The door was unlocked. He opened it and went in, locking it behind him.
Inside, it was dark. He felt around on the wall to either side of the door for a switch, only found one after his eyes had adjusted enough to see it, low on the wall, at knee level.
The room was as simple as Borchert's. A counter and a small kitchen in the back of the room. A single chair, this one with a sort of net webbing draped over it. A bed, in this case, three feet long, flush to the floor, pushed against one wall.
In the bed, a mutilated head rode on the pillow, the rest of the body covered by a blanket. He knelt down beside it. The eyes had been dug out, the lids cut off as well. The ears had been shorn away to leave two whirls of slick pink flesh. The nose, too, was gone, leaving a dark gaping hole. The lips seemed to have been gnawed mostly away, perhaps by the teeth that now loomed through their gap.
As he watched, the flesh on the face shivered and the head turned slightly, the missing eyes seeming to bore into his own eyes. He broke the gaze and then, grabbing the blanket, tugged it off the body.
Underneath was only a torso, all limbs gone, nipples cut away, penis severed. He sat watching the chest rise and fall, air whistling between the teeth. There was something wrong with the way the body lay, he realized, and he pushed it over onto the side a little, enough to see that the buttocks had been shaved away.
The mouth said something urgently but he couldn't understand what because most of the tongue was gone. He let go of the body. He looked away, let himself slip from his knees to lie on the floor. Behind him, he could hear someone pounding at the door. He stayed there, staring up at the ceiling, listening to Aline babble, until they came and dragged him away.
"So," said Borchert, "now you've seen for yourself." He was standing using a cane, precariously grounded in his palm to support himself. Kline was in the chair now, Borchert's chair, having been brought there by the guards after they had dragged him by the feet out of Aline's room and down the stairs, his head bumping against each step.
"What's wrong with you?" asked Borchert. "You look feverish."
"Aline's alive," said Kline.
"Of course he's alive," said Borchert. "I must apologize for lying, Mr. Kline, but trust I had my reasons."
"Why?"
"Why, Mr. Kline?" Borchert turned, moved closer by hopping slightly. "You want to know?"
"Yes."
Borchert smiled. "Knowledge is the most valuable of commodities," he said. "Shall we trade? I'll trade you knowledge for a limb."
"What?"
"You heard me," said Borchert. "Knowledge for a limb. You choose the limb. Or even just a hand or foot. That should be enough."
"No," said Kline.
"That's you're problem," said Borchert. "You don't want to know badly enough."
"I want to know," said Kline.
"Truth or flesh," said Borchert. "Which is more important?"
Kline didn't answer.
"Or say just a digit," said Borchert. "A single finger or toe. What does a finger or toe matter? You've already lost eight digits. What difference would one more make?"
Kline stood up, made for the door. He could hear Borchert behind him, chuckling.
"The offer stands, Mr. Kline," he said. "Come back any time."
He lay in bed, thinking. With the light off he kept seeing Aline's mutilated face, the head riding up on the pillow, blankets tucked just below the chin. Eventually he got up and turned the light on.
His foot ached. It was still weeping blood and fluid where the toes had been, and the foot itself was oddly dark, seemed swollen. He put it on a pillow, kept it elevated, which seemed to help a little.
What was the truth? he wondered. How important was it to know? And once he knew, what then?
He looked at his stump. He could still, sometimes, feel the hand there. And, when Borchert had drugged him, he had been able to see it as well, half-present, like a ghost. He tried to will himself to see it again, could not.
Maybe there was someone who could give him something for his foot, he thought, an anti-inflammatory or perhaps something more, before the foot became too swollen, too painful, to walk on. He would take that, and then stay in bed, waiting for the toes to heal.
Why? he wondered, again seeing Aline's face despite the light still being on. Why had Borchert lied to him? What did he have to gain by pretending Aline was dead when he was actually alive?
He kept turning the question around in his head.
And when, at last, he came up with an answer, he realized he was in very great trouble indeed.
IX
The guard at the gate didn't want to admit him when he arrived, but Kline told him he was coming for an amputation, that Borchert had invited him to return. The guard consulted his fellow behind the door and then waited with Kline at the gate in the dark while the latter guard went upstairs to consult Borchert.
"It's very late," said the guard.
"He'll see me," said Kline. "He told me to come."
And indeed, when the other guard returned, he was admitted.
He went with the other guard up the stairs to Borchert's room. The guard knocked. When Borchert called back, the guard opened the door and allowed Kline to enter alone.
"Well," said Borchert. "Truth is important to you after all, Mr. Kline."
He was sitting in his chair, a gun in his hand gripped awkwardly with his remaining fingers. "Please stay right there, Mr. Kline," he said.
"It's not loaded," said Kline.
"No?" said Borchert. "What makes you think that?"
"The gun you gave me wasn't," said Kline.
"No, it wasn't," said Borchert, "but wasn't that perhaps because I was giving it to you?"
Kline didn't answer.
"Care to tell me what you know?" asked Borchert.
"You're planning to kill Aline," said Kline.
"And?"
"And planning to make it look like I killed him."
"You've been most obliging in that regard," said Borchert. "You've acted your role nicely. A documented penchant for violence. A certain obsession with Aline, dead or alive. You're only wrong in one particular, that being that I've already killed Aline."
"When?"
"Not long after you last left. For a limbless man he put up quite a fight."
"Why?"
"Ah," said Borchert. "Mr. Kline, I doubt if I can make you understand."
"Try me."
"Try me, Mr. Kline? How colloquial of you. It was a matter of belief. Aline and I disagreed on certain particulars, questions of belief. Either he or I had to be done away with for the good of the faith in a way that would leave the survivor blameless. Otherwise there would have been a schism. Naturally, I, in my position, preferred that he be done away with rather than I."
"You were enemies."
"Not at all. Each of us admired the other. It was simply an expedient political move, Mr. Kline. It had to be done."
"Why me?"
"Why you, Mr. Kline? Simply because you were there, and because God had touched you with His grace, had chosen you by removing your hand. You'll of course be rewarded in heaven for your role in all this. Whether you'll be rewarded in this life, though, is entirely another matter."
"Perhaps I should go," said Kline.
"A good question, Mr. Kline. Do I kill you or do I let you go? Hmmm? What do you think, Mr. Kline? Shall I let you go? Shall we flip a coin?"
Kline did not answer.
"No coin?" asked Borchert. "Do you care to express an opinion?"
"I'd like to go," said Kline.