This Fortress World

by Gunn, James

  I knelt down to feel the floor. It was smooth and warm, almost hot. I felt all over the floor, crawling on my hands and knees. There had to be more than this. A room wasn't enough. I needed food and light, one almost as bad as the other. I felt a scream growing inside me.

  Something small and cylindrical rolled under my hand. I searched around for it, found it, and investigated it carefully. There was a button on the side. I pushed it in. Light sprang out of one end, disclosing a dusty floor and a cubicle walled in with boxes. They stared at me blankly, all except one. It gaped blackly.

  I flashed the light into it. There were dozens of sealed, plastic flasks and stacks of small boxes. I tore open one of the boxes and shook the contents out into my hand. Four dry biscuits and eight colored pellets.

  I ate the biscuits first. Then I put one of the brown pellets in my mouth and let it dissolve. It had a rich, meaty flavor. Two others were the same. The others were different. A light yellow one tasted like fresh fruit.

  After the food was gone I broke the seal on a flask and squeezed the water into my mouth. I felt contented, almost happy. In a few minutes, or half an hour, or an hour, this ship would be lifting, pushing itself away from the stubbornly resisting world below, breaking through thinning air into the blackness of space, and I would be here, snug, wellfed, waiting for the moment when I would slip out into the purer air and the cleaner soil of another world. MacLeod. I wondered if it would be better or worse. I hoped it would be better, but it didn't matter, really. It would be a new world, where I could make a new start. That was enough.

  I turned off the flashlight. It isn't so bad being in total darkness when you know you can have light if you want it. It's when there's no help for it that the dark closes in like something alive, clutching at your throat. There was no way of knowing how long the power for the light would last. I would save it.

  The darkness was warm and friendly. A little too warm, really. It made me drowsy. The heat from the floor beneath me worked up into my body…

  Somewhere, far off, something whirred. Later, light poured through my eyelids, redly. Something fumbled at my chest, shook my sleeve, and withdrew. I pried my eyes open.

  The light was blinding. There was a white spot of it; I couldn't see anything else.

  "Who is it?" I asked sleepily.

  Somebody chuckled.

  The chase was over. I had run until I couldn't run any more. That chuckle was all that was necessary to end my flight when freedom was a few minutes away.

  I knew that laugh. It was Sabatini.

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  Chapter Twelve

  There was no point in struggling. My gun was gone, and the knife in my sleeve was gone. Sabatini wasn't alone.

  I was jerked to my feet. My jacket was stripped off. My hands were tied behind me. I accepted everything numbly. I was an automaton, without life of my own, without hope or fear or thought. I waited for them to cut off my feet.

  Sabatini was chuckling again. "The old hot box. They never learn."

  I waited. They led me out through the narrow lanes between the stacks. When I stumbled in the darkness, they jerked me up.

  They're waiting until they get me out where they can carry me, I thought. But when we came out in the little cleared space in front of the open cargo door, they stopped me, but they didn't cut off my feet. Besides Sabatini there was a big one and a little one. In the dim starlight coming through the door, I saw that they were all dressed in real uniforms, orange and blue. It should have meant something to me, but it didn't.

  "You caught him," someone said, vast relief in his voice. Silver gleamed dully, but I didn't recognize him. He was older than my venal friend. "Thank God! You'd never think, to look at him, that he had the Plague."

  "At this stage," said Sabatini, "it hardly shows."

  "What I can't figure out," the voice said, "is how he got in there."

  "You can't?" Sabatini said. He sounded amused.

  "We will always be grateful to the Emperor," the voice went on hurriedly. "You've saved us months of delay in quarantine and maybe even our lives."

  "The Emperor lives to serve his people," Sabatini said dryly. "Now, if you will operate the hoist, we'll take this man where he can't contaminate anyone."

  Silver shrank back farther into the darkness. "Of course," he gasped.

  I edged toward the doorway, but a hand reached out to hold me back. A motor whirred softly. Chains rattled. A platform edged out into the starlight. Before it cleared the ship, Sabatini stepped onto it. One of his men handed me out to him. He held tightly to my arm with one hand, to the chain with the other. The other two mercenaries got on.

  The platform swung out into the night air, swaying gently. It fell through the darkness, slowed, and thudded softly to the pavement. As soon as the Agents stepped off, pulling me after them, the platform swayed back up.

  Across the field new lights sprang up. Someone shouted. The voice carried far through the night. A truck motor roared into life. Without haste but without wasting any time or motion, Sabatini pushed me to an orange-and-blue helicopter, through the door, and into a back seat. I sagged, unutterably weary of everything.

  One of the mercenaries got in the back with me. He was a little man with a dark face and eyes that held glittering reflections of the distant lights. The other one who looked big and soft and laughed a lot climbed into the front with Sabatini. More motors roared, but they were a long way off. Lights began to string out across the field. Others probed the sky with searching fingers.

  The helicopter motor coughed and was silent, coughed again and began muttering to itself. Vanes sighed above me. The helicopter lifted a few feet from the ground and moved sideways, drifting across the field.

  A powerful light bored through the darkness above our heads and was reflected brilliantly from the hull of the Phoenix. The helicopter drifted on, rising a little higher. The lights around the distant buildings slid away.

  In a few minutes we were close to the fence. It was a straight, bright line under us. And we left it behind, and it left us in darkness. We drifted on.

  No one said anything. My mind had begun to work again, not quickly, not well, but at least it began to think. I wondered what Sabatini and his men were doing in Imperial uniforms. I wondered why there had been excitement at the port. I wondered why we fled through the night. But it didn't really matter.

  Sabatini chuckled. "The old hot box. You haven't thanked me, Dane. I saved you from certain death." He chuckled again, and the big, soft one laughed.

  I didn't move; I didn't say anything. Sabatini turned around in the seat to stare at me through the darkness; his nose was a monstrous black shadow. "You know where they put you in that ship, don't you? Right over the motors. When the ship took off you'd have been cooked, inside and out. They've played that game for a long time, those spacers. I didn't think anyone still fell for it." He chuckled again, this time at humanity's eternal credulity.

  I didn't answer. I was cold inside. You'd have to trust someone, sometime, I heard Laurie saying. You'd be sure to trust the wrong person. But there hadn't been any choice. It was the space officer or no one. What did it matter whether I died there in the ship or in Sabatini's hands? It would have been better to have died in the Phoenix, hoping for life, dreaming of another world.

  The helicopter fell through the night, sighing, and landed gently in the darkness. They got out; they pulled me with them. Sabatini held my arms from behind while the other two stripped off their uniforms. Beneath the uniforms were the familiar black suits. Then the other two held me while Sabatini stripped. Then Sabatini held me again while the little Agent flipped on a small light. Three men were lying underneath some bushes. They were almost naked. They were dead.

  The two agents slipped the discarded Imperial uniforms on the dead men. I stood still, watching them, feeling my arms grow numb. When they finished they led me through the bushes to a low, dark car. They pushed me into the back again. The motor made
a raucous sound in the silent night before it gentled to a purr. We bumped out onto a smooth, dark road. We picked up speed and fled down it without a light. There was no way to measure time. The trip was endless.

  The lights of the Imperial City got closer, turning low clouds sullen red. We turned onto a road that seemed no better than a rutted track. We jounced along it for a long time, going a little slower; I had no idea how far we went. At the end of the track was a dark, massive pile that climbed against the sky, blotting out the stars. We stopped in front of it.

  They pulled me out, and Sabatini disappeared into the blackness. I heard something clank and groan creakily. A door was opening, and it protested. Something gaped with a deeper darkness. The big, soft Agent pulled me forward by one arm. I hung back, taking a last look at the few stars that glimmered between the clouds.

  A strong pull drew me stumbling into blackness. A light came on, a single beam in the darkness. It roamed unsteadily. Before us was a broad corridor, dusty, dark-walled in stone. The light went ahead and we followed, interminably, along the corridor and down narrow steps and a few level paces and down more steps, down, always down. The walls began to sweat. Occasionally crystalline salt deposits glistened in the light. We went down into the ground following a dancing beam of light.

  When we stopped, finally, we were in a dark room. I sensed that it was large; the darkness was close, but the walls didn't seem to press in upon me. Sabatini gestured with the light in his hand. The other Agents lighted wooden torches fixed in rusty metal brackets on the wall. They flickered and flared smokily. I looked around the room. It was big and cavelike and unfinished. Water dripped from the ceiling. Distributed haphazardly around the rough stone floor and against the walls were unrecognizable devices made of iron and wood and rope.

  I looked slowly back at Sabatini. He was watching my face, and he was smiling.

  "My little chamber has impressed you, I see," he said softly. "You are familiar with the work of your lay brothers. I, too, am a kind of scientist, and this is my laboratory. This is where I investigate the nature of truth—and how to find it. It's a fascinating search, and I think I have discovered some basic laws that the philosophers have missed."

  He glanced around the room. "The old Baron who built this castle and equipped this room was an inventive fellow, but he didn't have the spirit of the philosopher, I understand. This was his hobby. These walls once rang with shrieks and screams and moans of pleasure. The moans of pleasure were his. But now the room is mine, and we seek the truth. Where is the pebble?"

  It is difficult to shrug with your hands tied behind you, but I shrugged. There is only one way to be sure you don't say the wrong thing. That is to say nothing. No matter what happened, I would keep my mouth shut.

  Smiling, Sabatini studied me and motioned to one of the Agents. The little, dark one with the glittering eyes shook a knife out of his sleeve and stepped behind me. Involuntarily my back tensed. Something swished through the air. My hands fell free. They dropped at my sides. I wanted to rub them, where the rope had bitten into the flesh, but I restrained myself.

  "Pain is a strange thing," Sabatini said gently. "For some it is a stimulus that sets the tongue to wagging. All kinds of things spill out, truth and falsehood, it doesn't matter which, anything that might please the questioner. It becomes difficult to seine out what you want. For others pain is a wedge that splits the soul so that other things can enter. For still others, pain is a gag; the teeth clench tight upon it and will not loosen for death itself. I wonder. Which kind are you?"

  I wondered, too, but I didn't let him see that. I stared at his face impassively. In spite of the massive nose, the dark face was smiling and gentle. But the eyes were not smiling. They were hard and cold and piercing. They looked into me, seeing too much. But I would not look away.

  "Come," he said. "Let's look around. I think you would be interested, since you are a man of curious spirit."

  He led me through the cavern, describing the unending horrors that cluttered the floor and marred the walls. He told me how they worked and how they felt. His voice was tender; his words were rich and well chosen. They painted a picture of indescribable torment that sent sympathetic shivers up and down my spine.

  Some of the devices had spikes, some had knife edges, some had ropes and pulleys. Some were little cages in which a man could not sit or stand. Some were metal boots or gloves with screws on the side that could be turned to make them fit.

  "For they always fit," Sabatini said. "That is the beauty of them."

  He pointed out the old dark stains that had been made long ago; he speculated about them, his eyes glowing. But there were too many devices, too many stains. Eventually his flexible, purring cat-voice lost all meaning; I stared and did not see.

  "Ingenious, all," he said finally. "We admire the workmanship and the cleverness. We grease the wheels and the screws; we sharpen the points and blades; we renew the ropes. But in the final analysis these devices defeat their own purpose. They are too ingenious. The mind becomes bemused, contemplating them. There are too many parts; there is too much complexity. There isn't a single, dramatic facet for the mind to grasp as a symbol, to cling to in spite of itself. For that is the essence of learning the truth. We do not torture. We do not wish to torment the body. We apply only a gentle stimulus. It is the mind that tortures."

  I could have turned on him at any time. I could have hit him and made a break for the door. But I knew I didn't have a chance, and my attempt would be an admission of weakness. No, it was better to submit and say nothing. I was weak enough already without adding the weight of an unsuccessful escape.

  He led me back to a table near the archway through which we had entered. On the table was a collection of needles and knives and pincers. Judiciously Sabatini looked them over, glancing at me and back at the table. He stretched his hand out over them. He picked up a pair of pincers. He toyed with them as he talked.

  "Sit down, William," he said gently. He motioned to a heavy chair beside the table.

  I sat down, my arms on the armrests. The little Agent flipped metal bands across my arms and fastened them. Two more bands encircled my legs. I sat still, unable to move even if I wanted to.

  "No doubt you are curious," Sabatini said, "as to my right to possess the pebble. I'll tell you. Mine is the best right of all. I want it more than anybody, and I'm willing to do anything to get it, anything at all."

  "Why?" I asked, and I regretted it. I had broken the promise I had made to myself.

  Sabatini's eyes lighted up. "I don't know," he said reflectively. '"'ll be as honest and truthful with you as I expect you to be with me, William. I'm fond of you, already, and you will grow fond of me. It may take time, but we have patience, haven't we, William? I will be close to you, closer than anything has ever been before, closer than anything will ever be again.

  "And so I say, 'I don't know.' But I know it has a value, a great value, and it must be mine. Word spread throughout the galaxy that it was here, and I knew that it was what I had been looking for. I gave up a great deal to come and find it, more than you can imagine. But when I have it, the galaxy will be mine."

  I laughed at him. I put back my head and laughed. Echoes bounced off the walls at us. His face got red, a dark red that made his dark eyes darker, and I knew that laughing was the right thing to do. But the color in his face slowly receded, and he smiled again.

  "Clever, William," he said. "I am growing fonder of you all the time. It's going to hurt me a great deal to do what must be done. Save me the pain, William. Tell me where the pebble is."

  I looked at him steadily.

  He sighed, dangling the pincers. "Take off his shoes," he said sadly.

  The little Agent took off my shoes. The stone floor felt cold and damp to my feet. Sabatini knelt down in front of me, like a worshipper at a shrine. He touched my left foot with one finger. I controlled an impulse to twitch it back.

  "Such a fine, white foot," he said. "Such a pity to ma
r it." He lowered the pincers out of my sight. I felt them cold against my toes. "Ah, William," he sighed. "Good William, poor William."

  His arm rippled. His shoulder lifted. A tongue of fire shot up my foot, up my leg, through my spinal column to my brain, and rocked it. I gasped. I couldn't help it. Waves of pain raced back and forth along my body as I clenched my teeth, blinked away tears that sprang into my eyes, tried to smile.

  Pain! It was something that could not be imagined. We think we can stand anything. Torture cannot drag our secrets loose from our unwilling lips. We are strong and proud and brave. We will not talk. But our body turns upon us and twists our will and makes us weaklings. Unfair, unfair! To split a man in two and set one part against the other, fighting together, torturing each other. If the body is weak, the will should not be strong. But I would not tell…

  The pain died away as it localized itself in my foot and settled in a toe.

  "There now," Sabatini said, "that wasn't so bad, was it? It didn't hurt too much, did it?"

  He opened the pincers and let something thin and small drop to the floor. He stood up, looking down at my feet. "Poor little toe," he said. The big, soft Agent was laughing; it made his jowls shake. Sabatini looked into my eyes, dangling the pincers in his hand. My eyes were drawn to them irresistibly. They were held there by a kind of fascinated horror. I couldn't look away.

  "Where is the pebble, William?" Sabatini pleaded. I looked at the pincers and said nothing. "Ah, well," he said. "Tomorrow we will take the next toe. The day after that, the next, until they all look alike. And then, if you will not be my friend, we will start upon the fingers. After that, we will think of something else. We have lots of time, William. All the time in the world. We will learn to be friends, you and I."