“You understand I look like Tony Sic, but I’m-ah-I’m Jed.”
“Yuh. Somebody said-”
“Come on. Who is your steward of long things?”
“Huh?”
“Your commanding officer.”
“Lindsay Warren,” he said.
“Who put up the money?”
“For what?”
“For the Stake, in Belize,” I said. I tried not to look at the drifts of precancerous dander under his pathetic thinning sideburns.
“Lindsay’s investors.”
“Who’s Lindsay’s superior?”
“As far as I know, um, I don’t think…”
“Hurry up.”
“I think Lindsay’s his own boss.”
“Really? Okay, how do I get in there?”
“Where?”
“His office. At the Stake.”
“I don’t know.”
“You’d still better get some codes and names and whatever on the table. I’m serious.”
“I’m serious, I don’t know.”
“Okay, you obviously have nothing to offer.” I drew the needle back and scraped it over and over into his mandible toward his teeth, not widening the single puncture but etching a deep line in the bone, over and over, like I was jerking him off. He started shrieking way back in his throat but I gave him a full twenty strokes before stopping. Working on him was getting me back on track.
“There’s a Warren weapons test on for December twenty-first,” I said. “I want you to help me find out about it.”
“Okay.”
“So, okay, tell me about it.”
He paused like he was thinking of making something up, but he must have decided not to.
“I don’t know,” he said, “there’s a Christmas party at the Hyperbowl, if there’s something on for the Stake I’m not in on it.”
“How do I get to see Lindsay?”
“I don’t even know when he’ll be back, they move his schedule around-”
“Please, be terse.” When the stuff took effect he wouldn’t be able to tell me anything. “What codes do you have?”
“I just have a card.”
“How long is it good for?”
“Forever.”
I eased the needle in further, pushing it down from above with my finger, under his loose, bristly skin, until the point threaded into the base of his number-three molar. He tensed. Maggots of waxy sweat welled up out of his pores.
“Come on, how often does the card change?”
“All the time, it’s live-”
“I mean the whole card.”
“It gets replaced every week. I get the new one in two days.”
I felt footsteps again, and voices I couldn’t make out went down another hall, more urgent and official-sounding this time. I jammed the drift of cotton into Grgur’s face.
(107)
Twenty beats later I heard them come around on the other side into the nursing station and run off.
It’s a big sun day, I thought. Excellent. They’re following the badges. I eased up on the wad.
Grgur seemed immobile so I started doing some repair work on my cast-mace, taping in a few scalpels in a sawtooth pattern and then rewrapping the outside with regular white surgical tape.
“Who gave Jed-Sub-One the fake anticoagulant?” I asked.
“When?”
“Back on Halloween.”
“I don’t know, some other cutout.”
“Why?”
“We were not going to kill you, we were only supposed to bring him-you-in.”
“Bring me in to whom?” I asked. I scraped him again. He just squeal-whimpered a little. “Grgur? Seriously. To whom?”
“To Mr. Warren,” he said.
“Who else was going to be there?”
“I don’t know.”
“So what was the next step?”
“We were just going to move you out, we’re here to protect you.”
“We were here to protect you,” I said, trying to imitate him.
“You’re crazy,” he said. “If you walk out of here you’re dead, they know where we are, the whole place is covered… you’re sick, they put stuff in you that’s going to kill you if you don’t let them take care of you-”
“You’re crazy,” I said, sounding a bit more like him. I tried to raise my voice to the pitch he’d have if he weren’t so hoarse. “You’re a dead man. They know where we are. I’m here to protect you. You’re crazy. I’m here to protect you.” It wasn’t brilliant, but I thought it might pass.
Grgur must have gotten what I was up to because he shut up, but I wadded and scraped him again. Tough or not, he screamed and screamed. The cotton wad buzzed like a vibrator.
“Come on,” I said. “Who doesn’t like me? I mean, the most?”
“No, that’s the way it is.” He was starting to sound a little slushy.
“All right, let’s just chat, then. Tell me about Lindso’s Grand Prize Game.”
“I don’t know about things like that.”
I held the wad over his mouth and dug the needle in under the tooth. I didn’t find the nerve right away, but a few hundred beats after I did find it his eyes started tearing and five-score beats later he was screeching into the wad.
It’s kind of intimate and pathetic when someone actually breaks, when his whole tough-guy thing-which is a big part of his sense of self-just evaporates. Sometimes an interrogator can start feeling sorry for the subject at that point and stop pushing as hard, and then, even though the subject’s in a pretty bad way, he might still notice and start withholding information. I didn’t have that problem, though.
“Come on.”
“Let. Um. Me think. For… a minute. Okay, please?”
“Forget it,” I said, “you’re right, you can’t help me.” It was probably true, this whole session was a waste of time. Anyway, they must be finding those badges by now. Better hustle.
It had made me feel a lot better, though. Not out of revenge, like I cared about No Way or anything, but just more like I was back on my sacrificer track.
“You’re going to check me out of here.”
“Whatever you say, asshole,” he whispered.
“Look, here’s the deal,” I said. “Are you listening?”
“Sorry, what?” he said. He was trying to stall me.
“I know you heard that,” I said. “Okay. You feel sort of numb and cold right now, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve given you a mix of paralytics and depressants and a few other things and it ought to kill you in less than a half hour. You got that? And it will be very… claustrophobic, it will feel like you are drowning in feathers. So, we are just going to take the other elevator down into the Emergency entrance and you’re going to tell everyone who hassles us how okay everything is. Okay? And if you, if you screw up, I just will not tell them anything, and by the time they figure out the mix of things that’s wrong with you you’ll be a big blue bulgy-eyed turd.” I held the little drug bottles up in front of his face. “But if you’re really helpful, I’ll give you the bottles when I leave and maybe they’ll figure out what ails you. You understand?”
He grunted a little.
“You got that?” I asked. “Otherwise they’ll never work it out in time.”
He made another grunt that sounded a little more affirmative. Meprobamate is a hypnotic and I hoped he was getting into a receptive state of mind. Not like it was a truth serum or anything. Nothing is.
I took the wad away. He was gasping and I was pretty sure he wasn’t faking, he had that rattling shiver specific to Pavulon. This stuff is great, I thought. Maybe Jed did have a grain or two of useful information in his head.
I looked into his eyes. He was still glaring, but his eyes were already looking a little dilated and lymphy. I got the feeling he didn’t believe I’d care enough to let him live.
“Lube, I’m serious,” I said. “You may not know me, but the one thing I wouldn’t do is renege. On the other hand, if your guys pick me up I’m not talking. You know, even if they think to ask what’s wrong with you. I mean, I’d be upset to get nailed, but letting you die would take a little of the edge off. Okay?”
He nodded a little.
“Okay, here we go,” I whispered. I stood him up. He was weebly but he could stand, so I guessed the stuff was working correctly. I realized I was still in my gown. There weren’t any doctor costumes in here. Damn. Have to remember to take Grgur’s jacket on the way out.