by Paul Park
Thanakar moved down the line, feeling unusually deformed. But he put his shoulders back and, as was his unhappy custom, examined their faces to see if they were laughing at him. They weren’t, but for him the soldiers’ earnestness gave them a collective irony that would have been dissipated by a single quivering lip. Thanakar searched eagerly for some sign of mockery, but there was nothing, just popeyed boyishness and stiff black uniforms. They were so young. Thanakar passed the officer, a dark clean boy, his face frozen into a rictus of subservience, and the doctor felt his first contemptuous instincts being polluted by a small amount of sadness. There was no reason for young men to be clever if they were going to die so soon. The eternal war in which their fathers and grandfathers had fought was all around them, yet it was easily forgotten. There was no news, not even lies; there never had been. But Thanakar caught wisps of rumors from his cousins in the army. Even they knew nothing. There was fighting near the city now. You could hear the guns sometimes—where? North, east, west—you only saw it indirectly by how many things were missing: how empty the shops seemed, how pitiful the food available to the poor, how few men in a crowd.
The soldiers marched away, and Thanakar crossed the rest of the parade ground. He entered the mountain through a small postern, thirty feet high, carved in the shape of the twenty-first bishop’s open mouth. The stairs led up his tongue. Inside, all was submission and subservience, though as he penetrated the dingy corridors, the cell-like offices so small they made you forget where you were, the wardens and the guards seemed increasingly sullen. He was abusing his right. They knew it, and they hated him for it. At the checkpoints, he held his palms up with contemptuous nonchalance, and they were powerless to disobey. They knew better than anyone the penalties for disobedience.
In a windowless cubicle, he stopped before the desk of the subdirector for the ninth day of the week, a middle-aged man with a face full of warts, too ugly for active service, Thanakar supposed. No, the white ribbon of the winter war snaked through his buttonholes, and in his eyes there was a look of—what? Intelligence? Thanakar reminded himself that these men were all criminals, rapists, murderers, toadies. Yet as always, they had human voices.
“I thought we had seen you for the last time, sir,” said the man. His name was Spanion Locke, printed on a card pinned to the front of his uniform.
“You were mistaken.”
Locke stared at him sadly. Then he shrugged. “Where do you want to go?”
“Heretics.”
“Heretics.” The man sighed. “Sir, can I . . . may I ask you what you’re planning on doing?”
“No.” The doctor had no idea himself.
“Will you open your bag?”
“It’s my private property.”
“Sir, you understand it’s against the law to bring unauthorized drugs into the wards.”
“That can’t apply to me.”
“No, sir. But may I ask you what you’re planning to accomplish? We have more than one million inmates here.”
“I know that.”
“Yes, sir. But if you’re just trying to prove a point, I thought you might want to know what effect it has on other people.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, sir, for one thing, if I let you pass, I’ll lose my job.”
“My heart bleeds, Lieutenant.”
“Captain, sir.”
“I’m sorry. I guess I anticipate.”
“Very funny, sir. I’m not talking about that. After your last visit, the chaplain made the penalties very clear if you came again. As I say, I am unable to prevent it. But . . .”
“Please, Captain, spare your breath. Any punishment they give you has been earned a hundred times, I’m sure.”
“Do you know what the penalty is for treason, sir? Have you seen it?”
Thanakar said nothing, and the captain licked his lips. “That’s all right, sir,” he resumed. “I won’t beg. I’ve got my pride. I’m God’s soldier, and I do what I’m told. But as long as you’re such a humanitarian, sir, I thought you might care to imagine what your life might have been like if you had been born with my name and my tattoos. Do you think we’re here on voluntary service? No offense, sir. It would be different if you could do some good up there. But as long as you can’t, don’t you see, it’s a selfish act, and it’s not you who’ll bear the consequences. What can they do to you?”
“You think it’s selfish of me to risk my life . . .”
“Not your life, sir,” interrupted the captain. “My life.” A drop of perspiration ran down behind his ear and under his uniform. He swatted it as if it were a fly.
“I’m sorry to speak so blunt, sir,” he resumed. “I’m not complaining. I do what I’m told. But I thought I’d ask.”
“I’m sorry, Captain Locke. I’ve made up my mind.”
The man licked his lips. “Then that’s all right, sir,” he said. “No reason to apologize.” He stepped back towards his desk and picked up a ring of keys. “Heretics, was it? I’ll run you up myself.” He called into an inner room, and a young man came out and stared with dumb horror at the doctor and the ring of keys.
“Not to worry, Sergeant,” continued Locke. “I’ll take him up myself. Just mind the store.” Relief washed into the young man’s face, but the silent question stayed unchanged until the captain answered it with a grim, almost imperceptible shake of his head.
* * *
The biter reined his horse at the gates of the Temple of Kindness and Repair. He had been riding since before dawn, and he was happy and not ready to dismount. So he pulled his horse away and spurred it savagely up a slope of loose rock to the left of the gate; after the long ride, the animal was exhausted and bewildered, and it slipped and almost stumbled at the new exertion. The biter snarled and cut it with his whip, but at the top of the slope, he could see the city in the distance and the black mountain rising to the clouds. There he relented, and reached back behind his saddle to stroke the cut skin. He loved this horse, not a miserable, beet-fed barbarian creature, but a real horse, huge, wild, carnivorous, black. He stroked its bloody flank.
He had been riding for eleven days, up from the imperial capital, with messages and a mandate for power. A barbarian would have taken a dozen retainers and a train. But it was already raining in the South; the bridges and the tracks were all washed out, and he had been glad to leave his regiment to underlings and ride on alone. Nothing ever gave him as much pleasure as riding, the horse staggering off-balance and half mad with fatigue. He stripped the glove from his hand and stroked the animal lovingly, and looked out over the city. It belonged to him. He was free.
His other hand was just a steel claw; he cursed and shook it, but in fact he remembered the city only vaguely. It had been a long time since he had seen it, and then it was only through eyes darkened by ignorance and hate, through the bars of his cage as they dragged him through the streets after the cannibal war, the barbarians spitting and shouting. He barely remembered because as always, the past was to the present as the rider to the horse, unimpressive and mean, though it cut with the whip, kicked with the spur.
A group of monks and soldiers gathered near the gate, and he watched them with a mixture of impatience and delight. He himself bore the message of his own arrival. They gestured and talked among themselves, frightened by the giant stranger on the giant horse. Down below, he had jumped the wall. Here, he watched their faces widen and contort as he brought his horse back down the slope, and when he reached the flat he spurred it to a gallop again. The soldiers scattered, reaching for their pistols, though one stood firm, an old sergeant at the middle of the gate. A brave man, thought the biter. He would be rewarded for his bravery. But in the meantime, the biter lashed him in the face with his whip as he galloped through the gate into the first of ninety courtyards, where the guard was turned out to greet him.
They stood around him in a circle, awaiting the order to fire. He reined his horse so sharply that it almost collapsed, then sat still
and glowered at them while they stared open-mouthed along their rifle barrels. The sergeant came in, limping, with the blood running from his cheek, but before he could give the order, the biter stripped his white scarf back from his collar to show the crimson star, the crimson dog’s head at his throat. He dismounted stiffly, and as the sergeant came up, tossed him the reins. “My name is Aspe,” he announced in his harsh voice. “I have orders for the bishop.”
* * *
The elevator ride to the heretics section took twenty minutes. The captain had brought a book, so Thanakar sat silent on a stool, swallowing periodically to release the pressure in his ears. When the doors opened, they were almost at the top of the mountain, near where one of four uncompleted towers broke from its base, up towards the spiderweb cathedral hidden in the clouds.
This was the Tower of Silence; to get there, the captain led Thanakar up stairs and down stone corridors, and out into an open space several acres in extent, where the air seemed different from below: wetter, colder, whiter. The sun was in the center of a swirl of mist.
Because it was unfinished, the tower had no roof. Masons worked in the open air 700 feet above Thanakar’s head as he entered through a metal door. At that distance he couldn’t see them, but he could hear the chink of their hammers, and occasionally some pieces of stone or mortar dust would fall down through the vast, empty cylinder, down past him into nothingness, for the void stretched down into darkness as well as up into light, until the eye was lost. He stood on a narrow metal balcony, riveted to the inside of the stone chimney, and looked up past the spiral tiers of cells. The sky was white and far away, a little white disk.
Like all parts of the prison, it was very quiet. There were no wardens or guards. No movement caught his eye. The place seemed uninhabited.
“Is there a section for antinomials?” he asked.
Without speaking, Captain Locke led the way to the end of the spiral, rising some distance away out of the circular balcony on which they stood. He unchained a steel gate, and they started up a track of welded steel, circling gradually upward along the inside of the tower. The metal rang under their footsteps. To their left was the empty void, lit from above through the open roof. At intervals below, lamps rimmed balconies similar to the one they had just left. Looking down, Thanakar could see them, rings of light, gradually diminishing in size until they resolved into an evil glow. To the right were the cells, piled three high, the top ones reached by metal ladders. Inside, they were dark, illuminated only by fitful gleams from the captain’s torch. He swung it carelessly to mark their way, and occasionally the light would flit into a cell and catch some object there in its moving circle, a heap of bedding, a glint of metal, a living shape, the striped bars of the cage.
“How many people are imprisoned here?” whispered Thanakar.
“Capacity is one hundred thousand.” The captain spoke in his normal voice. In the half-dark, it sounded like shouting. “Present occupancy is almost two,” he added expressionlessly.
“All heretics?”
“One kind or another. These are lunatics, here. Paranoids.” The captain paused and shone his light into a cell they were just passing. In the middle of a tiny room, a woman sat, completely motionless, tied to a chair. Bound hand and foot, nevertheless, she gave the impression of movement, of implacable energy, as if she were straining every muscle against the cords that confined her. They cut into her flesh. Her wrists were bound to the arms of her chair, but her fingers stretched trembling at their furthest extent. Her head was sunk low on her breast, but as they passed she raised her head slowly into the light, and Thanakar gasped because for an instant it was as if she had no mouth. The lamp had resolved her white gag into her white face, a square piece of tape stuck to her lips. Above it, her eyes stared at him, insane, malignant, her pupils bleached white in the glare. Her hair was long and neatly brushed.
“My God,” whispered Thanakar.
“Yes. My God,” said the captain in his expressionless voice.
“How long can she live like that?”
“It depends.” The captain flicked his light onto a card stuck to the bars of the cell. “She’s been here five months.”
“Five hundred days. It’s not possible.”
For an answer, the captain turned his lamp away and resumed walking. Thanakar had to hurry to keep up. He gripped the guardrail spasmodically, and sometimes his feet stumbled on the rivets of the track.
They walked in silence for what seemed like hours. Several times the doctor had to stop and rest his leg, and always his companion stopped and waited for him without speaking. For some reason, it seemed warmer as they rose higher. Moisture glistened on the walls.
“We’re getting close,” said the captain presently.
The cells were larger here, and there were several prisoners in each one. They squatted, crouched, and lay full length, and as the light passed, they turned to look and made small noises with their chains.
“Adventists,” said the captain.
They continued on. The cells were large enough to permit standing, and rows of men stood watching them, holding onto the bars with manacled hands. They didn’t wear gags, but still they made no sound, just an occasional soft clink as they moved their feet or moved their heads to watch the passage of the lamp. They were dark men, tall and hairy, from the eastern provinces, with wide, flat faces and slitted eyes.
“Rebel Angels,” said the captain.
“Why don’t they speak. Why are they so still?”
“They have no tongues.” As if to confirm the captain’s words, one of the prisoners grinned as they walked past, and opened his mouth to show his toothless gums and where his tongue had been cut away.
Above them, the masons had finished work, and the sky was dark. They continued on, up into the highest reaches of the tower. The captain stopped before a long cage. “Antinomials,” he said.
For the first time, the doctor could smell urine and human filth mixing with the sweet pervasive prison disinfectant. The captain sniffed. “Nobody likes to come up here much,” he remarked.
In the cell, an old man sat with his legs stretched out along the floor, his back against the wall. He raised his head when the light hit him. And when he saw the doctor he snarled at him with animal malice, his eyes gleaming, his lips curled back against his gleaming carnivorous teeth; and in the perfect silence Thanakar could swear he heard a low, throbbing growl. He took a step backward and the sound intensified, and a throaty rattle mixed with it. The antinomial was marked, a livid cross and circle branded between his brows.
“He’s got something wrong with him, sir,” said the captain. “This one does. Under his pants. Wait, you can’t see it. Wait till he moves. There.” He brought the beam of light down the antinomial’s right leg, and Thanakar could see part of a clumsy bandage where the cloth was ripped below his knee.
Conscious of his own sweat, he turned back towards the captain, in time to see him smile. “Maybe you should have stayed down in Birth Defects, like before, sir. Or Perpetual Care. You won’t find much gratitude up here.
“Go on, sir, please,” he continued, when Thanakar said nothing. “I’d hate to lose my job without a reason.” He was holding out the key.
Stung, Thanakar took it and unlocked the cage. No sooner had he stepped inside when the antinomial sprang up from the floor and flung himself across the cell, but the chain around his middle jerked him back. Thanakar squatted down and opened his bag, while the antinomial glared at him malevolently. With careful fingers, he prepared a hypodermic syringe and stood up, and the antinomial stood up also, almost two feet taller, and reached out one huge hand to point at him. They stood staring at one another for a moment, and then the antinomial slowly shook his head and dropped his hands down to his waist.
“I want to help you,” said Thanakar.
The antinomial took hold of the chain around his waist. It seemed too little for his strength. He started to pull on it to test the links, and when he found one
he liked, he tensed his muscles, and in a while the metal seemed to bend under his hands.
At that moment the captain turned his flashlight out. In the sudden blackness, Thanakar could hear the creak of bending metal and hear the captain smile as he said, “They can see in the dark. You know that, sir?”
Thanakar took a step backward. “Turn it on, Captain,” he said, as calmly as he could. “You don’t want to be reborn as a mouthful of spit on Planet Nine.”
The captain laughed. “You’re a brave one, aren’t you, sir?”
“I’m a Starbridge.”
“Ooh, well said, sir. You deserve some light for that.” He flicked the torch on and then off again, but long enough for Thanakar to see where he had dropped his bag. He stooped to pick it up and took another step backward. Then he heard the sound of the breaking chain, and Locke must have heard it too, because the flashlight came back on, and Thanakar could see him draw his pistol. But the antinomial did nothing. He just stood there in the circle of light with the broken chain between his fingers. Then he spoke, in a voice rusty from disuse. He said, “Don’t play games. No games. Not with me. Go now. Now.” He pointed towards the door.
Thanakar went. He turned and walked up the ramp again, and the captain followed him, still smiling. “Oh, come on, sir,” he said, after a little while. “It’s not as bad as that. I could have locked you in. You left the key in the door. Trusting of you. Believe me, I was tempted.”
“What’s the penalty for murdering a Starbridge?”
“They can’t kill me more than once, sir. Besides, the chaplain offered me a dispensation, in case the opportunity came up. Believe me, it would have been the solution to all our problems.”
Thanakar turned back. “The chaplain offered you a dispensation to murder me?” he asked.
“Not murder. An accident. It was a choice between that or a court-martial.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
Captain Locke smiled. “I’m a religious man, sir. And I have my pride. Believe it or not, I respect what you are trying to do. I don’t respect the method. I mean the intent.”
