The Program

Chapter nine

Leah opened her eyes and felt a flutter of anxiety, as she had every morning for the last three months. And, as she had every morning for the last three months, she willed away her weakness, controlling her thoughts as she had been taught.

She told herself that her doubts were the last vestiges of her Old Programming.

That she could maximize her growth by minimizing her negativity.

That she needed to let go and Get with The Program.

It was a great honor to be invited to join the Inner Circle up at the ranch, just twenty-two days ago, and she wasn't about to screw it up. She'd sacrificed way too much for that. She stared at the cottage-cheese ceiling of her shared bedroom, the wrinkles of concern smoothing from her face, her heart rate slowing to normal. The space resembled a state-college dorm room – two beat-up wooden beds, drawers beneath, a single dresser, a closet with a splintering door that wouldn't close. Periwinkle paint covered the cinder-block walls, fading in patches where the sun hit it through the lone window.

Her Growth Partner breathed heavily on the other twin bed crammed into the space. Janie was a perky, attractive twenty-five-year-old; Leah found it hard not to envy her ready confidence and womanly curves.

The door creaked open, and the form of a man resolved from the dusty early-morning light. There were no locks on the doors up here, except, she had heard, in the Teacher's cottage. No phones, watches, clocks, TVs, or newspapers either. And no mirrors – Leah had learned to fix her hair without the aid of her reflection. Or, as was increasingly the case, she and Janie primped each other.

She had the luxury of working with computers, but always ancient ones with the modems excised or phone cords removed. Though she missed surfing the Web, it was unproductive to question and nitpick; besides, her computer skills landed her cushier specialized jobs that spared her Rec-Dute. The Recruitment-Duty shifts lasted eighteen hours or until one secured five sign-ups for a colloquium, whichever came first.

The man eased forward into the room. Leah pretended she was sleeping, but she heard the floorboards creak. A large hand came to rest on her thigh, protected only by a thin sheet. "Leah. It's your time to rouse the Teacher."

She opened her eyes. Randall, the bigger of the two Protectors, was sitting on the edge of her bed. He was almost entirely hairless -bald, no eyebrows, no chest hair – except for his arms; the dense mats of black hair caused the cuffed sleeves of his flannel to bulge.

"Let me tell my Gro-Par," Leah said.

But Janie was already up, fussing. Her bark-colored hair swayed with the effort; she wore it seventies style – center-parted and waist length. "Oh, my God. That's so killer. I can't be one of TD's Lilies because I'm married."

When it became clear Randall wasn't going to wait outside, Leah changed in front of him, made insecure by his beady eyes.

Janie preened her, combing her hair, which had been cropped in a shaggy pageboy her first day here. "It might be nice if you wore a sleeveless shirt instead."

"I'm a bit chilly. It's early."

"Cold is a state of mind, Leah. Don't indulge your Old Programming."

"I like this shirt."

Janie sighed dramatically, rolling her eyes at Randall. "See what I have to work with?" She covered up the slight with a nervous laugh and kissed Leah on the forehead. "I'm so proud of you."

Randall's throat rattled when he cleared it. "When you kiss someone on the face, you're sucking on a tube that's twenty-three feet long, the other end of which is connected to feces."

Janie shivered and busied herself tying Leah's shoelaces.

"I'll bear that in mind," Leah said.

Randall led her down the hall, past the cluster of closed doors. The cottage comprised two identical halves, each with four bedrooms and two baths, joined at a modest common room with a kitchenette. Cramped little structures with pebbles strewn across their flat roofs, the poorly insulated units were barely a step up from prefabs.

He headed outside, crossing the circular lawn around which the four other cottages were arrayed, Leah walking fast to keep up. At the edge of Cottage Circle, five enormous cypresses rose up, van Gogh shadows against the lambent glow of the horizon. The throw of land housing the little community was the sole stretch of flatness adrift on the thirsty brown mountains. The rest of the compound lay upslope on the precipice of a straight-drop cliff, except the Teacher's cottage, which stood to the west off a trail carved through chest-high brush.

As they turned onto the trail, Leah looked up at Randall, who had to stoop to get his six-three frame under the occasional branch. She spoke mostly to ease her own tension. "How did you find the Teacher?"

Randall kept on without pause. "He saved me."

The rest of the walk to the Teacher's cottage was silent.

Woods encroached on the rear of the building. Skate Daniels, the other Protector, tilted back on a rickety chair on the front porch, working at a hunk of wood with a hunting knife. He wore a boxer-style sweatshirt, the collar ripped and cross-threaded with a shoelace. The severed sleeves showed off arms massy with thick, undefined muscle. At his throat hung a crude necklace – two twisted copper wires threaded through tiny earth-tone beads, vaguely Native American in effect. Dangling from it like a pendant was the notorious tiny silver key.

Skate's two Dobermans bolted over to investigate, snarling and barking. Leah recoiled, terrified, but Skate backed them down with a snap of his fingers, and they scrambled off through the underbrush behind the narrow shed where Skate and Randall slept. Barely wide enough to accommodate two cots, the shed leaned like a wind-battered bait shack, exhaling a perennial spiral of smoke from a black pipe of a chimney. Once when Leah had to deliver a file to the Teacher, she'd seen Skate in there, shuddering against the cold and stoking the fire in the potbellied stove with a stick.

The shed, Leah had learned, was absolutely off-limits, as was the modular office a few paces behind it. The mod's door sported a profusion of locks, protecting its consecrated interior – the Teacher's private office space. Leah respectfully averted her eyes from the mod.

She stepped up on the porch. "What are you making there?"

Skate flicked the point of the blade against the wood, his flat eyes never leaving his task. "Jes' whittlin'."

Randall gestured to the door, and she stepped inside, nearly tripping over a white plastic tub brimming with mail. The ranch had been a bigwig director's retreat in the twenties; the Teacher's cottage was the only building not since supplanted by a lowest-bidder abomination. Beautiful stone exterior, slat-wood doors, a lazy fan overhead. Wagon wheels from a bygone movie shoot still lined the walk and framed the porch, sentimentalized by the adolescent residential treatment facility that occupied and further degraded the ranch before The Program acquired it.

Randall closed the door behind Leah.

Alone in the Teacher's cottage. She did her best to calm the storm of panic and excitement rising in her chest.

She prepared as she had been taught, first picking up and folding the Teacher's clothes, which had been left in the front room. She removed a ginseng mahuang smoothie from the tiny fridge, strained it into a glass to remove excess pulp, then arranged the vitamins in a grid on the serving platter. The napkin she folded into a crisp triangle.

After washing the hair from the shower soap, she ran the water so it would be hot when he was ready. She removed a fresh toothbrush from the cabinet and squeezed onto it a straight worm of Aquafresh. She plucked a premarked Dixie cup from the stack beneath the sink and poured mint mouthwash to the indelible-ink line drawn precisely an inch and a half from the bottom. She rested a new razor on the towel beside the sink and wiped the excess from the nozzle of the shaving-cream can.

You have been chosen, she told herself. You have been singled out. You are special.

The door to the Teacher's bedroom creaked slightly as she pushed it, balancing his breakfast tray with her other hand. His slumbering form lay beneath the king duvet. She set the tray on the nightstand and knelt at the side of the bed. She slid her hand inside the Egyptian-cotton sheets and gripped his erect penis.

"Wake up, Teacher," she said softly. Then she repeated herself, a little louder, barely recognizing her own voice. "Wake up, Teacher."

He stirred and stretched, arms shoving up against the massive headboard. He settled back, hands laced behind his head like Huck Finn. His facial skin was youthful, even taut, stretching his lips into thin strokes. A slender man with sharp, intelligent features, he had no wrinkles at all. His closely set eyes were hypnotic, captivating, prying; when he spoke to her, she tried to watch his hands or forehead instead. Now she kept focused on the task at hand, the silky duvet rising and falling a foot and a half in front of her face.

"Now, not too firm," he cautioned, his voice low and soothing. Then, a bit more sharply, "Relax."

At once her mind went blank, her breathing smoothed, and her hand moved of its own volition, butterfly soft, doing what it somehow knew to do.

"There, now," he said. "There, now."

His hips rocked slightly on the cushioned mattress, and then he shuddered and it was done. She withdrew her hand, wiping it on the sheets. Still she avoided his eyes, but the energy coming off him was approving, and her insides went warm with relief and gratitude.

Keeping her head bowed, she said, "Good morning, Teacher."

He reached down and stroked her hair gently, forgivingly. "Please," he said, "call me TD."