The attendant went to the machine, snapped a switch and then sat down beside it.
Cassina's eyes turned slowly until he discovered Spangler. He frowned, and seemed to be trying to speak. His lips moved minutely, but his jaw still hung open, with the suction tube hooked inside it. The monotonous gurgling of withdrawn sputum continued.
"Don't try to talk," Spangler said. ”Your throat and jaws are immobilized. Use the stylus."
Cassina glanced downward, and his hand clenched around the slender metal cylinder. After a moment he wrote, "What have you done to Wei?"
The words crawled like black snakes across the white screen. Spangler nodded, and the attendant turned a knob; the writing vanished.
Spangler looked thoughtfully at Cassina. The question he had been expecting was, "What happened?"—meaning "What happened to me?" In the circumstances, the question was almost a certainty—probability point nine nine nine.
But Cassina had asked about Wei instead.
Grudgingly, Spangler said, "Nothing, Colonel. We weren't after Captain Wei, you know. The Rithian spy had concealed itself in his room. We couldn't warn Wei without alerting the Rithian."
Cassina stared gravely at Spangler, as if trying to decide whether he were lying. Spangler abruptly found himself gripping his knees painfully hard.
"He's all right?" Cassina scrawled.
"Perfectly," said Spangler. "Everything's all right. We've got the Rithian, and the alert is over."
Cassina drew a deep breath and let it out again. His mouth still hung idiotically slack, but his eyes smiled. He wrote, "What have you got me in this straitjacket for?"
"You were injured in the struggle. You'll be fit again in a few days. We're going to put you back to sleep now." Spangler motioned; the horse-faced girl pressed the hypo against Cassina's arm and pressed the trigger.
After a moment she said, "Colonel Cassina, we want you to write the numbers from one to fifty. Begin, please."
At "15" the scrawled numerals began to grow larger, less controlled; "23" was repeated twice, followed by a wild "17".
It was long after office hours, but Spangler still sat behind his desk. He had switched off the overhead illumination, the only light came from the reading screen in front of him. The screen showed a portion of the transcript of his interview with Cassina.
Spangler flipped over a switch and ran the film back to the beginning. He read the opening lines again.
Q. : Can you hear me, Colonel?
A. : Yes.
Q. : I want you to answer these questions clearly, truthfully and fully to the best of your ability. When and where did you first meet Captain Wei?
A. : In Daressalam, in October, 2501.
Q. : Are you certain of that? Are you telling the truth?
A. : Yes.
Cassina's conscious mind was convinced that he had first met "Wei" twenty years ago in the Africa District. Several repetitions of the question failed to produce any other answer. Spangler had tried to get around the obstacle by asking for the first meeting after December 18, 2521—the date of the Rithian agents' discovery by the city patrol.
He skipped a score of lines and read:
Q. : What happened after that dinner?
A. : I invited him up to my quarters. We sat and talked.
Q. : What was said?
A. : (2 sec. pause) I don't remember exactly.
Q. : You are ordered to remember. What did Wei tell you?
A. : (3 sec. pause) He told me—said he was Capt. Wei, served under me in the Africa Department from 2501 to 2507. He—
Q. : But you knew that already, didn't you?
A. : Yes. No. (2 sec. pause) I don't remember.
Q. : I will rephrase the question. Did you or did you not know prior to that evening that Wei had served under you in the Africa Department?
A. : (3 sec. pause) No.
Q. : What else did he tell you that night?
A. : Said he had done Naval Security work. Said he had applied for transfer, to be attached to me as my aide.
Q. : Did he tell you anything ehe, either instructions or information, other than details of your former acquaintance or details about his transfer, that evening?
A. : No.
Q. : Skip to your next meeting. What did he tell you on that occasion?
Gradually the whole story had come out, except one point. Spangler had struck a snag when he came to the evening of the 26th, two days ago.
Q. : What did Wei tell you that evening?
A. : (4 sec. pause) I don't remember. Nothing.
Q. : You are ordered to remember. What did he tell you?
A. : (6 sec. pause: subject shows great agitation) Nothing, I tell you.
Q. : You are ordered to answer, Colonel Cassina.
A. : (subject does not reply; at the end of five seconds begins to weep)
Dr. Householder: The fifteen minutes are up, Commissioner. ..
End tran scrpt 15. 52 hrs 12/28/2521.
Later in the afternoon, after his first report to Keith-Ingram, Spangler had had another session with Cassina under the interrogation machine. He had drawn another blank, and had had to give up after five minutes because of Cassina's increasing distress. On being released from the machine, Cassina had gone into a coma and Householder declared that it would be dangerous to question him again until further notice.
Half an hour later, while he was talking to Pembun, Spangler had had a report that Cassina, still apparently unconscious, had made a strenuous effort to tear himself free of the protective collar and had gone into massive hemorrhage. He was now totally restrained, drugged, receiving continuous transfusion, and on the critical list.
Pembun. Pembun, Pembun. There was no escaping him: no matter where your thoughts led you, Pembun popped up at the end of the trail, as if you were Roger trying to get out of the Space Thing's dreadful garden.
Pembun had been right again; Pembun was always right. They had triggered some post-hypnotic command in Cassina's mind, and Cassina, twitching to the tug of that string, had done his best to kill himself.
"It seems to me," Pembun had said that afternoon, "that the main question is—w'y did Colonel Cassina try so 'ard to get to the Rithch w'en 'e found out you were after 'im? 'E 'ad a command to do it, of course, but w'y? Not jus' to warn the Rithch, becawse 'e didn' get enough warning that way to do 'im any good, an' besides, if it was only that, w'y did the Rithch try to kill Cassina?"
"All right," Spangler had said, keeping his voice level with difficulty. "What's your explanation, Mr. Pembun?"
"Well, the Rithch mus' 'ave left some information buried in Cassina's subconscious that 'e didn' want us to find. I 'ad an idea that was it, and that's w'y I asked you not to tell Cassina the Rithch was dead—I thought 'e might 'ave been given another command, to commit suicide if the Rithch was discovered. I think we're lucky to 'ave Colonel Cassina alive today, Commissioner; I b'lieve 'e's the most important man in the Empire right now."