For LUH it was different.
She sat alone in a completely dark compartment, too small to stand in. She could only sit with her knees up under her chin. She lost track of time. At first she couldn’t sleep, she was too terrified to even close her eyes. Then came hunger and finally exhaustion. She slept.
Hunger woke her. She felt weak, cramped. Her back ached horribly. Her arms and legs were tingling from lack of blood circulation.
A sound.
No, it was only the scrabbling of her own feet against the metal floor of the cell.
Destroyed. They were going to destroy her. She remembered the defense counsel, his flushed face, his slightly embarrassed expression when the Pontifex said, “Destroyed.”
The counsel had shrugged. “I did the best I could,” he had said.
Just like that. The best he could. Her life was going to be ended. It embarrassed him.
It was a sound. From outside. Shuffling… footsteps. A muffled voice. A laugh.
Suddenly light streamed down on her from overhead. Her eyes squinted and watered involuntarily.
“Come on now,” a man’s voice called down to her. “Don’t be bashful.”
She looked up, still squinting. She could barely make out his bulky outline against the unaccustomed light.
“Here, reach up. Don’t make me do all the work.”
Obediently she reached up, and a pair of strong hands grasped her arms and pulled her up out of the cell. It looked like a narrow hallway. The floor was studded with small, square hatches. Hers was the only open one.
“This way.”
The man gestured with one hand and nudged her shoulder in the direction he was pointing. She walked slowly, stumblingly, her legs aflame suddenly from the long cramped idleness.
She tripped on one of the hatch edges and nearly fell. But his strong arm circled her waist and held her up.
“That feel better?”
He was big, a tall thickset man with heavy features and stumpy teeth with spaces between them. He was grinning at her now, his face close enough for her to smell his breath.
“Th… thank you…”
He laughed and held her as they walked down the length of the hallway. He pushed a door open and LUH saw a small room, white and lit glarelessly from ceiling panels. No furniture except a single straight-backed chair in the middle of the room. No doors other than the one they came through.
“Sit,” the man commanded.
She went slowly to the chair and sat in it. It felt hard and cold. It faced away from the door.
Turning back toward him, she asked, “What… what’s going to happen?”
“You’ll see.”
Shaking inside, LUH sat there. She concentrated on trying to look unafraid. She forced herself to sit quietly, to keep her head erect and not turn around. But her hands, gripping the chair’s arms, were trembling.
She stared straight ahead. There was a viewscreen on the wall, she noticed for the first time.
Destroyed! The word kept ringing in her mind. When? How? Would it be here, in this room? Was he the executioner?
The door clicked open. Involuntarily, she turned in the chair and saw a second man step in—tall, hard-looking. Eyes directly on her.
She turned away from them and stared back at the viewscreen.
“That’s her?” asked the newcomer.
The first man must have nodded.
“Okay.”
The door opened again. Footsteps, and then the sound of the door closing. Then nothing. Biting her lips, LUH sat there unmoving. No sound at all except her own breathing, her own pulse hammering in her ears.
When she couldn’t stand it any more, she turned around again. The room was empty. She was alone.
She didn’t know whether to remain sitting there or not. She started to get up, but the door opened again and the men came back in, wheeling a holocamera on its dolly. Behind them were three robot policemen.
They set up the camera while she sat, terrified, watching them.
“Okay, we’re ready.”
The first man came up to her and gently pulled her by the arm out of the chair. “You won’t need this any more, pretty.” He grinned again and her knees almost gave way under her.
The sudden realization was like a flame in her innards. The holoshows he watched… the girl wasn’t a mannequin!
“Camera set?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, pretty, here’s your big chance in show business.”
LUH wanted to faint, to run, to scream. But she couldn’t move. She couldn’t make a sound.
The three robots circled around her. They each had chrome nightsticks in the belts of their uniforms. She felt, rather than saw, the cameramen grinning.
One of the robots grabbed her arms from behind her. She whimpered as another ripped her blouse open. They pulled the blouse off her shoulders, then tore off her pants and slippers. She stood there, naked, cowering, wanting to be dead.
“It’s all right, pretty. Don’t be afraid,” one of the cameramen said.
She turned toward the voice, and a robot slapped her in the face. Hard. She tasted blood. Her eyes stung and watered.
Then the beating began.
Control was reviewing data, coldly watching the results of the day’s work: economic indices, accident reports, arrests, awards, new production highs, consumption curves, graphs, charts, tables of numbers and cryptic symbols raced across his viewscreen wall faster than most eyes could follow.
He nodded as the data sped by.
The amber light on his desk communicator began flashing. He touched the BUSY indicator, but the light persisted.
Something important. Not red-alert, but someone had an urgent desire to speak to him.
It had better be truly urgent, he told himself as he interrupted the data flow.
A Mercicontrol doctor’s face appeared on the screen, much larger than life, frowning with professional concern.
“Sir, I’m terribly sorry to interrupt you…”
“Don’t waste my time,” Control snapped testily. “What is it? Speak.”
“I just received a laboratory report on a condemned felon, sir. Apparently the report was misfiled and it didn’t get to this station until…”
Huffing with impatience, Control said, “What is it?”
“The prisoner 3417, prefix LUN… no, sorry, it’s LUH. She was sentenced to be destroyed… sexact, drug evasion, natural-born…”
“Yes?”
“Well, sir, the laboratory report indicates that… well… she’s, um, pregnant, sir.” The doctor pronounced the repugnant word softly.
Control leaned back in his sculptured chair. “You’re certain of this?”
“Yes sir. No doubt about it. The fetus is at a very early stage, of course… but it’s definite.”
“Very well,” said Control. “Place the report in the proper file.”
“Yes sir. I… uh, I thought you’d want to know firsthand, sir.”
“Quite right.” Control cut the connection and the doctor’s face vanished from the viewscreen.
For a long moment Control sat staring at the wall, at the face of the First Control. Then he reached for the communicator switch again.
LUH lay in a pool of her own blood. She couldn’t see out of one eye, her lips felt numb, her whole mouth raw. The pain in her body had reached the point where it slid into numbness. She felt them kicking her, but the shock was gone. Agony had reached its maximum, her nerves couldn’t carry any greater intensity of pain.
“That’s enough,” a voice said. A sharp voice, accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed instantly.
“Clean her up and deliver her back to Mercicontrol,” the voice said.
LUH looked up too late to see who had spoken. The viewscreen on the wall was fading into darkness.
“Cut the camera,” one of the men said.
“Whew… these damned lights are hot.”
She felt one of them hauling her up and depositing her onto the chair again. She was dizzy, everything was blurring out of focus.
A man’s face swam into view, very close to her. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” He laughed.
“Clean her up, is it?”
“Plenty of time for that later. Mercicontrol won’t be in any hurry to get her.”
“Give her a whiff of this.”
Something pungent exploded in her face. She snapped her head back. They pressed a cold compress against her face.
“Not too bad… you still look kind of pretty.”
“Here…” A pair of pills were pushed past her swollen lips. “Swallow.”
She had to try several times before she could get them down. Almost instantly, though, the pain seemed to fade slightly. The room, the men, slid into reasonably sharp focus. Against one wall the robots stood deactivated, smeared with her blood.
“See, she’s coming around.”
“Ready to watch yourself on the viewscreen? Look!”
The screen brightened, and she saw herself—with THX. Sitting next to him on the contour seat in the holoroom. And then in bed with him.
“Look at that,” one of the men said.
“Really going at it.”
She tried to turn her face away, but they held her head. “Watch it! You enjoyed doing it then, why don’t you want to watch it?”
“No…” Her own voice sounded strange, strangled.
She tried to get out of the chair, but all she could do was slide to her knees. One of them pulled her head up, and she saw a man standing in front of her, naked, swollen, bestial.
“Try this one,” he said.
Control worked his communicator again and saw the room with LUH and her three jailors. She was slumped against the metal chair, gagging.
One of the jailors pulled her up and draped her across the arms of the chair.
Control shuddered. Why are the jailors worse than the criminals? If we didn’t need them… He sensed his pulse quickening as he watched. Well… as long as we can preserve the fetus, what difference how she’s destroyed? And he rocked back and forth, awash with pleasure, watching them.