Table of Contents [Report This]
Printer Chapter or Story Microsoft Word Chapter or Story

- Text Size +

The Centre

            Miss Parker and the sweepers returned, panting and furious. “We missed him. They got away. Jarod and Major Charles were both here, and we missed him!” She glared at the sweepers.

            “That’s enough, Miss Parker,” Mr. Raines said. “Now that you’re here, you may as well accompany us to the Centre, in case Jarod and his father try something. We’re already behind schedule. You take your car and go ahead of us.”

            She swung around with a look of disgust. “Come on, Broots.”

            And the sweepers took Gem’s arms again, and they went back through the corridors. This time nothing stopped them, and for the first time Gem could remember, he was outside, and there was a breeze on his face, and he could hear a sound in the distance that he recognized as a cow. They were pushing him into a long black car, but he saw enough to hold inside him and treasure for a long time. Trees, chickens, clouds.

            Mr. Raines got in on one side of him, Willie on the other, and the other sweeper beside the driver in the front. Willie wrapped something across Gem’s lap and secured it at his side with a click. The doors closed off the cool outside air and the bright colors. The windows were very dark, and Gem could hardly see through them. He tucked his hands under his thighs to hide their shaking. He couldn’t let Mr. Raines see how excited and disturbed he was. He would either be pleased that he was disturbed about the Man or displeased that he was excited about being in a car. Gem tried to sit still, as he was taught, his head a little down to hide the way his eyes went from window to window, trying to glean any glimpse he could of that great outside. At the same time his mind was working at the problem of the Man, trying to figure out what it was about him that was so disturbing. It wasn’t the same kind of disturbance Mr. Raines wanted him to feel about him. It was that old feeling of familiarity, as if he should know the Man, know him as well as he knew himself. That combined with the fact that the Man was trying to kill him and had deprived him of any chance of knowing his parents made Gem’s mind go round frantically in circles, which he was not used to his mind doing.

            The black car drove up and down and around twists and turns, through dark trees Gem could only see the forms of through the darkened windows. Sometimes another car passed them. Willie kept his hand where Gem knew his gun was. Mr. Raines’ breathing was noisy beside him. At last the trees fell away, and there was a great, open expanse, dark grey through the windows. Gem wondered what it was. And then ahead they were coming up to a building, tall and long and beautiful, and the car stopped in its shadow. Mr. Raines got out; Willie undid the belt around Gem’s waist and pulled him out after him, and then Gem could hear a familiar sound and smell a completely unfamiliar smell. Now he knew what the open expanse was. He knew the sound of waves from a simulation he had done; it was the ocean! He tried to see it, but the building was in the way, and Mr. Raines and Willie were pulling him inside.

            Trying to reconcile himself to the loss of the outdoors he had only just discovered, Gem found consolation in the strangeness of the new building. It was beautiful, far more like places he had seen pictures of than like anything at Donoterase. It had long halls with high ceilings, the walls of beautiful stone that made the memory of the concrete walls at Donoterase all the drabber. Willie guided him into an elevator, and even the elevator had interesting walls of beautiful, rich shades of brown.

            But when the elevator doors opened after a long descent, Gem knew this place wasn’t so different from Donoterase after all. Donoterase had been all ugly green walls and blue lights, and here it was dark, oppressive grey, but it was just as drab and depressing. They took Gem through a large, grey room and into an only slightly smaller grey room. Willie opened a door and pushed Gem through it, into the considerably smaller room on the other side of the door.

            Gem stood and looked around it. It was smaller than the room he had had at Donoterase, long and narrow, holding only a bed, a chair, and a small stand for a lamp. There was no lamp. The walls and door were metal. The bed was against the long wall opposite the door, in front of a flat, lighted panel set into the wall. Gem knew what that was for. It was so he could be seen at all times, as was the long, narrow window at a little above his shoulder height in the wall next to the door. As he lay in his bed, anyone could come and look through the window at him. Was he supposed to do something interesting while he slept? With a quick glance around, he identified the one place in the room where he could be and no one could see him, in the far corner between the lamp-less stand and the wall, just beyond the reach of the long window. Though he wanted to go huddle himself into it, he knew he couldn’t, not now when he had just arrived and Mr. Raines was standing there. He turned around to look at Mr. Raines.

            “Welcome to the Centre,” Mr. Raines said, and Willie closed and locked the door.

            Gem slowly sat down on the edge of the bed. Just as slowly he lay down, as if he were tired. He wished he could turn his back on the window, but that wouldn’t do, either. The only thing he could do was wrap his arms around himself, close his eyes, and remember the drive, the clouds, the trees, the sound of the waves, and the chickens.










You must login (register) to review.