Space Eater (26 page)

She ran into a particularly bad patch of static around then, and Lowenstein cut her off. My neck was stiff from where without noticing it I’d been craning to hear the dribbles and hisses from the speaker.

“Would I be right in guessing that Hawking Center is or was New Africa’s ground-based AP research establishment?” Rossa put the question very calmly, very slowly, as if trying to keep Lowenstein from speaking for as long as she could.

“That’s right,” he said. “Can’t handle everything at once—we’ve barely had time to move troops into Columbus (that’s the first town over there) and look what happens. Might be bluff. Possibly isn’t.

What’re you going to do about it?” There was a fine, almost invisible trembling in his forearms where they lay on the desk, and his fists were tight-knotted.

“Us?” I said.

“Not Colophon after all,” Rossa was mumbling. “They should have called it Pandora.”

“You. You turned up with this godawful continent-smasher, and now a bunch of lunatics from Hawking want to break up New Africa if they can’t have it the way they want it. The
oil field
is at stake. Can you grasp that with your tiny minds? The whole point of this war was the oil field, and you’ve handed them the means to destroy it.” He stared at that odd see-through cube on the desktop, as if he was trying to calm himself.

“It might be still worse than that,” Keeb said. “A series of explosions on that scale might conceivably set tidal waves—the term is a misnomer, of course—sweeping around the world to cause actual physical damage in the Archipelago.” I could see he’d shifted gear again, and gone back to being Lowenstein’s fact machine.

“That is
quite
unjust,” Rossa said calmly. “We tried to keep silence, but you insisted on knowing all about this terrible weapon—“ But that would cut no ice: one thing you learn in military life is that nothing’s fair, and another is that it isn’t ever the general’s fault. Especially, especially when he can find some handy scapegoats...

General Lowenstein leaned forward as if he was about to bawl at Rossa loudly enough to blow her out through the (closed) door. That was bad. Then he caught control of himself and his face went stiff like armor plate—you could almost hear the bolts clicking across as his jaw locked into place. That was worse.

“Item,” he said, “you’ve produced an appalling weapon. Item, you suggested the scheme that handed the weapon to the enemy. Could have got you shot on those grounds if I wanted to. That’s not what I want. I want a solution to this mess.”

I noticed that now it was being waved at
him
, it wasn’t the Lowenstein effect any more.

“General,” I said, “this ... thing is like the nukes. It’s outside your protocol, and for the same reason—that it’s just too big and there isn’t any defense.”

“Of course you might build a few nullbombs of your own and make the converse threat,” Rossa said.

“But that doesn’t really seem to meet the case, does it?”

“You were holding something back when you were questioned,” Lowenstein said. “The power apparently comes from clear outside this universe—now if only the rate of release were controlled we might be able to dispense with this damned oil field altogether. Or possibly the FTL drive might have equally useful side effects. Or possibly—“

“Possibly you might buy New African oil on mutually agreeably terms,” Rossa suggested.

“No such things,” said the general. “Blasted fools want to go into full-scale conservation measures before we’ve even developed the planet properly.”

I said: “Hey, how did you get on without oil in the war if you need it that bad?” The general made a wave-all-that-nonsense-away move with one hand, so I had to remember for myself how there were floating oil rigs in the sea out west of the Archipelago. Just not enough of them, I supposed. Or—

“Completely impossible position,” Lowenstein was saying. “StraProgCom wanted you brainfixed until I pointed out we might need to let you go back, some day. Nothing irreversible for our good ambassadors.

You have me to thank for that. On the other hand, I’m at hazard unless I squeeze every last drop out of you. You’ve kept things back. I want those facts. Can’t make any decision on this new problem without all the information. Don’t dare pull apart your ship when there’s the chance of nullbombing our own neutral zone. Understand me?
I have no choice
.”

Rossa: “You want us to forgive you in advance for sending us back to your private inquisition?
I’m
not going to stroke your conscience for you, General, but you’re welcome to my permission for what it’s worth. We’ve nothing to hide—but it’ll be
no comment
all the way when your Torquemadas tread on Earth security...”

“I suppose that goes for me too,” I said slowly.

“Permission’s irrelevant,” Lowenstein said. “Nothing stays held back—and it’s not going to be your decision. You’ve lucked your way through a Grade One questioning; this time it’ll have to be Grade Two. I’m sorry.” His voice soared out of control with the last words, up into a squeak like a bat stalling in midair. I couldn’t tell, from the way he looked from me to Rossa and back again, whether he really was sorry or only felt he ought to be: either way it somehow cracked off another layer of my training. I stared at that mysterious see-through plastic cube on the corner of the desk. It was the size of two fists together and I still couldn’t guess what it did. I’d been too long away from the Force. While we waited for them to come and take us away, I could feel the tension like someone turning screws in my chest; and it wasn’t only get-ready-for-battle tension, going-over-the-top tension, the sort of thing I wanted it to be.

There was a new, wormy feeling in my gut that I hadn’t had since early days in the Force. I was starting to be frightened.

Part Three

The Devourer

All things (e.g., a camel’s journey through a needle’s eye) are possible, it’s true.

But picture how the camel feels, squeezed out

In one long bloody thread from tail to snout.

C.S. Lewis,
Epigrams and Epitaphs

Twenty-Four

There is a thing about pain, a thing you can discover again and again because of what the thing is: You never remember it right. When I had the old, bad dream about that first run on the training ground, the spike and the grating bone, the horror was something to do with
thinking
about it—imagining I was crippled and broken, coming apart as the tendons peeled off the bone with nothing at all I could do to make it heal. You can cobble up queasy thoughts like that any day of the week, say by flipping through anatomy books to see how your elbow-joints work—it all looks so feeble and gimcrack, that muscle and that awkward lever, that to think about them makes you loathe the idea of lifting a weight. I suppose you could call that a sort of intellectual pain. Then there’s the clean, sharp pain when you burn your fingers or get tweaked by gadgets like Rossa’s armband—that sticks in your mind better than the real thing, even though you never remember it as being quite as piercing as it really was.

The real thing is something else, and it isn’t clean. The real thing is padded steel jaws clamping slowly shut on your balls, heavy chains thudding over your kidneys, some big fellow jumping on your stomach until you throw up and black out at the same time, strangling on your own vomit, almost happy to do it because you want to die and escape the dreadful sick pain. That’s the real thing, or as close to it as I can come when—the way I said—you never remember it right.

Grade Two questioning was a stiff dose of the real thing. The setup was the same as for Grade One, only this time they used the steel-web straps on the couch, and the electrical attachments weren’t only the polygraph readouts they’d slapped onto me before. I was stripped, and there were so many needle electrodes taped around my groin I tried to distract myself by inventing jokes about the sex life of hedgehogs. They slipped a test jolt into me before I reached the first punch line, and without wanting to I found the straps were strong enough to take anything I could do to them. Then the cold pressure injections. Then the questions...

“Can the Lowenstein bomb’s energy be released at a safely usable rate?”

“No.”

“That is not an acceptable answer.” Pause. I could hear quite clearly the sound of the slack being taken up in a loose push-button that wobbled, that wobbled in its socket ... and terrible things began to happen.

Something like a brace-and-bit creaking at my crotch, a sadist turning it with a shaky hand, grinding a wormy hole up into me, spoiling me every way and forever ... The straps took another beating. I don’t know how many times the creamy woman’s voice repeated the question before I could understand it again.

“I don’t know any other way. I’m not a technician anyway. All I know is what’s on those plans I gave, we gave Lowenstein...” White dazzle in my eyes—

“Are you quite sure? I’m afraid I’ll have to give you another reminder ... What’s the matter with you?

Don’t cry before you’re hurt, big boy.” What was the matter was a sudden and different and not quite as shattering pain that hit me without any warning while she was halfway through the line about a reminder.

Second-hand. Rossa was collecting a reminder of her own in the next cubicle. I had time to think that, before my own dear lady hit the button again, and everything else in my body whited out like the stars in the face of Beta Corvi. I was turned inside out more times than I could count before she gave up on the business of beating nullbombs into plough shares.

“...Let’s leave that for the moment. Do you know anything about this FTL drive?”

“No...” (but the drugs were pushing at me) “comment.”

“I’m afraid that is no longer an acceptable answer. You must understand how necessary it is to cooperate. (Level three, please.)” Hadn’t thought it could get any worse, but it did, way beyond where you could squeeze it into words. I swam back up into the light, very slowly, and found my wrists burning where the straps had held them; and my throat was raw.

“Why make it hard for yourself? You must understand that we already know
almost
everything. Your companion has told all she knows ... you didn’t expect her to last the course, did you? She’s only a woman. Now, just to confirm what we now know—tell us in your own words about the FTL system.

The sooner we confirm, the sooner we can ease up on your friend.”

Standard interrogation trick, isn’t it? We already know. And of course there was a chance, there was just a chance Rossa might have opened up. I’d have thought she was tough, but you can never guess what people will do when—Without another word from my personal torturer, it hit me again. The same pain but somehow muted, somehow skewed ... secondhand. I tried to bottle up the scream, but it broke out anyway; I felt like a sword-swallower throwing up. All my universe was here under the jagged lights, but somewhere outside the universe Rossa was getting a touch more of level three. They wouldn’t press her that hard if she’d started babbling; so I mustn’t say anything; but I had to say something and keep off that next hammer blow of pain that wanted to smash me. So...

“I ... don’t know how ... the FTL drive ... works.” By thinking hard about the physics and not at all about what had happened between Tunnel and Corvus, I found it just possible to say the words.

“I’m afraid you can’t deceive the machine, Lieutenant. I can see quite clearly that that’s an evasion. Now explain what you know about the FTL drive systems which brought you here. Explain how the equipment can be in the ship and not in the ship.”

I clamped my teeth together until I thought they’d crumble and break. I waited for what had to come.

Only the maggoty notion came crawling and writhing in my head: was it that important a secret after all?

Why not abandon the whole silly FTL pretense, since the only point of it was to impress people like Lowenstein, and—

“Level four, please.” And my mind blew apart, splashed all over the walls of the room. For a while I wasn’t me, I wasn’t anything human. I don’t know how much time went by. When the pieces of me had come squirming back together I knew that I couldn’t have taken that hell for another half-second ... but then, I’d probably have thought the same if it had stopped sooner. Much more of this and they wouldn’t have anything left to interrogate—just quivering jelly on the table.

“—absolutely indefensible,” a man was saying sharply. “Stimulation at level four might have caused permanent nerve damage. You’re an incompetent, an utter incompetent! This means a triple demerit at the very least, and if Lieutenant Jacklin’s damaged, you can expect to face a court of inquiry before the day’s out. Now
get out of here
.” There was a pause, a sound of footsteps, a door opening and closing.

I lay waiting for whatever might happen next. By that time my brain was simply recording what I heard or saw, not doing anything with the data except file it away.

“Lieutenant Jacklin? Are you all right? I really must apologize—that woman grossly exceeded her instructions. She’ll be broken, I promise you, broken. Now let’s get the formalities over and take you for a good meal—you look as if you need one! Ms. Corman has given us her version and we simply need to check it out, the matter of the one-point-nine-centimeter parameter in the FTL system and so forth. I do understand your loyalty position. The best compromise would be for you to give a simple, nontechnical description in your own words of the FTL drive apparatus and anything else which seems relevant—feel free to leave out classified details, of course. How about that?”

“Ye-es ... Can I...” I lost the sound and had to take it from the beginning: “Can I have a drink of water?”

“Of course.” Straightaway there was the sound of pouring. You have to keep water handy in torture cells—calibrated pain makes people thirstier than almost anything else. The man lifted my head gently and touched the rim of a plastic cup to my mouth; I took a gulp, and then another, water spilling over my chin.