When the Sleepers and Rainor split up again, Reb and Wash decided to circle the city. They soon discovered that a large number of cyborgs were at work in the surrounding fields. They stood watching as these strange people moved down the long rows, mechanically hoeing their crops.
Reb, who knew more about farming than most of the others, said, “I never saw anything like this.”
“What, Reb?” Wash asked. They were standing off to one side of a very large field.
“Well, when you chop cotton or work in the potato fields, you work a while and then you rest a while,” Reb said. “Otherwise you burn out. But it doesn’t look like these people ever rest. Why, it makes me downright tired just to watch them go at it.”
Wash nodded. “It’s hard to think of them as people,” he said, “but I know they are.”
“They move so much like robots. They never laugh. It makes you feel plumb sorry for them.”
“It’s just a real shame! I’d like to go up to one and rip that thing off his head. But no telling what that would do,” Wash said.
“It might kill ’em right off.”
“These poor folks—I just don’t know what to think about them. I know we’ve got to do something to help them, though. Whatever it takes.”
Reb reached over and slapped his small friend on the shoulder. “You’re getting to be quite a fire-eater, Wash.”
“Well, it makes me mad! Somebody’s making these people work like slaves, and they don’t care a thing about them.”
“They sure don’t. We saw this morning what they did to that woman who just died because she couldn’t stand the pace.”
“Josh will think of something.”
“I think he will. And that Rainor—he’s not moving until he finds his sweetheart. And I’m getting really hungry.”
Back in the city they joined Dave and Abbey.
“We found people working everywhere,” Abbey said. “There were some cyborgs out cleaning the streets. They did nothing but pick up small bits of paper and trash by hand and put it in the bags that they carried.”
“There’s a profession for you. Professional trash picker upper,” Dave muttered. “All day long. Never anything else. What kind of a mind would design a thing like this? He must be a maniac.”
“Probably some mad scientist like those we used to see on TV. You remember the old Frankenstein movies?”
“Sure. The mad scientist who made something like a human being. But it didn’t work too well.”
“No, it didn’t,” Abbey said, “and I always felt kind of sorry for the monster he invented.”
“You’d feel sorry for anybody, Abbey.” Dave grinned. “You’ve got a tender heart. Come on. Let’s see what the rest of the gang’s doing. Maybe they’ve found some food.”
Josh, Sarah, and Rainor were standing in a group listening to Jake when the others joined them.
“What’s up, Jake?” Dave asked.
Jake had been talking excitedly and waving his arms. “Just come with me,” he said. “and I’ll show you. I found a cafeteria!”
“I don’t believe it! In this place?” Dave exclaimed. “But lead me to it if there’s food there.”
Jake led the way down the street to a building where, from time to time, a cyborg would emerge. “Come on inside,” he said. “I want to show you this.”
Josh was as curious as any of the rest. He followed Jake through the door, and there he saw a line of cyborgs in front of a big machine.
“What’s that thing?” he asked Jake.
“It’s where they get their food. This place is kind of like a deli.”
“A deli?” Josh repeated, frowning.
They moved closer. Now Josh saw that each cyborg held a bowl. He put it under a spout, and the spout discharged something that looked like stew.
In his other hand, each cyborg carried a large metal cup. He held the cup under another spout and what looked like water came out of it.
“Now watch this,” Jake said. “This is the awful part!”
Josh and the others watched as the cyborg moved on and stood with his back to the wall. He lifted the soup container and swallowed. He did not lower the bowl until, apparently, it was empty.
Next, he raised the cup and drank whatever was in it without stopping. Then, in stiff, mechanical fashion, he moved along the line and dropped the cup and the bowl into a chute, which swallowed them up. Finally, he marched on out of the building.
“You mean that’s it?” Reb said softly.
“That’s it. How would you like that for a meal!” Jake exclaimed in disgust.
Abbey cried, “That is horrible! It’s worse than we treat animals.”
“I doubt if they even taste their food,” Josh said sadly. “Whatever’s happened to their minds, they can’t see or hear or probably taste anything. You’re right, Jake. It’s awful.”
Jake’s face grew determined. He was a stubborn boy anyway, and now he said, “I’m going to see what that stuff tastes like.”
“Better not,” Josh warned. “Don’t!” But he was too late. He watched Jake go toward the machine, and he said, “Jake’s going to get us all into trouble. He’s too impulsive.”
Jake picked up a cup and a bowl. He walked over to the food dispenser and stood in front it. He held out his bowl and pushed the button, but nothing happened.
Then a loud voice said, “There is an insane unit in the cafeteria at location r313. Annihilators will apprehend insane unit at once.”
Jake turned pale. He dropped the cup and the bowl and hurried back. “We’d better get out of here!” he said.
“We’d sure better,” Josh said.
They ran from the building just in time, for as they ducked around a corner, Josh saw three black-clad annihilators approach the building.
“Big mistake on my part,” Jake said. “Sorry about that. They’d probably throw us out to the wolves if they caught us.”
“I think I know what they mean by ‘insane,’” Josh said as a thought came to him. “They mean anybody who’s not under their control. Those are probably microphones attached to their ears—the leadership uses those to tell them what they’re supposed to do.”
“And you’re probably right,” Rainor said. “If there was ever a madhouse, this is it.”
“We’ve got to find something to eat,” Reb said, getting suddenly practical.
“No problem,” Josh said. “Sarah and I found that they bring in the produce from the fields and store it in a big warehouse. We also discovered that there’s a herd of beef cattle and a place where they butcher. So we can get meat as well as vegetables. No reason why we can’t just help ourselves and then pay whenever we figure out who it is we pay.”
Then the girls reported locating an empty building at the edge of town with—wonder of wonders—a cook-stove in it! It must have once been used for a smaller cafeteria. There were even side rooms too, where the girls could stay while the boys camped out in the larger one. They at once decided to make the place their new hideout.
The next evening Reb was cooking steaks on the woodstove when Sarah and Abbey came in. Both girls seemed depressed, and Reb looked up from the stove to ask, “What’s wrong?”
“We looked into one of the houses where the workers live. It was a terrible place.”
“I expect it might be,” Reb said. “Everything else is. So what did it look like?” He turned over a steak and poked it with a fork. “These are gonna be done pretty soon.”
As the others gathered around to take their steaks and beans and potatoes from Reb, Sarah repeated, “It was just terrible. There was just one room. There were pegs on the walls to hang clothes and pads on the floor for sleeping.”
“That’s all their beds were,” Abbey exclaimed. “Dirty old mats!”
“No furniture at all, you say?” Josh asked.
“Nothing but just those pads. But the people themselves were worst of all. They were just—standing there.”
“What do you mean ‘just standing there’?” Rainor asked.
“Most of the time when you get people together, they’re talking and playing games or singing or doing something together. But these cyborgs weren’t doing anything.”
“Some of them were asleep on their mats. Well, I guess they were asleep.” Abbey looked ready to cry. “It was like they were dead. They just lay there flat on their backs, staring up at the ceiling. Some of them didn’t even have their eyes closed, so I couldn’t tell if they were awake or not.”
“But the very worst were people just standing. I mean that literally,” Sarah cried with vexation. “I mean, there must have been twenty of them. They could have been talking or doing something, but they weren’t. They just stood. Some of them were facing the wall. There were no windows to look out of. It was like being in a cell where everybody was dead.”
The meal was somewhat spoiled by this gloomy news.
Rainor agreed and frowned. “I looked into one of those houses, too. It was like being in a big tomb.” But then he said, “But there’s nothing we can do about that right now.” He seemed to want to change the subject. “When we finish eating, let’s go out again and see if we can catch sight of Mayfair. You want me to describe her to you again?”
Wash grinned. “Beautiful brown hair. Beautiful brown eyes. In fact, the most beautiful girl in the world. You’ve described her a hundred times.”
Rainor managed to grin, himself. “Well, let’s see if we can find her.”
This time when they split up, Josh went with Rainor. The boys walked up and down the streets and went inside various buildings. And all the time, the cyborgs paid them not one bit of attention.
“This is spooky,” Rainor said. “It’s like being in a dead city.”
A shiver went over Josh. “Sounds like a horror movie to me.”
“What’s a horror movie?”
“I’ll explain it to you some other time. Let’s keep looking.”
Then they came to a building that was under construction. The cyborg workers moved slowly, never varying their pace as they carried boards and pounded.
A scaffold had been built, and just as they were passing under it, suddenly Rainor said, “Josh, look out!”
Something had gone wrong up on the scaffold. Both boys leaped out of the way, but a falling board struck one of the cyborg workers, a young woman.
“It hit her antenna,” Rainor said. “The bulb on the end of it has gone out.”
Josh was thinking quickly. “We’re going to get away from here,” he said, “and we’ll take her with us.” He lifted the young woman and looked into her face. “Will you go with us?” he asked. “We’ll help you.”
Her voice was dead sounding, as the cyborgs’ voices always were. “I am Unit cd92,” she repeated.
“Well, come on, Unit cd92,” Josh said grimly. He took her by the arm and pulled her along. She offered no resistance.
“I am Unit cd92,” she kept repeating, but she walked along between them.
“You think that’s all she can say, Rainor?”
“I don’t know, but since that antenna’s been knocked sideways, it may be she’s disconnected. When we get her away from here, we can talk to her. Maybe she can tell us something.”
Leading the girl, they hurried away from the construction site and headed for the hideout.
And for the first time, hope came to Josh. “Maybe this is the break we need, Rainor,” he said. Then he looked at the girl walking between them. “She’s kind of pretty. No older than I am, I would guess. I sure would like to see her come out of it.”