Still shaking. Chair like seat in a roaring roller-coaster swinging round the sky. Mouth full of tongue and the only thirst was for words – tell, tell tell! "Flowers on the pavement – I'll throw flowers over the wall for Solly in the event of my death please send this container Flores for Solly Las Ramblas personally – I said personally, you hear me, you bloody well hear me?" Shivering and feverish now, swinging along and a hand on my wrist. "How am I, Doctor? How am I?"
A glass vase tinkling somewhere near because I'd shouted it loud as I could, bellowed it out at the globe of stars. If only he'd co-operate!
"That's Barcelona. We know that.
"Don't know everything."
"We know the avenue called Las Ramblas, in Barcelona.
"What number is it?"
"Spanish inquisition new-style with amytal these days is it, oh but you're damn clever see the bull-ring, ever see the bull-ring? She stands like a matador feet together and hips forward till you want to horn her like a bull would if she stood like that in a bull-ring but -"
"But we've forgotten the number in Las Ramblas "
"You never knew it and never will -"
"We know it isn't fifteen -"
"Men to mow, men to mow a meadow -"
"We have to send them the container, you see, and we don't know the number -"
"Go and shit."
"Where is your Control? Not in Barcelona, surely? "
"Keep control."
Keep control. Christ, not easy. Shivering all over blast their eyes he'll never forgive me. Breath like a bellows, slanting light like arrows at the eyes blast their eyes. You have the advantage. Use it! Invincible – Quiller the Killer!
The down-curve. I could feel it. The down-curve, glory to God it was coming. I was over the bloody top and on the way down and what had they got? Four names: Pol, Jones, Solly, Inga. Jones dead, Solly dead, Inga mad. Pol left. A dozen Pols in the Berlin directory, fat lot of use to them that was. What else? Post, and stamp, don't have to stamp the letters. In the event of my death. Container. Las Ramblas. A lot of stuff about that lean black cacodemon. Nothing important.
Over the top and on the way down. Play it cool now.
"We'll send the container to Barcelona for you and your man can pick it up in Las Ramblas. What could be simpler? Just put the number on the container and -"
"Yes yes yes. Jawort!"
Say anything. English or German or French. Anything. Watch it, though. Easy does it. In English: "They never got me, though, because I linked up with three others, a Jew and a Dane and a Pole and a Dutchman – nine others, that's right. Proper old beanfeast – how's your idiom, friend Fabian? "In German: "We are not concerned with reaching a particular line on the map but with the extermination of living forces, in other words plain bloody murder and you know who said that? Hitler the fidget, and may the good Lord rot his soul in hell." In French: "They dropped parachutes that night and Barney got shot dead before he hit the ground. It didn't make any difference, there were ten of us. If we'd -"
"There are two lines of trees, and they sell goldfish and puppy-dogs in the middle – now where are we?"
"Las Ramblas."
"Yes, but what number?"
"Five."
"Five?"
"Six. Seven. All good niggers -"
" Fifty-six?"
"Jawort!"
Tiring. Splendid sign. The pressure coming off. Everything quite clear, quite lucid, but the fever going. Fox them.
"Nona fia buro-ki muldhala im bhano-jhim, sembali vadha."
Sitting up there with his Fowler's, never get his D.Lit. in Rabinda-Tanath. "Darmha valthala-mah im jhuma! " Sense not important. Tree tall, man very dead, fire-cart kill quick, just let it come. No word, oddly, for bullet. "Varstra-las! "
"Is that Indian?"
"Ink."
"The American infantry used to take Cotapeeke Indians with them on the battlefield in Normandy, so that orders could be shouted without the enemy understanding them. I expect your Bureau got the idea from that, didn't it?"
"Burro. Donkey. Speak Spanish?" Had to answer, had to. Verbal diarrhoea. Say anything. Urge to speak. Question of time now.
"I always speak Spanish in Las Ramblas, yes. Shall we contact your man in Barcelona by radio for you?"
"They're up today. Yesterday they'll -" watch it! "Be boiling over. Look, if you think you're going to -"
"Why are you still in Berlin?" There was an edge on the tone for the first time.
"The new generation is making its breakthrough to a kind of music that has never been heard before. A ballet of intricate patterns that bespell the eye. Try me on -"
"We thought you were flying out -"
"Pigs might fly, phoenixes fly, the higher they fly -"
"Phoenix? Phoenix, yes. How did you hear about Phoenix?"
"Phone, you tapped my phone, you sods. Listen, there's no talk, no turkey -"
"What was Solly's mission?"
"My fault – my fault -"
"What was he researching on?"
"German war, it wasn't fair -"
"Germ warfare? Oh, we know that. But what will your man in Barcelona do with that container?"
Say nothing. Still dangerous: the answers were coming out mixed up because of the need to inhibit them at source, but he was piecing the images together like an expert. He had to open me up soon or it'd be too late and he knew that – some of the questions were even direct: what was I doing in Berlin, so forth. Showed he was fighting hard, gloves off.
Coming down the far side now. Worst over. The tingling on the skin had stopped. Sweat drying on me. Anxiety on the wane, normal lucidity returning (more real than the glaring superlucidity of the hepped phase).
He said: "We've just had a call from your Control and you are ordered to make an immediate report. Begin, Quiller."
Then I was out again, whole, and still sane.
There is a dawn area coming between the nightmare roller-coaster phase and the daylight of normalcy, and I was in it now, and knew it.
"Begin your report, Quiller!"
Physically I was all right: a shoulder bruise and some thirst, that was all. Psychically stable: disinclination to plan anything, sense of loss (psychic contents had been spilling), nothing worse.
I could make a check now, and defeat the last enemy, my own disinclination to plan anything. I had to plan. If I were going to live, it'd be on my wits.
The guards were still strung across the far end of the room with their guns out of sight. Oktober hadn't moved. I got a look at the gold wrist-watch as Fabian turned to him. 10.55. It had been a ninety-minute ride, then.
Start thinking. Why had Fabian turned to look at Oktober? They were both moving away from me to stand half-way down the room. I heard them murmuring. Nothing intelligible. So they'd given it up. Fabian had been reduced, in the end, to trying simple extortion: Begin your report! Hoping to tap some remnant source of psychic response. No go.