At the end of each workday the Procurator dismissed his shadows, allowing them to descend the coiled ramps that led from occupied areas to Shadowland beneath. There each shadow entered the lock as he was programmed to do.
“Strip off your shadow suit,” said the lock.
The shadow stripped off the stiff suit with all its sensors and connectors, hanging it in an alcove in one side of the booth.
“Place your hands in the receptacles.”
The shadow placed.
“Bend your head forward to make contact with the plate.”
The shadow bent.
Light, sounds, movement. Snark stood back from the plate, shaking her head, as she always did, bellowing with rage, as she always did.
“Leave the cubicle,” said the voice, opening the door behind her, opposite the one she’d come in by.
“Goddamn bastards,” screamed Snarkey, hammering at the cubicle wall. “Shitting motherfuckers.”
The floor grew hot. She leapt and screamed, resolved to obey no order they gave her. As always, the floor grew too hot for her, and she leapt through the door just in time to avoid being seared.
“It’s the mad howler,” said slobber-lipped Willit from a distant corner of the locker room. “Snarkey-shad herself, makin’ noises like a human.”
“Shut the fuck up,” growled Snark.
Willit laughed. Others also laughed. Snark panted, staring about herself, deciding who to kill.
“Slow learner,” commented Kane the Brain, shaking his head sadly.
Snarkey launched herself at Kane, screaming rage, only to find herself on the floor, whimpering, her thumb in her mouth.
“An exceptionally slow learner,” repeated the former speaker, kicking Snark not ungently in the ribs. “Poor old Snark.”
“Good baby-girl shadow.” Willit sneered as he passed on his way to the door. “Play nice.”
Snark sobbed as the room emptied.
“Have you quite finished?” asked the mechanical voice from a ceiling grille.
“Umph,” she moaned.
“I’ll ask one more time. Have you quite finished?”
“Yessir.” The word dragged reluctantly from her throat, burning as it came.
“Then get up and get dressed. The locker room will be steam-cleaned in five minutes. Besides, you are no doubt hungry.”
She was hungry. Procurator had hosted a banquet today, and shadows had served the food, seeing it, smelling it, seeing other people eat it. Shadows didn’t eat. Shadows didn’t get hungry or sleepy or need the toilet. Sometimes they got in the way of things and were killed, but if so, they did it quietly. Ordinary people didn’t stare at shadows, it wasn’t civilized, any more than wondering about them was. Shadows were a peculiar possession of bureaucrats in office in Alliance Prime, and that’s all anyone really needed to know unless one was a shadow oneself.
The metallic voice preached at her. “If you’ll make it a habit to eat just before you go on shift and immediately after, you’ll feel less hunger and you’ll be less uncontrolled. If you are less uncontrolled, you won’t find yourself rolling around on the floor making infant noises and attracting the scorn and derision of your fellows.”
“Damn motherfuckers ain my fellows.”
“What did you say?”
“I said I feel little collegiality for those sharing my conditions of servitude.”
In the sanctuary, when Snark was a little kid, the grown-ups had talked High Alliance. She could talk like that anytime. If she hadn’t been able to remember back that far, she could mimic her fellow-shad, Kane the Brain. Kane talked like an official butthead.
The voice said, “You aren’t required to feel collegiality. You are only required to behave as though you do.”
Snark panted, letting the rage seep away. Each time she came off shift, it was the same. Everything that had happened to her, every glance that had slid across her without seeing her, every gesture she was supposed to notice, every need she was expected to anticipate, all of them boiled inside her all day, rising higher and higher, until the cubicle took the controls off and she exploded.
Which was wasting time, she told herself. Wasting her own time. She only had one third of her time to herself, as herself. One third she was a shadow, under full control. One third she was asleep, also under control. The rest of the time, here in Shadowland, she could feel however she wanted to feel, do whatever she wanted to do. She could eat, talk, have sex—if she could find somebody willing. She could read, attend classes, engage in hobbies. If she wanted to kill somebody, have sex with somebody unavailable, the simulation booth would accommodate her. The booth would help her do anything! Anything except kill people so they stayed dead.