Walking Dead

by Peter Dickinson

  The descent into the pit lay along the traditional helix, spiralling down. While Foxe believed that his choice lay between doing what Doctor Trotter wanted and enduring for a few weeks the kind of jail Mr Palamine had described, it had been fairly easy to continue to refuse. But slowly Captain Angiah, without directly telling him, let him become aware that there were a number of ways in which Ladyblossom’s murder might be solved, and that the choice of whom to accuse and the verdict of the court lay completely within the Prime Minister’s whim. He even referred to Foxe’s talk with Mr Trotter the herbalist as evidence of Foxe’s interest in magical practices. Other witnesses could be found. A snake-apple could be discovered in Foxe’s flat. Charley would say that his wife knew Foxe for a powerful witch … so the weeks could be months, years … ah, no, there was no death penalty on the Islands, but nobody was immortal. Men died, slowly or suddenly … and wasn’t the court likely to consider Foxe’s refusal to take part in a scientific experiment as evidence of his conversion to magical practices?

  The first step down the spiral had seemed hypothetical. Suppose Foxe were to agree to conduct the experiment, then what would his conditions be? It must have taken almost an hour for Captain Angiah to coax and bully Foxe past that point, and then he was walking down the slope. He had agreed. All he could do now was safeguard his position as far as possible. The subjects must be genuine volunteers. If less than twenty forthcoming, Foxe to return to Hog’s Cay under house arrest. Foxe to have complete charge of the experiment—no guard, police officer or other person to address, contact or discipline in any way any of the subjects of the experiment, except as specifically ordered to by Doctor Foxe. The drugs administered to be only those already supplied by the Company, etc., etc., etc.

  While Captain Angiah typed the agreement out on the ancient machine, Foxe ate a pappy roll and greasy hamburger, and thought. He tried to pin his mind down to further safeguards. Secrecy first; if that was broken, proof that he’d been blackmailed into this fix; proof that he thought the experiment harmless; proof that the subjects were volunteers. The headline ran threading through all his thoughts: Prison Camp Doctor Conducts Human Experiments. Now, Doctor Foxe, you claim that you were forced into this situation. But surely …

  His digestive juices seemed to make no contact with his meal, which lay in his stomach like a stone. He had stopped asking himself, Why me? because now half-knew the answer. The Prime Minister was not merely interested in Foxe’s experiment on the prisoners, he was also conducting his own experiment on Foxe. He had chosen his victim that morning at the laboratory, because of something that Foxe represented, something perhaps that Foxe had said to Mrs Trotter—not a logical choice, of course, but a sudden, passionate interest, like love at first sight.

  The Captain pulled the paper out of the machine, read it slowly and passed it across the table. The sentences were meaningless, read by Foxe’s prickling eyes like words in a dream, but not reaching his brain. He put his hand in his pocket to look for his pen but found Quentin instead. Quentin had slept since breakfast, but now seemed to be stirring, so Foxe lifted him onto the table to clear up the crumbs, but he seemed more concerned to witness Foxe’s signature. Foxe wrote his name in an angry scrawl. Captain Angiah added his, slow and clear but surprisingly florid. As if adding a seal Quentin excreted neatly onto the paper. Quite right. That was about what it was worth.

  The arena where the prisoners were kept was called the Pit. Once you were down in it, standing on its sand-strewn floor, the glare seemed less—certainly less than the afternoon sun in the castle courtyard. The overarching dark lay close above, making the gallery invisible behind the lights; it was impossible to tell whether one was being watched by twenty guards, or two, or none.

  “Do they all speak English?” said Foxe.

  “Yeh. Some of them may pretend not to understand you.”

  “OK. Thanks. Now I’m going to need an assistant, somebody who can read and write and add up. Not a guard or a soldier. Shall I pick one out of this lot?”

  “No,” said Captain Angiah firmly. “The Prime Minister says they’ve got to be all in the experiment.”

  “Provided they volunteer.”

  “Sure. I’ll get you a prisoner from outside.”

  “Fine. Now will you go back to the gallery, please?”

  “I better stay here, Doctor.”

  Foxe’s hand seemed too tired to quiver as he snatched the agreement from his pocket and thrust it under Captain Angiah’s monstrous nostrils, pointing at clause (iv). For the first time that day Captain Angiah smiled; he nodded to the two armed guards who had accompanied them to the floor of the pit and led the way up the flight of wooden steps to the gallery. Foxe waited till they had reached the top and with a squeak of pulleys and creak of hemp the steps were hauled up into the dark. Then he turned to the silent prisoners, paraded in three ranks in front of him.

  “Perhaps you would all sit down,” he said.

  The large eyes stared at him from drawn and sunken faces. Nobody stirred. A voice bellowed out of the darkness.

  “Siddown, yah black bastards, when the white man telling you.”

  As the ranks collapsed to the sand Foxe turned.

  “Captain Angiah?”

  “I am still here,” said the darkness.

  “Will you see that the guards understand their new orders? Interference of that kind will make the experiment valueless.”

  Slowly Foxe turned to face the prisoners, aware that for almost the first time that day he had spoken with real confidence. This glaring arena was now his laboratory, the world where he was himself, solid, in control. He was aware too of a strange surge of excitement, far below the rational level, at the prospect before him. Reason might surface in the end—it might, for instance be possible to set something up which paralleled a known animal experiment closely enough for actual comparisons to be made—probably nothing quantifiable, and of course never publishable, but still an experience, an insight, a colour that might tinge future experiments, back in the sane world where rats were rats and you could do what you chose with them.

  He looked along the ranks. Four-fifths males—that was good. A few impossible to sex at a glance. Condition poor—in fact appalling by normal laboratory standards. But the starved eyes seemed bright, watchful, interested. His own eyes locked to a particular glance, a hard, strong face surrounded by a frizz of tight-curled hair, the eyes sunken and very dark, a look both withdrawn and speculative. He stopped inspecting a group of laboratory animals and realised that he still had to make contact with each individual mind. Rats don’t volunteer.

  “My name’s David Foxe,” he said. “I’ve been asked, or rather I’ve been forced, to conduct an experiment. I can promise you it will do no one any harm. I can also promise that no one need take part unless they want to. Everybody in the experiment must be a volunteer.”

  Arms rose at the word, like the tentacles of some sea-bed creature wavering for prey above the sandy floor.

  “That’s no good,” said Foxe, wearily. He was cross with himself for not having guessed that one of the guards would already have been down here, telling them what would be done to those who failed to volunteer. The Prime Minister had probably given the orders even before he’d allowed Captain Angiah to concede the point. Foxe was tired of the sheer crudeness of the machinery of despotism—surely they must know that he’d be aware that if he failed to get the volunteers he wanted there’d be no question of the clause about his going back to house arrest on Hog’s Cay becoming operative—he’d simply vanish, or fall into the harbour and drown, or eat something poisonous from Mrs Trotter’s recipe book, or … Part of Foxe’s anger rose from feeling that he was being treated as almost totally naïve, but more from this being a further interference in the domain of his laboratory.

  He waited till the arms had returned to rest. A few of the faces looked puzzled, but one or two were smiling, in a r
emote sort of way, as if his refusal to accept their offer had been a small victory for them.

  “Now listen,” he said. “First I will tell you what I can offer to those who do volunteer. I cannot work with you if you are ill or starved, so I will see that you get proper food. You will not do any work except what is needed for the experiment. You will have no contact with any of the guards. I think the experiment will last about five weeks.

  “Now, as for the experiment itself. I can’t tell you the details of it, partly because I haven’t worked them out yet and partly because if you know what the purpose of the experiment is that will affect your performance. But in general terms it is to study the effect of a particular drug on human behaviour. I myself believe that this drug probably has no effect at all, or is if anything a mild sedative. To prove that this is so, I will inject myself with the same drug. I’m not doing this only for that reason, but because I’ve been forced to conduct these experiments, and I need to be able to show that I’m not asking you to undergo anything that I’m not prepared to undergo myself. For the same reason I need to be able to show that everyone taking part in the experiment is a genuine volunteer.

  “The only other thing I can tell you at the moment is that the experiment will consist of your doing certain tests, which will probably be more like children’s games than anything else, and I will measure your performance. Are there any questions?”

  There was a brief silence. They stared at him with a strange look which he found hard to read. If they had indeed been children he would have said it was that sense of desolation which comes when an expected treat is cancelled by the mysterious whims of the adult world. A deep voice spoke.

  “This what you come to tell us? We play games?”

  The words seemed to come from nowhere in particular, like a medium’s ventriloquial trickery—a useful knack among prisoners.

  “It’s not exactly games,” he said. “I haven’t worked out the details, because I’ve never done anything quite like this before. My proper work is with animals. Rats, for instance. I make them do rather simple tricks, such as finding their way through mazes, and I measure how fast they learn to do it. I’ve got one here, as a matter of fact.” He put his hand in his pocket and held Quentin up by the scruff, legs and tail dangling. Some rats don’t mind this treatment, but Quentin started to wriggle so Foxe, unwilling to lose the slight hold he now had on the prisoners’ attention, put him on his left sleeve and let him run up to his shoulder. All along the ranked faces before him eyes opened wider, a movement both involuntary and unanimous, like a bed of mussels opening in response to a change of current.

  “The rat has a name?” asked the sourceless deep voice.

  “Quentin,” said Foxe. “That’s what the Q stands for.”

  They laughed, loud and all together, with a note of surprise and delight, as if what he’d said had been a brilliant, unpredictable pun. The noise startled Quentin, making him nuzzle into Foxe’s ear. Abruptly the noise cut out.

  “What he saying?” whispered two or three voices together. Foxe shrugged, wishing he could think how to erase the violet dye and return Quentin to ordinary rathood. He didn’t want a lot of magical nonsense messing up his task. Probably it was best to treat it all as a joke, he decided.

  “I don’t pay much attention to what he says. He’s a bit mad, if you want to know.”

  They stared, so silent that it was hard to believe they were even breathing—stared not at Foxe but at Quentin on his shoulder, making him feel that they were actually looking past him at some monster of the volcanic pit creeping up behind. Carelessly he plucked the rat from its perch and slid it into his pocket. They breathed. They fidgeted.

  “OK,” he said. “I suggest you take a few minutes to think about it. I’d better remind you that I’ll need to be satisfied that anyone who volunteers is doing so because he wants to, not because he’s been ordered to.”

  Foxe strolled away, trying to undo by his walk the mischief he’d done by producing Quentin. He ought to have been frightened; it looked as if he’d now be faced with a batch of prisoners too scared of Quentin to volunteer, and it would be the harbour for Foxe, or the poison, or perhaps a fall from a helicopter … He didn’t care much. It wasn’t because he was too tired to care—in fact, despite his exhaustion, he was full of a strange eagerness to begin. His mind was like a student’s on a first project, running ahead in an undisciplined way to future details, with none of the groundwork cleared. But a lot of the groundwork was irrelevant in this loony set-up—most of the logical safeguards for a start—you couldn’t even arrange for a double-blind system, with only Foxe to do all the work … Games … he’d used the word almost unthinkingly, but now it flashed on him that it solved huge problems. In the world of games there is only one vice, which is cheating … Cheating should be measurable, if the rules were clear enough … they’d have to think they were being tested for something else, of course—it wasn’t Foxe’s field, but he’d once shared a flat with a psychologist who was interested in competitiveness and was telling his subjects that he was testing their hearing acuteness … so you’d need games which seemed to measure something else, but you wouldn’t even tell them that … let it slip, perhaps, and see who passed the word to whom … no dice, that’d be measuring group-loyalty against rule-acceptance … no, keep all aspects, both apparent and real aims, inside the games … Umm, umm … Doctor Trotter wasn’t going to fancy any of this … what he’d liked about Foxe’s original story was the stress, the breakdown of social behaviour, the mindless blood and dirt; and that was what he wanted here, more stress, more starvation, the legitimised torture of his enemies in the name of science. Well, he wasn’t bloody going to get it. He was going to get games—not for reasons of morality, or of cowardice, but because they’d work. Games.

  Vaguely as he strolled around Foxe took in details of the Pit, rather as if he’d arrived too early for an interview in a strange town and was wandering about, his main attention fixed on the coming encounter, but still subconsciously registering elements which combined into an impression of a life-pattern. The walls were rough rock, their monotony relieved here and there by sharp-shadowed crevices into which even the two dozen arc-lights did not shine. It was only rock, and the light only light, and the darkness overhead an unmysterious space beyond the light; but in the arena itself a life-mode had evolved, parts of it—for instance where he passed a block of improvised patched screens from which came the sharp odour of latrines—obvious, and parts alien. Foxe, without much thinking about it, realised that the sand which floored the Pit was not its natural surface, but was brought in to provide some sort of cleanliness. He halted, still considering the problem of games and cheating, and stared at a patch of this sand, one of the alien bits of Pit life, where the surface had been carefully smoothed and covered with a pattern of symbols through which footsteps threaded a spiral path.

  “We ready, then,” said a voice.

  Foxe looked up and saw a gaunt young man with a pocked face had come up.

  “Fine,” said Foxe. “Any volunteers?”

  “All the lot of them, man.”

  Foxe didn’t sigh or shrug, though the news should have been no less irritating than it had been ten minutes before. But now, OK, he’d lost a point, but he’d got his volunteers.

  “You think it will work?” said the young man in a low voice.

  “I don’t know. It’s pretty difficult. This isn’t really the right place—and as far as I know nothing like it’s been tried before.”

  “Seems it begun working this same morning,” said the young man.

  “Umm,” said Foxe. He was half way back to the group of volunteers before he was far enough out of his abstraction to realise that the man had been talking not about the experiment but about the pattern on the floor.

  4

  Foxe lay on a huge soft bed dreaming that he was looking for Lisa-Anna in a strange c
ity. It should have been an anxiety dream, but had none of that feel about it because he was certain of reaching her in the end, and was bitterly disappointed when a voice woke him, speaking close beside his ear.

  “Doctor Foxe, you there?”

  “I suppose so,” he muttered.

  “The President dining in forty minutes. Request your company, uh?”

  Foxe groaned, opened his eyes and half sat up. There was no one in the room.

  “You hear me, suh?”

  The voice came from among the luminous press-buttons on the console beside the bed.

  “OK, I’ll be there,” said Foxe. “I haven’t got much to wear.”

  “Tuxedos, suh. Plenty clothes in closet. Guests assemble at twenty-forty hours in ante-room to left of elevator lobby, first floor.”

  The speaker ceased its subliminal hum. Foxe peered at the luminous buttons and pressed the one with the lamp-symbol on it. Light began to glow through the room, increasing in intensity while he kept the button pressed and stopping when he released it. Another button slid the window-shutters away, revealing equatorial stars over the oily harbour and the black hulk of cliff that hid his new laboratory. Yet another, with a temperature-setting knob beside it, started to run a bath next door.

  Foxe rose and walked to the clothes-cupboard, which disappointingly opened with a manually operated catch, but turned out to be as large as a fair-sized room. Rack on rack of clothes, male and female, seemed to inspect him as he entered. It was like a roomful of ghosts, no, not ghosts, for these presences were nothing if not material, hanging there, waiting to be reanimated. For a moment Foxe, perhaps because his mind was still full of Lisa-Anna who had enjoyed playing with such notions, considered the possible combinations of spirit, flesh and clothing. There are seven in all, one with the set complete, the living man, three with one element missing and three with two. They had names, moreover, even the two-combinations: spirit and clothes were the ghost; spirit and flesh were the savage; clothes and flesh the corpse—no, you’d got the corpse already, as a one-combination. Clothes and flesh were the walking dead.