Maps of Hell

Prologue

The twins learned much about death before their tenth birthday.

Their mother wanted them to live with her parents, but their father insisted that the family stay together. It was unusual. None of the other doctors even had their wives with them, let alone their offspring. Special arrangements had to be made; permissions were granted, signed and stamped at high levels. Fortunately, the father’s immediate superior approved of the children’s presence. The experience would make them perfect citizens and perfection was the aim of all the nation’s scientists, was it not? The fact that they were twins, thus providing many valuable points of comparison, was very much in their favor.

There was no school where the doctor worked, but tutors were easy to find. The place was teeming with them, even if they seldom lasted a whole year. Of course, the thin, nervous men and pale women could have been a bad influence, but the children were quick to see any deviation from the principles their father had taught them from the earliest age. They had complained about several teachers. Those undesirables were immediately removed and were not seen again.

As the boy and girl grew, they lost their puppy fat and turned into hard-bodied replicas of their father. The only thing that spoiled their flawless appearance-blond hair, ice-blue eyes, that remarkable nose-was the extreme pallor of their skin. They took one hour of exercise in the garden every day, rain or shine, but the atmosphere they lived in was hardly conducive to rosy cheeks.

After two years the children knew all there was to know about the human condition, especially that of the lower races. The doctor and his chief were pleased. That knowledge would stand the boy and girl in good stead when they became adults and continued the glorious work for future generations. Their mother was less enthusiastic. She sickened and died during the family’s second winter in the East.

It couldn’t be said that the twins were unduly affected.