Vascha waved his hand.
And Peder’s further denials faded away. He was almost totally bemused by everything the Minister had said. He had never really looked on Caean as an aggressive force, and not having taken the feud between the two nations seriously, had never expected to find himself in this invidious situation.
‘Well, you’ve brought me a real birthday present after all,’ Vascha said with evident gratification. ‘Yourself: our first captured Caeanic agent, and a person of some importance if I’m any judge.’ He glanced up at the security men. ‘Bring him this way. ZZ want to take a look at him.’
The rear of the room contained a second door giving access to an elevator. All four men entered it, and the elevator first descended, then travelled horizontally for a distance. They emerged into a garage containing a handsome Maxim car. Peder was bundled into the back, while Vascha climbed into the front compartment. The garage doors opened. They were driven down a ramp, along a shuttered drive, through an automatic gate and on to the streets of Gridira.
The sky was beginning to lighten slightly. The car turned on to the North Axis and crossed the city. The Minister pulled a bandanna from his pocket, handing it to Burdo through a connecting window. Burdo blindfolded Peder.
After a while Peder spoke out loud into the silence.
‘What’s ZZ?’
Lieutenant Burdo’s voice came in reply. ‘You know all about them.’
‘No, I don’t. What are they?’
There was a pause. ‘Zealots of Ziode. A secret patriotic society.’
Peder asked no more questions. Twenty minutes later the blindfold was removed. The car was standing on gravel at the rear of a tall, old-fashioned house, close to a well-tended garden bounded by twelve-foot walls. The baroque outlines of other buildings thrust up beyond. This was an antique, well-heeled part of the city.
After being taken from the car Peder was herded into the house and down some stone steps. They were in a small cellar, facing a steel door.
The Minister turned to Burdo. ‘After we go inside, wait upstairs.’
The door opened. Vascha entered, and Peder was nudged in behind him. At his back the door closed with a thump.
In keeping with their rejection of artificial constraint on human individuality, the council of the Zealots of Ziode met stark naked. There were six of them sitting at the crescent-shaped table. Above and behind them, the starburst of the Ziode Cluster blazed on a dark backcloth. Above that, the initials ZZ were emblazoned. The walls of the room were draped with banners and flags.
Looking into their set, determined faces, Peder recognized at once that he was facing rampant nationalism.
Baryonid Varl Vascha divested himself of his clothing, piling his garments neatly on a nearby chair. Naked, looking flabbier and pudgier than he had appeared when dressed, he went and stood to one side of the crescent table.
For the first time since he had begun wearing his suit, Peder felt a loss of confidence. He even wondered if he should confess the whole story of its acquisition. That might be better than to be arraigned as an enemy agent, he thought.
No. These toughened fanatics would show him no mercy. He made an effort to call on the suit’s supernal elegance, performing slight, casual motions – extending one foot an inch or two, lifting his shoulders and turning them in a gesture that was almost effete in its ambiguity.
His élan began to return. These near-subliminal manoeuvres were usually guaranteed to bring opponents to a state of fawning ingratiation. For a moment Peder saw the familiar semi-hypnotic look flicker over the faces of the Zealots, but they were plainly less susceptible than the average citizen to foreign wiles and their self-willed sternness soon returned.
They began to fire questions at him.
‘How long have you been in Ziode?’
‘What kind of information have you passed back to Tzist?’
‘Who do you report to?’
‘How many agents does Caean have in Ziode?’
Peder remained dumb before the barrage. ‘You’re on your own now,’ one of them reminded him. ‘No one can help you, you know that.’
Another Zealot made a remark to Vascha. ‘I wonder if he knows the invasion date?’
‘Invasion?’ Peder echoed. ‘Who says Caean is going to invade?’
‘We say it,’ Vascha said gruffly.
‘You should look on Caean as a friend, not as an enemy,’ Peder replied in a clear voice. ‘Caean will do you nothing but good. We—’ The response had come out of Peder’s lips without any volition on his part. He stopped, realizing he was condemning himself out of his own mouth.
But still the words came, prompted by some secret impulse in his brain. ‘We bring you a new life. Cast off your sleep, enter the new morning of revivifying apparel.’ He raised his arm in a strangely awkward, dramatic gesture, tilting his face towards the ceiling. Dimly he was aware that the suit had taken over his persona and was making him behave like this.
‘Watch out, he’s up to some kind of trick!’ Vascha said sharply. He stepped forward and shoved at Peder, delivering a mild rabbit punch to the side of his neck as he went down.
‘Don’t underestimate Caeanic garments,’ he told his fellow Zealots. ‘Some of them can exercise a kind of mesmeric influence.’
Sullenly Peder climbed to his feet, rubbing his neck awkwardly. ‘I have no information for you,’ he muttered.
The Zealot chairman grunted and opened a drawer under the table. ‘We’ve prevaricated enough. Let’s begin the interrogation. Succinyl will soon get him talking.’
Peder shrank at mention of the interrogation torture drug. The chairman took a hypodermic from the drawer. But Vascha laughed without humour.
‘You don’t need that. There’s a quicker method. Just take his clothes off him. Caeanics can’t stand to be naked. It reduces them to some kind of animal state and you can do anything you like with them – I’ve seen it before. I told you, they’re not like us.’
The chairman hesitated, then replaced the hypodermic in the drawer. He nodded to two of those who sat with him. They rose to their feet and approached Peder, their naked bodies, so pale and flabby, filling him with a purely physical revulsion.
The cellar oppressed him. He should have felt relief at his reprieve, but instead another, deeper terror had taken hold of him. The terror of being disrobed, of being made to go naked in front of these men. To stand naked, stripped of his Frachonard suit! No, no, he could not permit it, it was impossible, he could not!
‘The succinyl!’ he shouted desperately. ‘I’ll take the succinyl!’
They all laughed. Then, as they laid hands on him, something snapped. A feeling of gigantic orgasmic release ripped through every fibre of his body. It was like a sudden discharge between the electrodes of an arc light, an eruption of unsuspected power, and everything seemed to go dim, his perception to withdraw itself, to enter a far darkness. He was only aware, in a vague and incomplete manner, that blinding shocks of energy were vibrating through the room and creating turmoil.
He must briefly have lost consciousness. When he came to he was still standing, and was still unmolested. The cellar looked as if a small explosion had gone off in it. The backcloth bearing the Ziodean starburst was burning. The table and chairs had been overturned, the Zealots having been flung about the room like rag dolls. The air carried a strong acid smell of electrostatic discharge.
At first Peder was too nonplussed to know what to do. Then, quietly and carefully, he moved about the cellar, examining the forms of the unconscious Zealots.
The first two he looked at – the same two who had attempted to undress him – were apparently dead. He moved to a third, but at the same time heard a groan behind him.