Wilt on High

It was hardly surprising. The strange noises Wilt was in fact making hardly came into the category of utterances and certainly weren't explanations.

'Scrambled,' said the doctor Glaushof had summoned to try and inject some sense into Wilt's communications system. 'That's what you get with AI Two. You'll be lucky if he ever talks sense again.'

'AI Two? We used standard issue Agent Incapacitating,' said Glaushof. 'Nobody's been throwing AI Two around. That's reserved for Soviet suicide squads.'

'Sure,' said the doctor, 'I'm just telling you what I diagnose. You'd better check the canisters out.'

'I'll check that lunatic Harah out too,' said Glaushof and hurried from the room. When he returned Wilt had assumed a foetal position and was fast asleep.

'AI Two,' Glaushof admitted lugubriously. 'What do we do now?'

'I've done what I can,' said the doctor, dispensing with two hypodermics. 'Loaded him with enough Antidote AI to keep him out of the official brain-death category...'

'Brain-death category? But I've got to interrogate the bastard. I can't have him cabbaging on me. He's some sort of infiltrating fucking agent and I got to find out where he's from.'

'Major Glaushof,' said the doctor wearily, 'it is now like zero three hundred hours and there's eight women, three men, one lieutenant and this...' he pointed at Wilt, 'and all of them suffering from nerve-gas toxicity and you think I can save any of them from chemically induced psychosisI'll do it but I'm not putting a suspected terrorist wearing a scrotal guard at the head of my list of priorities. If you want to interrogate him you'll have to wait. And pray. Oh yes, and if he doesn't come out of coma in eight hours let me know, maybe we can use him for spare-part surgery.'

'Hold it there, doctor,' he said. 'One word out of any of these people about there being'

'Gassed?' said the doctor incredulously. 'I don't think you realize what you've done, Major. They're not going to remember a thing.'

'There being an agent here,' shouted Glaushof. 'Of course they've been gassed. Lieutenant Harah did that.'

'If you say so,' said the doctor. 'My business is physical welfare not base security and I guess you'll be able to explain Mrs Ofrey's condition to the General. Just don't call on me to say she and seven other women are naturally psychotic.'

Glaushof considered the implications of this request and found them decidedly awkward. On the other hand there was always Lieutenant Harah...'Tell me, doc,' he said, 'just how sick is Harah?'

'About as sick as a man who's been kicked in the groin and inhaled AI Two can be,' said the doctor. 'And that's not taking his mental condition beforehand into account either. He should have been wearing one of these.' He held up the box.

Glaushof looked at it speculatively and then glanced at Wilt. 'What would a terrorist want with one of those things?' he asked.

'Could be he expected what Lieutenant Harah got,' said the doctor, and left the room.

Glaushof followed him into the next office and sent for Captain Clodiak. 'Take a seat, Captain,' he said. 'Now I want a breakdown of exactly what happened in there tonight.'

'What happened in there? You think I know? There's this maniac Harah...'

Glaushof held up a hand. 'I think you should know that Lieutenant Harah is an extremely sick man right now.'

'What's with the now?' said Clodiak. 'He always was. Sick in the head.'

'It's not his head I'm thinking about.'

Captain Clodiak chewed gum. 'So he's got balls where his brain should be. Do I care?'

'I'd advise you to,' said Glaushof. 'Assaulting a junior officer carries a very heavy penalty.'

'Yea, well the same goes for sexually assaulting a senior one.'

'Could be,' said Glaushof, 'but I think you're going to have a hard time proving it.'

'Are you telling me I'm a liar?' demanded the Captain.

'No. Definitely not. I believe you but what I'm asking is, will anyone else?'

'I've got witnesses.'

'Had,' said Glaushof. 'From what the doctors tell me they're not going to be very reliable. In fact I'd go so far as to say they don't even come into the category of witnesses any longer. Agent Incapacitating does things to the memory. I think you ought to know that. And Lieutenant Harah's injuries have been medically documented. I don't think you're going to be in a position to dispute them. Doesn't mean you have to, but I'd advise you to co-operate with this department.'

Captain Clodiak studied his face. It wasn't a pleasant face but there was no disputing the fact that her situation wasn't one which allowed her too many options. 'What do you want me to do?' she asked.

'I want to hear what this Wilt said and all. In his lectures. Did he give any indications he was a communist?'

'Not that I knew,' said the Captain. 'I'd have reported it if he had.'

'So what did he say?'

'Mostly talked about things like parliament and voting patterns and how people in England see things.'

'See things?' said Glaushof, trying to think why an attractive woman like Ms Clodiak would want to go to lectures he'd have paid money to avoid. 'What sort of things?'

'Religion and marriage and...just things.'

At the end of an hour, Glaushof had learnt nothing.

Chapter 16

Eva sat in the kitchen and looked at the clock again. It was five o'clock in the morning and she had been up since two indulging herself in the luxury of a great many emotions. Her first reaction when going to bed had been one of annoyance. 'He's been to the pub again and got drunk,' she had thought. 'Well, he won't get any sympathy from me if he has a hangover.' Then she had lain awake getting angrier by the minute until one o'clock when worry had taken over. It wasn't like Henry to stay out that late. Perhaps something had happened to him. She went over various possibilities, ranging from car crashes to his getting arrested for being drunk and disorderly, and finally worked herself up to the point where she knew that something terrible had been done to him at the prison. After all he was teaching that dreadful murderer McCullum and when he'd come home on Monday night he'd been looking very peculiar. Of course he'd been drinking but all the same she remembered saying...No, that hadn't been Monday night because she'd been asleep when he got back. It must have been Tuesday morning. Yes, that was it. She'd said he looked peculiar and come to think of it what she really thought was that he had looked scared. And he'd said he'd left the car in a car park and when he'd come home in the evening he'd kept looking out the front window in the strangest way. He'd had an accident with the car too and while at the time she had just put that down to his usual absent-mindedness now that she came to think about it...At that point Eva had turned the light on and got out of bed. Something terrible had been going on and she hadn't even known it.

Which brought her round to anger again. Henry should have told her but he never did tell her really important things. He thought she was too stupid and perhaps she wasn't very clever when it came to arguing about books and saying the right things at parties but at least she was practical and nobody could say that the quads weren't getting a good education.