“I said, “Thank you, Most Reverend Sir.”
“Don’t thank me, thank the Lord I serve. However,” he went on, frowning slightly, “this frontal assault 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 assumed 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 assistants 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 assistants behaved as if they were completely free of any sadistic 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 passed 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 shift 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.
“Hello.”
“Hello,” 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 subbasements under the basement 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.”