There is a typicality to this breed of men that stamps them: the way they will stand with their hands behind their backs to speak death into the faces of the weak, the way they will take quick offence, like schoolgirls, and announce a slight as ‘unforgivable’, the way they will show you only half of horror so that your imagination can run riot and bring you to self-made madness. Thus I was to watch only shadows.
"No, don't!" And of course, to listen.
I could feel the blood draining from my face. It was a moment before I could place a new sound. The click of a closing manacle. She was no longer free.
She began wailing softly.
Oktober watched me.
We are not gentlemen. We are trained, though, to respect the rights of the citizen in whatever country. If we need transport urgently we are trained to get it in whatever way we can that doesn't encroach on the rights of the citizen: we don't simply steal a parked car even knowing that we shall return it after use. London is very finicky on this kind of thing. Nor do we intentionally involve members of the public in our affairs.
I had transgressed. I had involved Inga. Not intentionally, but London would decree that it had been intentional by negligence: I had known she was a defector from Phoenix and therefore connected with the subject of my mission, however negatively, and should have kept away from her. I was directly responsible for this. I must therefore do what I could about it.
I must not stand by and let her suffer pain that would send her mad before she died. I must not give my Control and its purpose and its lives into enemy hands.
Normal resources were unavailable to me. There was no hope of getting out of here and running for it, so. That they would leave her alone. There was no hope of reaching her without being restrained by their weight of numbers. I could say nothing to Oktober that would save her, without costing the lives of Control operators and defeating the Bureau's purpose, which was to safeguard human life on a larger scale against the risks of a resurgence of Nazi militarism and its war potential.
Of a dozen possible actions, two alone were worth the consideration, and one of those was denied me. It was the first time I had ever regretted my insistence on travelling light, unencumbered by the bric-a-brac for which some agents have a fondness – guns, code-books, death-pills, so forth. It would be the complete answer to this situation a death-pill. Five seconds, and there'd be proof at Oktober's feet that nothing they could do to her would make me talk. I carried no pill.
The shadows moved and I watched them and heard the sound in her throat and knew it was something like the word please and that it was said to me and not to them because they couldn't help her and she thought that I might.
Oktober watched me. He called through the doorway:
"Increase treatment."
She made another sound and I did the one thing that held out any hope.
15: BLACKOUT
I fainted.
The last conscious memory was of Oktober reaching out to save my hitting the floor. It was probably instinctive. I was able, before blacking-out, to note that he must be ignorant of the processes of syncope, or he wouldn't try to keep me upright. The longer I remained upright the longer I would remain blacked-out.
Psychological and physical factors were all to my advantage. Although he was ignorant of the actual mechanism of syncope he would know that I was psychologically conditioned to it, because this was a crisis: I was helpless in a situation of rapidly increasing strain, and however much the ego and superego tried to rationalise and seek comfort or simply acceptance, the id knew I was in bad trouble and was ready to throw the switch and relieve the strain by blacking me out.
There was also a psychological lever working in Oktober himself: fainting is considered a sign of weakness, though wrongly (the guards trooping the Colours are far from weak specimens, however often they fall over. Long and motionless standing is a classic physical cause of syncope), and I was Oktober's enemy. In a given case we always tend to believe what pleases us, even when evidence to the contrary is stronger. In this case there were two kinds of evidence presented to him. One: the blackout was shown to be produced falsely, at a time when I was obviously desperate for a way out. Two: it was shown to be produced because I was weak. The former evidence was the stronger, because intelligence agents don't pass out so easily in a crisis: crisis is their raison d'etre and it is what they live and sometimes die for; otherwise they'd take up dairy-farming. But Oktober would accept the evidence that pleased him personally: that the blackout was caused by weakness in his enemy.
The physical factors were to my advantage because they too helped to give credence to the genuineness of the faint. The room was very stuffy due to airlessness and the rise of temperature. The central heating was on, and during the last fifteen minutes the temperature had been boosted by the presence of four extra people, each of whose bodies was running at 98.4 degrees F. and throwing off excess heat. My face was bright with sweat and my breathing heavy: two symptoms precursive to a faint.
I was thus psychologically and physically conditioned for the occurrence, and Oktober was furthermore ready to believe the evidence of weakness in an enemy. It was vital that the blackout should look genuine in its inception. It was certainly genuine in its performance.
The same factors that presented evidence of truth were to my advantage in another way: they helped me to induce unconsciousness. Lack of oxygen, mental strain, so forth. To induce syncope at will in a normal environment is not so easy. The instinctive fear of achieving the desired result – unconsciousness – works against the determination to do it. An advanced student of Yoga can induce a form of syncope by one of several asanas, mostly simply by Savasana; but the resulting unconsciousness is salutary, and both body and mind realise it: there is no distortion of any function. I knew that in this crisis a blackout would be salutary indirectly (it would save another's pain), but the body is selfish and will look after only its own direct needs. It was therefore necessary to simulate functional disbalance.
I wasn't worried that my enemy was watching me. The trappings of the trick would look genuine, simply because they were genuine. I filled my lungs, blocked the throat and tried to force air out against the block. The face would gradually suffuse as the blood was driven to the surface. Then I emptied the lungs totally, showing gradual and comparative pallor. The intrathoracic pressure was rising fast and reaching well beyond the 100mm Hg produced by a normal cough, and the pressure was being transmitted to the internal jugular vein and cerebrospinal fluid. In the final seconds of consciousness I tracked the process mentally, to encourage the will. Peripheral filling was now setting up and I could feel the increase of the forearm volume. Cardiac input and output was being reduced, and I held breathing as long as possible to keep the process going.
Then I went slack and inhaled, to bring down the blood pressure with a bang.
The ears sang and the vision lost focus, and the room was darkening as I saw Oktober's hand come out to grab me as I collapsed. The whole operation had taken some five or six seconds and I would be blacked-out for perhaps ten or fifteen and even more if he kept me upright instead of putting my head below heart level.