all as she talked. He saw the small iron cage
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hoisted by rattling chains, up, out, over, and then down into the waiting bonfire built in the
medieval town square. He heard the shrieks, saw the dimly lit figure in the cage flinging itself
around in captive agony, heard the flesh crackle like bacon in a skillet (his simile), saw the iron
grow red until its content was entirely consumed. Paul nearly fainted at the force of his-tu-
tored-imaginings. This wasn't a make-believe story, this wasn't the comics or TV-they were all
tame and boring-this was what had happened to real people, done by real people.
It was too much for a small boy, and yet from the time he could think, Dianne had treated him
to such fare. (In fairness to her, it must be said that he bad never put his fingers in his ears. He
listened.) Their natures coincided at this point, and the Freedom Five "game" insofar as they
were able to influence it, was their game. (In fairness again, it must be admitted that though
the others might change the plot here and there, they played. They liked it.)
Thus, when Paul considered tomorrow and the prisoner they called Barbara, he considered it
from a most special point of view. He lay in the darkness of his room turning over all the
possibilities. Actually you ought to have more than just a knife to do any good.
Bobby, awakened on the same night, hardly knew what to think. Cindy, sleepy and untalkative,
shook him to consciousness and then went stomping off to bed, fell in, and was almost
instantly asleep, knotted hair, dirty dress, dirty pants, dirty socks, and all. In the smoothly
purring automated house, Bobby was alone again. Though he did not think of the house in just
those terms, it seemed a ship. The flavor of the hour was easily assimilated. It was a ship on
which he was at once both master and passenger-the black night sailed by outside. He had his
duties and his burdens.
After he bad yawned and scratched himself to life, Bobby made a cursory inspection of the
prisoner, though it was hardly necessary on this fourth night.
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He had observed-excepting when Cindy ungagged the captive-nothing more from Barbara than
the occasional movement of a hand, the turn of the head, an occasional opening and closing of
the eyes, or a twisting of this foot or that. She simply could not escape, and each tieing up
made it less likely. The children steadily improved as wardens, and Bobby was the best of all.
The difference tonight-her nakedness-did not much affect Bobby. Barbara appeared to be
sweet, defenseless, and all that, but to him, she was also a trifle repugnant. The raw thrust of
genitals and hair was a little too much for him at his age; everything was overscale compared
to his own slight build. Her nudeness was simply another grotesque item in Bobby's troubled
week.
Nonetheless, walking into her room and finding all of this so-still so--Bobby felt a true
sympathy for Barbara. They were hurting her. She had not put on makeup in days, so that her
eyes were as naked as her body; nothing was left to imagination, and in her eyes he saw the
change the Freedom Five had caused. There were dark smudges under those eyes. He knew
Barbara had slept, but she seemed not to have slept in a long time. Her eyes-possibly from
sleeplessness-were red with irritation, and wide open and dry, and the pupils were abnormally
dark (or so it seemed to Bobby). Her wrists and ankles were chafed and scraped from the rope;
her hands which he did not dare touch and her feet (he touched one foot knowing what he
would find) were dark colored and cold. Circulation. Her stomach was flat, not to say hollow.
The torture was beginning to show.
Bobby knew what he would do if it were up to him, what he could do even now-the sooner the
better. Son of a surgeon, he had sat around enough dinner tables
·listening to his father talk about patients. Bobby would untie her, get some circulation going,
feed her, cover her up, and let her sleep in absolute secure peace until she wanted to get up
and become some part of Barbara
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again. He remembered asking his father some question about his work and hearing Dr. Adams
tell him, "We stop a person from getting sicker and make him comfortable, but patients get
well by themselves. All you can do is to try and help."
And Bobby did want to help her, but it wasn't one of tonight's possibilities. Boy fears were at
war.
Free Barbara, and in all probability she would beat him half to death. If she did not, Freedom
Five (only then it would be three) would do it for her later, Leave her prisoner and let the
others toy with her another two or three days, and his parents would accomplish the same
end. There was no way out and no way to take action just now.
Personally he felt bad about Barbara. He they-had proved the point. They bad taken and suc-
cessfully held her captive. Now the responsibility weighed on him. For a boy who should have
been living on parental guidance, kindness, and protection, he had turned out to be
extraordinarily self-disciplined. How else could be have made the initial capture, stood the
morning watches, avoided catastrophe last night, and so on? Like his surgeon father he had
the inborn willingness to subject himself to the test again and again. Someday-again like his
father-he might hold life and death in his bands, and they would be good bands. But for the
moment he was tired of it all and quite frightened over what would happen next. (Cindy bad
told him what John bad done.)
At one o'clock in the morning, however, be just couldn't seem to think about it clearly. Like any
adult faced with similar imponderables, he simply postponed thinking about the matter.
Barbara, momentarily released in imagination, was-with some misgivings-returned to captivity.
Bobby left her room and went into the kitchen to make himself a milkshake.
Ordinarily a treat, this ritual repeated alone three nights in a row (no one to give permission,
admire, or share) bad become like so many other things he found himself doing now that
Barbara was captive, his par-
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ents were gone, and he was in charge. It was simply another duty; having fun was
practically a duty. Like Cindy he felt ennui. He wondered why in the world adults bothered
to grow up. You had to get physically bigger of course, but why grow up if it was like this? He
shook his head.
Well, anyhow.
He carefully plopped in the ice cream-c-chocolate-added chocolate syrup for true taste, just
enough milk to liquefy, and pushed the bowl of ingredients up under the blade of the
Adams' milkshake-maker (as separate from Mother's mixer and Dad's blender, each in its
own place, too). He set the automatic timer for forty seconds, pulled down the lever, and
pushed the button to On. Having at thirteen years old executed this maneuver without
even thinking about it, Bobby turned and idly surveyed the kitchen. It was in the instant of
turning that he saw-perhaps a trick of reflection what appeared to be a light down in the
marshy woods by Oak Creek where nothing else could be.
Bobby wasn't alarmed. Parallax and prism effects, particularly in a house with duothermal