The Insulators Read Free Page B

degree of perversion was inevitable, and knew also that if a man or a woman’s sexual proclivities were released the discipline necessary for the work could be more easily imposed.
    Most of the workers, once they had served for a year signed on for another. Others simply disappeared, presumably going back to the outside world.
    She had now been here for six months, half of her contract period. There were times when she was quite content but other times when she felt that she was being suffocated, that this was a prison and she would never sign on for another year.
    Paul Taylor had begun contentedly enough, until the noise had become too much for him. One either got used to the noise or eventually succumbed to it. She got used to the constant roaring, and no longer used the earplugs which were standard equipment.
    She was not sure why so much noise was necessary. No real attempt was made to muffle it; there were times when she felt that it was deliberately imposed, so as to deaden feeling.
    She thought all these things as she prepared the crystal containers and placed them in neat piles by her right hand. There were only a few left to do, and she would be finished in good time.
    Freddie Ferris came across and shot her a quick sideways glance as he said: “Have you enough crystals?”
    “Plenty, Freddie,” she answered.
    “I can easily bring you more.”
    “No, I’ve plenty,” she insisted.
    He moved a little closer to her and took a handful of the crystals from a transparent bowl on her left. He peered at these as if he were examining them, and spoke out of the side of his mouth. “Do you think Paul will ever come back?” The whisper was barely audible above the roar from the generating room.
    “Of course he will!” she answered sharply.
    “Don’t raise your voice!” Freddie urged, and when she glanced at him from the corner of her eyes, he went on: “I don’t think he will.” He looked expressionless except for what might be dread in his eyes.
    She did not think Paul would come back but she said quickly: “Nonsense!”
    “I don’t think we’ll ever get out of here alive,” Freddie mouthed. “No one does and no one ever will.”
    “Nonsense,” she repeated. “Of course we shall.”
    “I don’t believe it. I believe they’ll keep us here as long as we’re useful to them, and then kill us.”
    She felt a rising, choking dread, yet replied with a calm which surprised her. “What on earth makes you feel that?”
    “I just feel it,” he said. “I’m terrified out of my wits.”
    “I think the noise is getting on your nerves,” she retorted. “Try to forget it, Freddie.”
    “Forget it!” he exclaimed, and let the crystals fall back into the bowl. As they fell he looked up at her with impassioned appeal, his very heart seemed to show in his eyes: “Janey! Don’t tell anyone I said this.”
    “Of course I won’t, you oaf,” Janey assured him.
    Then she was aware of Leadbetter approaching, betrayed by a pale shadow on the translucent glass of the window. She placed the last of her batch of little containers on the bench, and then turned away from Freddie and looked up into Leadbetter’s face. There was nothing to suggest disapproval, or that the Chief Chemist had heard what they had been discussing.
    “Are you ready?” he asked.
    “Yes – all done,” she answered. “One hundred and twenty.”
    “Good. Philip is ready,” Leadbetter told her. “Freddie and I will take them over. You go and rest, Janey. You look tired.”
    She wasn’t tired; she was very frightened, and tense with trying to hide it, and her fear grew worse when she realised that he had noticed something was wrong. She did not want to be questioned or scrutinised, so she turned quickly away as Philip came up with some containers for the little tubes. He looked at her without expression; it was easy to believe that he was disapproving.
    She went out by the door through which Paul Taylor had gone. There were doors at