Go To Part Three
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“I gonna die of old age 'fore we get t' this place,” DelMonde complained as he and Dr. Rendell continued to make their way slowly towards the temple district. “It gonna kill these folks t' walk at normal speed?”
“Considering how tranquilized most of them are,” the Haven replied, nodding towards a particularly befuddled citizen across the avenue. “It might.”
The poor soul was staring longingly through a shop window. He ran his hands gingerly over first one pane of glass then the other, seemingly unable to figure out how to get into the shop itself until one of the clerks finally came out to render assistance.
“Now there’s truth in advertizing,” Rendell said, nodding towards a place of business ahead of them on their side of the street.
Under a shop sign bearing a logo that featured a happy man smoking a cigarette, stood a very, very happy man smoking a cigarette.
“I’m surprised they smoke here.” The Haven wrinkled her nose pityingly at the prim Landrans around them. “They seem so hopelessly lacking in all the more civilized vices.”
“I surprised they…” Del broke off and sniffed the air. “Am I smellin' rigellian?”
Rendell smiled as the familiar odor of this popular mild narcotic curled around them. “Am I smelling profit?”
“I t'ink -- as official representatives of th' Federation -- that we under obligation t' check this shit out,” the Cajun pronounced solemnly.
“I concur completely, Mr. DelMonde,” the doctor agreed in the same spirit.
The shop was infused with the rich aroma of old wood and finely toasted leaves that no metal-plated Starbase humidor could ever approximate. The two officers from the Drake took a moment to breathe in this rare, delicious ambiance as they surveyed the shelves lined with well-stocked jars and boxes. The sweet smell of rigellian led them to a counter marked with large white symbols.
“That letter inside a white circle indicates this is a licensed pharmacy,” Rendell informed her fellow officer quietly, “So this is medicinal rigellian… but…” She sniffed the row of cigarettes in decorative box on the counter expertly. “It doesn’t smell like it’s medical grade.”
“This is the best we have.” A sallow-faced clerk who looked like he was at the most eighteen or nineteen pointedly pulled back the box and then held out his hand. “Script,” he demanded.
“Script?” DelMonde repeated. “There be a script?”
“Prescription,” Rendell translated. “He wants to see our prescriptions. If we want some of this nice medicine, we need to have prescriptions.”
“Well, we got us a pile o' papers,” the engineer concluded hopefully, searching though his pockets for documents they’d been supplied with at the embassy.
“ID cards, passes…” Rendell rummaged through her tiny purse. “No prescriptions… Stingy-stingy, Lindstrom.”
The clerk snapped the lid of the box closed. “No script. No service.”
The two Drake officers stared, as surprised by the fact the young man was being rude to them as they were that he was not smiling while he did it.
“No, no, that’s not the way, Gelmar,” an older man in a white coat scolded gently as he inserted himself with between his clerk and his customers. “Good day, friends.”
“It were until 'bout a second ago,” DelMonde replied.
“New in town?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Rendell confirmed.
“In town for the Parliament?”
“The Parliament,” the doctor repeated as if she knew what he was talking about. “Ooo. That’s gonna be fun, isn’t it?”
“You be supporting the Traditionalists or Progressives?” the shopkeeper asked, though the question was glossed with a professional veneer of disinterest.
“Which one more likely t' get us some smokes?” DelMonde asked. When Rendell raised a bemused eyebrow at him, he shrugged. “I got this here cigarette case. Looks funny when it not got not'ing in it.”
“No script. No service,” the clerk reiterated sullenly from behind his boss’ shoulder.
“Now, now, Gelmar,” the shopkeeper soothed. “These be strangers. They be tired and unsettled from their journey. They’ve had no time to pick a clinic.” He gently pried the box from his clerk’s fingers, selected four slim cigarettes, and handed them to DelMonde. “Here, friend, take these. When you have your script, be sure to come back to this shop to fill it.”
“Or we don’t get our reimbursement,” the clerk informed them, pointedly snapping the lid back shut.
“Gently, Gelmar, gently,” the shopkeeper cautioned mildly. “Can’t you see this gentleman is already disturbed from his travels?”
Both Drake officers could tell from the emphasis the Landran put on the word “disturbed” that there was a silent “mentally” inserted in invisible parentheses before it.
“No need for us to cause him further distress.” The shopkeeper turned his calming smile on DelMonde. “Our job is to ease suffering, not compound it.”
“I t'ink your boy there need these here smokes more 'an me,” the engineer replied as the clerk stomped off to shelve the box in a different part of the store.
“Oh, he gets his share,” the shopkeeper assured them with a soft, sad laugh.
“Kids today…” Rendell gave him a sympathetic shrug. “What can you do?”
“Yes, the poor children…” The Landran looked towards his sulking employee with a smile tinged with infinite sorrow. “They can’t remember what happiness was.”
The sound of children’s voices was audible well before they reached the over-sized doors of the main building of what was obviously a campus of some sort.
Sulu took in a deep breath. “I suppose you’re about to tell me this is one of your orphanages.”
“Not exactly,” Lindstrom answered brightly. “We call it a boarding school.” His smile faded as he paused. “We do have a lot of orphans… an unbelievably tragic number of orphans…”
Lindstrom’s pace slowed to the point where Sulu thought they might come to a complete standstill on the brick path to the school’s entrance. At that moment, however, the sound of children’s voices chanting a rhyme designed to help them remember how to conjugate certain types of verbs floated down from one of the upper stories.
“On the bright side,” their guide continued, cheered enough to resume. “To the extent there is a bright side -- Because the old “Festival” system always involved a certain number of sudden deaths, this civilization has very robust and generous traditions of adoptive parenting. An individual’s descent is traced through matrilineal lines – if they bother to keep up with genetic heritage at all. Usually not considered important. Landru made most of the big decisions about who was going to inherit what or who was going to be in charge of whatever, so… generally not important. Two parent families with only their own biological offspring are rare. Under Landru, adults were more apt to live in professional or affinity groups rather than what we would recognize as marriages or families. They tended to care for infants and toddlers communally, then foster out older children more on the basis of aptitude for certain professions than anything else.”
This summary tallied well with Sulu’s foggy memories of this place. The inhabitants had seemed so friendly at first, so easy-going, so ready to offer advice or invite perfect strangers into their big homes that seemed more like bed-and-breakfast hotels than private residences. “So why do these children live here?”
“Post-Landru, our numbers for everything from severe depression to outright mental incapacity are…” Lindstrom trailed off, as if he could not bear to repeat any more of the appalling statistics of his planet’s misery. “Well, we still have very, very, very few adults who are stable enough to serve as full-time parents. And among those who are coping well… As you may imagine, child-rearing under Landru involved indoctrination strategies that are… problematic at best.”
“Centuries of traditions aimed at training children to unthinking, unconditional obedience to an all-seeing power that no longer exists.” Sulu grimaced. “Problematic may be an understatement... at least from our point of view.”
“So,” Lieutenant Vale began hesitantly. “The Federation becomes parent to an entire generation?
“Not exactly,” Lindstrom replied firmly. “We provide instruction during the morning hours, but then we take a long break in the afternoon where the kids go have a meal with their parents and foster parents. They spend unstructured free time with them in the middle of the day. Since there’s no shortage of housing right now, a lot of the children have their own room in their family’s house.”
“So, they sleep at home?” Sulu asked, suspecting this was not the case.
“No,” Lindstrom confirmed a little reluctantly. “We bring them back for a few more school hours in the late afternoon. This is usually the time for physical education or arts and craft programs. They spend a lot of time preparing for whatever our Big Event is going to be that night.”
“Big Event?”
“Yes, we invite the entire community in for concerts, dances, performances, big communal meals, sports…” The administrator beamed proudly. “So the adults are spending real quality time interacting with their kids in a very positive way.”
Sulu did not return his smile. It was apparent that as Vale had posited, the Federation team was raising this generation of Landrans in their own image. “But you don’t send them home at night?”
“No,” Lindstrom admitted. “Our numbers show that adults at risk for having a psychotic break are most likely to have problems during late evening and early morning hours… when they’re tired and… Well… It’s still just safer for the kids to be here at night.”
“Oh.” Sulu could see why funding for this project was the topic of such hot debate in the Senate. Federation contact had inarguably led to profound, near-catastrophic, long term problems for the peoples of this planet. However the potential for over-reach on the part of the Star Fleet team sent to aid them turning into an overwhelming influence that could easily result in the complete erasure of the pre-existing culture was equally obvious.
A charmingly old-fashioned set of bells rang out from the top of the main building. Fresh-faced youngsters in blue and grey plaid school uniforms topped with adorable pinafores or dapper little jackets spilled out in to the courtyard between the buildings on their way to their next class.
“Do you have a separate school for the older children?” Vale was asking. “The pre-adults, I mean.”
“We don’t have any secondary education in place right now.” Lindstrom explained, smiling and waving at students who called greetings to him. “And before you ask, that’s because: first – we don’t have the resources. And second – the apprenticeship system we have in place is closer to what these people are used to. For right now, this is more comfortable for everyone.”
“Those children…” Sulu began slowly. “The teenagers… They’re old enough to remember Landru, aren’t they?”
“Yes.” Lindstrom gave a distracted nod. “We have some challenges there.”
As Sulu opened his mouth to question his former shipmates on the specifics of those challenges, Lindstrom pushed open the school’s tall set of ornate front doors.
“Here we are, gentleman!” He grinned as he waved them in. “Let me show you some of this planet’s best hope for the brightest possible future…”
“I’ve never gotten the point of museums,” Lian Rendell complained mildly as they strolled through a high archway draped with a banner that read, “Our World Before the Time of Landru.”
“It in th' name, cher,” Del replied. “You go see stuff an' muse on ‘em.”
The headquarters of the super-computer that once ruled this planet had been turned into an exhibition hall. Despite the colorful displays, it was an eerie, hollow sort of place. Just getting to the door had been an unsettling exercise thanks to the characters who had set up shop on the sidewalk. Fellows draped in shiny togas with ridiculously swirled and poofed hairdos wandered around there warning pedestrians to mend their evil ways. Instead of shouting hellfire and damnation like any respectable street preacher would, these oddballs half-whispered their jeremiads in voices so unnaturally calm it made Del’s skin crawl.
“I’d’a thought Havens would love museums,” he said, concentrating on his lovely companion to knock off the chill of those unnerving encounters. “A museum is no'hing but a warehouse full o' fancy stuff that used t' belong to rich folks. That what ya’ll like t' look at, non?”
“No, we like to look at fancy stuff that belongs to us,” Rendell corrected as they passed a display of jewelry made from a copper-colored metal. “Our rich people don’t let we poor people look at their prized possessions. They think we might start scheming to take them if we know about them.”
“They’d be right on that, I guess,” the engineer conceded.
“Oh, yes,” the doctor confirmed as they paused in front of a display of mannequins wearing male and female variations on the toga costume the freaks stationed outside the front entrance were wearing.
The museum wasn’t exactly overflowing with patrons. Ahead of them in the hall were a group of three old men, a young woman with a fussy baby, and a middle-aged woman with a teenage boy.
“I hope them old Haven misers have th' grace t' at least let th' rest o' you look at old stuff like this they not use no more,” Del said, gesturing to a glass case of what was obviously computer components arranged as though they were crown jewels.
“Oh, no,” Rendell replied. “Our rich people hang onto everything they or their ancestors have ever owned.… Otherwise it might look like someone succeeded in being clever enough to figure out a way to take something from them.”
Del discretely consulted his pocketwatch/tricorder for unusual power readings. “Don’t it make it harder t' get your young’uns interestin' in learnin' 'bout history if you not have no museums t' take ‘em to?”
“There is a prime example of the difference between Terrans and Havens,” the doctor said, neatly stepping between the engineer and the nearest native so he could have the freedom to broaden his scan without detection. “You write history down and make it into something so boring you have to bribe your own children to want to know anything about it.”
“Ya’ll don’t write not'ing down?” DelMonde asked, noting what could be shielding seventy-five yards away from their current location.
“Not very much,” Rendell replied. “Real history is generally a record of things that happen to rich people – either very good things for them where they get what they want, or bad, very embarrassing things where they fail miserably. The good things they have written down – but not so much as to give any secrets away. The bad things they do their very best to not have recorded…”
The Cajun smiled as he compared his power readings with heat signatures. “You makin' it sound like gossip now.”
“Oh, it is,” the Haven insisted, keeping her eye on the silent museum guard at the doorway behind Del. “It is. And we’re all mad for it. Even the poorest, most ill-educated Havani child can recite the lineage of the current CEO going back twelve generations at least …”
“Wit'out missin' a bastard or a mistress?”
“Exactly.”
“What naively serious creatures we Humans are,” Del agreed facetiously, pocketing his watch, taking the doctor by the arm, and heading in the direction of the most suspicious readings.
Rendell smiled and shook her head. “It would be profitable for at least one of you to truly realize as much.”
They strolled towards a doorway marked “The Time of Landru: Hall of Audiences.”
“Welcome, friends.” A sweet-faced matron wearing a badge that identified her as a museum employee stepped out from her station behind one of the arches to greet them as they crossed into the next section. She held out a tiny white box for each of them.
“What are these?” Rendell asked, lifting the little lid to reveal a small light blue pill inside.
“Only a simple calming potion,” the native assured her
“This exhibit gonna be that good?” Del asked dubiously.
“For some it can be a bit overwhelming.” The guide smiled kindly as she pressed a white box into the engineer’s outstretched palm. “Please remember that the voice of Landru you may hear is only someone reading the lines, not Landru himself… And be aware that the figures in the tribute to the service of the Lawgivers are only wooden statues.”
Dr. Rendell tried to take this reminder to keep a firm grip on reality as solemnly as was possible. “We’ll bear that in mind.”
“You need not take the potion,” the native informed them in an adamant but reassuring tone. “You may dispose of it at the far end of the chamber. But don’t hesitate to ask an attendant for a larger dose if you feel unsettled.”
“Now that was damned hospitable,” DelMonde commented as they turned away.
Once the docent was occupied with the next cluster of tourists, Rendell touched the pill to the tip of her tongue. “Mild sedative. Federation-made unless I badly miss my guess.”
“Most doctors use a tricorder fo' that,” the engineer observed.
Rendell sniffed. “Most doctors don’t have my refined sense of taste.”
“No, they surely don’t.” Del grinned. “You know, these folks do have they good points.”
“Just because they gave you a sedative?”
“Shows both consideration an' forethought,” the engineer argued. “If Sulu was a true leader o' vision, he’d set up a yeoman t' do the same as you come up on th' bridge ever' mornin'.”
The Haven shook her head. “These are the sort of ideas of yours that tell me you are never going to going to be given your own command in Star Fleet.”
“Oh, is that right?”
“Well…” Rendell smiled and patted his arm. “If you ever do, call me immediately.”
“Very impressive,” Sulu said, as they walked down a sunny corridor of the school building decorated with reassuringly normal artwork from the students.
Lindstrom gave a verging on impatient sigh. “But..”
“What do the Landrans think of these boarding schools?” the captain asked instead of voicing his doubts directly.
“They’re not as opposed to them as certain senators on the Appropriations committee seem to assume, if that’s what you mean,” the Director replied defensively. “We don’t force anyone to send their children here. Parents are so proud of these kids…”
“The “Big Events” you spoke of,” Vale interjected. “These would seem designed to make the school a focus of community life.”
“Yes,” Lindstrom admitted, leading them into an airy auditorium where a choir of angel-voiced middle-schoolers were practicing. “Yes, we try to make the schools as appealing as possible. And yes, we know that this is still a very conformity-driven culture and that now that we’ve gotten the majority of the children in school, there is social pressure on anyone who decides to keep their child at home…”
“Do people decide to keep their children home?” Sulu asked quietly as the Director ushered them into seats in the back row. “Is that really an option?”
“We can’t take a child anyone has any kind of claim on,” Lindstrom assured him.
“Even if that adult is unstable?” the captain persisted.
“If we think a child is in danger, we can’t act directly,” the Director explained. “We have to go through the local Child Welfare board. And by local, I mean all native.”
“And do they usually agree with your teams assessments of risk?”
“Yes. We’re very selective about the cases we put forward.”
“Are the members of Child Welfare Boards elected?” Vale asked almost apologetically.
Sulu was becoming impressed with the young Indiaan’s ability to not be distracted by the emotions around him or over-awed by Lindstrom’s self confidence. The lieutenant was doing a better than expected job of politely keeping the conversation directed to areas where the Director’s answers were less forthcoming than they at first seemed.
“No, they’re made up by certified native medical professionals,” Lindstrom replied easily.
Even Sulu could feel the irritation that the Director was attempting to hide. “Where do they get their certification?”
Lindstrom sighed. “Okay, we provide that training, but they’re completely independent from us now.”
Sulu gave a serene nod and smiled as if he were contemplating nothing more than how lovely the music from the choir was. “Okay.”
It was Lindstrom’s turn not to be fooled. The Director’s fingers drummed exasperatedly against the arm of the plush theater seat. “You have to remember where we started and what we’re up against…”
“I do,” his former shipmate assured him. “All we’re doing is trying to be thorough. You need to be up front with us, Lindstrom. If there are reasons why people here may hate or resent the Federation, we need to know. No public relations spin. No sugar-coating.”
The Director blew out a long breath. “Then to be up front, the sore point about the school is not that we keep their kids most of the day and all night – they’re used to decisions of that magnitude being made for them. They like things to be that way, actually. The thing they complain about is the curriculum.”
Vale raised an eyebrow. “They have something against math?”
“No,” Sulu concluded watching as the lines around the corners of Lindstrom’s mouth tightened. “History.”
“And literature,” The Director nodded. “Or at least what we consider literature…”
“Not history,” the captain finished for him.
“You’ve got it. What you and I consider History is data driven – dna, fossil records, scans… Hell, since the discovery of the Guardian, we can just go look at a tape if we have questions. What they have is… it’s folklore at best.”
“What exactly do they have?”
The Director sighed heavily. “Scattered, conflicting accounts of the life and sayings of Landru, many of which have only recently been written down for the first time. Oral traditions…” He held up a hand before either of the officers from the Drake could speak. “Look, we are fully aware of the Earth parallels and the profound sociological importance of these narratives. We’re not suppressing or censoring or even publically contradicting them… when we can help it. But I won’t have them taught in the schools as fact.” He gestured at the group on the stage. “Some of these kids have potentially got a great future in front of them. I wouldn’t be surprised that if within the next ten years we have more than one taking the Star Fleet entrance exams…”
“Lindstrom,” Sulu said, exchanging a look with Vale to let the Lieutenant know he intended to be the one to explode the bomb the Indiian had alerted him to earlier in their tour. “Speaking of being up front with us…”
The Director looked back and forth between the two Drake officers warily. “What?”
“She’s a brave and smart little girl to react as little as she did when we walked into her classroom,” Sulu began gently.
All the color drained from Lindstrom’s face, but his mouth clamped stubbornly closed.
“Tia is tia, sir,” Lieutenant Vale informed him, referring to the Indiian ability to sense unique emotional signatures as well as identify strong affective bonds.
Sulu pressed carefully. “I can understand why you’d want to protect your daughter…”
Keeping a carefully neutral expression on his face, Lindstrom stood up and gestured them to the door. “Not here,” he said tightly.
“Oh, that sounds reasonable…”
“What?” Del growled, the ambiance of this insane asylum was starting to make him feel anything but reasonable.
Although fortune had favored him enough to place the anomalous readings closest to one of the side alcoves, they were not far enough from the hall’s main attraction for the engineer’s liking. At the far end of the wide corridor was a portrait of the fellow all the screwballs outside the museum were imitating. It was life-sized and painted on a translucent piece of duraplast. It wasn’t a statue. It wasn’t a hologram. It was just a not-all-that-realistic sort-of-see-through painting. There were other pictures and information about this fellow all up and down the walls of the hall. At irregular intervals, a recording of some actor reading blandishments that this Landru-person was supposedly famous for saying played softly. If they’d been at a normal museum back home, the exhibit would have been in danger of winning the most boring display every to make it out of a fifth grade Science Fair.
It was a blockbuster for these yokels, though. Del could now see why they handed out sedatives at the door. He was on the edge of going back and demanding an entire case full.
As soon as a new group of natives hit the door, they began to weep and wail, “Landru! Landru!” More often than not, they’d run up to the painting and start to roll around on the floor in front of it confessing all sorts of supposedly heinous shit they’d done that week. When the recording came on, they’d squeal and groan as if whatever fortune cookie saying that was playing for the tenth time in the past ten minutes had been written just for them.
After letting the tourists caterwaul for a minute or two, the nice lady at the desk would give them another sedative (if they’d already taken the first one), make them touch the duraplast to show them it wasn’t real, then shoo them gently to the next room.
Del was beyond sick of it, but he still hadn’t been able to get a good fix on the source of the readings he thought might be significant.
Lian Rendell pointed a gloved finger at mural on the wall opposite. “This says that Landru was a sort of psychotherapist…”
“I thought you jus' told me he was a sort o' engineer,” Del replied irritably as the deformed wavelength he was chasing disappeared yet again.
“There are different versions,” the doctor replied, seemingly unaffected by either his ill mood or the freak show playing at the end of the hall. “I like this one. In it there’s a planet-wide conflict…”
“That was in th' last one,” the engineer reminded her gruffly.
“It’s in several versions.” Rendell pointed to spots on a few different murals, although she can’t have imagined he was going to look up from his readings to verify. “This war was very nasty… even as that sort of thing goes. Chemical attacks against civilian populations…. That sort of thing…” She frowned at a badly-drawn scene accompanying the text depicting an atrocity. “Very bad. After the war, there are large numbers of survivors too traumatized to function in mainstream society. Landru pioneers a form of mass neurotherapy that has remarkable success. The account tells of former victims and aggressors from both sides of the living peacefully together…”
“Wit' an emphasis on th' peaceful, I bet.”
“Doubtlessly. Still a remarkable achievement given their level of technology… It started out as something to do with sound waves beyond the audible range…”
The engineer’s ears did perk up at that. “Sonics, huh?”
“Yes.” Rendell turned to give him a significant “See? I’m not just wasting time” glance. “It’s easy to extrapolate that after they’d had success taking the treatment that had worked on individuals and turning it into a continual, inaudible pulse that calmed an entire hospital at once…”
“..Th' next step fo' a reasonably ambitious mad scientist an' his staff would be t' come up wit' an evolving AI system that could implement th' therapy on a bigger an' bigger scale,” DelMonde speculated.
“…Until the computer is in charge of the whole planet – including its inventors.”
“…Goes power-mad an' turns ever'one into grinnin'-zombie-slaves,” the engineer concluded and then shook his head. “Happens ever' time. Absolute calculation calculates absolutely.”
“What?”
“I was tryin' t' be funny, cher,” Del explained, turning back to his pocketwatch-tricorder. “We Earthers got this sayin' 'bout absolute power corruptin'…”
“…Absolutely?” The Haven raised a superior eyebrow. “Yes, you do say things like that…. Not that this isn’t an enthralling way to spend a day, but, exactly what is it that you’re looking for?”
Del snarled at his miniature tricorder as the readings he was trying to triangulate vanished again. “Not'ing.”
“Seems like you’re finding a lot that.”
“Not that kind o' not'ing,” the engineer replied distractedly, venturing further into the alcove full of mannequins in long hooded robes holding pipes. “Not'ing where there actually might be somet'ing.”
Although he was not bothering to clearly articulate his theory, he thought he might be chasing the trace of a tiny fault in a mechanism shielding the entrance to a secret passage. This alcove seemed like a great place to stash the portal to a secret passage. As the woman at the door had warned them, these dummies dressed like mad monks getting ready to work on some plumbing really scared the shit out of the natives as they passed. They were all too freaked out to even devote much attention to the fact that the engineer was pacing back and forth pointing his pocket watch at the wall.
“I thought we came in hoping to find nothing,” Rendell complained prettily.
Del bent down and pushed a long robe-sleeve out his way. “Not this kind o' not'ing.”
“You are very particular about your nothings, Mr. DelMonde,” the doctor commented.
What his tiny, overly ornate tricorder was telling him plainly, though, was that there was definitely something underneath the stone flooring to have a passage to. His readings showed tunnels and chambers going at least a half-mile down. There was technology operating in those chambers. There were people in those chambers.
“Hey!” he called out to the museum lady as she passed to calm another hysterical patron.
“Sir…” The native sighed deeply. This was not the first time he had questioned her. “Sir, there is no lower floor.”
“Now, both you an' I know that is horseshit,” DelMonde retorted. “There are ten stories below our feet.”
The museum lady tilted her head suspiciously. “What makes you say that?”
Del narrowed his eyes impatiently and gestured to the mad monk figures behind him. “I’m a fan o' these fellows,” he said, knowing that would get some sort of reaction from her. “It got somet'ing t' do wit' them, non? They used t' live down there, I t'ink.”
The woman shook her head with profoundly adamant discomfort and turned to go. “I have no knowledge of these things.”
“But there are rumors that the Lawgivers had underground barracks, aren’t there?” Rendell stopped her, gesturing to the signage along the walls of the Lawgiver exhibit. “And secret passages?”
“I have no knowledge!” the woman insisted.
“They’s somebody 'round here that know how t' get down there,” Del speculated firmly.
“There is only one floor now, sir,” the woman maintained a little desperately. “Anything else – if ever there was anything else – is sealed off, gone completely.”
“Then why am I gettin' enough heat readin's t' fill half a deck of a starshi… Ow!” The engineer broke off abruptly as Rendell reminded him of the limitations placed on their interactions with the natives by kicking him discreetly in the shin. He thanked her with a frown and cleared his throat. “Look, I know that they’s people down there. Don’t ask me how I know. I jus' know. An' you know too, gal.”
The frightened fog hanging over the museum woman’s brain seemed to lift a little. “The 14th street Anarchy Zone is an underground facility, if you mean…?” she suggested hesitantly.
“Anarchy Zone?”
“Art Zone,” she corrected hastily. “Art Zone. I meant to say Art Zone.”
Del snapped his pocket watch closed. “How we get there?”
“Go to…”
“14th street,” all three of them finished together.
“Thanks.”
“Just a minute.” Rendell put one hand on the engineer’s shoulder and the other on the museum lady’s arm before they could all eagerly part company. She turned to the native. “Don’t give the baby or the young woman a sedative this time.”
“We have child-sized doses,” the docent assured her, returning to her normal, calmly professional mien.
“I’m sure you do.” The doctor gave her an un-smile and pointed to the weeping woman at the other end of the gallery. “She’s asking Landru how to make her baby stop crying so much. If you give her a sedative and the baby goes to sleep, her tiny brain may conclude that Landru wants her to give it more and more sedatives…”
The native paused, then nodded. “You are, perhaps, wise in this.”
“Oh, I am most definitely wise in this,” Rendell informed her firmly. “The baby is probably crying because it has a minor illness. She needs to take it to a doctor, not to a painting. Do I make myself clear?”
“I will see it is done,” the woman acquiesced, unquestioningly recognizing authority when she heard it.
“Very good. Thank you,” the doctor dismissed the native who hurried to attend to her neglected duties. Rendell wiped some imaginary dust off her gloves and straightened her hat. “All right, Mr. DelMonde. Lead on,” she said, taking him by the arm. “We head into Anarchy to find Nothing.”
The engineer acknowledged this jab with a rueful grin. “Can’t say I not know how t' show a lady a nice time, non?”