Consider Her Ways Read Online Free PDF Page B

then followed them.
    A few minutes later all the rest had packed up and gone. The six of us were alone again. It was Hazel who broke the ensuing silence.
    ‘That was a bitchy piece of work. The poor little devils were only doing their job,’ she observed.
    ‘If that’s their job, I don’t like it,’ I told her.
    ‘So you just get them a beating, poor things. But I suppose that’s the lost memory again. You wouldn’t remember that a Servitor who upsets a Mother is beaten, would you?’ she added sarcastically.
    ‘Beaten?’ I repeated, uneasily.
    ‘Yes, beaten,’ she mimicked. ‘But you don’t care what becomes of them, do you? I don’t know what’s happened to you while you were away, but whatever it was it seems to have produced a thoroughly nasty result. I never did care for you, Orchis, though the others thought I was wrong. Well, now we all know.’
    None of the rest offered any comment. The feeling that they shared her opinion was strong, but luckily I was spared confirmation by the opening of the door.
    The senior attendant re-entered with half a dozen small myrmidons, but this time the group was dominated by a handsome woman of about thirty. Her appearance gave me immense relief. She was neither little, nor Amazonian, nor was she huge. Her present company made her look a little over-tall, perhaps, but I judged her at about five-foot-ten; a normal, pleasant-featured
young woman with brown hair, cut somewhat short, and a pleated black skirt showing beneath a white overall. The senior attendant was almost trotting to keep up with her longer steps, and was saying something about delusions and ‘only back from the Centre today, Doctor’.
    The woman stopped beside my couch while the smaller women huddled together, looking at me with some misgiving. She thrust a thermometer into my mouth and held my wrist. Satisfied on both these counts, she inquired:
    ‘Headache? Any other aches or pains?’
    ‘No,’ I told her.
    She regarded me carefully. I looked back at her.
    ‘What –?’ she began.
    ‘She’s mad,’ Hazel put in from the other side of the room. ‘She says she’s lost her memory and doesn’t know us.’
    ‘She’s been talking about horrid, disgusting things,’ added one of the others.
    ‘She’s got delusions. She thinks she can read and write,’ Hazel supplemented.
    The doctor smiled at that.
    ‘Do you?’ she asked me.
    ‘I don’t see why not – but it should be easy enough to prove,’ I replied, brusquely.
    She looked startled, a little taken aback, then she recovered her tolerant half-smile.
    ‘All right,’ she said, humouring me.
    She pulled a small note-pad out of her pocket and offered it to me, with a pencil. The pencil felt a little odd in my hand; the fingers did not fall into place readily on it, nevertheless I wrote:
    ‘I’m only too well aware that I have delusions – and that you are part of them.’
    Hazel tittered as I handed the pad back.
    The doctor’s jaw did not actually drop, but her smile came right off. She looked at me very hard indeed. The rest of the room, seeing her expression, went quiet, as though I had per
formed some startling feat of magic. The doctor turned towards Hazel.
    ‘What sort of things has she been telling you?’ she inquired.
    Hazel hesitated, then she blurted out:
    ‘Horrible things. She’s been talking about two human sexes – just as if we were like the animals. It was disgusting!’
    The doctor considered a moment, then she told the senior attendant:
    ‘Better get her along to the sick-bay. I’ll examine her there.’
    As she walked off there was a rush of little women to fetch a low trolley from the corner to the side of my couch. A dozen hands assisted me on to it, and then wheeled me briskly away.
    ‘Now,’ said the doctor grimly, ‘let’s get down to it. Who told you all this stuff about two human sexes? I want her name.’
    We were alone in a small room with a gold-dotted pink wallpaper. The attendants, after