"So! That is finished. Now you go to Dr. Rubec."
"Who is Dr. Rubec?" Hilary asked. "Another doctor?"
"Dr. Rubec is a psychologist."
"I don't want a psychologist. I don't like psychologists."
"Now please don't get upset, Mrs. Betterton. You're not going to have treatment of any kind. It's simply a question of an intelligence test and of your type-group personality."
Dr. Rubec was a tall, melancholy Swiss of about forty years of age. He greeted Hilary, glanced at the card that had been passed on to him by Dr. Schwartz and nodded his head approvingly.
"Your health is good, I am glad to see," he said. "You have had an aeroplane crash recently, I understand?"
"Yes," said Hilary. "I was four or five days in hospital at Casablanca."
"Four or five days are not enough," said Dr. Rubec reprovingly. "You should have been there longer."
"I didn't want to be there longer. I wanted to get on with my journey."
"That, of course, is understandable, but it is important with concussion that plenty of rest should be had. You may appear quite well and normal after it but it may have serious effects. Yes, I see your nerve reflexes are not quite what they should be. Partly the excitement of the journey and partly, no doubt, due to concussion. Do you get headaches?"
"Yes. Very bad headaches. And I get muddled up every now and then and can't remember things."
Hilary felt it well to continually stress this particular point. Dr. Rubec nodded soothingly.
"Yes, yes, yes. But do not trouble yourself. All that will pass. Now we will have a few association tests, so as to decide what type of mentality you are."
Hilary felt faintly nervous but all appeared to pass off well. The test seemed to be of a merely routine nature. Dr. Rubec made various entries on a long form.
"It is a pleasure," he said at last, "to deal with someone (if you will excuse me, Madame, and not to take amiss what I am going to say), to deal with someone who is not in any way a genius!"
Hilary laughed.
"Oh, I'm certainly not a genius," she said.
"Fortunately for you," said Dr. Rubec. "I can assure you your existence will be far more tranquil." He sighed. "Here, as you probably understand, I deal mostly with keen intellects, but with the type of sensitive intellect that is apt to become easily unbalanced, and where the emotional stress is strong. The man of science, Madame, is not the cool, calm individual he is made out to be in fiction. In fact," said Dr. Rubec, thoughtfully, "between a first-class tennis player, an operatic prima-donna and a nuclear physicist there is really very little difference as far as emotional instability goes."
"Perhaps you are right," said Hilary, remembering that she was supposed to have lived for some years in close proximity to scientists. "Yes, they are rather temperamental sometimes."
Dr. Rubec threw up a pair of expressive hands.
"You would not believe," he said, "the emotions that arise here! The quarrels, the jealousies, the touchiness! We have to take steps to deal with all that. But you, Madame," he smiled. "You are in a class that is in a small minority here. A fortunate class, if I may so express myself."
"I don't quite understand you. What kind of a minority?"
"Wives," said Dr. Rubec. "We have not many wives here. Very few are permitted. One finds them, on the whole, refreshingly free from the brainstorms of their husbands and their husbands' colleagues."
"What do wives do here?" asked Hilary. She added apologetically, "You see it's all so new to me. I don't understand anything yet."
"Naturally not. Naturally. That is bound to be the case. There are hobbies, recreations, amusements, instructional courses. A wide field. You will find it, I hope, an agreeable life."
"As you do?"
It was a question, and rather an audacious one and Hilary wondered a moment or two later whether she had been wise to ask it. But Dr. Rubec merely seemed amused.
"You are quite right, Madame," he said. "I find life here peaceful and interesting in the extreme."
"You don't ever regret - Switzerland?"
"I am not homesick. No. That is partly because, in my case, my home conditions were bad. I had a wife and several children. I was not cut out, Madame, to be a family man. Here conditions are infinitely more pleasant. I have ample opportunity of studying certain aspects of the human mind which interest me and on which I am writing a book. I have no domestic cares, no distractions, no interruptions. It all suits me admirably."
"And where do I go next?" asked Hilary, as he rose and shook her courteously and formally by the hand.
"Mademoiselle La Roche will take you to the dress department. The result, I am sure -" he bowed "- will be admirable."
After the severe Robotlike females she had met so far, Hilary was agreeably surprised by Mademoiselle La Roche. Mademoiselle La Roche had been a vendeuse in one of the Paris houses of haute couture and her manner was thrillingly feminine.
"I am delighted, Madame, to make your acquaintance. I hope that I can be of assistance to you. Since you have just arrived and since you are, no doubt, tired, I would suggest that you select now just a few essentials. Tomorrow and indeed during the course of next week, you can examine what we have in stock at your leisure. It is tiresome I always think, to have to select things rapidly. It destroys all the pleasure of la toilette. So I would suggest, if you agree, just a set of underclothing, a dinner dress, and perhaps a tailor."
"How delightful it sounds," said Hilary. "I cannot tell you how odd it feels to own nothing but a toothbrush and a sponge."
Mademoiselle La Roche laughed cheeringly. She took a few rapid measures and led Hilary into a big apartment with built-in cupboards. There were clothes here of every description, made of good material and excellent cut and in a large variety of sizes. When Hilary had selected the essentials of la toilette, they passed on to the cosmetics department where Hilary made a selection of powders, creams and various other toilet accessories. These were handed to one of the assistants, a native girl with a shining dark face, dressed in spotless white, and she was instructed to see that they were delivered to Hilary's apartment.
All these proceedings had seemed to Hilary more and more like a dream.
"And we shall have the pleasure of seeing you again shortly, I hope," said Mademoiselle La Roche, gracefully. "It will be a great pleasure, Madame, to assist you to select from our models. Entre nous my work is sometimes disappointing. These scientific ladies often take very little interest in la toilette. In fact, not half an hour ago I had a fellow traveller of yours."
"Helga Needheim?"
"Ah yes, that was the name. She is, of course, a Boche, and the Boches are not sympathetic to us. She is not actually bad looking if she took a little care of her figure; if she chose a flattering line she could look very well. But no! She has no interest in clothes. She is a doctor, I understand. A specialist of some kind. Let us hope she takes more interest in her patients than she does in her toilette - Ah, that one, what man will look at her twice?"
Miss Jennsen, the thin, dark, spectacled girl who had met the party on arrival, now entered the fashion salon.
"Have you finished here, Mrs. Betterton?" she asked.
"Yes, thank you," said Hilary.
"Then perhaps you will come and see the Deputy Director."
Hilary said "au revoir" to Mademoiselle La Roche and followed the earnest Miss Jennsen.
"Who is the Deputy Director?" she asked.
"Doctor Nielson."
Everybody, Hilary reflected, in this place was doctor of something.
"Who exactly is Doctor Nielson?" she asked. "Medical, scientific, what?"
"Oh, he's not medical, Mrs. Betterton. He's in charge of Administration. All complaints have to go to him. He's the administrative head of the Unit. He always has an interview with everyone when they arrive. After that I don't suppose you'll ever see him again unless something very important should arise."
"I see," said Hilary, meekly. She had an amused feeling of having been put severely in her place.
Admission to Dr. Nielson was through two ante-chambers where stenographers were working. She and her guide were finally admitted into the inner sanctum where Dr. Nielson rose from behind a large executive's desk. He was a big florid man with an urbane manner. Of trans-Atlantic origin, Hilary thought, though he had very little American accent.
"Ah!" he said, rising and coming forward to shake Hilary by the hand. "This is - yes - let me see - yes, Mrs. Betterton. Delighted to welcome you here, Mrs. Betterton. We hope you'll be very happy with us. Sorry to hear of the unfortunate accident during the course of your journey, but I'm glad it was no worse. Yes, you were lucky there. Very lucky indeed. Well, your husband's been awaiting you impatiently and I hope now you've got here you will settle down and be very happy amongst us."
"Thank you, Dr. Nielson."
Hilary sat down in the chair he drew forward for her.
"Any questions you want to ask me?" Dr. Nielson leant forward over his desk in an encouraging manner. Hilary laughed a little.
"That's a most difficult thing to answer," she said. "The real answer is, of course, that I've got so many questions to ask that I don't know where to begin."
"Quite, quite. I understand that. If you'll take my advice - this is just advice, you know, nothing more - I shouldn't ask anything. Just adapt yourself and see what comes. That's the best way, believe me."
"I feel I know so little," said Hilary. "It's all so - so very unexpected."
"Yes. Most people think that. The general idea seems to have been that one was going to arrive in Moscow." He laughed cheerfully. "Our desert home is quite a surprise to most people."
"It was certainly a surprise to me."
"Well, we don't tell people too much beforehand. They mightn't be discreet, you know, and discretion's rather important. But you'll be comfortable here, you'll find. Anything you don't like - or particularly would like to have... just put in a request for it and we'll see what can be managed. Any artistic requirement, for instance. Painting, sculpture, music, we have a department for all that sort of thing."
"I'm afraid I'm not talented that way."
"Well, there's plenty of social life too, of a kind. Games, you know. We have tennis courts, squash courts. It takes a week or two, we often find, for people to find their feet, especially the wives, if I may say so. Your husband's got his job and he's busy with it and it takes a little time, sometimes, for the wives to find - well - other wives who are congenial. All that sort of thing. You understand me."
"But does one - does one - stay here?"
"Stay here? I don't quite understand you, Mrs. Betterton."
"I mean, does one stay here or go on somewhere else?"
Dr. Nielson became rather vague.
"Ah," he said. "That depends on your husband. Ah, yes, yes, that depends very much on him. There are possibilities. Various possibilities. But it's better not to go into all that just now. I'd suggest, you know, that you - well - come and see me again perhaps in three weeks' time. Tell me how you've settled down. All that kind of thing."
"Does one - go out at all?"
"Go out, Mrs. Betterton?"
"I mean outside the walls. The gates."
"A very natural question," said Dr. Nielson. His manner was now rather heavily beneficent. "Yes, very natural. Most people ask it when they come here. But the point of our Unit is that it's a world in itself. There is nothing, if I may so express myself, to go out to. Outside us there is only desert. Now I'm not blaming you, Mrs. Betterton. Most people feel like that when they first get here. Slight claustrophobia. That's how Dr. Rubec puts it. But I assure you that it passes off. It's a hangover, if I may so express it, from the world that you have left. Have you ever observed an ant hill, Mrs. Betterton? An interesting sight. Very interesting and very instructive. Hundreds of little black insects hurrying to and fro, so earnest, so eager, so purposeful. And yet the whole thing's such a muddle. That's the bad old world you have left. Here there is leisure, purpose, infinite time. I assure you," he smiled, "an earthly paradise."
Chapter 13
"It's like a school," said Hilary.
She was back once more in her own suite. The clothes and accessories she had chosen were awaiting her in the bedroom. She hung the clothes in the cupboard and arranged the other things to her liking.
"I know," said Betterton, "I felt like that at first."
Their conversation was wary and slightly stilted. The shadow of a possible microphone still hung over them. He said in an oblique manner,
"I think it's all right, you know. I think I was probably imagining things. But all the same..."
He left it at that, and Hilary realised that what he had left unsaid was, "but all the same, we had better be careful."
The whole business was, Hilary thought, like some fantastic nightmare. Here she was, sharing a bedroom with a strange man, and yet so strong was the feeling of uncertainty, and danger, that to neither of them did the intimacy appear embarrassing. It was like, she thought, climbing a Swiss mountain where you share a hut in close proximity with guides and other climbers as a matter of course. After a minute or two Betterton said,
"It all takes a bit of getting used to, you know. Let's just be very natural. Very ordinary. More or less as if we were at home still."
She realised the wisdom of that. The feeling of unreality persisted and would persist, she supposed, some little time. The reasons for Betterton leaving England, his hopes, his disillusionment could not be touched upon between them at this moment. They were two people playing a part with an undefined menace hanging over them, as it were. She said presently,
