This Fortress World (16 page)

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 mar 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."

The clamps that held my arms and legs were released. I was pulled up. My legs shook. They took my clothes off, slitting the sleeves of the shirt and the legs of the pants. My clothes fell away. They unclasped the belt around my waist. I stood in front of them naked. I looked at my left foot out of the corner of my eye, quickly, so that Sabatini would not catch me at it. Blood welled from the left little toe, where the nail had been. It was such a little thing to cause so much pain.

It was bad being naked, worse perhaps than the pain. It was not the cold or the dampness; it is hard to be strong and proud without clothes. When they take your clothes away, they take away your dignity. Without dignity, it is difficult to be anything.

"Good night, William," Sabatini said gently. "Until tomorrow."

He smiled. They led me away. I limped as they took me down a long corridor to a door made of wood with an insert of metal bars at the top as a little window. They unlocked the door with a key and pushed me in. I stumbled and fell on a pile of old straw. Things scampered over it and rustled in it, but I was too tired and weak to care. I sat on the straw, huddled up, my knees drawn close to my chest, and tried to forget the pain that had been and the ache that was and the pain that would come tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that until I couldn't stand it any longer and I would talk. I tried to forget about the pincers.

Why should I have to stand such pain? Life is not meant to be agony. Life should be free and proud and filled with love. I had nothing, not one of them. Why shouldn't I give them the pebble? Let them fight over it. Let them kill themselves for it. It was no concern of mine. It was only an egg-shaped crystal pebble and it had no meaning, and if it had a meaning, they would never be able to figure it out.

And yet I knew, despairingly, that I would never tell them where to find it. It was the only thing I had left. I would never tell them, and the pain would go on and on.

Something moved. It was in the room with me. It was larger than the things that scampered and rustled. I sat still, listening for it, trying to peer through the darkness, trying to see what was in the room with me. Slowly my eyes adjusted to the darkness. It was a person, lying in a corner of the cell. I could make out the outlines of a dark shape.

I crawled toward it, over the old straw that smelled damp and moldy and rotten as I stirred it. I got close enough to see that it was a woman, naked as I was. It was an old woman with a skinny, wrinkled body and a worn face and tangled, matted hair.

"Carlo," the woman mumbled toothlessly. "Carlo? Have you come back?" In her voice was a strange mixture of fear and anticipation. "Don't hurt me, Carlo. Don't hurt me any more. I've told you everything, Carlo. Where are you, Carlo? I miss you. Only don't hurt me any more. I've told you where it is. You saw me. I dropped it in the offering plate. I left the pebble there in the Cathedral.…"

I stopped listening. I knew who the old woman was.

It was Frieda.

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Running, running, running through the dark, only there is no reason to be running, and it is difficult for feet to run when the dark path is paved with knives and pain streaks through the darkness in jagged strokes that leaves the darkness even blacker.