The kitchen redolent of roast chicken, of the fragrant steam rising from pots containing vegetables cooked in chicken broth, the hum of the oven fan and the susurrant rush of that warm air through the vent grille…A woman at the cooktop, her back to Jane and Luther, and a man standing at the dinette table, sliding dinner rolls from a tipped baking sheet into a serving basket…
Jane said, “Play Manchurian with me.”
The man looked up and the woman turned, and simultaneously they said, “All right.”
“Sit at the table.”
In the act of stirring something, the woman took a long-handled spoon from a pot and put it on the counter, and the man put down the baking sheet, and they sat as instructed.
“Stay here and wait for me,” Jane said, and they agreed, and she crossed the room to join Luther, who had already pressed open the door to the butler’s pantry.
She followed him through another door, into the dining room, where four staff members, dressed all in white as if they were consecrated in some cult of virgins, sat ready to eat at the table, while a man, also attired in white, poured ice water from a clear-glass pitcher jeweled with condensation.
“Play Manchurian with me,” Luther said on entrance.
The four at the table turned their heads toward him and chorused, “All right.”
But the man with the pitcher might have been distracted or perhaps a bit hard of hearing. He reacted not to Luther’s control command but rather to the turning of the others’ heads, looking up in surprise and pouring water past the aimed-for drinking glass onto a silver caddy that held shakers of salt, pepper, and other spices. He saw their weapons, shouted a warning, dropped the pitcher, and pivoted away from the seated four as shattered glass and crescents of ice glimmered across the tablecloth, borne on spilled water.
The fleeing man reached the archway before Jane called out, “Play Manchurian with me.”
Although the quartet at the table repeated their assent, she didn’t know if the fifth had heard her until she pursued him and found him standing in the hall as though he had forgotten where he was going and why he had dashed from the dining room.
His gaze conveyed confusion and fear and a sense that he was lost. His hands were fisted at his sides, the knuckles as sharp and white as if skin had split to reveal bone.
The torment in his eyes moved her, though not to pity, which was for the distress and misfortune of others that one didn’t share. Instead, sharp sympathy pierced her, for he had been robbed of his dignity by the people who would steal hers at the first opportunity. He had been shaken out of the life he’d been meant to live and into a life shaped for him, not unlike how she’d been reduced from a hunter of fugitives to a fugitive herself, from wife to widow, from being a mother every day to being a mother as events allowed.
She holstered the pistol. “I’m not here to hurt you. Do you believe me?”
“Yes. Of course. Yes.”
“What’s your name?”
“George.”
“Don’t be afraid, George. Not of me.”
He seemed to seek answers in her eyes. “What’s happened to me?”
“Don’t you know, George?”
“Something’s happened. What was isn’t.”
Nothing could be done for him. Slaves shackled could be freed by the cutting of chains, by the passage of laws. But the nanoweb spun across the surface of his brain, its fibers woven deep into his gray matter, allowed no casting off of chains and could not be undone by even a law of the best intentions.
“Don’t be afraid,” she repeated, and though it sounded foolish, it was the only thing she could think to tell him.
“Are you afraid?” he asked.
“No,” Jane lied.
“All right, then.” His fists relaxed. “All right.”
“Come back into the dining room, George. Sit down with the others.”
With lamblike docility, he did as she told him, but she felt none of the worthiness of a good shepherd.