Transition (36 page)

I thought about this. It seemed to me that the fellow’s mind had been broken in prison, probably, but that he had also probably
always been an idealist. He certainly sounded like one now. Almost like a fanatic. Nevertheless, had it been up to me I’d
have released him, frankly. However, it was not up to me. There was high-level interest in this case, for one thing, and an
accusation of having aided terrorist groups could not simply be ignored. He was right in that; the law had to be obeyed. I
thought of handing him over to one of the younger people who would not have heard of him, but decided on reflection to question
him myself, determining that I would be more lenient than they, given that I knew the unfortunate circumstances that had led
him here.

Accordingly, we employed the gagging tape/suffocation method. Jay admitted nothing regarding membership or support of clandestine
or illegal organisations or even any sympathy with them or indeed any outright criticism of the state until approximately
the average degree of pressure had been applied, whereupon, displaying all the standard and expected signs of distress, he
informed us that he’d admit to anything, of course he would. This was what he’d meant, he claimed. People would admit to anything.
The only real truth that torture produced was that people would admit to anything to get the torture to stop, even if they
knew that the admissions they were being called upon to make would eventually prove fatal for them, or others. The whole process
was pointless and cruel and a waste, he claimed. A state that allowed or condoned torture lost part of its soul, he said.
He then pleaded directly with me to stop and reiterated that he would admit to anything we wanted him to admit to, and sign
anything we put in front of him. I chose not to point out that what he had just endured was not true torture by my definition
as it had not involved any actual pain or physical damage, just great discomfort and distress.

That notwithstanding, I terminated the interrogation at that point, with, I will own, no small degree of relief, before he
could admit to anything specific that we might be obliged to follow up.

Jay was released the following day. I filed a report that implied we had been considerably more severe with him than we had
in fact been, guessing that this was all that had been desired by the powers that be in the first place, and our skills and
facilities had in effect been used as a means of punishment rather than as they were supposed to be, to discover the truth – a
use of our time and resources concerning which, I need hardly emphasise, I was in some disapproval, if, of course, powerless
to prevent.

Sadly, a month later, we read that Jay, our Subject 47767, the one-time police officer who had been a hero to many of us,
had taken his own life, throwing himself underneath the wheels of one of the trucks that deliver giant rolls of paper to newspaper
printing presses. One of my colleagues pointed out that suicide, too, was technically illegal, which to me seemed ironic as
well as very sad.

Subject 7

Only one person was ever truly kind to her. It was one of the brush ladies. There were various brush ladies. They were all
small and dark and hunched. They had brushes that sucked at the air or that swallowed dust from the floor. And from lights
overhead. The brush ladies only came at night. A man who was taller than them came with them and told them what to do.

She liked the brush ladies because they did not hurt her. They left her alone. She had been afraid of them at first, because
everything that happened here hurt her or confused her and they obviously belonged to this place and so she was scared of
them. But in time she stopped being frightened and started to look forward to seeing them because they were not like the others.

The others hurt her. The others had clipboard things and electrical things and torches they shone in her eyes and small hard
heavy things they spoke into. They had glass things that they used to put liquids into her. These were called syringes. Also
they had wires that they attached to her. Lots of wires. Some tubes too. Mostly wires. The tubes hurt more than the wires
but the wires could hurt as well. They all wore white coats or pale blue uniforms. The hurt came from fire in her veins, usually.
Though they had other sorts of pain they could make her feel. It depended.

Some of the others did not wear white coats or pale blue uniforms but dressed like ordinary people did. These ones just sat
around and stared at her. She got the impression that they could do things inside her head. This was because when she tried
to think herself away from here – to escape the way she had escaped from things before, before she had been brought here – the
sitting people would close their eyes or bunch their fists or sit forward suddenly and she could feel them in her head, pulling
her away from anywhere she might find safety or at least a temporary numbing of the pain.

Even when she was awake she heard voices and saw ghosts. When they put the liquids into her at night she went to sleep and
had bad dreams as well. At first there had been little time to watch the brush ladies or try to talk to them before sleep
rose up within her and dragged her down to where the nightmares waited. Then, she had thought that the brush ladies were a
part of the bad dreams. But gradually she found that, each night, she stayed awake a little longer before falling asleep.

Or perhaps the brush ladies came earlier – she wasn’t sure.

Sometimes, after they had put the night-time liquids into her, one of the others would come to check on her. She would pretend
to be asleep. The next morning, when they wanted her to wake up and be washed and fed before they started to do things to
her, she would pretend to stay asleep. Gradually they put less liquid in the syringe each night before the lights were dimmed.
She still pretended to be asleep in the evening but she woke up on time in the morning. They seemed satisfied with this. She
was happy because now she got to watch the brush ladies.

She tried talking to them but they ignored her, or – when they did come over to talk to her – they did not speak the same language.

But then one of them seemed to change, and appeared to understand her, and talked to her. The brush lady who talked to her
always wore a grey cloth tied round her head. She was sure that this brush lady had been one of the ones who had not been
able to talk to her in her own language, so she was surprised that now suddenly she could. Still, that was good. Even so,
she still didn’t understand everything the brush lady said. Sometimes it sounded as though she was talking to herself, or
using the sort of complicated, mysterious words that the others did, the ones who hurt her.

Sometimes the brush lady with the grey cloth went back to not talking to her, or seemed not to be able to understand her again.

That was confusing.

The grey-cloth brush lady seemed different on the nights when she did talk to her compared to the nights when she didn’t.
She walked differently, stood differently. She was the same all the time when the man who shouted was there, then – when he
had definitely gone – she became slightly different, if she was going to talk to her. Perhaps nobody else would have noticed
what changed in the brush lady with the grey cloth, but she did. She was able to see these things. She was special and could
see things other people didn’t. That was just one of the special things that she could do, one of the things that had made
her different and worse compared to everybody else. These things had made her a Problem Child and Educationally Special and
Developmentally and Socially Challenged, before they’d decided she was Disturbed and a Delinquent and A Danger To Herself
And Others (the others would always try to protect themselves – she understood that).

Finally these things had caused her to have a Breakdown and so she had to be Committed Into Indefinite Non-Elective Long-Term
Institutional Care With Immediate Effect and so here she was in this long-term care. It had led to a hospital like a prison.
And then to another one which was the same but different. And then to this place, which was worse than either of the hospital-prisons
because here even the people supposed to be looking after her hurt her. Worse, she couldn’t even use the things that made
her special to get away from the being hurt.

Also, she couldn’t retaliate. She could not hurt people who hurt her because they had these people in plain clothes who sat
around her, the ones who sat watching her and did the eye-squeezing, fist-pumping, hunched-over thing. Or maybe it was because
they put the liquids into her, using the syringes. These things put her to sleep, or made her just too woozy to think or aim
straight.

Here are some of the things that the grey-cloth brush lady said to her:

“Hello. How are you? What have they got you on? What do they call you? Subject Seven. Well, that’s caring. Remember me? How
are you? What have they done to you? Evening. Me again. I don’t even recognise this, what the hell is it? Oh. Hey, Subject
Seven. Been a while. How’s things? Shit, what are they pumping… Are you with us, Seven? Are you? Anybody left in there? Fuck,
you poor kid. Yes, they’ve seen something in you, haven’t they? Something they think they can use. Mm-hmm. Fate help us all…
What? Oh, I wish I could. What are they doing to you now? You poor…”

And so on and so on.

She replied by saying things like these:

“I spy Monty’s video. Rent me a Sunder. I’ll have that child frashed, so elp me. Crivens, Mr Givens, you’ll be the deaf of
me. Swear I never heard of such a thing. On me muvver’s grave, there’s a thing. Oi sat in a satin stain. Spot of block and
truckle never hurt nobody. Alignment? I’ll show you alignment, you arrant plopinjay; bend over. So help me. Hold fast there,
bothers and cistern, we shall not face such girlsterous times alone! Clunch.”

“… Can you? Can you hear me? Listen, I can’t get you out of here, Seven, not in any way, physically or otherwise. Minor miracle
I’m here. Never thought I’d work so hard to get back in. I don’t think you can understand a damn thing, can you? But for the
record – in case you somehow can, or one day will – you’ve made it worth it, all by yourself, just to get to see what they’ll
do, what they want, what risks they’ll take, how low they’ll stoop. But look, maybe things will change. Now listen, kid. You
do whatever you need to do to make things easy on yourself, okay? Go along. Do you understand? Do something of what they want
but keep a true core inside you, a soul of rebelliousness; an anger, not a fear. One day you’ll be free, and then we’ll see
what we can do. I might be there then. If I am, remember me. Good luck.”

“Well met by sunlight. We’ll greet by sinlight. Stroke me a clyper!”

The grey-cloth lady often touched her; she would stroke her hand or pat her arm or smooth her hair off her forehead. She did
that again now, brushing hair from her brow.

Liquid.

In the light, she could see that there was liquid on the grey-cloth brush lady’s cheek. Tears.

That was strange. For some reason she’d thought that only she made tears, not anybody else.

Then the grey-cloth brush lady went away with the rest of the cleaners.

She never came back.

The Transitionary

After the great septennial extravaganza under the Dome of the Mists, I was no longer Madame d’Ortolan’s golden boy. I was
not at all sure that I ever had been, despite what Mrs Mulverhill might have believed, but certainly I was no longer. I must
have passed whatever test she had arranged around that consummately bizarre serial two-person orgy she took me on, because
I survived in the immediate thereafter and there were no further interrogations, but she felt that I had insulted her, obviously,
and now I would be made to pay.

I was still convinced that the whole point of the exercise had been to test how easily I could be couriered and to give the
trackers, spotters and foreseers who were undoubtedly in attendance nearby something to work on – like handing a sniffer hound
a piece of clothing belonging to the person you wanted to track – and if there had been any personal component – Madame d’Ortolan
feeling some curious form of jealousy regarding myself and Mrs Mulverhill, perhaps – then surely that had been entirely subordinate
to the infinitely more important business of ensuring the security of the Concern.

Nevertheless, I knew I had insulted her and she had taken it very badly. I had not reacted as I had been expected to, required
to. I had shown some distaste, even arguably some disgust. Certainly not the awed, stunned, perhaps embarrassed, perhaps humbled
respect I believe she had anticipated and was convinced should be rightfully hers.

In the end, on any absolute scale it had been no great hurt; the average person must endure, absorb and forget a hundred equivalent
or worse insults and denigrations each year. But for a person of Madame d’Ortolan’s unparalleled importance and continually
reinforced pride, the very unexpectedness of it had magnified the offence and made it loom all the larger, set against the
otherwise smoothly functioning progressions of her remorselessly flourishing life.

For a few months afterwards I was rested and given no assignments at all, but from then on I was sent on gradually more difficult
and hazardous missions for l’Expédience. I was allowed to spend less and less time in my house in the trees on the ridge above
Flesse. I spent my days instead spread serially far across the many worlds, engaging in feats of derring-do, close-quarter
assassination and outright thuggery. Gradually even the house at Flesse stopped seeming the sanctuary it had been and when
I had discretionary use of septus I would holiday, if that is the right word, in the world containing the Venice where I had
met and lost my little pirate captain, wandering like a lost soul across its history-scorched face, becoming familiar with
that single embodiment of a world crippled by its legacy of recent cruelties and a self-lacerating worship of the proceeds
of selfishness and greed. Again, this was your world, and I guarantee that in many ways I know it better than you.