Behind him the scenes of unmasking and transform- ation and mistaken identity went on. His enfeebled thoughts turned briefly to Mironenko. Would he, or any of his tribe, survive this massacre?
'Ballard,' said a voice in the fog. He couldn't see the speaker, although he recognised the voice. He'd heard it in his delusion, and it had told him lies.
He felt a pin-prick at his neck. The man had come from behind, and was pressing a needle into him.
'Sleep,' the voice said. And with the words came oblivion.
At first he couldn't remember the man's name. His mind wandered like a lost child, although his interrogator would time and again demand his attention, speaking to him as though they were old friends. And there was indeed something familiar about his errant eye, that went on its way so much more slowly than its companion. At last, the name came to him.
'You're Cripps,' he said.
'Of course I'm Cripps,' the man replied. 'Is your memory playing tricks? Don't concern yourself. I've given you some suppressants, to keep you from losing your balance. Not that I think that's very likely. You've fought the good fight, Ballard, in spite of considerable provocation. When I think of the way Odell snap- ped ...' He sighed. 'Do you remember last night at all?'
At first his mind's eye was blind. But then the memories began to come. Vague forms moving in a fog.
'The park,' he said at last.
'I only just got you out. God knows how many are dead.'
'The other ... the Russian ... ?'
'Mironenko?' Cripps prompted. 'I don't know. I'm not in charge any longer, you see; I just stepped in to salvage something if I could. London will need us again, sooner or later. Especially now they know the Russians have a special corps like us. We'd heard rumours of course; and then, after you'd met with him, began to wonder about Mironenko. That's why I set up the meeting. And of course when I saw him, face to face, I knew. There's something in the eyes. Something hungry.'
'I saw him change -'
'Yes, it's quite a sight, isn't it? The power it unleashes. That's why we developed the programme, you see, to harness that power, to have it work for us. But it's difficult to control. It took years of suppression therapy, slowly burying the desire for transformation, so that what we had left was a man with a beast's faculties. A wolf in sheep's clothing. We thought we had the problem beaten; that if the belief systems didn't keep you subdued the pain response would. But we were wrong.' He stood up and crossed to the window. 'Now we have to start again.'
'Suckling said you'd been wounded.'
'No. Merely demoted. Ordered back to London.'
'But you're not going.'
'I will now; now that I've found you.' He looked round at Ballard. 'You're my vindication, Ballard. You're living proof that my techniques are viable. You have full knowledge of your condition, yet the therapy holds the leash.' He turned back to the window. Rain lashed the glass. Ballard could almost feel it upon his head, upon his back. Cool, sweet rain. For a blissful moment he seemed to be running in it, close to the ground, and the air was full of the scents the downpour had released from the pavements.
'Mironenko said -'
'Forget Mironenko,' Cripps told him. 'He's dead. You're the last of the old order, Ballard. And the first of the new.'
Downstairs, a bell rang. Cripps peered out of the window at the streets below.
'Well, well,' he said. 'A delegation, come to beg us to return. I hope you're flattered.' He went to the door. 'Stay here. We needn't show you off tonight. You're weary. Let them wait, eh? Let them sweat.' He left the stale room, closing the door behind him. Ballard heard his footsteps on the stairs. The bell was being rung a second time. He got up and crossed to the window. The weariness of the late afternoon light matched his weariness; he and his city were still of one accord, despite the curse that was upon him. Below a man emerged from the back of the car and crossed to the front door. Even at this acute angle Ballard recognised Suckling.
There were voices in the hallway; and with Suckling's appearance the debate seemed to become more heated. Ballard went to the door, and listened, but his drug-dulled mind could make little sense of the argument. He prayed that Cripps would keep to his word, and not allow them to peer at him. He didn't want to be a beast like Mironenko. It wasn't freedom, was it, to be so terrible? It was merely a different kind of tyranny. But then he didn't want to be the first of Cripps' heroic new order either. He belonged to nobody, he realised; not even himself. He was hopelessly lost. And yet hadn't Mironenko said at that first meeting that the man who did not believe himself lost, was lost? Perhaps better that - better to exist in the twilight between one state and another, to prosper as best he could by doubt and ambiguity - than to suffer the certainties of the tower.
The debate below was gaining in momentum. Ballard opened the door so as to hear better. It was Suckling's voice that met him. The tone was waspish, but no less threatening for that.
'It's over ...' he was telling Cripps '... don't you understand plain English?' Cripps made an attempt to protest, but Suckling cut him short. 'Either you come in a gentlemanly fashion or Gideon and Sheppard carry you out. Which is it to be?'
'What is this?' Cripps demanded. 'You're nobody, Suckling. You're comic relief.'
'That was yesterday,' the man replied. 'There've been some changes made. Every dog has his day, isn't that right? You should know that better than anybody. I'd get a coat if I were you. It's raining.'
There was a short silence, then Cripps said:
'All right. I'll come.'
'Good man,' said Suckling sweetly. 'Gideon, go check upstairs.'
'I'm alone,' said Cripps.
'I believe you,' said Suckling. Then to Gideon, 'Do it anyway.'
Ballard heard somebody move across the hallway, and then a sudden flurry of movement. Cripps was either making an escape-bid or attacking Suckling, one of the two. Suckling shouted out; there was a scuffle. Then, cutting through the confusion, a single shot.
Cripps cried out, then came the sound of him falling.
Now Suckling's voice, thick with fury. 'Stupid,' he said. 'Stupid.'
Cripps groaned something which Ballard didn't catch. Had he asked to be dispatched, perhaps, for Suckling told him: 'No. You're going back to London. Sheppard, stop him bleeding. Gideon; upstairs.'
Baliard backed away from the head of the stairs as Gideon began his ascent. He felt sluggish and inept. There was no way out of this trap. They would corner him and exterminate him. He was a beast; a mad dog in a maze. If he'd only killed Suckling when he'd had the strength to do so. But then what good would that have done? The world was full of men like Suckling, men biding their time until they could show their true colours; vile, soft, secret men. And suddenly the beast seemed to move in Baliard, and he thought of the park and the fog and the smile on the face of Mironenko, and he felt a surge of grief for something he'd never had: the life of a monster.
Gideon was almost at the top of the stairs. Though it could only delay the inevitable by moments, Baliard slipped along the landing and opened the first door he found. It was the bathroom. There was a bolt on the door, which he slipped into place.
The sound of running water filled the room. A piece of guttering had broken, and was delivering a torrent of rain-water onto the window-sill. The sound, and the chill of the bathroom, brought the night of delusions back. He remembered the pain and blood; remembered the shower - water beating on his skull, cleansing him of the taming pain. At the thought, four words came to his lips unbidden.