CHAPTER THIRTEEN
April 1, 2001
It had been two weeks since their contact had infiltrated the Sect. Progress was slow. What made it frustrating was that John had to catch the murderer in the act. Right now, according to the telephone call, the agent had progressed to drawing the designs to tattoo new recruits. The killer, who he referred to as Doc, had not asked him to find the appropriate maiden.
Rachel knew it would be soon. "I know you're impatient Jarod," she said, "and it appears you're getting normal—for a 1.6r. Your snide remarks are down to two a day."
"Somehow I've lost the ability to do that and that's not all I lost."
The book said this was normal. According to paragraph fifteen on page forty-five, "We, The Hiomo Dominants, being superior in intelligence, do not need to berate inferiors for their lack of control. We have more subtle ways"
The book also said, "Because of the fear the inferiors have of us, certain medications made many of our children like them. The residue of human emotions will sometimes crop up in those removed from this artificial form of control. However, in time, the Dominant will exert itself."
"Yes, Jarod, you were a 1.4 then, the most dangerous transition level, 'a period of great emotions, both natures fighting each other.' I quote that from Walter Attwood's new book, 'The New Species, a Military Dissection"
"I was always afraid at the Centre until something happened. I told you about Raines putting me in a canister."
Rachel nodded.
"I might have started to revert back to my original nature then."
"Did you like the book I gave you to read?" she asked.
"Men are from Mars Women are from Venus." It gave him quite a few insights into his life once he left the Centre. He became less cooperative, less fearful. He was so furious about how he acted when he was in the Centre, he decided to delve in further and borrowed several other books using Rachel's library card. His mind, already at a high level, imagined the results of the Centre's manipulations. The Centre did not allow me to think or have the emotions of a boy. Girls are fearful, not boys! Girls co-operate, boys want to dominant and be bosses. Girls try to please! He quoted several other phrases or sentences from a book designed on how to get boys to be better readers along with several recommended books.
Rachel pressed further the contrast between Jarod in the Centre and out of it. "Didn't you just hate Miss Parker?"
He answered the question about Miss Parker and gave her some details, concluding with, "She didn't kill me."
Rachel almost gasped as the Pretender revealed Miss Parker and him having sex as an emotionless 1.6r. The whole description sickened the Profiler as she tried to remain calm. What must have frustrated Miss Parker was seeing no reaction of shame or fear from the Pretender and all the time, she did not let Jarod touch her.
"I don't understand Jarod why you would tell me this as if it were a clinical study."
"I never recalled any relations with the opposite sex during my captivity in The Centre until Lyle showed me a tape after the whipping. No experience means no feelings on the incident, bad or good to dwell on and by the time Miss Parker was in her teens, I was kept from her." He put down his book Rachel was so lovely. He reached for Rachel and she hugged him.
"Jarod, they whipped you?" She pulled his shirt up his back, noting the faint scars. They had almost disappeared, but this, she assumed, was because of his being a Dominant. If he were homo sapien, they would remain visible for years to come. It must have hurt.
"When he did that, he told the staff to block the cameras. They're always on. It seems that hooking me up to a car battery and shocking me is more acceptable." He pointed to his head, to where he assumed, they implanted the bar code or chip. "It could be a combination of both, microchips so small they are unnoticeable."
They moved over to the couch and made love. For an hour afterwards, they lay in each other's arms without saying a word. "I have to do something," she said.
"Stay." He moved her legs apart, manipulating it just so he could enter her again.
Rachel almost sat up. This whole incident was similar to when they had sex resulting in the birth of the triplets. Then when they lay together, Jarod unzipped his pants, and pushed her legs aside and entered her. It was as if he was doing it by instinct, as if it was expected. He thinks that as soon as you lie besides a woman, you are supposed to have sex. What did that Centre do to him?
"Why did Lyle show you the tape?"
"While he was whipping me, I shouted, 'if I'm gone, there'll be no Pretender to do your dirty work!' but he said, 'No! You want proof? You'll have it!' After the whipping, he chained me to a chair in front of a television set. It was me as a young boy and they held the girl's legs apart and took me…" He stroked the side of her face.
"Don't tell me anymore of it," said Rachel, "I can guess."
"He also showed me a lab with samples, one with my name, 'Jarod,' among others, but I couldn't see who they belonged to," and Lyle said, 'your own private sperm bank, Jarod. Of course your new owners will be in charge of your donations now.' Are you pregnant yet? Miss Parker told me this is the way you make children and the triplets need brothers and sisters." He was yawning. He pulled himself off her and zipped up his pants.
"It's almost that time of month for me," Rachel answered with a smile and questioned him further about the staff and learned that besides Mr. Raines, Mr. Lyle, Miss Parker, Sydney and Broots, there was a woman director of the Centre who, Jarod suspected, participated in the kidnapping of various Pretenders. (There had been another one previously, but she had to return to South Africa when her husband died.)
Rachel picked up her cell phone and called her Blue Cove contact who informed her that the first woman director did not go to look after her husband's affairs. She had contacted AIDS back in nineteen ninety-five and kept a low profile, hiding her disfigurement by pills and makeup. "How did she get it?"
"Both her and her husband had affairs. The Centre was silent on that aspect."
She thanked him and turned to the information on the present female director. She was one of those high brow blonde types and used to work for Social Services and that was the reason, she was so good at luring kids away.
Below these were the workers and inmates that included the janitors, the cleaning staff, the Pretenders, and Angelo. Rachel made an excuse that she had to get something from the other room. "I'll let you rest," she said, but all she got was silence. He was already asleep.
Rachel wrote two lists on her notepad; one with superiors, and the others with inferiors including Jarod, but the sleeping man could not give their names. Fortunately she had an inside man. A psychiatrist, James Alton had approached her while she was still teaching in the FBI about an organization indirectly responsible for the death of a vacationing G-man and his wife who were aboard a plane that crashed into the Atlantic. It appeared that his wife was also on the same plane, but although he could get the lowdown on this cabal, he was afraid he would be watched.
A few days after that incident, a Walter Attwood called her, asking if a James Alton had been in touch with her. When she replied in the affirmative, he told her that James was the member of a New Species that had suddenly appeared beginning in the late 1940s in Mexico and gave her insights into their development. She thought nothing of until her triplets began developing at an astonishing rate and the tests done by a Doctor recommended by Atwood proved they were Homo Dominants.
Renewing her contact with James Alton, Rachel received a DVD he secretly copied of Raines putting Jarod in that cylinder There were others, not the Black and White ones of that boy who Jarod thought was he as a youngster, but the real ones before being doctored and kept as evidence of the sims.
She looked over the information on the simulations and saw how the Centre had really treated Jarod. Alton learned that when Jarod was small, he tried to run away. They locked him in a closet for days. He was practically starving when they released him. Jarod did not remember this. According to the informant, they gave him an injection that wiped away his memory of that incident and that was not the only incident they made Jarod forget.
Unlike the simulations with Sydney, there were those in which he had no memory or at least an implanted false memory. In one, they locked him in a cell, something to do with a kidnapped child to see if she would get out before the air ran out. Jarod was hardly breathing when they released him. The little girl was not so lucky. She was dead. Rachel shivered.
Jarod went through his supposed childhood, believing that his simulations were just exercises given by Sydney to help humanity. Oh yes many of the simulations were just that, virtual realities with electrodes on his head or model layouts, but as he matured the simulations became more real or at least, they did not block his memory.
They buried Jarod in quicksand up to his head; blind folded him, turned out the lights, and told him to get back to a certain place before the food ran out, and other simulations. Sometimes the staff moved in boxes and equipment, more likely to block Jarod from escaping without breaking something. Sometimes when space was unavailable they put him in a large acrylic or glass bubble hooked up with wires and placed him front of a screen. However, his face and clothes was that of another boy
Rachel knew. She gave a photograph of Jarod to VCTF and told him to make him look younger. Jarod would not know the difference. He had only seen himself in a mirror once during his time at the Centre.
There was another simulation this with a cliff out of wire covered with clay and rock and cemented into the floor on which the Centre staff placed Jarod on top of it and told him to get down and at the end of it. Rachel saw the same man speaking into the boy's eyes.
She also learned that Sydney had also manipulated him, giving him information from his point of view. She wrote a note: "The Centre and Jarod's trainer not only kept him unaware of popular culture and the latter fed him prejudicial information, not allowing Jarod to make his own decisions." And during this life there, Jarod had no idea of this cruelty and deceit. He felt this was normal.
Jarod was now awake. He had turned on his laptop and searched for the names of anyone from Kenya called Isaiah, who came from a small village, which had been subject to lion attacks —in other words, he was fishing.
When he heard Rachel in the washroom, he inserted the Hercules CD, and connected it to a missing ocean vehicles web site.
Ah yes, the fishing boats bound to Mexico. Lars, Lewis, Lynch, from Sweden, England, and Ireland Visas issued by the Mexican government and an official denial, one month later.. Here's another list. German, Welsh, Dutch, Cornish departed May the fourth, nineteen forty five. A ship that did not make it. Ah presumed drowned.
He checked the crew manifesto against an obituary issued by the Royal Navy. Suddenly he almost stopped breathing Miss Parker's grandfather was on the missing ship and another ship went down, but before he could check any further, Rachel entered the room.
"Find anything?" she asked.
Jarod took out the Cd and brought up the African web site and then switched to one about Europe. "Look at this. Notice the similarity to what went on in Europe during the Black Plague and what is now happening in Africa because of the AIDS epidemic?"
He turned to an English University site, showing how the breakup and death of families contributed to gangs wandering the area and the rise of piracy. There were numerous sketches of beggars, later of street gangs who except for their strange costume, would be at home in the slums of any modern city. "The Medieval example of Social Engineering," he said, "at least there is no blame except ignorance."
"No blame in the present epidemic, in spite of what some sites tell. The people lived and acted as they did for centuries." She got a little closer. "Could you go back to the Kenyan Government site and look for signs of sudden population decrease?"
"Look for enrollment in the University of Nairobi, anyone coming who became a vet."
Jarod brought up several names. "I'll look for one with the first name of Isaiah. He might be Jewish."
"Probably not. Christians have taken Jewish names and Roman Catholics often choose the names of the apostles, Peter, John, James, and so on for their children. He's probably a native with no European or Arabian ancestry."
There was no Isaiah on the list. Jarod was sure that this Isaiah was a phony. "I'll look through the veterinary hospitals or clinics for anyone named Isaiah who worked as an attendant."
They found the name after an hour's search. A certain Isaiah Bututo had taken a course in Veterinary Medicine.
Rachel and Jarod drove to the VCTF who contacted the Dean of the college. Isaiah Bututo had been one of his best students. The government had sponsored him and other orphans. "Of course there were rumors of certain animals disappearing but the one who complained was a born troublemaker, not like Isaiah. Do you know he made head of his class?"
George turned off the tape. "That's all I have on him. Rachel, you seem puzzled."
"Nothing," she said as she saw Jarod looking at her and wondered whether there was more to this Centre than he told her.
…