“The rules of engagement no longer apply in a world without rules. But no, I am not going to torture that kid. He won’t know anything valuable. A simple truth drug will be enough in this case, and since you’re here and Captain Holbrook is in surgery performing a cesarean delivery, you’re going to administer it. That’s an order, Dr. Ross.”
She wasn’t an officer, but the base was under military law. Too bad so many civilians forgot that.
Momentarily distracted, she said, “A cesarean? Who’s having a baby?”
“One of the Settlers.” A baby that, because it was born at the base and not at the RSA-exposed Settlement, had a hugely increased chance of living more than a few hours. Would the new parents appreciate that? Would Colin?
Lindy was never distracted for long. “You promise? No torture?”
“Did you not hear me, Dr. Ross?”
“Yes.” She calmed down. “Now?”
Why not? A hundred details clamored for Jason’s attention, but everyone except the signal crew and patrol detail were safe inside the two domes. Private Sendis had been buried in the graveyard beside Enclave’s seldom-used southwest airlock. Specialist Lena Tarrant was recovering from wounds sustained in the firefight at the Settlement. The base was not under attack, and Elizabeth Duncan sat in the command post at the top of Enclave Dome, ready to receive any messages from the outside patrol. His second in command was one of the best soldiers Jason had ever seen, although almost unknowable. Always she sat so straight that her back never touched any chair. Her expression seldom changed: alert and unemotional. Sometimes she seemed like a machine, except that nobody was a machine. Least of all, Jason thought, himself.
Jason said, “All right, now. Get whatever you need.”
After Lindy fetched her supplies, he led the way to the secure door leading underground. Private Garson sprang up. “All quiet, sir.”
“Good.” He opened the door.
She said, “Don’t you need a retinal and digital match?”
“Both off during daytime if a guard is on duty. Too many scientists and lab techs coming and going from the bird lab.”
At the bottom of the stairs, Jason keyed them into the stockade. No one, fortunately, emerged from the bird lab opposite the stockade. Building the bird lab inside the dome, even underground, had troubled Jason, but the scientists had insisted. They needed easy access between the bird lab and the research facilities directly above. Jason also hadn’t liked the scientists’ bringing in live birds infected with RSA, even though the sparrows that had been captured outside were brought through the tunnel airlock sealed in esuits, and then taken directly into the negative-pressure lab. The birds weren’t, of course, exposed to decon, which would have negated the whole point, and only RSA survivors were allowed to work in the bird lab. At first, Jason had argued for killing the birds outside and only transporting tissue to the lab. However, the scientists had all protested so stringently that he’d had to give way. Apparently, living and breeding sparrows were necessary to develop vaccines or gene drives. But if any of the scientists got careless for even a second…
So far, none of them had. “Colonel,” Dr. Steffens had said, not bothering to hide her disdain, “I’ve worked with Congo hemorrhagic fever, Marburg, and Ebola. Dr. Yu headed the team for the Embassy work on R. sporii. Zack McKay is an expert on Lassa. We will not get careless.”
“Everybody is careless sometime, Dr. Steffens,” he’d said. She didn’t like him, nor he her.
Nor did he like putting the stockade in Lab Dome underground annex. But there was no other place. The underground annex in Enclave was used to bring in Settlement crops and forest game, and kitchen staff were in and out constantly.
The private on stockade duty opened the cell door for Jason and Lindy. The New America soldier sat in the same cell where James Anderson had killed himself. Nothing indicated that fact; the alien material of the floor was as impervious to stains as to ordnance. A plate of untouched food sat beside the teenager. One wrist and both feet manacled, the kid glared at Jason and Lindy from defiant, scared eyes. His wispy beard had become neither fuller nor longer.
“I’m Colonel Jenner and I command here,” Jason said. “Your name and rank?” Some New America cells kept to old rules for POWs; some did not.
The boy said nothing.
“Corporal, secure the prisoner.”
Thompson expertly pinned the boy with a choke hold. Before he could even struggle, Lindy wrapped a tourniquet around his upper arm and slid a needle into a vein on the inner surface of his elbow.
Jason neither liked nor trusted truth drugs. They hadn’t advanced much in fifty years; they usually produced an unsortable mishmash of fact, fantasy, and gibberish; a personality with strong defenses and even minimal conditioning could withstand them. They had not worked with Anderson. Jason wasn’t a trained interrogator, and he doubted that this boy had any useful information. But he had to do this, just in case.
Or was this interrogation, done this gentler way, to demonstrate to Lindy that he was not a monster?
To demonstrate that to the image of Jane in his mind, more than she should be?
To demonstrate to Colin?
“He’s under,” Lindy said. “Just a minute…”
Jason said, “Corporal, dismissed.”
“Yes, sir.” He left, closing the door.
With narcosynthesis, timing mattered. The subject fell into sleep, and then partially aroused from it. Questioning needed to happen during the brief period of twilight consciousness, when inhibitions were lowered and the cortex no longer functioned as a control over what was said. Maintaining that state required frequent, carefully balanced doses of Lindy’s witches’ brew of depressant, barbiturate, and ataraxic. She had proved to be surprisingly good at this.
“Okay,” she said.
Jason said, “What is your name?”
“Tommy. I am Tommy.”
A lucid response, but thick and mumbling. “Tommy what?”
“Tommy knockers. Grandma said… tom toms… magic…” His body in the clean uniform twitched and then he was asleep. Lindy gave him more drug.
“Where did you get the uniform, Tommy?”
“Grandma. Sewed my… sewn shut…”
“Where did you get the uniform? Where?”
“Sierra Depot.” Suddenly clear and crisp. But only for a moment. “Night… Blackie said… that girl…”
“Who was at Sierra Depot?”
“Danced with her but she wouldn’t… they all… Grandma sewed it for me. Her big table, so big… why did Blackie do that? Why wouldn’t she dance with me?” His face twisted, about to cry.
This was pointless. Bits and pieces of this pathetic kid’s lost life, floating to the surface like jetsam after a shipwreck. He must have been only five or six when the Collapse happened.
Fragments of lost life mingled with bits of erotic fantasy. “I licked her and fucked her… tits and ass and cunt… Grandma said…”
Jason put his hand on Tommy’s shoulder and squeezed hard. “Who was at Sierra Depot?”
“Sierra…” He lapsed into sleep.
“More, Lindy…. okay, Tommy, who was at Sierra Depot?”
“Unit Nineteen. We killed all the fuckers, we…”
“You what? What did Unit Nineteen do at Sierra Depot? Tell me!”
“There’s a password. Blackie said…”
“A password to what?”
“A key.”
“A key to what?”
“To the locked room.”
“What’s in the locked room?”
“Full of gold and jewels and silver and girls… Blackie said… gold and myrrh and Frank-in-his-senses… Frank is dead….”
Christ. This was pointless.
Until all at once, it wasn’t.