The Prisoner (1979) (9 page)

A
nd sometimes it was:

‘Yes, sir. May I help you?’ The clerk came around the counter.

‘I’d like a pane of glass.’

‘What size?’

‘Thirteen by ten.’

‘Just a moment.’ He went to a cupboard, returned.

‘All out.’

‘When will you have more?’

‘Any day now. A shipment’s past due.’

‘Will you notify me when it comes?’

‘Certainly.’

Ting-a-ling-ling.

T
he day was clear, brisk.

‘Number Six.’

‘Good afternoon, Number Two.’

‘Where you off to?’

‘The tobacco shop.’

He slung his jacket over one shoulder. ‘I’m going that way. Mind if I join you?’

‘Not at all.’

Their shoes crunched against the gravel.

‘I thought you were going to do away with Numbers?’

‘I proposed that, but there’s been no answer. In fact, I haven’t heard from Number One in several days.’

‘Really? Is that usual?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t been on the job long enough to tell.’

‘What do you propose?’

‘To wait, I guess. I’m bound to be contacted soon.’

‘Wouldn’t care to send me off to investigate?’

‘I don’t think I’d better. I mean, I’ve got a position to maintain. A lot of people depend on me. I wouldn’t want to disappoint them.’

‘Well, I wish you luck.’

‘Thanks, Number Six.’

Ting-a-ling-ling.

‘Yes?’ The bearded tobacconist stood in the shadows, face hard and recentful.

‘I’ve an order in for some cigars. Number Six.’

‘Yes. I remember. Well, they haven’t come in. And I don’t know when they will.’

‘But number Two okayed them?’

‘Yes. But nothing’s come of it. Nothing’s come in days.’

‘Let me know if it does.’

‘Be seeing you.’

‘Be seeing you.

Ting-a-ling-ling.

T
he breeze was warm and salty.

‘What’s that you’re reading, Number Seven?’

‘Portnoy’s Complaint.’
She held it up.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t like censors.’

‘Want lunch?’

‘No.’ She made a face. ‘I’ve orders to avoid you as much as possible.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. Only that I must be careful not to be seen with you.’ She tilted her head back and looked at him, then went off along the street.

B
ut this time:

‘Attention! Attention please! This is an announcement of importance to everyone. Attention! Attention please! An important announcement:

‘Citizens of the Village, this is Number Two. You are all to be set free. Those of you who wish to leave may do so. Liners will arrive next Wednesday to take you to Southampton. Passage to the destination of your choice will be provided there.

‘Those who require a more extensive relocation may remain here until the details have been worked out.

‘But you do not have to leave this Village. You may stay if you like. Repeat: You may stay if you like. We are not being closed down, merely opened.’

I
t was good to be in London again.

He leaned back against the bus seat and looked down through the window at the street below. A newsboy stood in the grey twilight: a red and white sweatered figure against asphalt grey paving. The buildings were red, soot-blackened brick with dun, soot-blackened casements. There was debris—old newspaper, bits of cardboard, shattered plastic, a weatherstained playbill—blowing along the sidewalk and out into the street, where it was flattened beneath the wheels of passing cars.

MINISTRY SCANDAL—HIGH OFFICIALS SLAIN ROVING YOUTHS BATTLE POLICE IN PICCADILLY COMMUNIST PLOT CLAIMS M.P.

‘So, you know, I says to her: If you don’t get your arse into gear and go out and get yourself a job, I’m gonna kick your butt. And she says to me—get this: the girl’s been laying around there ever since she got outta school, doing nothing but watching the telly and talking to boys on the phone—and where
they
get the time, I don’t know—and I tell her to go out and get a job, and she looks up at me and smiles and says, “I don’t know if I should, ma, I think I’m pregnant.” And you wanta know something else: she says she don’t know who the father is.’

‘Well, I never. That’s almost as bad as—’

KNIFING ON OMNIBUS

KILLER OF FOUR CAPTURED THROUGH ACCIDENT

There was a high-pitched scream.

‘Leave me alone.’

A young man glared indignantly at his companion, and as the bus came to a stop, he slapped the offender, leaped to his feet and stormed down the stairs.

The stench of sweat, wine and urine was unbearable. In the pastoral reality of the Village he had forgotten air could be so foul. The indulgent softness of the voices was like the sound of grease sputtering or the wetness of poured garbage. Their faces were coarse, hardened, impoverished, smouldering with resentment. He got up, went to the back exit and down around it to the street. A newspaper stand displayed its headline:
OXFORD RIOT—65 ARRESTED.

A sign above the door read:
FISH & CHIPS.
He went in.

‘What’ll it be, love?’

‘Fish and chips.’

‘Aught to drink?’

‘Ginger beer.’

She slid open the door of the fryer, reached in with a scoop. Two fat golden fish came out. She lay them on a paper and brought out the chips. Then she folded the paper into a neat parcel.

‘Vinegar and salt?’

‘Please.’

She got a bottle from the cooler. ‘That’ll be sixpence.’

He paid it and turned around.

A camera was mounted over the door, swivelling slowly from right to left.
TELE-GUARD SECURITY CAMERA,
the identification plate said.
Monitored twenty-four hours a day!

He stepped out on to the street.

All motion froze. Reality ground to a halt. Everything was still, even (he was certain) the motion of particle and electron.

Some terrible dislocation wrenched through marrow and bone.

Alone on the suddenly silent earth, he was as frozen as they.

This had been reality: deep in the fibre of his being, in the bedrock of his mind, he had believed this reality. Each blade of grass, each breath of air, each glimmer of light had seduced and compelled him. He had given himself up to the illusion.

And reality had broken.

Then, from far away, like the distant wail of the wind, a force blew up, stirring the dry grey dust of reality, and rising along his hackles in a frigid, blistering gale.

It lashed up about him and the fabric of reality quickened, grew thicker, took on life. The figures began to change. First their expressions (little flickerings of eye and mouth) and then their bodies (hair, complexion, length of limb, torso, stance and personality) began to change. They became farmers, businessmen, politicians, and peasants in a flickering blaze of change.

He saw every evocation of each visible personality throughout every incarnation down all history, all space, all time.

Light, sound, vibration, solidity and surface flared up in a great tumultuous cry. And the electric circuit of his nerves fused beneath too great an awareness as perception multiplied beyond limit and the universe closed in against him in a total, inchoate mingling of interior and exterior. All tissues, membranes, surfaces, interfaces and barriers vanished in a single gestalt instant. And transfixed by the experience of reality, he came finally to the centre of existence.

His mouth opened in a frozen, silent scream.

There was a moment which he became everything, and then—

Godhood.

His consciousness fled from the moment unable to accept, trembled and withdrew. It blanked out pain, blanked out cause, blanked out event, withdrew cell by cell, nerve by nerve through his every day in the Village to the time before that, to the source of the pain.

He fell, unopposed, to the day it all began.

The music pounded out of the speaker and the singer’s voice set up an eerie summons, high and compelling. The shadows of overhead trees dappled and swirled off the car as it roared down the street and into the city rising before it.

His face was grim, set. Eyes, mouth, plane of the face, determined, stubborn and resolute. The singer’s image was conjured in his mind, behind the brightness of the London afternoon.

The car rolled down a ramp into an underground garage.

He got out and went up to giant double doors, seized the handles and threw them open.

He threw the resignation on Sir Charles’s desk.

Sir Charles looked up. His lips parted: The question was flung from the very depths of the universe itself:

WHY?

It smote his consciousness—all time, all structure, all reason ringing with the blow. Present and future mingled in his mind. Like the ghost of reality yet to be, he saw the Village more clearly than the face of the man before him.

And the memory of copper wire and jellied flesh was a shield within his hand.

‘No!’ he cried.

It was the ultimate affirmation.

The universe came to an end.

V
euillez,
Number Six, how did you resist?’

‘Number Four was too co-operative, feeding me in prison. It was out of character. I ate and caught flu. Why? Obviously so I wouldn’t be with you for the execution. Having found one illusion, I waited for the next. And after it, the next. There was never a time I believed completely in my environment.’

‘Merci.
At least I know.’ He made a defenceless motion with his hands. ‘What will happen to me now, I cannot say.’

‘Perhaps you’ll be given your old job back.’

‘Yes, I rather like blending tobacco.’

‘Well, if that’s all—’

‘Oh yes. You may go, Number Six.’

‘Be seeing you, Number Two.’

He stepped out in the street and started home.

Number 237 was talking to a shopkeeper across the street. He turned and waved his hat. ‘Hello, Number Six.’

‘How was your fishing?’

‘Good. Good. You must come to dinner and see.’

‘I will.’

He went on across the green.

Number 32 came out of a store. Her skirt blew up about her legs.

Some days he would play chess with the Admiral.

And some days he would struggle merely to remain alive.

Today he had a window to repair.

And tomorrow…he would wait and see.

For he had defeated them, as he would always defeat them, learning more each time until he set himself free and left.

For one man alone, each victory against so great a machine must be sweet.

He lit a cigar and smiled.

Life was very good just then. Just then.

“Closely based on the extraordinary TV series, far and away the finest thing the medium has done in this genre; while Disch himself is one of the best SF writers.”

—
Observer