It was freezing. It was so cold it was like falling into knives. It was so cold it was hot. It was so cold I could do nothing: not breathe, not move my arms, not try to surface nor dive, swim nor float, loll myself nor save myself. I >fell into the water like a rubber statue, and sank, and returned to the surface, and bobbed there, shocked beyond reaction.
At the new man's command, they fished me out again, Malik and Rose. I was held up by their hands like a drowned cat, and the new man said to me, "It is cold."
I was trembling violently, nerves and muscles snapping in and out of tension. I couldn't have replied even if I'd had something to say.
He went on: "We are tiiree miles from shore, and moving. We will never be less than three miles from shore, and usually we will be more than that. You couldn't survive it, I I hope you understand that. You'd be dead inside five minutes, if you tried swimming to shore. Do you understand thatr
I tried to nod, tried desperately to nod. I didn't want him to think he needed to demonstrate his truth to me a second time.
He was satisfied. He said to Malik and Rose, "Take him away. Dry him. Dress him. I'll tell Phail he's here."
Malik and Rose turned me. They opened the door and led me into the ship.
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xxvn
I thought: Til never be warm again.
I was dry now, in heavy clothing, and sitting in a warm room, but down inside my skin, down in my veins and bones, in my stomach and my heart and my throat, I was trembling with the cold. I sat there and shivered endlessly, my arms wrapped around myself.
Malik said to me, "Oh, come on, Rolf, it isn't that bad," and the door behind him opened.
The man who came in was young, but bore himself with such arrogant irritation that it was obvious he had great authority. He said, "Is he ready for me?"
Malik and Rose were both suddenly nervous. "Yes, sir," said Malik, and motioned at me as though inviting this new one—this must be the Phail I'd heard mentioned—to help himself to me.
Phail came over and looked down at me, a crooked smile on his lips. "And to think I had you once," he said. "Had you and let you get away. You remember the last time we met?"
I raised my eyes and studied his face. The lines of arrogance were so deep, he must have been born with them. He had a cultured face, a face that showed breeding and education, but also betrayed degeneracy; the scion of a bloodline in decline. His hair was sandy, dry-looking, lying flat to his skull and brushed back from his forehead. His eyes were a peculiarly pale blue, snapping with impatience and contempt.
I said, "I don't know you." My voice and enunciation were both affected badly by the chill I felt, embarrassing me. I wanted to be equal to this man, superior to him. I felt instead like a cowering mongrel, waiting for a kick from his boot.
" You don't remember me?" he asked, and then I did.
The mine. He was one of the three young officials who had come on the tour of inspection. One had called me Malone, the second had reminded him that Malone was dead, and the third had said nothing. This was the third man, the silent one, watchful, keeping his own counsel.
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He nodded now, smiling at me. "I can see you do," he said. "It conies back to you now, doesn't it?"
"Yes."
"Yes. Some day you must tell me how you escaped from that camp; you're the only one who ever has." His smile broadened. "You'll be pleased to know the camp personnel were appropriately punished for letting you go. They've taken your place, the lot of them."
"You made them slaves?"
"Doesn't that please you? They were your masters; I should think you'd be pleased to hear they now know what it was like."
I looked at my wrist; a shiny bluish glaze of skin had lately grown over the stump. I said, "The doctor, too?"
"Oh, the doctor especially. He was the one said it was safe to put you on that job. And he cut your hand off, after all, when perhaps he could have saved it."
I looked at my wrist. Sometimes, when I was looking the other way, I seemed to feel the hand still there; I seemed to be able to flex the fingers, close them into a fist. I tried it now, looking, and saw useless muscles move in my forearm. "I'm sorry for him," I said.
Phail was as surprised as I was. "I should think you'd hate him."
"I don't," I said, not understanding why that should be true. Wasn't vengeance the fuel that kept me going?
"A remarkable attitude," said Phail, the contempt in his voice like a slap across the face. "But not what we're here to discuss." He turned toward Malik and Rose. "A chair."
Rose brought it, a heavy padded chair, carrying it over hurriedly and putting it down where Phail could sit directly in front of me, our knees almost touching. I watched this operation, distracted by odd questions about myself: Why didn't I hate the doctor and the other officials from the mine? Why wasn't I afraid of this vicious man Phail?
Phail sat down, leaned forward, tapped my knee, and smiled falsely at me. "You aren't going to be difficult, are you?"
"About what?"
"There are questions for you to answer.'*
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I waited. I didn't know yet whether I would be difficult about answering his questions or not.
He seemed to want me to speak again, to give him some sort of assurance, but when I remained silent he shrugged, sat back, crossed his legs, and said, "Very well. I want to know where you've been since you left the mine. Every thing."
There was no reason not to tell him. I said, "I got away in one of the ore trucks. I left it by—" But then my voice broke, and shivering controlled me for several seconds. When the spasm was over, I said, "Could I have something hot to drink? I'm so cold, it's hard to talk."
He frowned at me. "Cold? It isn't cold in here."
"I'm very cold," I said.
"Are you sick?"
Malik said, "Sir?"
Phail turned an impatient glare at Malik. "What?"
"Sir, Mister Davus made us throw him in the water."
"For what possible reason?"
"To show him he shouldn't try and swim for shore."
"Stupid," said Phail. He looked at me. "I apologize for Davus. I don't believe in unnecessary cruelty." To Malik he said, "Get him something to drink."
We waited in silence till Malik returned, carrying a large mug of soup. It was a meat soup, steaming with heat, and it made me think of Torgmund. I found that I regretted Torg-mund, that the thought of him saddened me and made me feel unworthy to be an instrument of vengeance. Everywhere I turned, it seemed, there were stray thoughts to take me away from my purpose. I could hardly remember myself as I was when first I'd come here: steel, sharp, singular, emotionless, machined. Now I was feeling as though all I wanted to do was confess.
Confess? Confess what?
I drank the soup, pouring it down my throat as though I were a cold and empty pitcher, hollow and white inside, and it did help to ease the chill. When I was done with it, Phail asked me again to recount my history since escaping from the mine, and this time I did. I told him everything, Torgmund and the cabin, the journey out of the darkness, the
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errors of direction, the death of the hairhorse, the three days in the UC Embassy, everything.
He listened intently, and when I was done he said, "Plausible. You had nothing on you, no papers, no maps, nothing to show— Still, it could be in your mind."
"What could?"
He peered at me. "Are you ignorant, or are you merely illustrating ignorance? An act, or reality?"
"I know nothing that I haven't told you."
"Patently false," he said briskly. "Whole areas of your life and knowledge haven't been touched upon at all."