off, realizing instantly that she had made a serious error.
“To correct what, Miss Lambert?”
Her hand came up to her mouth as she stared at the raging in his eyes, so evident even through the darkened glass.
“To correct what?” he thundered, making the speaker crackle with the overload of sound.
“They’re going to reimplant her,” she said in a half whisper. “Correct the error.”
He swung around like a raging bull, looking for some kind of a weapon. In one swift motion he had the wooden stool by one leg and took a step toward her.
“Eric! Put the stool down.” She jabbed at the alarm button and heard the buzzer out in the hall start to sound. “Put it down, or I’ll have to trigger your Punishment Mode.”
“Do your best, lady!” he shouted, hurling the stool with all the pent-up fury that had been building up in him. Nicole instinctively ducked even as she leaned on the red button on the console marked PM.
The stool smashed against the mirror, and Nicole heard the sharp crack of glass. An intricate spider’s web instantly appeared. She stared through it in horrified fascination, as he stagg
ered backwards, his whole left side twisting like an overwound spring.
“Is that the best you can do, Nicky?” he gasped, as he careened sideways, nearly losing his balance. But incredibly, he came up with the stool in his right hand. She could clearly hear him gasping in agony as the jolts from his wrist computer hit him again and again. Like a discus thrower in slow motion, he whirled once, and the stool came hurtling at her again.
Nicole threw up her arm as the glass shattered with a roar, spraying her with a stinging rain of a thousand tiny missiles. She spun around and dove for the stun gun in a rack near the door. For nearly thirty seconds she remained frozen, crouched in a firing position, but when no figure loomed to confront her, she straightened up slowly and peered through the shattered glass. Eric was lying in a twisted mass on the floor, not moving. Suddenly Nicole’s knees were so weak they wouldn’t support her, and she sat down quickly in her chair. Her heart was pounding so violently that she could feel it throbbing even in her fingertips.
A few moments later the door burst open, and Travis darted into the room. She started to give him a nonchalant wave, but then she realized her hand was trembling so violently that it would instantly give her away, and she stuck it down her lap. “Hi,” she managed, forcing a smile. “Have you got a broom?”
“Are you okay, Nicole?” the Major demanded, as he joined them at the table in the cafeteria.
“Yes, I’m fine. I—”
He clenched his fist and smacked it into his palm. “I can’t believe how stupid, how utterly stupid this boy is. Right on the verge of freedom, and he pulls this.”
“Sir,” Nicole said, “if it weren’t for his sister, I don’t think—”
“I know,” he snapped impatiently, “but we can’t have someone who goes berserk on us, even in a crisis.”
Suddenly, to her amazement, Nicole wanted to defend Eric Lloyd, the sight of Becky collapsing into a heap on the floor still vivid in her mind. “Major,” she said evenly, “I know that what he did is unacceptable, but I think what happened was very unusual provocation.”
“Agreed,” he conceded reluctantly. “Travis, I want to know who implanted his sister and why she was overprogrammed.”
“I’ve already ordered an investigation.”
“Good. Everything we do with this young man seems to be botched up. If we do turn him around, it’ll be a wonder.”
Nicole’s head shot up. “You mean you’re not rejecting him?”
“Oh, no. We’ll give him one more shot at it. But starting right now, I want a twenty-four-hour monitor of his movements kept in Central Control. If he so much as tweaks his nose in the wrong direction, that will be it. We’ll slap a Stage Three implantation on him.”
Even Travis’s eyes widened at that. Nicole knew personally of only five in Shalev who had ever received Stage Three—two vilelooking men caught trying to penetrate the Outer Perimeter, and three others declared to be incurable psychopaths.
“Nicole, I want you to oversee the monitoring of his movements. Check the tapes every day.” The Major turned to Travis. “Who’ll be his training officer? Have you decided yet?”
“Clayne Robertson.”
“Ah, yes, a good choice. Have you told him yet?”
“I was briefing him when Eric went off his gourd.”
“I want Clayne to actually move in with Lloyd until we’re perfectly satisfied he’s turned. We’ll give him a month and then decide whether to lift the implantation.”
“You’re going to implant him?” Nicole blurted, feeling her stomach drop.
“Of course,” the Major said, surprised at her question.
“But you said you were going to give him another chance.”
“We are, but not without implantation. We can’t risk any more outbursts.”
“Oh.” Nicole dropped her eyes under his probing gaze.
“Can we?”
“No, sir, of course not. I don’t want to face any more flying stools.”
“You seem bothered by that, Nicole. Why?”
She considered that, noting again that it was not images of Eric that she saw, but of his mother and sisters. “I think surprised is a better word,” she said, looking up to meet his gaze. “When you said you were going to give him another chance, I assumed you meant with the same status.”
“Stage One or Stage Two?” Travis broke in, winning a grateful look from Nicole.
“Stage Two.” The Major glanced at his watch. “In fact, it should be done by now. That’s why we’ve got to turn him in a hurry. If we wait very long, he’ll be so conditioned to it that he’ll lose his value to us. So get Clayne on it now. He’ll be out of sedation within the hour.”
Travis straightened, aware that the interview was over. “Yes, sir. Consider Eric Lloyd under control from this point on.”
Chapter 12
Nicole watched wide-eyed as Clayne Robertson polished off his third piece of pie and washed it down with the last of a quart of milk. She turned to his wife and shook her head. “Adrienne, you must spend your whole life cooking.”
Adrienne Robertson smiled, the well-formed, white teeth a startling contrast to her ebony-brown skin. She looked at her husband with obvious pride and fondness. She was lighter skinned than he, and as slender as he was muscular, with delicately shaped features and jet-black hair that was fluffed into a short but full Afro cut.
Clayne smiled back at his wife. They were in the comfortable, modern dining room of the Robertson apartment, lingering over the remains of dinner. He turned to Nicole. “If you don’t put fuel in the boilers, you won’t get any power in the turbines.”
Nicole laughed. “Turbines are a good analogy. I’ll bet you burn more fuel than an ocean-going liner.”
He gave a deep chuckle and patted his stomach in easy contentment. An ocean-going liner wasn’t too far off, Nicole decided. A former middle linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers, Clayne was built like a fifty-gallon oil drum. Central Supply had his uniforms specially tailored to cover the massive shoulders and thick legs. He had no neck, just a square block of a head precariously stuck on his shoulders. Football was not played anymore in the Alliance of Four Cities, because a player had been killed some years before. He had smacked helmets with another player with particular force, and the implantation had misfired into his brain. But Nicole had seen movies of football games, and it caused her to shudder slightly when she thought about running headlong into this bull of a man.
“Tell you what,” he rumbled good-naturedly, “if you’re so worried about Adrienne, tell the Major to pull me off this babysitting job and let me come back home before she gets out of practice.”
“Oh, no,” Adrienne said quickly, her dark eyes teasing. “I miss you. But I figure I’ve saved enough out of my food budget in the last four weeks to buy a new car. I say let the Guardians feed you another two weeks, and we’ll be completely out of debt.”
A deeply hurt expression flattened Clayne’s features even more. Then suddenly he lunged forward, causing the dishes on the table to jump and Adrienne to squeal as he caught her arm. “So that’s how it is, huh?” he growled.
“Clayne!” she wailed, as she tried to pull free. “Let me go!”
“Buy a new car, huh? Get out of debt, huh?”
“Clayne! You’ll wake the children. Nicole! Help!”
But Nicole just waved her away, laughing too much to render even psychological assistance.
Suddenly Clayne sobered, and Adrienne instantly followed. She leaned forward and gazed into his eyes. The meat-cleaver hands came up and brushed at her cheeks gently, and Nicole looked away, embarrassed to witness such open and unabashed love between two people. She knew that she and Travis were moving in that direction, but they weren’t there yet. Few people she knew were.
“Forget the car,” Adrienne said softly. “Just come home again. Okay?”
“I will, soon as we get this young bronco tamed. You know that.”
Slightly flustered at her own emotions, Adrien
ne put her hand over Clayne’s and turned to Nicole. “How soon are you going to let this man of mine go?”
She shook her head. “Clayne can answer that better than I. The training period is over now, but until Eric has proven himself on the job, the Major wants Clayne to stay with him. I’d say another two weeks probably.”
“Did they ever move his family up to Stage One?” Adrienne asked.
“No. Because of that little show with the stool, the Major insists that he totally prove himself first. Eric still has a Stage Two.”
Clayne stood up and motioned to them. “Let’s go in the living room to talk.”
They moved into the next room and sat down, Clayne and Adrienne on the couch, Nicole in a comfortable chair facing them. “Well, I know he’s a challenge,” Adrienne said, once they were settled, “but I think he’s nice. The kids just love him.”
Without thinking, Nicole pulled a face.
Clayne laughed. “I don’t think Nicole is quite as taken with Eric as you are, dear.”
“Why?”
“He’s insolent, arrogant, and totally self-centered,” she shot back.
“Translated, that means he takes particular delight in needling his Monitoring Officer,” Clayne explained. “And he has a peculiar talent for that. And as if that weren’t enough, the first day on the job he nearly decked her fiancé.”
“Your fiancé?” Adrienne cried.
“Yes—Travis. If I hadn’t pulled him off—”
“You lunkhead,” Adrienne said, smacking Clayne’s leg with her fist. “You didn’t tell me Nicole was engaged.”
“Oh. I meant to when I called you last night.”
“You,” she said, doubling up her fist at him. Then she turned to Nicole. “When?”
“Night before last. We get the rings next week.”
“That’s wonderful. Had I known, we’d have made Travis come tonight in spite of his meeting. Have you set a date yet?”
Nicole shrugged. “No, not yet. Travis thinks we ought to be engaged for a little while before we make final plans.”
“Ah, cold feet already,” Clayne teased.