"I meant, since I left the mine."
"Of course." He frowned, and tapped a knuckle against his chin. "It would be easier to believe you," he said thoughtfully, "but perhaps more dangerous as well. That you should disappear in precisely that direction, that you should return from that area, that you should have an animal and equipment you did not have before, all of this is suspicious. Even that you should be here on Anarchaos is itself suspicious. But your explanations are invariably plausible, for the hairhorse, for the clothing and equipment, for your whereabouts while not under surveillance."
"You might be able to find Torgmund's cabin," I said. "That would prove what I said."
"I am not interested in proof," he said. "Proof is secondary to judgment. I am interested solely in judging you, for truth or falsehood. Why did you come to Anarchaos?'
"To work for the Wolmak Corporation. For Ice."
"I believe you are lying now," he said. "But persuasively. If you can lie persuasively now, could you have been lying just as persuasively about the other things?"
"I was going to work with my brother," I said. "Wolmak paid my way from Earth; you can find out for yourself."
"Proof again. Only a liar needs proof. To prove details is simple, can be done no matter how complex the lie, but to judge overall veracity is much more difficult. It is the latter which is necessary. Why didn't you leave when you found out that your brother was dead?"
"There isn't any truth that I know that will hurt me if I tell you," I said. "I knew my brother was dead before I left Earth. I'd been offered the job, Gar got me the job, but just
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before I was supposed to leave the news came he'd been killed. I came anyway."
"To get the job?"
"No. I didn't care about the job. I came to find out what happened to my brother."
He smiled as though I'd just confessed a childishness, and said, "You wanted revenge?"
"I thought so."
"You thought so?"
"What I wanted," I said, being as truthful as I knew how, telling myself the way things were through this medium of apparently talking to Phail, "what I actually wanted was to understand."
"Why your brother was killed, you mean."
"Specifically that, yes."
He frowned again, saying, "Are you leading me away from the subject? These are strange answers. What do you mean, specifically?"
"I mean I wanted to understand. Everything. Myself, and everything around me in relation to myself. It seemed if I could understand about Gar's killing, it might be a clue, I could—" I hunted for the word.
"Extrapolate," he said.
"Yes. Extrapolate the general answer from the specific."
"And therefore understand."
"Yes."
"And have you been successful? Do you understand?**
"I'm no longer sure it was a thing that could be looked for."
"You are taking me away! The subject is not philosophy, the subject is moneyl"
I looked at him, saw the patrician face being angry, and said, "Money? What money?"
*Tfou claim to know nothing," he said, enraged by me. "You claim to have come here on a philosophical quest. You say the word money and you look at me with an open guileless face, as though the existence of money had never before been pointed out to you. No one is that remote from money."
"I don't know what money you mean," I said.
He said, "Are you very stupid, or very clever? You present me with your mythic qualities, love and death, the slain bro-
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ther, eternal questions, the unwordly view. You think if you show yourself to me as a saint you'll impress me and I'll stay away from you."
I didn't understand him, yet it did seem to be true that he was impressed by something. He was getting more and more nervous. I said, "I'm not stupid, but I'm not clever either. I came here, I came to this planet, I thought I was hard, I thought I was the strongest thing there was and it would all go my way, and nothing went my way. I lost every fight. I lost a hand. I learned nothing, and I'm sitting here a prisoner of a man I don't know, caught up in some sort of problem I don't understand. You're the one making the myths, the money myth, the golden fleece. I don't have what you want."
He glowered at me in surly indecision, and finally said, "I cannot believe in you. No one is a money virgin. What did you do on Earth? Where were you when you decided to come here?"
"In jail."
He sat up, looking hopeful. "For theft?"
"Manslaughter. I have—I used to have—a bad temper.** I looked inside myself but couldn't tell, and said so: "I don't know if it's gone or not."
"Bad temper," he mimicked, in a sudden return to his angry contempt. He'd made up his mind about me, all at once. He pointed a finger at me and said, "You were at the site, I know you were. You'll tell us where it is, you'll lead us to it, you'll give us the whole thing. You'll either do it now, with no trouble, or you'll do it later on, after a great deal of trouble."
I said, "I don't want any trouble. I won't fight anybody, I won't hide anything. I don't want to be involved any more. I'll answer anything you ask me, I swear I will."
"You'll take us to the site?"
There was nothing for me to say. I sat and looked at him, feeling helpless and very frightened.
He nodded cynically. "Ignorant again," he said. "Such touching innocence, such a blank expression. There is a drug called antizone, have you ever heard of its?"
"No."
"It is used with the hopelessly insane. One injection, and your brain empties itself through your mouth. You will speak
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your entire history, all your memories, every bit of your knowledge, the total of your conjectures, each of your hopes and expectations. You will state every item aloud, and in the act of stating it you will forget it. Sometimes this process takes days. When it is finished, your mind will be empty. You will then be retrained in those rudimentary skills necessary for survival, and you will be sent back to the mine. And this time, you won't escape."
Of course! A great light seemed to bloom in my mind, a beautiful illumination, and with it a lovely sensation of peace. I had found my golden fleece!
I closed my eyes. I caressed the prospect he offered me.
He said, "Well? Is that what you want?"
I said, '"Yes." I kept my eyes closed.
He slapped me stingingly across the face. My eyes popped open, and I saw him standing over me, glaring at me. "Don't play with me!"
"I want the drug," I said. 1 am finished, but afraid to die. I didn't know about that drug, I would like it very much."
He backed away from me, stumbling against his chair but staying on his feet. "How clever are you? What game are you playing?"
There was no way to make him believe me, but surely he would do it anyway. I closed my eyes again. In the darkness inside I felt at peace.
I heard Phail moving around the room, prowling back and forth, muttering to himself. He asked himself what intricacies I might be plotting, if perhaps there were some drug he didn't know about which could be taken at some earlier date and leave the taker immune to antizone, if perhaps I were under some hypnotic protection which would allow him to empty my mind without getting the information he wanted, if I were perhaps merely trying a desperate bluff.
Finally he said, with abrupt decisiveness, "Very well. Well fall back on proof. Malik, get all he can tell you about this alleged cabin where he spent so much of his time. Then see if you can find it, see if it exists."
I opened my >eyes, hoping to see his face, but he had already turned away and was going out the door.