Maelstrom by Paul Preuss

area; after a period of time one passed on to greater things–or went back to the streets.
    Each guest had a separate cubicle in the lowceilinged basement. There was a shower and water closet at one end of the narrow hall, and at the other end, a kitchen and laundry. Guests were invited to volunteer to help with the work. Blake refused at first; he wanted to see what would happen if he didn’t try to ingratiate himself. No one seemed bothered. Starting the second week, he began doing his share in the laundry. This too was apparently normal, and the only remarks were simple thank-you’s.
    Meals were served in the big room on the ground floor, whose windows overlooked the courtyard. The food was good and simple: vegetables, breads, fish, eggs, occasionally meat. People with business in the other buildings that fronted the court were thus assured by a glance inside that the Athanasians were going about their meritorious work of feeding the hungry.
    In the same room each morning and afternoon, after the dishes were cleared away, there were “discussions” led by members of the staff–discussions very like group therapy sessions, except that their only stated purpose was to let the guests get to know each other. Blake was not pressed to tell more about himself than he wanted to.
    Catherine was never far from Blake’s side in the first days, although the suave Lequeu had vanished from sight. Blake counted three other staff members, the big man who had effected his rescue from the police, whose name was Pierre, and two other men, Jacques and Jean, who along with Catherine led the discussions or sat in to keep one or more of the guests company. All were in their late twenties. Blake had no doubt that all were using assumed names.
Perhaps the guests were, too. Certainly “Guy” was.
    Vincent had been there the longest; he was an Austrian, a self-styled troubador who scraped along by playing classical guitar and nine-stringed karroo at various restaurants in the Quarter, singing whatever he thought the patrons were hoping to hear but specializing in the folk songs of the workers who had built the great space stations. “My dream someday is to go into space,” Vincent said, “but the corporations will not take me.”
“Have you applied for the programs?” someone asked.
     
“As I have explained, I do not dare. Because of things, you know, in my past. . . .”
     
“We don’t know, Vincent, you haven’t explained.”
    Blake listened to Vincent speak about his dreams and realized that he was a seducer, so well armored behind his charm that no amount of mere talk would reach him. Which is probably why he was still in the anteroom of the program. Blake wondered how much more time the Athanasians were willing to give him.
    Salome came from a farm near Verdun. She was a dark, tough girl who had borne her first child at fourteen, married at sixteen, and had three more children but never found enough time for an education. Her mama had the children now; Salome, twenty-one, was making her way in the streets of Paris.
“How?”
     
“Doing what I have to do.”
     
“Stealing?”
     
“When I have to.”
     
“Sleeping with men?”
     
“Only if it feels like the right thing to do.”
    And dreaming of joining the theater. Salome was writing a play; she had a manuscript of ragged pages she offered to read. Her aggressive, intelligent style in conversation did not transfer to the page. No one criticized her work, but as the days passed, Salome described a change in her goals, from playwriting (she admitted that her writing was hampered because she did not read that well) to helping spread the good work of the Athanasians.
Salome had arrived in the program only a few days before Blake. He was not surprised when, two weeks after he arrived, she was gone; he knew she’d already been promoted.
    “I admit that when you approached me, I hadn’t eaten for four days. I was beginning to hallucinate.” The speaker was Leo, a thin,