"That's enough." Quidley watched the dark dead face. What was this man's secret? Did he have a secret?
"Once there was a man — they asked me to interrogate him — he said nothing, nothing at all — he died, saying nothing — then later they told us he was mute—"
"I said that's enough. Wake him up. Oxygen. Adrenaline. Whatever it takes."
"Yes, sir."
Gradually life returned. Tuner writhed on the cot. His eyes opened again, staring at the concrete ceiling of the interrogation room. Muffled sounds bubbled up from deep in his throat.
"Is he coming out?"
"Si, Major. He'll be groggy though. The drugs and the electricity, the effects are cumulative."
Quidley waited. The cot had been dirtied and his nostrils twitched as the smell came up to him. "This won't work, then? He won't talk at all?"
"This is only one technique, Major. As you know there are many others." The little Cuban smiled, and brushed a hand gently over Turner's forehead.
Quidley bit his lips. He hated this part of his job; it was something a regular Army officer shouldn't have to involve himself with. Let the police do it, or the CBI, the smooth types with their cold faces. This was their business.
But, damn it, he was caught. He was Port Security officer, and the man had been remanded to his jurisdiction. He'd hoped for quick answers, then pack the man off for a civilian "trial," and they could do what they liked with him after that — send him to a hospital, to Memphis, to a medical reclamation depot. But it had backfired. He couldn't get rid of him now. Not with General Norris breathing down his neck.
Damn it. What a corner he'd gotten himself into. Not to mention this poor bastard. He came back with a start, realizing Sanchez was watching him curiously.
"I suppose… another technique," he said.
"Insulin shock? A psychological technique? There are many of those, many ways of inflicting pain today, Major."
"You don't use the whip no more," the man on the bed croaked, startling them both. Quidley caught the flare of hatred from his eyes before he looked away.
"Of course not. We don't want to hurt you. Only to have you talk with us—"
But the eyes had sunk closed again. He swung on Sanchez, his decision made. "No. We won't use the… negative techniques. No more pain." He looked at Turner, who was breathing shallowly, asleep. "I don't think it would work on this man anyway."
"You may be right, Major. But that narrows down what I can do."
Quidley clenched his fists. If he could just get rid of him! "What do you recommend?" he asked the medic.
"We can continue the drugs, sir. But they're driving him under fast. But there's — " Sanchez looked thoughtful — "There's a new technique. I was trained for it in Memphis."
"Have you the equipment here?"
"Yes, sir."
"Does it cause pain?"
"Just the opposite."
"What do you mean?"
Sanchez bent over the sleeping Turner and placed his hands lovingly around the crown of his head. "Here. A headpiece like a helmet fits. In it are electrical coils, adjustable. With them we induce a current in the pleasure center of the brain."
"How will that make him talk?"
"They used it first with rats, Major. Crude at first, with wires in the cerebral cortex. Let them administer the pleasure by pressing a switch. Later they gave the rats a choice between freedom and the switch. They stayed. Finally they gave the rats a choice between food and the switch. They all starved after living in artificial ecstasy for three days straight. So you see what we do. We give him pleasure, unlimited pleasure. Then he will talk, gladly. This was actually done with a Northern spy they caught and after they traded him over the border he killed himself because he could never have the pleasure again." Sanchez' hand smoothed Turner's close-cropped head, and he looked lovingly down at him.
"Can't he hear us?"
"It doesn't matter if he can or not, Major. He will have no choice at all."
Love burned like a fire in the center of his brain. Flooding him with light. He was part of a current of joy, and it never ended.
Through it, under it, in a strange way he did not understand, he remained himself, though he did not think at all, nor feel, except for the overwhelming joy. Somehow it was connected with the tightness (joy) around his head. His eyes too were covered, but cobalt blue it was under them, with holy patterns. He was coming — he was coming — but it wasn't sexual and it never ended. His genitals were gone. He didn't care. His legs, his hands, his body were gone. He didn't care. He had so much more.
This was what he'd always wanted. Perhaps he was dead and this living current of pleasure that roared through him, turbulent, laughing, cobalt blue, was the finger of Jesus reaching down into his head. No, he knew it wasn't, knew that somehow it was their doing, but if your enemy gave you such a gift unending how could you hate him for it? He loved the whitey major with the precise voice and the pale distant eyes. He wished he were lying right here with old Johnny Turner drinking from the cup of everlasting bliss. His fingertips trembled where they protruded from the padded cuffs.
Vyry he had loved Vyry but she'd never given him the tenth nor even the thousandth of what was rolling through him, burning sweet in his brain like a hot star, quivering and pulsing in his stomach and legs and fingernails. He wished she was lying here with him and the major drinking the cobalt blue. The moment, now, stretched endlessly and thrillingly sweet, sweeter than Vyry, sweeter than jane, sweeter than the coke the sailors from South America sold at the docks. At the docks, the warehouses — Bo, Willy, Leo, he wished they were here too, all the men who'd had been with him.
Someone came and stood beside him. He could hear them, very faintly.
There had been a secret, hadn't there? There had been a meeting perhaps? Why had he been out after curfew? How had he hurt his leg?
And over and over again, repeated petulantly, angrily, whispered, shouted, asked soothingly, asked hypnotically, the same question:
Why won't you talk?
He lay and listened to the voice with the questions and smiled as the flood of pleasure whirled over them, submerged them, took them away like petals on a cobalt blue rush of whirling living joyous water. The questions came again, and again the water rushed them away. He would have answered them, he didn't care now, but to open his lips was too great an effort. The flow went on and on and his fingertips trembled gently in the padded restraints and later, much later, grew still.
EIGHT
Far below, the ocean, blue, curved upward in a vast and restless bowl. Behind, faint in the west, a low dark line marked the Virginia coast.
Huge, streamlined, silver, the Confederate Navy aircruiser zep Shenandoah thundered out to sea.
Quidley, on Deck Two, stared upward at the vast bulk above him. Six 20-foot propellers, driven by huge Rolls turboprops, shimmered golden in the light of the rising sun. Their muted roar sent a thrill through the rail he grasped. He had seldom flown, and the sensation of speed was magnificent. As was the view below. He tore his eyes away from it to check his watch. Seven-thirty. At the zep's speed, well over a hundred miles an hour, the fleet should soon be in view.
Whether it was the experience of flying, the crisp morning air at six thousand feet, or simply a reaction from the confusion and tension of the last few days, he felt wonderful. He leaned forward, looking down through the angled glass, and smiled. Things were not so bad, and for that, he could take part of the credit. Why not?