When his vision had come back, Two Hawks saw that the room was of polished granite. Its ceiling was far above; the light came from a huge lamp on a wooden table. Several men stood around them. These wore tight-fitting black uniforms; on the left breast of each jacket was a misshapen death’s head. And, unlike any he had seen so far, these men had completely shaven heads.
He had been right. He and O’Brien were here to be interrogated. Unfortunately, they really had nothing to tell. The truth was so incredible that the questioners would not believe it. They would think that it was a fantasy concocted by Perkunishan spies. They could not think otherwise, any more than a man of this world, caught in a similar situation in Two Hawks’ Earth, would be believed by either Allies or Germans.
Nevertheless, there came a time when Two Hawks told the truth, unbelievable or not. O’Brien was the lucky one. Weakened by the malaria, he could not endure much pain. He kept fainting until the inquisitioners were satisfied that he was not faking. They dragged him out by his heels, his head hobbling on the smooth greasy-looking stone. Then they devoted their full energies and ingenuity to Two Hawks. Perhaps they were especially vindictive because they believed him to be a traitor. He was obviously not a Perkunishan.
Two Hawks kept silent as long as possible. He remembered that the old Iroquois of his Earth had admired a man who could take it. Sometimes, though rarely, they stopped the torture to adopt a man of great courage and endurance into the tribe.
After a while he began wondering how his ancestors could have been so tough as to keep silent, even to sing and dance or yell insults at their tormentors. They were better men than he. To hell with the stoicism and with the defiance! He began to scream. This did not make him feel better, but it at least permitted him some expression and release of energy.
The time came when he had babbled his story five times, insisting each time that it was true. Six times he fainted and was revived with ice-cold water poured over him. After a while, he did not know what he was doing or saying. But at least he was not begging for mercy. And he was cursing them, telling them what low worthless despicable creatures they were and vowing to cut their guts out and loop them around their necks when he got a chance.
Then he began screaming again, the world was one red flame, one red scream.
When he awoke, he was in pain. But it was more like the memory of pain. The memory hurt enough but was far preferable to the actual agony inflicted on him in that stone chamber. Still, he wished he could die and get the exquisite hurt over with. Then he thought of the men who had done this thing to him, and he wished he would live. Once on his feet, give him a chance to escape, and he would somehow kill them.
Time passed. He awoke to find his head being held up and a cooling drink going down his dry throat. There were several women in the room, all clad in long black robes and with white bands around their foreheads. They shushed his croaked questions and began to change some of the bandages in which he was swathed. They did so gently but could not avoid hurting him. Afterwards, they applied soothing lotions and put fresh bandages on.
He asked where he was, and one answered that he was in a nice safe place and no one was ever going to hurt him again. He broke down and cried then. They looked to one side as if embarrassed, but he did not know if they were embarrassed by the show of emotion or by what had been done to him.
He did not stay awake long but fell into a sleep from which he awoke two days later. He felt as if he had been drugged; his head was as thick as the taste in his mouth. He managed to get out of bed that evening and to walk up and down the long hall outside his room. Nobody interfered, and he even talked—or tried to talk—to some of the other patients. Shocked, he returned to his tiny room. O’Brien was in the other bed. Weakly, O’Brien said, “Where are we?”
“In the Iroquoian version of the booby hatch,” Two Hawks said.
O’Brien was too drained of strength to react violently. He did succeed in talking, however. “How come we’re here?”
“I suppose our torturers, the Iriquois Gestapo, concluded we had to be insane. We stuck to our story, and our story could not possibly be true. So, here we are, and lucky at that. These people seem to have preserved the old respect for the crazed. They treat them nicely. Only, we’re prisoners, of course.”
O’Brien said, “I don’t think I’m going to make it. I think I’m going to die. What they did to me. . . and being on this world, I...”
“You’re too mean and ornery to die,” Two Hawks said. “Where’s your fighting Irish spirit? You tough mick, you’ll make it all right. You just want some sympathy.”
“No. But promise me one thing. When you get the chance, find those bastards and kill them. Slowly. Make them scream like they made us scream. Then kill them!”
Two Hawks said, “I felt like you did. But I’ve discovered something about this world. There aren’t any Geneva conventions. What happened to us happens to any prisoner if the captors feel like torturing him. If we’d fallen into the hands of the Perkunishans, we’d have gotten the same treatment or worse. At least, we aren’t crippled for life or permanently scarred. From now on, we’ve got it made. We’re being treated like kings. Like captive gods. The Iroquois regard the insane as possessed by divinity. Maybe they don’t really believe that any more, but the basic attitude still exists.”
“Kill them!” O’Brien said, and he fell asleep again.
By the end of the following week, Two Hawks was almost back to normal. The third-degree burns were still healing, but he no longer felt as if he had been flayed alive and every exposed muscle and nerve beaten in a mortar. He met the director of the asylum, Tarhe. Tarhe was a tall thin man with a huge nose and the eyes of a gentle eagle. In addition to being the chief administrator, he was also the head latoolats. This word meant, literally, he hunts, and was the generic term for the Iroquoian equivalent of psychiatrist.
Tarhe was a kindly man and a scholar. He gave Two Hawks permission to use his library, in which Two Hawks spent hours each day learning about this world, or Earth 2, as he was beginning to call it. There were books in every major language and many in the minor tongues and over a hundred volumes of reference material. There was also a multilingual dictionary which Two Hawks used frequently. His education leaped ahead like a hare with a fox on its trail.
Occasionally, Tarhe called him in for brief therapeutic sessions. Tarhe was a busy man, but he considered Two Hawks’ case a challenge. As time went on, he allotted an hour a day to his patient, although for Tarhe it meant losing an hour of sleep or of study for himself.
“Then you think that I had some experience on the western front that was so terrible that my mind snapped?” Two Hawks said, “I retreated from reality into the fantasy world of this Earth I claim to be from? I found this world unendurable?”
Two Hawks grinned at Tarhe and said, “If that is true, why would O’Brien have exactly the same psychosis? The same down to every minute detail? Don’t you find it strange, indeed incredible, that we could agree on a thousand details of this fantasy world?”
Tarhe said, “He found your psychosis attractive enough to want to get into it. No wonder. He obviously depends upon you a great deal; he would feel shut out, absolutely alone, if he were not in this... this Earth 1.”
Tarhe did not use the term psychosis or anything like it. His word, translated literally, meant “possession”. It was used because a latoolats treated the insane as if they were actually possessed by a demon or an evil ghost. The demons, however, were dealt with scientifically; they had been categorized. One of Tarhe’s medical books gave a list of one hundred and twenty-nine types of evil spirits. Two Hawks was supposed to have been taken over by a teotya’tya’koh (literally, his body is cut in two).