If This Goes On Part 4

The leader gestured with his pistol; two of them grabbed my arms and hustled me toward the door, while the fourth fell in behind. But I am fairly strong; I made it hard for them while protesting, 'You've got to let me get dressed at least. You've no right to haul me away half naked, no matter what the emergency is. I've a right to appear in the uniform of my rank.

Surprisingly the appeal worked. The leader stopped. 'Okay. But snap into it!'

I stalled as much as I dared while going through the motions of hurrying-jamming a zipper on my boot, fumbling clumsily with all my dressing. How could I leave some sort of a message for Zeb? Any sort of a sign that would show the brethren what had happened to me?

At last I got a notion, not a good one but the best I could manage. I dragged clothing out of my wardrobe, some that I would need, some that I did not, and with the bunch a sweater. In the course of picking out what I must wear I managed to arrange the sleeves of the sweater in the position taken by a lodge brother in giving the Grand Hailing Sign of Distress. Then 1 picked up loose clothing and started to put some of it back in the wardrobe; the leader immediately shoved his blaster in my ribs and said, 'Never mind that. You're dressed.'

I gave in, dropping the meaningless clothing on the floor. The sweater remained spread out as a symbol to him who could read it. As they led me away I prayed that our room servant would not arrive and 'tidy' it out of meaning before Zeb spotted it.

They blindfolded me as soon as we reached the inner Palace. We went down six flights, four below ground level as I figured it, and reached a compartment filled with the breathless silence of a vault. The hoodwink was stripped from my eyes. I blinked.

'Sit down, my boy, sit down and make yourself comfortable.' I found myself looking into the face of the Grand Inquisitor himself, saw his warm friendly smile and his collie-dog eyes.

His gentle voice continued, 'I'm sorry to get you so rudely out of a warm bed, but there is certain information needed by our Holy Church. Tell me, my son, do you fear the Lord? Oh, of course you do; your piety is well known. So you won't mind helping me with this little matter even though it makes you late for breakfast. It's to the greater glory of G.o.d.' He turned to his masked and black-robed a.s.sistant questioner, hovering behind him. 'Make him ready-and pray be gentle.'

I was handled quickly and roughly, but not painfully. They touched me as if they regarded me as so much lifeless matter to be manipulated as impersonally as machinery. They stripped me to the waist and fastened things to me, a rubber bandage tight around my right arm, electrodes in my fists which they taped closed, another pair of electrodes to my wrists, a third pair at my temples, a tiny mirror to the pulse in my throat. At a control board on the left wall one of them made some adjustments, then threw a switch and on the opposite wall a shadow show of my inner workings sprang into being.

A little light danced to my heart beat, a wiggly line on an iconoscope display showed my blood pressure's rise and fall, another like it moved with my breathing, and there were several others that I did not understand. I turned my head away and concentrated on remembering the natural logarithms from one to ten.

'You see our methods, son. Efficiency and kindness, those are our watch words. Now tell me-Where did you put her?'

I broke off with the logarithm of eight. 'Put who?'

'Why did you do it?'

'I am sorry. Most Reverend Sir. I don't know what it is I am supposed to have done.'

Someone slapped me hard, from behind. The lights on the wall jiggled and the Inquisitor studied them thoughtfully, then spoke to an a.s.sistant. 'Inject him.'

Again my skin was p.r.i.c.ked by a hypodermic. They let me rest while the drug took hold; I spent the time continuing with the effort of recalling logarithms. But that soon became too difficult; I grew drowsy and lackadaisical, nothing seemed to matter. I felt a mild and childish curiosity about my surroundings but no fear. Then the soft voice of the Inquisitor broke into my reverie with a question. I can't remember what it was but I am sure I answered with the first thing that came into my head.

I have no way of telling how long this went on. In time they brought me back to sharp reality with another injection. The Inquisitor was examining a slight bruise and a little purple dot on my right forearm. He glanced up. 'What caused this, my boy?'

'I don't know, Most Reverend Sir.' At the instant it was truth.

He shook his head regretfully. 'Don't be naive, my son-and don't a.s.sume that I am. Let me explain something to you. What you sinners never realize is that the Lord always prevails. Always. Our methods are based in loving-kindness but they proceed with the absolute certainty of a falling stone, and with the result equally preordained.

'First we ask the sinner to surrender himself to the Lord and answer from the goodness that remains in his heart. When that loving appeal fails-as it did with you-then we use the skills G.o.d has given us to open the unconscious mind. That is usually as far as the Question need go-unless some agent of Satan has been there before us and has tampered with the sacred tabernacle of the mind.

'Now, my son, I have just returned from a walk through your mind. I found much there that was commendable, but I found also, a murky darkness, a wall that had been erected by some other sinner, and what I want-what the Church needs-is behind that wall.'

Perhaps I showed a trace of satisfaction or perhaps the lights gave me away, for he smiled sadly and added, 'No wall of Satan can stop the Lord. When we find such an obstacle, there are two things to do: given time enough I could remove that wall gently, delicately, stone by stone, without any damage to your mind. I wish I had time to, I really do, for you are a good boy at heart, John Lyle, and you do not belong with the sinners.

'But while eternity is long, time is short; there is the second way. We can disregard the false barrier in the unconscious mind and make a straightforward a.s.sault on the conscious mind, with the Lord's banners leading us.' He glanced away from me. 'Prepare him.'

His faceless crew strapped a metal helmet on my head, some other arrangements were made at the control board. 'Now look here, John Lyle.' He pointed to a diagram on the wall. 'No doubt you know that the human nervous system is partly electrical in nature. There is a schematic representation of a brain, that lower part is the thalamus; covering it is the cortex. Each of the sensory centers is marked as you can see. Your own electrodynamic characteristics have been a.n.a.lyzed; I am sorry to say that it will now be necessary to heterodyne your normal senses.'

He started to turn away, turned back. 'By the way, John Lyle, I have taken the trouble to minister to you myself because, at this stage, my a.s.sistants through less experience in the Lord's work than my humble self sometimes mistake zeal for skill and transport the sinner unexpectedly to his reward. I don't want that to happen to you. You are merely a strayed lamb and I purpose saving you.'

'I said, 'Thank you, Most Reverend Sir.'

'Don't thank me, thank the Lord I serve. However,' he went on, frowning slightly, 'this frontal a.s.sault on the mind, while necessary, is unavoidably painful. You will forgive me?'

I hesitated only an instant. 'I forgive you, holy sir.'

He glanced at the lights and said wryly, 'A falsehood. But you are forgiven that falsehood; it was well intended.' He nodded at his silent helpers. 'Commence.'

A light blinded me, an explosion crashed in my ears. My right leg jerked with pain, then knotted in an endless cramp. My throat contracted; I choked and tried to throw up. Something struck me in the solar plexus; I doubled up and could not catch my breath. 'Where did you put her?' A noise started low and soft, climbed higher and higher, increasing in pitch and decibels, until it was a thousand dull saws, a million squeaking slate pencils, then wavered in a screeching ululation that tore at the thin wall of reason. 'Who helped you?' Agonizing heat was at my crotch; I could not get away from it. 'Why did you do it?' I itched all over, intolerably, and tried to tear at my skin-but my arms would not work. The itching was worse than pain; I would have welcomed pain in lieu of scratching. 'Where is she?'

Light...sound...pain...heat...convulsions...cold...falling...light and pain...cold and falling...nausea and sound. 'Do you love the Lord?' Searing heat and shocking cold...pain and a pounding in my head that made me scream-'Where did you take her? Who else was in it? Give up and save your immortal soul.' Pain and an endless nakedness to the outer darkness.

I suppose I fainted.

Some one was slapping me across the mouth. 'Wake up, John Lyle, and confess! Zebadiah Jones has given you away.'

I blinked and said nothing. It was not necessary to simulate a dazed condition, nor could I have managed it. But the words had been a tremendous shock and my brain was racing, trying to get into gear. Zeb? Old Zeb? Poor old Zeb! Hadn't they had time to give him hypnotic treatment, too? It did not occur to me even then to suspect that Zeb had broken under torture alone; I simply a.s.sumed that they had been able to tap his unconscious mind. I wondered if he were already dead and remembered that I had gotten him into this, against his good sense. I prayed for his soul and prayed that he would forgive me.

My head jerked to another roundhouse slap. 'Wake up! You can hear me-Jones has revealed your sins.'

'Revealed what?' I mumbled.

The Grand Inquisitor motioned his a.s.sistants aside and leaned over me, his kindly face full of concern. 'Please, my son, do this for the Lord-and for me. You have been brave in trying to protect your fellow sinners from the fruits of their folly, but they failed you and your stiff-necked courage no longer means anything. But don't go to judgment with this on your soul. Confess, and let death come with your sins forgiven.'

'So you mean to kill me?'

He looked faintly annoyed. 'I did not say that. I know that you do not fear death. What you should fear is to meet your Maker with your sins still on your soul. Open your heart and confess.'

'Most Reverend Sir. I have nothing to confess.'

He turned away from me and gave orders in low, gentle tones. 'Continue. The mechanicals this time; I don't wish to burn out his brain.'

There is no point in describing what he meant by 'the mechanicals' and no sense in making this account needlessly grisly. His methods differed in no important way from torture techniques used in the Middle Ages and even more recently-except that his knowledge of the human nervous system was incomparably greater and his knowledge of behavior psychology made his operations more adroit. In addition, he and his a.s.sistants behaved as if they were completely free of any s.a.d.i.s.tic pleasure in their work; it made them coolly efficient.

But let's skip the details.

I have no notion of how long it took. I must have pa.s.sed out repeatedly, for my clearest memory is of catching a bucket of ice water in the face not once but over and over again, like a repeating nightmare-each time followed by the inevitable hypo. I don't think I told them anything of any importance while I was awake and the hypno instructions to my unconscious may have protected me while I was out of my head. I seem to remember trying to make up a lie about sins I had never committed; I don't remember what came of it.

I recall vaguely coming semi-awake once and hearing a voice say, 'He can take more. His heart is strong.'

I was pleasantly dead for a long time, but finally woke up as if from a long sleep. I was stiff and when I tried to s.h.i.+ft in bed my side hurt me. I opened my eyes and looked around; I was in bed in a small, windowless but cheerful room. A sweet-faced young woman in a nurse's uniform came quickly to my side and felt my pulse.

'h.e.l.lo.'

'h.e.l.lo,' she answered. 'How are we now? Better?'

'What happened?' I asked. 'Is it over? Or is this just a rest?'

'Quiet,' she admonished. 'You are still too weak to talk. But it's over-you are safe among the brethren.'

'I was rescued?'

'Yes. Now be quiet.' She held up my head and gave me something to drink. I went back to sleep.

It took me days to convalesce and catch up with events. The infirmary in which I woke up was part of a series of subbas.e.m.e.nts under the bas.e.m.e.nt proper of a department store in New Jerusalem; there was some sort of underground connection between it and the lodge room under the Palace-just where and how I could not say; I was never in it. While conscious, I mean.

Zeb came to see me as soon as I was allowed to have visitors. I tried to raise up in bed. 'Zeb! Zeb boy-I thought you were dead!'

'Who? Me?' He came over and shook my left hand. 'What made you think that?'

I told him about the dodge the Inquisitor had tried to pull on me. He shook his head. 'I wasn't even arrested. Thanks to you, pal. Johnnie, I'll never call you stupid again. If you hadn't had that flash of genius to rig your sweater so that I could read the sign in it, they might have pulled us both in and neither one of us have gotten out of it alive. As it was, I went straight to Captain van Eyck. He told me to lie doggo in the lodge room and then planned your rescue.'

I wanted to ask how that had been pulled off but my mind jumped to a more important subject. 'Zeb, where is Judith? Can't you find her and bring her to see me? My nurse just smiles and tells me to rest.'

He looked surprised. 'Didn't they tell you?'

'Tell me what? No, I haven't seen anybody but the nurse and the doctor and they treat me like an idiot. Don't keep me in suspense, Zeb. Did anything go wrong? She's all right-isn't she?'

'Oh, sure! But she's in Mexico by now-we got a report by sensitive circuit two days ago.'

In my physical weakness I almost wept. 'Gone! Why, what a dirty, scabby trick! Why couldn't they have waited until I was well enough to tell her good-by?'

Zeb said quickly, 'Hey, look, stupid-no, forget that "stupid"; you aren't. Look, old man, your calendar is mixed up. She was on her way before you were rescued, before we were even sure you could be rescued. You don't think the brethren could bring her back just to let you two bill and coo, do you?'

I thought about it and calmed down. It made sense, even though I was bitterly disappointed. He changed the subject. 'How do you feel?'

'Oh, pretty good.'

'They tell me you get that cast off your leg tomorrow.'

'So? They haven't told me.' I twisted, trying to get comfortable. 'I'm almost more anxious to get shot of this corset, but the doc says I'll have to wear it for several weeks yet.'

'How about your hand? Can you bend your fingers?'

I tried it. 'Fairly well. I may have to write left-handed for a while.'

'All in all, it looks like you're too mean to die, old son. By the way, if it's any consolation to you, the laddy boy who worked on Judith got slightly dead in the raid in which you were rescued.'

'He was? Well, I'm sorry. I had planned to save him for myself.'

'No doubt, but you would have had to take your place in line, if he had lived. Lots of people wanted him. Me, for example.'

'But I had thought of something special for him-I was going to make him bite his nails.'

'Bite his nails?' Zeb looked puzzled.

'Until he reached his elbows. Follow me?'

'Oh.' Zeb grinned sourly. 'Not nearly imaginative enough, boy. But he's dead, we can't touch him.'

'He's infernally lucky. Zeb, why didn't you arrange to get him yourself? Or did you, and things were just too hurried to let you do a proper job?'

'Me? Why, I wasn't on the rescue raid. I haven't been back in the Palace at all.'

'Huh?'

'You didn't think I was still on duty, did you?'

'I haven't had time to think about it.'

'Well, naturally I couldn't go back after I ducked out to avoid arrest; I was through. No, my fine fellow, you and I are both deserters from the United States Army-with every cop and every postmaster in the country anxious to earn a deserter's reward by turning us in.'

I whistled softly and let the implications of his remark sink in.

Chapter 6.

I had joined the Cabal on impulse. Certainly, under the stress of falling in love with Judith and in the excitement of the events that had come rus.h.i.+ng over me as a result of meeting her, I had no time for calm consideration. I had not broken with the Church as a result of philosophical decision.

Of course I had known logically that to join the Cabal was to break with all my past ties, but it had not yet hit me emotionally. What was it going to be like never again to wear the uniform of an officer and a gentleman? I had been proud to walk down the street, to enter a public place, aware that all eyes were on me.

I put it out of my mind. The share was in the furrow, my hand was on the plow; there could be no turning back. I was in this until we won or until we were burned for treason.

I found Zeb looking at me quizzically. 'Cold feet, Johnnie?'

'No. But I'm still getting adjusted. Things have moved fast.'

'I know. Well, we can forget about retired pay, and our cla.s.s numbers at the Point no longer matter.' He took off his Academy ring, chucked it in the air, caught it and shoved it into his pocket. 'But there is work to be done, old lad, and you will find that this is a military outfit, too-a real one. Personally, I've had my fill of spit-and-polish and I don't care if I never again hear that "Sound off" and "Officers, center!" and "Watchman, what of the night?" manure again. The brethren will make full use of our best talents-and the fight really matters.'

Master Peter van Eyck came to see me a couple of days later. He sat on the edge of my bed and folded his hands over his paunch and looked at me. 'Feeling better, son?'

'I could get up if the doctor would let me.'

'Good. We're shorthanded; the less time a trained officer spends on the sick list the better.' He paused and chewed his lip. 'But, son, I don't know just what to do with you.'

'Eh? Sir?'

'Frankly, you should never have been admitted to the Order in the first place-a military command should not mess around with affairs of the heart. It confuses motivations, causes false decisions. Twice, because we took you in, we have had to show our strength in sorties that-from a strictly military standpoint-should never have happened.'

I did not answer, there was no answer-he was right. My face was hot with embarra.s.sment.

'Don't blush about it,' he added kindly. 'Contrariwise, it is good for the morale of the brethren to strike back occasionally. The point is, what to do with you? You are a stout fellow, you stood up well-but do you really understand the ideals of freedom and human dignity we are fighting for?'