James P. Hogan Giants 4 Entoverse

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her back, staring up at a strange ceiling.
The transition was as abrupt and as disorientating as that. She had no
awareness of anything that had happened in between, not even a sensation of
time having passed. It was as if a piece had been cut out of a recording tape
in her head and the ends spliced cleanly together again.
For what must have been several minutes, she lay regrouping her scattered
thoughts and trying vainly to coax an ounce of a recollection from the gap in
her impressions. But there was nothing. Her train of memory was like the trace
of a recording clock that had lost power and then started again sometime
later, after what could, for all the information she had to go on, have been a
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moment or a year.
She raised her head and saw that she was still dressed as she had been;
she was lying on a couch and covered to the waist by a light blanket. The room
was warm and clean, furnished simply with chairs, table, closet, and vanity,
and embellished with a few strangely styled ornaments, and some pictures on
the walls. It felt more like what could have been a spare room in any private
house than a hospital. But there was a trace of an odor permeating the place,
which suggested, if anything, a kind of incense. She could detect no sign of
any injury, and concluded that she hadn't been in an accident. Therefore her
amnesia had been induced deliberately; somebody didn't want her to know where
she was or how she'd gotten there.
Which said she was probably a prisoner.
She tried moving and found there was no restraint. But when she got up and
crossed the room to try the door, it was locked. She turned to look at the
surroundings again, and noticed the standard Jevlenese companel by the couch,
similar to the one she had seen in Baumer's office. "ZORAC, are you there?"
she said aloud on impulse. "Can you hear me?" There was no response. "Channel
fifty-six...Activate channel fifty-six..." Nothing. She went back to the couch
and sat down to try and make something of the panel's manual controls, but
without result. On reflection it seemed a pretty silly kind of hope, anyway.
Then, all at once, the utter isolation of her predicament came home to her.
She felt her resolve slipping, and fear taking over despite herself.
Suddenly she wanted to be back in Seattle again, among her own things, knowing
that familiar places and scenes lay outside the walls. She picked up the
blanket and pulled it around her shoulders, knowing that the room wasn't
especially cool, but unable to feel warm. So much for curiosity and an
interesting life. If she got back okay after this, she decided, from now on
she'd join the local women's club and get all the excitement she needed from
the soaps.
A prisoner, then, of whom? It could only be the Jevlenese organization,
whatever it was, that Baumer was mixed up with. It was clear now that he had
been acting under instructions from them when he called her. Whether he had
known their exact intentions or purpose made little difference. She stared at
the door and thought of the countless movie sequences she had seen, telling
her what to do in this kind of situation: wait behind it for a guard to come
in with a tray of food, surprise and overpower him, and then contrive an
escape. Simple. Nothing could have seemed more ridiculous.
Then, as if triggered by her very thinking about it, the door opened.
For a moment, Gina wondered if she was in a VISAR-created world for some
reason. There would have been no way of telling the difference.
But the person who came in wasn't a guard with a tray. It was a woman in a
loose green trouser-suit gathered at the ankles and secured in the middle by a
wide belt. Her features were loose and fleshy, and her hair was streaked with
gray and tied severely behind her head. With her was a shortish man in a
straight-cut coat of gray trimmed with blue, whom Gina had no reason to know
was Eubeleus's aide, Iduane.
They stood looking curiously at her for a few seconds. She stared back with
what she hoped was a passable imitation of defiant indifference; inside,
something in her chest was turning backflips.
"So, again you are with us," the woman said. Her manner was matter-of-
fact, dispassionate. "A resetting of the short-term neural circuits. Nothing
that you should worry about. You simply lose a few unimportant memories. Some
people's take longer to reintegrate than others." The words were coming from
her mouth. She was speaking her imperfect, accented English naturally, Gina
realized.
"How -- " Gina's throat had gone dry. She forced saliva into her mouth and
tried again. "How long have I been here?"
"Not long. Under a day, a little."
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Too passive, Gina told herself. She was starting to react submissively
already. "You've no right to keep me for any time at all," she said, mustering
some firmness and straightening up. "I demand -- "
"Oh, please not to waste time with the theatrics," the woman said. "This is [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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