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Chapter 4: Armitage
"Now that we have settled our small differences, there is no reason why we cannot eat and drink together as good friends should, is there?"
Armitage, wearing a broad, cheery smile on his face, raised his glass.
"Allow me to raise a toast: to Haven."
Grimm felt his hand moving towards the glass in front of him. Something at the back of his mind, some distant, inchoate memory, warned him against drinking any of the red liquid, but it seemed unreasonable to refuse such a decent man as his host.
"To Haven," was the dull, insipid, chorused answer to Armitage's toast. The five adventurers lifted their glasses as one and drank deeply. The Administrator nodded in an approving fashion.
"That's much better." Armitage turned to his left and raised his voice, addressing somebody Grimm could not see. "Thank you, Terrence, we can lose the ultrasonics now, I think."
A muffled voice replied, "They're off, Administrator."
The head of Haven reached into his left ear and withdrew a small, white plug, repeating the operation on the right and drawing a sigh of relief. "These aural filters are quite uncomfortable, you know," he said.
Grimm had a vague wish to say something, but he found his mind slow and sluggish. It seemed much easier to sit and listen to Armitage than to talk. He felt a tug at his sleeve and heard a faint, familiar voice coming from the direction of his pocket.
"Grimm! You are drugged. Give me your power so that I may aid you."
"Shut up, Thribble," the young mage mumbled. "I'm all right."
Armitage leaned forward, a look of utter fascination on his face. "My goodness, is that an extra-dimensional imp? I believe it is!
"I have never seen the like before. We may learn a great deal from this little one. Give him to me, Grimm."
Grimm fished in his pocket and withdrew the minuscule demon.
"Do not accede to this monster's demands, Questor Grimm!" the demon piped, struggling in Grimm's grasp. "Where is the mighty will for which you Questors are supposed to be renowned?"
"Shut up, Thribble," Grimm repeated in a sleepy monotone. "I'm sure Armitage just wants to take a look at you."
"I imagine that he wants to take a look at my vitals, with the aid of a scalpel, human!" Thribble shrilled, but Grimm handed over his grey friend without the least flicker of concern.
As the Haven man reached out to clutch the tiny underworld being, Grimm saw a blue flash, and Thribble disappeared.
Armitage howled; an unearthly, animal sound of frustration. "Where's he gone? Bring him back at once, Grimm."
The Questor managed to summon up sufficient energy for even a listless shrug. His mouth moved, but he gave up the effort to speak. Dumb passivity was far easier.
Armitage pounded his fist on the table. "Damn it all! I've been trying to get hold of one of those creatures for ages, and a small specimen like that would have been so easy to handle.
"Ah, here come our meals, at least."
A squat, metal thing with spindly arms slid into the room on small wheels and proceeded to distribute plates of meat and vegetables to the diners. A second machine served Armitage alone, but the significance of this fact meant nothing to the befuddled Grimm.
"Do eat, dear friends," Armitage said. "You don't want your food to get cold, do you?"
As if possessed of no more free will than Armitage's strange, metallic servants, Grimm and his companions began to eat, as if it were a chore to be completed.
"Ultrasonics are all very well," the Administrator mumbled through a large mouthful of food, "but, of course, the effects soon wear off when you deactivate them. Drugs aren't much good either, but they keep the subject nice and placid while one carries out the main business of Pacification; studying a brace of Questors promises to be really interesting. If you're as good as you say you are, the experience could be quite edifying."
Armitage's words washed over Grimm like a warm, heavy stream, without meaning or import, but soothing and relaxing.
The Administrator seemed to like the sound of his own voice, as well as the taste of his food, and he carried on, despite his impassive audience, rubbing his hands in evident, unalloyed pleasure. "A new humanoid species and a hypomelanic giant to study," he enthused, "and a young, fresh girl to add variety to our tired, limited gene pool, to boot! Marvellous!"
Despite his complete lack of appetite, Grimm found he had cleared his plate as if he had been starving, although he could not remember what he had eaten, or what it had tasted like. His companions had also finished their meals, and they sat as if in deep meditation, their eyes glazed and lifeless. The young mage could not bring himself to feel concern for them, or to acknowledge that there was anything unusual in the tableau.
Having finished his own meal, Armitage sat back and stretched luxuriantly. "Perhaps you would like to hear something of the history of our happy little commune of Haven. You would? That's excellent.
"You might not believe it, but there has been a scientific mission here for fifteen hundred years, since before the Final War that destroyed most of the rest of the world. Protected as we are by the mountains, we avoided the worst of the devastation. I like to think there are similar enclaves of Technology in similar locations throughout the world, and that we may eventually pool our resources and our learning."
Armitage took a few minutes to clean between his teeth with a length of fine white cord. Apparently satisfied with his dental hygiene, he continued, as if lecturing an attentive group of students rather than five drug-dulled semi-morons.
"At its inception, this establishment was set up as a criminal rehabilitation facility. Escape from this high, cold vantage point was all but impossible, and there were teams of devoted, dedicated psychologists and behavioural analysts on hand to counsel the inmates in an attempt to persuade them to see the clear light of pure reason.
"They failed, of course, despite their noble intentions. The criminals said what the analysts expected them to say, but not what they really believed or felt. Time and again, they broke the rules of the facility, and the members of the staff could do little but chide them or give them further sessions of futile counselling. Society was remarkably lax in those days: physical or mental punishment was forbidden, and the murderers and habitual thieves who found themselves here had known a lifetime of being cautioned and released. They had learnt that crime did pay, despite the contrary admonishment of a common adage of the time."
From the corner of his eye, Grimm saw that Drexelica had slumped face-first onto the table, but the urbane Armitage did not seem fazed in the least by this.
The Administrator took a large cigar from his pocket and lit it with a golden implement that produced flame without evident tinder or flint. He leaned back in his chair and took several serene puffs, his face a blissful mask of contentment.
"After a series of attempted insurrections and riots, the authorities of the time became desperate, and they gave the scientists here at Haven free rein to deal with their charges as they deemed fit; we became masters at manipulating the human mind. Crude initial experiments with mind-altering substances gave way to the use of ultrasonic bombardment, like the little burst you experienced earlier tonight. I'm sure you'd acknowledge the effectiveness of this technique if you weren't so heavily sedated."
He waved his cigar in a contemptuous manner at the display of bovine passivity from his captive audience.
"Anyway, the main trouble with both those control methods is that they don't last too long, and they don't make a permanent change in men's minds. We at Haven have raised the ancient techniques of subliminal suggestion and surgical brain Pacification to an art form. In ancient times, they used to slice through the connection between the two halves of the brain in an attempt to provoke docility; can you believe that? The result of this first attempts at surgical brain modification produced placid morons with no more willpower than you have now.