LOGAN (The Innerworld Affairs Series, Book 5) by Marilyn Campbell Read Free Book Online

murmured her similar conclusion close to Tarla's ear. "Okay, I hate to say it, but I'm starting to worry that Higgs nailed it with his zoo theory."
    Once the elderly men heard how many more people would be eating with them, they welcomed the extra hands.
    Before they were put to work, however, they were offered a snack of bread, cheese and some fruits that tasted like apples and pears, but had white and pink skins. Everyone agreed that it was possibly the best food they'd had since they entered the army. The water they were given was lightly carbonated and was so refreshing, they each had a second cup. Darcy declared that it had to be from a mountain spring but Duncan only knew that it came through the pump.
    As soon as they had their fill, Tarla made sure each person had an assignment while she stuck by Duncan. She could tell he was tiring of all the questions but she prodded him a bit further.
    "You said you'd been here about ninety years. What about the others?"
    Duncan rubbed his ear lobe. "Hard to say. Some have been here as long as me. Some only a little while."
    "You must have been very young when you arrived."
    He considered her words a moment then shrugged. "Was twenty four. Never thought I'd see sixty let alone pass a hundred. But they don't let you die so easy here. Just keep fixing a body until it's too old to wake up one morning... like Moishe." He stared at a spot on the floor. "Going to sleep and not getting up. That's the only way to leave this place."
    Tarla waited for him to say more on his own but after a few seconds, the placid expression returned to his wrinkled face.
    "Must get to work now," he said and took her to the table where another man was shucking ears of corn.
    As her fingers peeled away the husks, her mind tried to make sense of what she'd seen and heard so far, but she only came up with more questions. Besides the technology extremes, the general demeanor of the men in residence was most peculiar. She could understand how the older men might accept being in this strange place, especially when some of them, like Duncan, had been here for nearly a century.
    But what about the others? Her first impression of them had been that they were like sheep. Or maybe robots. If they had been transported to an alien planet, these men could be machines instead of humans. Yet, she recalled Duncan's comment about the wall. At one time, someone must have tried to scale it or dig under it for him to say it couldn't be done. A robot wouldn't attempt to escape.
    Another explanation could be that they were all tranquilized, but their pupils appeared normal and, though their movements seemed a bit slow, they were fairly smooth and coordinated. Rather than exhibiting symptoms of being drugged, she would describe them as being incredibly complacent.
    Had they all given up? Or were they simply too afraid to face whatever power was out there?
    * * *
    Logan tipped the clay jug to pour another cup of the cool water. It wasn't that he was still thirsty, he just had never tasted anything so... clean. That word replayed itself in his head as he realized clean was the best description he could come up with for this whole weird place. The water, the air, the whitewashed buildings, even the animals and the men—everything looked too clean and fresh.
    As a kid growing up in one of the lousier neighborhoods of Detroit, he hadn't believed there were places in the world where the sky was actually blue. As far as he knew, streets and sidewalks always had garbage and urine all over them. He had seen pictures of cleaner, more colorful places in books at school but he doubted they were real. For him, the world was dirty and gray, a place to survive rather than appreciate its beauty.
    Thirty-some years later, his opinion of the world was still pretty much the same, which was why he knew this place—even without the green sky and blue grass—wasn't part of any world he was familiar with. He didn't belong anywhere this squeaky