The World Swappers by John Brunner

shrugged. “I only do as I’m told,” she said. “I wouldn’t know.” Her face had lost its sympathetic expression, and now seemed quite hard and masklike. Enni felt an empty sensation of betrayal. She could not find her voice.
    For a moment, Dolores’ face softened again. “Good luck, kid, anyway. Don’t be hard on her, will you, Doc?” she added over her shoulder, and then she was gone from the room.
    “Sit down, please,” Gold repeated. Enni took a deep breath.
    “No. Not until you tell me what’s going on!”
    “You will do as you’re told,” said Gold bluntly. “You must understand that you are not very important.”
    Enni, biting her lip, shook her head in dismay rather than refusal. “Very well,” said Gold heavily, and pressed a knob on his desk. A door opposite the one by which Enni had entered slid aside, and more men, also in white coveralls, came in quietly. They moved toward Enni.
    She screamed.
    It was not long before she discovered that the tales the elders told about Earth were a mere fraction of the truth. With hypnotics and suggestion-drugs, they opened her mind, took possession of it, drained it of her most secret memories. They recorded her words and her screams and played them back until there was no corner of her brain to which she could flee for even an instant’s privacy.
    It seemed to go on for a long time. It seemed to go on forever.

    Falconetta’s house was built on the edge of the Indian Ocean–literally. At high tide, the sea flowed over the transparent ceiling of the main room. It was high tide now, and Falconetta and Ram Singh waited tensely in greenish luminescence. They hardly spoke. Every now and again they betrayed their impatience by gestures.
    When at length the transfax alarm sounded, they started in spite of themselves. Falconetta leaped to her feet and went to open the concealed door of the cabinet. They always hid their transfax units; they had to. Strangers might otherwise have asked questions.
    Counce came out into the room and answered their unspoken question with a nod.
    “He’s got her. And they’ve probably already gone to work. Now we’ve got to figure out how long we can leave her in his hands.”
    “As short a time as possible,” said Falconetta firmly.
    “But long enough for him to convince himself he’s taken everything he can from her mind,” Ram corrected.
    Counce gave a shrug. “Two weeks should be quite long enough. After that, when Bassett finds out he still hasn’t got what he wanted, he may grow desperate and permanently injure the girl’s mind. And if we let that happen, we’d never forgive ourselves.”
    “Have you decided yet how we’re going to rescue her?” Falconetta inquired.
    “Just grab her. By transfax.”
    “And make it obvious that we had a hand in it?” Ram objected. “After all, Bassett would recognize that a matter transmitter had been used.”
    “That’s all to the good. When Bassett realizes that we are in such a strong position that we can give him information he thought would suffice, and he finds he has been hitting his head against a brick wall of our design, he’s that much more likely to give way in sheer fury.”
    Ram hesitated. “It sounds logical,” he conceded. “All right, we can try. We can only do our best, after all, and we’re certainly doing that.”
    “I’d feel a hell of a sight more confident if we weren’t already doing our best,” snapped Counce. He dropped into a relaxer which stood close by, and wiped his hand across his eyes as though to rub away tiredness.
    “I hate this blackmail,” he said. “That’s what it is, you know. With an admixture of bribery. Still, it’s all we’ve got.”
    “I think you can dignify our contribution with a better name,” Ram said gently. “Have you had a chance to watch the Falconetta Show lately?”
    “No, but I expect that, as usual, half the population of Earth has been tuning in. What are you doing?”
    “A series on the effects